Tickling the Butterflies!

One thing you find in Kansas aside from loads of Wizard of Oz references, tornadoes and lots of wind, is grass.

Grass comes in all shapes and sizes. Some are thin, some are tall, some have tassel like ends, and some have bushy tails. Personally, I find it all fascinating. Yes, I know its just grass but it's just kinda interesting. You don't find a lot of interesting things on the prairie so you have to take what you can get.

The later, the ones with the bushy tails (it resembles a fox's tail) is the kind that has taken up root in my front garden. Let's just say I almost needed a machete to hack through the front garden this afternoon when for the first time since April, it got weeded. Apparently it was a good year for weeds.

Talia too has taken a liking to the bushy tail variety.

I have a huge blanket flower plant in the front garden that resides next to the fox tailed grass. I just I bought this year and it has taken over one side of my front garden.

Its a sea of yellow blossoms save for one splash of red from a petunia plant that grew there all on its own. The Kansas wind does its best to leave little surprises to my garden by depositing seedlings when I'm not looking.

The butterflies and moths seem to like the yellow blanket flowers too. T seems to like the bushy grass next to the yellow blanket flowers. She likes the grass not for any aesthetic reason but just because its great for 'tickling'.

Her father taught her this on a few walks we've taken around the neighbourhood. S grabs some stray grass and points it at T and goes 'tickle, tickle, tickle!' The game starts, T squeals and S runs away. Think a game of tag with a piece of grass. The game continues until they both get tired of it.

Oh what fun, right?! Not if you are a butterfly or moth.

T likes to use the fox tailed grass 'tickle' the butterflies and moths. Let's just say, the butterflies and moths are not so fond of being tickled.

As I start to pull the fox tailed grass, T squeals and says "Oh there my tickle grass!"...Oh dear look out bugs. As I pull weeds, I hear 'tickle, tickle, tickle' coming from my right.

She flops the head of the bushy grass on top of the butterflies and moths perched on the yellow blanket flowers. She squeals 'Tickle, tickle!' as she does.

As one can expect, the flying critters don't stay long after Ms Thing starts with the tickling. Its a good thing they don't have stingers or T would be in trouble.

The conversation that follows goes something like this:

T - "Awwwww! Where'd they all go Momma? I want to tickle them!"

Me - "I'm afraid my dear girl, they don't want to be tickled."

T - "But why?"

Fair question but how do you explain why butterflies don't want to be tickled to a curious 3 year old.

Anyone remember this Looney Tunes skit, it just seems appropriate...I will love him and squeeze him and call him George....

Fool me twice, shame on you!

We all know that old adage: Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice shame on you.

Well, I tried to fool T a second time and it didn't work.

Anyone who knows T, know she has a stuffed friend knows Bart. Bart has been through countless washes and dryer sessions, has been knawed on since T started teething and has had to have his ears replaced.

The poor thing has been dragged everywhere in the house, on every adventure T has ever embarked on and is the first thing she thinks about whenever she returns home, gets in trouble or goes to bed. He gets a loving little kiss goodbye before we leave the house and a Oh Bart I missed you when we get home. And is her baby that she feeds whenever R gets a bottle with Mommy.

We happened upon a duplicate Bart ages ago. We kept the new Bart in the event that something very bad happened to the current Bart.

We used the second Bart during our trip back home last January and T didn't bat an eye. Recently S has been after me to trade up the new Bart for the old Bart. So I tried switching them when T went to the gym with S.

No dice.

She noticed right away that it was a different Bart. The new Bart was bigger and well, nicer looking than Crackhead Bart. That's what I call her old one because he does look a might worse for wear. I tried telling her Bart had had a bath and that's why he looks better. Nope, no go.

She was elated to have two Barts. She just couldn't give up the old Bart so the new Bart went back on a vacation...to a spa...in St. Moritz. He's going to send T a postcard.

He may yet come back for a visit but we will have to see. For now, he's sleeping in my dresser.
Eight months ago, she didn't notice, now she does. Fool her once, shame on T, fool her twice shame on Mommy!

Hi Mom, I've lost Dad!

So yes, normally this blog is about the kids and our adventures but this one is just too funny. I think even my dad would agree.

Whenever we have guests visit from out of town, they always have stores they like to visit. For my family, its Lowes, Best Buy and anything involving card making or scrapbooking supplies.

We often joke about the time I let Mom go to Hobby Lobby by herself, equipped with S's cell phone. I tried calling her 6 times from the parking lot as I didn't want to have to get T (who was a young toddler at the time) out of the car and trapse halfway across the store to find Mom. T and I had been runnind errands. The cell phone rang and rang in her purse but she didn't answer it.

On ring #7, she finally realized what the noise coming from her purse was and answered....my family aren't your typical cell phone users.

Now back to our story...

My dad is a man of simple needs. But take him to a large home improvement store and he's in heaven. And may I just say, my house looks all the better after he visits.

This past visit, my parents were down for a longer than usual visit. Dad needed a project and I have a to do list. That meant a trip to the . This time however, I had to go order flooring at a nearby store so I dropped Dad off at Lowes and ran my errands.

I told him to wait over there. By over 'there' I meant the BBQ display. He thought it meant by the swingset display, that was just to the left of the BBQ display.

You can see where this is headed.

Dad told me not to rush, he could stay busy poking around home improvement store. Heavens, who couldn't?

I ran my errands and returned to Lowes. I looked to see if he was waiting by the BBQ display. Nope, no Dad. I went inside to check and see if I could find him.

