run, run, as fast as you can

I'm really slacking at blogging, I know. I keep thinking I need to just crack down, but it doesn't seem to happen. Anyway, Abraham is saying some hilarious stuff these days, and I have to write it down so I don't forget. For instance, yesterday he randomly started singing, "Baa baa, black sheep, have you any gingerbread man cookies?" Here are a couple other gems:

Getting into bed, I say, "Abraham, can you scoot over? I don't have any room. I'm going to fall off."

He throws his arm around me and says, "I'll save you, Mommy."


-----


Further proof that Abraham was scarred by the first 20 minutes of The Jungle Book. Anderson was going out to a movie and Abraham said he wanted to go too. Anderson said he couldn't go because it was an adult movie.

Abraham: Too scary?

Anderson: Yeah, it's a little scary.

Abraham: Like Mowgli?

Thanksgiving was nice. More on that later, hopefully. Now, a conversation from last night.

(Playing "Professor says"...which is the library's version of Simon says. During dinner. Which he is not eating.)

Me: Professor says, touch your head.

(Abraham touches his head.)

Me: Professor says, touch your nose.

(Abraham touches his nose.)

Me: Professor says, come take a bite of your food.

Abraham: Professor says, walk away. (Abraham walks away.)

Me: Touché, Abraham.

In the check-out line at the grocery store, Abraham strikes up a conversation with the woman behind us, naming all the things we're buying. She is impressed and says, "Wow, you're smart!" To which Abraham replies, "Yes, and funny."

Abraham says

Me: Abraham, I love you!

