Swallowtail Butterfly

Found this beautiful freshly-dead swallowtail out running with the kids at a lake. We took it to the park ranger, who delightedly added it to her collection.

Beauty is all around us.

Hunting for Inchworms

A "twig mimic" inchworm

Inchworm Home Sweet Home

Inchworm of a geometer moth

For the past few weeks it has seemed like within minutes of venturing outdoors I am sure to hear the delighted scream of someone screeching, "Mommy! There's a WORM on your shoulder!" Terrific. They're these little green inchworms, and they seem to drop right out of trees, and they are everywhere.

Well, finally I decided to figure out just what they were, and lo and behold, they are inchworms. But what's even more incredible -- and which proves yet again just how little I know -- is that these little guys turn into moths.

Wow. I had no idea.

So of course we had to catch some and build a little habitat. It turns out that they're the larvae stage of the Geometer moth, geo-meter being Greek for earth-measurer, which refers to how the inchworms draw up their mid-sections to creep along the ground. Cute little fellows. Find them dropping down on silky threads from trees -- or on your shoulders.

Our habitat started out as a bona fide bug-catching glass jar with holes in the top, but we discovered that the squiggly little guys could squeeze right out the holes, and since I didn't relish the thought of finding them in the Cheerios, we recycled a plain old plastic cup with a lid and punched TINY holes in the top.

Success. And not just because they didn't escape but because I have now kept them alive for 48 hours. According to all the information I've found on the Internet (which is always correct), they eat leaves (verified -- oak leaves, preferably) and will enter the cocoon stage sometime in the near future and emerge as moths sometime in the not-so-near future. Like, November. In which case, our little critters are only going to be enjoying their new home for a few more days, because we have vacation plans coming up, and I refuse to call up neighbors and ask if they'll babysit our inchworms.

Fish birthday cake

We have a tradition around here that grew out of me being a cheapskate my innate creativity and desire to serve my family. The birthday boy or girl (or man or woman) gets to request a cake, and I'll figure out how to make it (seriously, $55 for a silly-looking princess cake?).

Last year V-Man requested a volcano cake, and then a few days before his birthday he amended his request to an EXPLODING volcano cake (thank you, Food Network). Being the amazing mother that I am (ahem...) I managed a pretty cool exploding cake thanks to a Bundt pan, baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring. And it was even safe to eat.

We had a couple adult birthdays around here lately, one for an uncle who is an avid fisherman. So the kids suggested a fish cake, and since I didn't feel like making Nemo, I opted to make an actual fish cake. Since I quickly realized that buttercream frosting wouldn't mimic fish scales very well, I settled on tackling something I had wanted to attempt for quite some while: FONDANT. The homemade kind -- the kind that inspires any amount of horror stories.

I'll cut to the chase: It worked! No horror stories here. I found the recipe here, and it involves lots of marshmallows and powdered sugar. A few tips:

• Don't do it with kids around. Go ahead and just mark out a night after they're in bed. Otherwise it's impossible. 
• It's MESSY. VERY VERY MESSY. And sticky. But the result is downright professional.
• People will be suitably impressed whenever you can work "While I was making fondant..." into a conversation (assuming they know what fondant is). But your husband will think you're nuts for going to all this trouble for a birthday cake, and around 1 a.m. he will stare at the horrendous marshmallow mess in your kitchen and undoubtedly ask, "Why can't we just buy a cake?" Instead of screeching, "Because they're too freaking expensive!" just smile and say, "Our kids are worth it, honey." Alternatively, you can throw some fondant at him.

Frogs!

Making frog costumes

Our recent unit of study was FROGS! Jumping, hopping, kissing... what's not fun about frogs?

There's no shortage of books about tadpoles and frogs, given that frogs are the example most commonly used to demonstrate how amphibians go through metamorphosis. But we found a couple other charming books that made the kids giggle every time. I highly recommend The Frogs and Toads All Sang by Arnold Lobel, and What Did I Look Like When I Was a Baby? by Jeanne Willis. Don't worry if you can't sing the songs -- just make up any old tune. The kids don't care.

V-Man as a toad... there's something very fitting about this.

Inspired by the Frogs Sang book, we had a FROG PARTY. The kids made costumes by painting paper bags (we painted spots so V-Man could be a toad), and we drew lilypads on the deck by tracing round placemats (sneak in some counting practice here by drawing numbers in the pads). Then we made lemonade and I surprised them with a frog's favorite snack -- Ants on a Log (celery covered with peanut butter and raisins). We would have had a frog's other favorite snack -- gummy bugs -- but somebody ate them all after the kids went to bed one night...

