bravery + teeth = butterflies

teeth have been the topic of quite a few of my posts...

there was the dramatic loss of the first tooth...

the spontaneous loss of the second tooth...

the pulling of the 3rd and 4th teeth....

(in order to make room for premature loss and eruption of 1st and 2nd teeth)

then of course the prior post regarding Beans lack of teeth...

phew, it's been a busy teeth year for us!

:0)

the pulling of Ahdee's teeth was a pretty big deal though...

and apparently the Tooth Fairy thought so too...

she, or he (they) decided to reward the brave girl Ahdee with a certificate to purchase her very own LIVE Butterfly Garden...

Ahdee & Bean watch a channel called Sprout PBS Kids every morning while mommie wakes up..

this enables limited screaming/fighting/arguing during mommies wake up time...

now, i love Sprout, but they do have a lot of commercials...

not to mention the SAME commercials everyday..

sadly, my kids can now recite most of these commercials even though they only watch one or two (OK, maybe 3) shows a day on this channel... 

(did i not just commend myself on becoming a housewife.. I have to have them do something while I lay on the couch clean the house...)

anyhoo...

one of these commercials advertises the LIVE Butterfly Garden...

of course, Ahdee immediately fell in love with the idea of growing and hatching her very own butterflies..

so after some very detailed research...

i.e. making sure that at no point did I actually have to TOUCH the butterflies...

because anyone that knows me knows that i'm deathly afraid of bugs...

and YES, butterflies DO count...

i digress...

...  :)

so Ahdee got her wish via that clever Tooth Fairy... :)

and here's how it all played out...

here are the caterpillars after they became giant..

there is also a cocoon in the picture.. or is it a chrysalis.. i never quite got the distinction...

then viola.. one morning we woke up to butterflies...

8 of the 9 butterflies made it through the process...

it was sad to see one of the butterflies struggling and then never making it out of the cocoon (chrysalis?)

then after a few days of feeding them oranges...

and me getting grossed out cause there were live bugs intentionally in my house...

it was finally the day to set them free!..

Bean was ultra excited..lol

and my brave girl Ahdee decided to put her hand in and try to catch a couple before we released them...

so, just like the kids in the commercial, she let them sit on her finger...

and, just like the kid in the commercial, 

she let the butterfly sit on her nose...

although, i would say the kid in the commercial wasn't scared to death at the time...LOL

i was actually so proud of her...

by this time...

Bean had run into the house to escape the horror of real butterflies fluttering outside of their cages...

and Keane and i were watching from a very safe distance...

but my girl was brave, and actually, even comfortable after a while...

then she wanted to get some other people involved...

luckily she chose Auntie Keane as a victim fellow butterfly lover...

Auntie Keane"loves" bugs almost as much as me...

you'll have to ask her about the centipede one day...

lets just say it resulted in her slapping the crap out of herself...

can you see the handprint?  geesh..

(but that of course is another story)...

...

back to the butterfly experiment...  :)

I have to say that i think the Tooth Fairy did a great job choosing an educational, creative gift...

i do however think that he/she should think wisely about what to get Bean for her teeth as she did not end up digging the butterfly experiment at all.. 

and watched the whole event trepidatiously from behind the safety of the glass door...

**Quick side note.. now that the blog is private, I've decided it is ok to use real names and will eventually be incorporating them into my posts... in case you're wondering what's up with the switch :)