Abraham: I love eat chicken!


~~~~~~

Abraham: I hear a noise. Do you?

Me: Yes. Is it the shower?

Abraham: No, guns shooting bullets and fireworks!

I just had this crazy thought about re-envisioning how we define room function in our homes. (Captivating, I know.) I woke from a nap with BabyHam and realized it was time for us to get up, but he was still sleeping. I wondered if the closed curtains and darkness of the room was keeping him asleep longer than usual. Then I wondered how our sleep might be improved if the room was actually painted black and we had thick curtains on both windows. It would just be called the "sleep room" and the only thing in the room would be the beds for all family members (and maybe a small nightstand for water or what have you). We could put some of those glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling (which would also be painted black). It would be like a dark cave. The curtains would somehow be rigged electrically to start opening slowly as the sunrises so that you're awakened gradually by natural light. None of your clothes or anything would be in this room, so you would need also...

The "dressing room"! This could be where all dressers and clothing for all family members would be, with a large, full-length mirror, a vanity for fixing hair and putting on lotions and potions, some chairs. Depending on the size of the room, it could be a sewing/laundry room as well. Imagine, just take off your clothes and put them right in the washer! Of course, to be more aesthetically pleasing, the washer and dryer would be behind doors.

Then, since clothes and bed are housed elsewhere, the kids would just have a playroom, devoted only to toys and arts and crafts. There would also be a reading room for all books, children's and adult's alike, that would be nice and cozy with pillows and beanbags and couches. I suppose then we could have a media room too.

I really like this idea! I kind of want to do it. It seems like a natural way to organize different aspects of life. Or maybe I'm just crazy, who knows!

belated birthday

So, I am really late in writing this, but, Abraham's birthday party was a huge success! Most of you have probably seen all the pictures I posted on Facebook from the party, but I wanted to post here specifically about the theme and decorations. I chose a book theme, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, one of Abraham's favorites. If you have kids and haven't read this one already, I highly recommend it. Basically, the hungry little caterpillar eats through different foods each day until he gets big and fat and turns into a butterfly! For the party, I got some great ideas from around the web and tried to do everything as cheaply as possible. I really had a lot of fun putting my creativity and (lack of) artistic skills to work. First up, the invitation. I just printed it out on card stock with images I found online and used a hole-puncher on the fruit. Then I used a little round sponge brush and some paints to make the caterpillar at the bottom.

The invitation

Next, decorations. I spotted this caterpillar and decided an easier/cheaper version would be with balloons. Crazy easy to make and Abraham LOVED it. It lasted for a week or so after his party, until he asked me to dismantle it so he could play with the balloons. Decorations AND toy!

Caterpillar balloons

Then Abraham and I painted some decorations in our version of Eric Carle's style: the sun and butterfly from the story.

Wall decorations and photo display

Abraham painted the butterfly mostly himself!

And I created a photo display with one photo from each month of his two years of life! It turned out so adorable that I MAY still have it hanging up over a month later...

Two years of Abraham

 As our guest book, we asked everyone to sign Abraham's copy of the book. This will be a great memento for him to keep of his 2nd birthday party.

Guest book

Here are the party favors. I saw these cute little lollipops at a toy store that reminded me of the book, so they became party favors. Then I copy/pasted some images of the caterpillar and fruit and printed them out on magnetic paper to make a cute little magnet set based on the book. This was actually a lot more time-consuming than I anticipated, because I wanted to arrange the fruit just right to get maximum numbers on each page and then had to cut them all out afterward. But it turned out really nice, so I'm glad I went for it. Rounded up the gift bag with a little pack of markers from Target.

Party Favors

 

 

 

 

 

Next up, the caterpillar feast! I got this idea from another caterpillar party featured here. Basically, I chose the foods from the book, laid them out in order, and put a little label for each one that included the photo and text from the book. The feast was a big hit with kids and adults alike, and just happened to include many of Abraham's favorite foods. I included little transition cards in between to include the rest of the story.

In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf.

One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and - pop!- out of the egg came a tiny and very hungry caterpillar. He started to look for some food.

On Monday he ate through one apple, but he was still hungry. On Tuesday he ate through two pears, but he was still hungry.

On Wednesday he ate through three plums, but he was still hungry.

On Thursday he ate through four strawberries, but he was still hungry.

On Friday he ate through five oranges, but he was still hungry.

On Saturday he ate through one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon. (We didn't quite have all of these foods, but you get the idea.) Now he wasn't hungry anymore--and he wasn't a little caterpillar anymore. He was a big, fat caterpillar.

Here is the big, fat caterpillar! I found this cake and did my own version. The picture doesn't look that great to me, but it turned out cute. A little less professional looking and more "homemade." :)

Caterpillar cake!

Party activities included a caterpillar tunnel (it had a caterpillar face on the end, but I didn't get a lot of pictures of it for some reason), an apple ball toss (apples hand-painted by my husband in the style of Eric Carle), and my favorite, the "Paint a Butterfly" station. We also had the water table out and some other outdoor toys that were a lot of fun.

Ball toss

Caterpillar tunnel

The "Paint a Butterfly" station got a lot of use. I just printed a butterfly outline on card stock and set out some paints and brushes!

We had a lot of fun celebrating with our friends, and it got me in the mood for more party planning! Why wait for a birthday? The one thing I wish I had done was actually read the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, at the party, because it turned out several people weren't familiar with it. To me it's such a classic that I just assumed everyone was familiar with it. But other than that, the party was great. Thanks to everyone who came and celebrated with us!

Abraham spilled some water on the porch while watering the plants then splashed in it a bit and started walking around, making "print feets." I love it!

belief

I love this:

Little by little, wean yourself.

This is the gist of what I have to say.

From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,

move to an infant drinking milk,

to a child on solid food,

to a searcher after wisdom,

to a hunter for more invisible game.

Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.

You might say, ‘The world outside is vast and intricate.

There are wheatfields and mountain passes,

and orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight

the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding.’

You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up

in the dark with eyes closed.