Because MM was getting a little sick of her usual reading lesson (and so was I), I suggested she compose a story about a frog instead. She did, and we spelled it out together. I had intended to have her write an entire story, but then I realized it would take approximately three years to do so, so we didn't get further than "Starbright the frog could not find any insects. She had been hungry for five months."

The unfinished story of Starbright the Frog.

Besides, I'm pretty sure that Starbright the Frog was seconds away from meeting a handsome Frog Prince who would take her to live in his castle for ever and ever, so I'm not too disappointed in our stopping point.

Starbright on her lilypad, probably waiting for her Frog Prince

In a more academic pursuit, we spent a lot of time at the creek looking for frogs, which meant I did a lot of extra laundry, and which also meant we had a lot of wet sneakers drying on the porch. Between that and all the running strollers in the front yard, I fear our house looked a little red-necky for a while. 

Or maybe we just looked like the house of a busy, happy homeschooling family.

Ants on a log... a frog's favorite snack.

IHC: Garbage Cake

The perfect April Fool's Day dessert - Garbage Cake!

You'll need:

• 1 box of chocolate cake mix

• parchment paper

• 1 tub of chocolate frosting

• long pretzel rods

• candies - especially gummy worms, but anything else that looks gross or garbage-y

The really impressive part about this is that I actually got around to reading a parenting magazine. Thank you, Family Fun, for the cool idea. Here's how to do it: Bake a chocolate cake mix in a 9 x 13 pan. It helps to line the bottom with parchment paper. When it has cooled, measure out the length of the pretzel sticks and cut. On a tray, smear the whole thing, sides included, with chocolate frosting. No need for smooth strokes. Line the sides with the pretzel rods, then on top stick whatever candy you want. Get creative! I took Peppermint Patties and cut a circle from the middle (just the dark chocolate part) to make wheels.

Picking up trash on the moon

The other day we were at Target (our home away from home) and V-Man saw one of those robotic picker-upper claw thingies and might as well have bowed prostrate before the aisle cap where it was displayed.

"Mommy," he breathed in that tone usually reserved for cupcakes with three inches of chocolate frosting, "do you know what that is?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's one of those robotic picker-upper claw thingies."

He gave me a look I get a lot lately, that are-you-really-that-dumb? look. "No," he corrected me. "It's what astronauts use to pick up garbage on the moon."

Oh. We bought it, of course, and a few hours later set out for a long run in the triple stroller. V-Man insisted on bringing his robot claw astronaut trash-collecting tool, and despite the high probability of it striking his little brother in the face, I let him.

One block into the run: "Mommy -- stop! I saw TRASH." From then on I stopped the stroller about every ten feet so V-Man could use his claw to pick up Styrofoam packing peanuts, crumpled receipts, plastic bags and an assortment of other gross stuff. All of it went in the bottom of the stroller. He found a lot, and with great enthusiasm hopped out of the stroller to pick up the slightest bit of trash with his claw.

It was a good exercise in keeping the earth clean, but also a good exercise for me in following the kids' lead. If I had said NO to buying the toy, NO to taking it in the stroller, NO to letting him get out and pick the stuff up, we would all have missed out on a good learning experience -- and a good time.

And it didn't hurt that we left our 6.3-mile route around the lake a little nicer than we found it.

Smokehouse Birdhouse

Proof that three-year-olds can be unpredictable: Since January I have had the local newspaper's annual Birdhouse Contest marked on the calendar. I figured for sure that we would be making a princess birdhouse (check) and a rocketship birdhouse. But about a week ago, as we were on the way home from the craft store with silver spray paint, V-Man announced he wanted to do a smokehouse birdhouse instead.

His fascination with smokehouses is nothing new. About a year ago we visited a historic hotel and plantation near our house, which has a smokehouse from the 1860s. Once V-Man learned that a smokehouse is used to dry and smoke meats, he had to know more. We researched smokehouses, looked up youtube videos, visited one in Colonial Williamsburg and made a smokehouse out of popsicle sticks. Trust me, there's not a lot out there about smokehouses. Strange.

So back to the Smokehouse Birdhouse -- we took a bluebird box that was waiting to go up (and house chickadees, no doubt) and V-Man glued balsa wood all around. Then he painted it. Luckily, the natural brush strokes of a three-year-old have a very "rustic" quality to them so his smokehouse birdhouse looked quite old and decrepit. Then we broke balsa wood for roof shingles and he painted it red.

The final touch: Since we couldn't exactly hang smoked carcasses, we hung the next best thing... mealworms, a bluebird's favorite food. I am quite happy to report that he insisted on doing the mealworm work himself.

The result was a fine birdhouse that he entered in the competition alongside his sister's beaded Turkish harem-like bird palace, officially titled "Princess Bird Gazebo." And V-Man took second place in his age category, which can only mean one thing: The judges must not be mealworm fans.