Countless minutes of searching later, I tried having him paged...three different times. One associate asked what he looked like. I gave her his description. She looked at me and I said, "Yes, I know, I've just descibed the average male customer! I've lost him in the male version of a scrapbook store!"

Meanwhile, Dad was outside, in 90+F heat with his purchases, in a shady spot by the playground display.

He was having his own adventure.

When I tell folks stories of my adventures in Bible Belt, no one believes me until they experience it first hand. Dad finally believes me.

While I was frantically looking for Dad inside the home improvement store, Dad was outside being helped by two ladies who offered to help him pray that I would find him.

Dad politely declined their offer but accepted when they offered to pray for him while they went about their day. About 15 minutes later, I found him.

Divine intervention? You be the judge.

This isn't the first time Dad and I have had a bad time at this particular store. During Dad's inaugural trip to this home improvement store, a guy side swiped my old Suzuki with us sitting inside it. I think from now on, we will go to the home improvement store near us.

Anybody got any Scooby snacks?

I firmly believe one of the greatest joys about being a parent is sharing something from your childhood with your child.

One such thing for me is Scooby Doo. Sounds odd, right?

Not for me. Growing up where I did, channel selection wasn't the best. We had like 6 stations of which, 3 were affiliates to each other so really three, Global, CTV and CBC. If we had great reception, we could get Fox out of Buffalo and maybe PBS however, they were still snowy.

Vintage cartoons and 60s era programs like Star Trek and the Munsters where summertime fares on one of the CBC affililate stations. Scooby Doo was one such 'vintage cartoon'. I could watch those for hours even if I'd seen the episode before.

T was first introduced to Scooby Doo at the doctor's office of all places. R needed to get his shots and the nurse always brings in kid themed bandaids. This time it was Scooby Doo.

Last weekend, T and I spent the better part of the weekend watching reruns of the original Scooby Doo series. It is only now I truly grasp how campy those shows are and how much each episode follows a set pattern of events. Each villian, upon being revealed, says "If it weren't for the meddling kids I would have gotten away with it..."

Even the new series uses the same line is used...somethings I guess do stand the test of time.

Tiring T out, one Nana at a time

If there is one thing I've learned about T, you have to keep her busy.

Having the grandparents visit after R's arrival was a very good idea. T thoroughly enjoyed having someone devouted to her since R was keeping Mommy busy.

I had attempted to find crafts and activities that T could do with her Nanas. Her Poppas kept busy either helping Nanas, fulfilling their golf supply needs and fixing household projects that needed to be done.

When Nana K arrived, T got to play outside at the play park, play in the water pool, and do crafts. I'm not sure which she enjoyed more.

T's day with Nana K usually started going to the play park up the street. Everybody got dressed, put on sunscreen and ran off to the park.

After lunch, T tried her hands at various activities which included making foam popsicle stick puppets. A friend had mentioned during one of our Moms Night Out, that she often occupied her daughter with foam crafts that were sent home to the grandparents.

What a stroke of luck! Each Nana went home with a foam picture frame for their fridges too! She and I had worked on those before R arrived...the weekend before I believe!

Now for the record, they did have googly eyes but as difficult as they were to put on, they fell off very easily...I'm going to have to go on eyeball duty to see about finding any castoffs before R starts crawling. I know I plucked many off of T's dirty clothes after they were washed. They liked to stick to everything but the foam puppets!

When Nana J arrived, we had to find other stuff to do. Nana J brought some 3D foam crafts with her. That took up 2 days...they now adjorned T's walls.

They also worked on T's crazy hat for Kids Day Out.

When we arrived at KDO for the crazy hat day, there was at least one other little girl who had the same pink hat...apparently I'm not the only one who spied the good deal at the local mega craft store's sale on foam supplies!

And they worked on R's letters for his room. Painting with a 3 yr old was interesting! T was very excited that R was going to have letters like she does in his room. Each kid has their name up on their wall. We used Fire Engine red, Apple green and School Bus yellow for R's letters.

T picked them out, even without knowing the names!

Keeping Thing #1 busy...

T attended a Kids Day Out program across town (about 20 minutes away) for most of last year.

When she started, there were a lot of tears on her part. As the year went on, she grew to love being at this program. She got to play with other kids, and Mommy got some time alone.

The one thing I've learned about T is you have to keep her mind and body busy. If she's not busy, she's not happy.

The church that ran the KDO program also had a summer program. I hadn't registered her for the summer session because I was due to have R the week it started its summer program. Since R arrived early, I felt it was important that she have a chance to had some summer fun too. She had kinda been forcefully shoved aside because of R's early and stressful arrival.

Luckily there was a spot open for her. She was thrilled. They had themed days. She got to bring her tricycle and dress up for Red, White and Blue day (which just happened to fall on July 1st so she wore red and white) among the activities. There was much discussion that day about where she should wear a white hat or a red one. We finally convinced her to wear a read one.

There was also a crazy hat day. Nana J and T worked very hard on her hat, a pink foam stetson with monkeys and gorilla puppet she made with Nana K.

Yeehaw cowboy!

After we finished this KDO program...we were left with waiting two weeks for her zoo camp to start. Of course, the zoo camp was during the height of the summer heat.

It was a Zoo Safari camp. T went every day for a week. She learned about bears, turtles, chickens, hippos and trees. Every day she came home with a craft and a slip of paper with questions I was to ask her about. These questions were about the topic they had learned about that day.

These are T's zoo crafts: a hippo puppet, a chick in an egg carton cup, a turtle shaker and a bear necklace

After that program ended, we had to find something else to do. That meant more trips to the zoo and the local green space to stretch ours legs with friends.