                                                    Listen to the answer.

There is no ‘other world.’

I only know what I’ve experienced.

You must be hallucinating.

                                                    -Rumi

And then I melted

Last night was a little bit of a bedtime struggle. So it's way too late and I'm lying in bed with Abraham, trying to help him fall asleep. Then he rolls over and gives me a big hug and says, "I love you. We're friends, Mommy."

What a sense of humor this kid has already. I had him all wrapped up in a towel after his bath and then threw him on the bed for fun. He said, "Oh no, Abraham broke all to pieces!"

Then yesterday he was singing "What a Wonderful World" (which he learned at library story time, complete with sign language) and I told him I would be right back, I had to go to the bathroom. He immediately changed his song and sang, "What a wonderful pee pee!" And then cracked up. Who knew potty humor started so early!

Cute talker

You always hear about how routines and schedules are good for kids, especially young ones, as it lets them know what to expect and helps make transitions easier and such. I've been getting some concrete proof of this lately, now that Abraham is so much more talkative and expressive. We've never kept a strict "schedule" with him, just some general guidelines, like, he usually naps about 12:30-2:30 these days. But if I need to put him down a little earlier or even an hour or more late, then he's fine with it. Lately, though, if we're out in the morning, when I tell him that it's almost time to go, he says, "Go home, eat lunch, take nap." He knows the routine and likes it. He'll also tell me if he's ready to take a nap. When he wakes up in the morning, the first thing he says is "eat food." One day we had dinner much later than usual, around 7:30 when I came home from a meeting. For the next week, on days when I worked until 9, he wanted to eat as soon as I got home. Just one exception to our schedule made him think we had changed things up permanently. It's so interesting and cute.

His talking has really exploded this past month. He can seriously narrate events and experiences. When Anderson gets home from work, he asks Abraham what he did today, and Abraham will tell him pretty accurately. The super cute part is that, if he is repeating something that someone else said, he will use a really high-pitched voice. For instance, he might say: "Abraham color floor. Mommy [high-pitched] noooo." Cracks me up.

Other things that are funny:
If he is looking for something, he calls to it saying, "come out!"
He tells me to sit next to him while he's playing, and then says "closer."
He likes for me to pretend that a toy is sad so that he can do something to make it happy.
He's still writing songs but now also sings along to things that we listen to. I wish I could get this on video! But the camera/phone distracts him. Nothing warms my heart more, though, than hearing my 2 year old belt out: "Wilco will love you baby!"

I ran across the idea today of keeping a one-sentence journal, to make it easy, sustainable, no pressure to come up with paragraphs each day or find the time to write. Just jot down a sentence each night that tells a little something about what happened during the day. I like the idea a lot, because there are a lot of random memories that I want to keep track of, but they don't necessarily lend themselves to an entire blog post. Or, I just don't have time to write a long post, even if I have ideas. But if at the very least I jot down a sentence each night, that's something. And knowing me, I'll probably have a hard time limiting myself to just one sentence! See: the paragraph you just read. Here's today's sentence(s):

I asked Abraham if he wanted some pita bread, and he said, "No thank you, mommy." First time he's ever said that. And he absolutely learned just by example, not me trying to teach him manners. So cute! He also calls one of his girl figurines "little miss muffin." Instead of muffet. I love it!

In other news (see? impossible to write just one sentence once I get started), I'm getting all crafty lately. Abraham's birthday party was a big success (I'll post pictures here soon, but you've probably seen them on FB already), so now I want to have a fall party! In all my spare time, I know. I also NEED to write more, and want to some. I've got these poetry ideas, but that stuff takes time and space. You can't write a poem in 30 minutes when you still have to do dishes and can hear a toddler running upstairs. At least, I can't. Maybe some people can. Tell me your secrets! I also want to bake more, especially now that it's fall. In fact, Abe and I made a sweet potato spice cake just the other day, that I sort of made up. I mean, I loosely followed a recipe. But that recipe didn't call for sweet potato. Or any of the spices I added. Or coconut. It was yum and reasonably healthy and real food.

And in kid crafts, I really want to make a quiet book! This seems like such an awesome (time-consuming, difficult, talent-requiring) project that you could really personalize for your kid, and would teach them things while keeping them quiet - a practically unheard of combination! Not sure that I can actually pull it off, but I'm dreaming about it. Maybe by the time Abraham is in high school I'll have one finished...

And that's a wrap! (Maybe next time it will be a rap. Groan. I know. I can't help myself.)

conversations

Early one morning:

Abraham: Get up! Peanut butter jelly sandwich!

Me: *groan*

Abraham: Sorry Mommy.



On our way out to eat brunch:

Me: We can get pancakes and eggs and bacon! Or sausage. Do you want bacon or sausage?

Abraham: Bacon AND sausage!


His first use of the word "and"! Haha. My little carnivorous baby!

The hills are alive

This is not much of a post, more of a question. A discussion starter. For all you parents and some-day parents out there: how do you decide what type of music is appropriate for your kiddos to listen to? Let's just agree from the start that of course anything obscene or sexy or violent is out.

From birth (and before), we basically decided that we wanted Abraham to listen to stuff that we like. We wanted him to like cool indie-hipster music and whatever it is Anderson listens to. So from an early age, we played (and he loved) The Arcade Fire, Wilco, Liars, Blonde Redhead, Deerhunter, Grizzly Bear, Interpol, Bright Eyes, and so on. You get the idea. Now, at almost two, he can identify and name these bands when he hears them. Of course, we skipped a song if it had bad language. But there have been some things we let him listen to, or have introduced more recently, that I am finding a little more questionable now that he is talking and repeating everything he hears. For instance, "shut up and go to sleep," "happiness is a warm gun," "how quickly will I die if I jump from the top of the parachutes?"

Right at this moment, some of you are all like, "what is the big deal?" while others are horrified by what terrible parents we must be. So what are your thoughts on music and kids?

Bee-tee-dubs, we do have some children's music that he listens to as well, although it's mostly stuff I/we listened to as kids (Red Grammer, Raffi).

To accept or decline

I got friended in real life today. It was...nice? Awkward? Surprising. I went to get my oil changed, and Abraham and I waited in the kid's room. There was another mom and her four-year-old there, who generously let Abraham play with a bunch of cars, trucks, and trains that they brought from home. The mom and I struck up a conversation while our boys played together. I am, as you know, shy and awkward, and unlikely to initiate such a conversation. But luckily I am capable of making appropriate comments and questions come out of my mouth in reply. Then when their car was ready, she asked for my contact info so that we could hang out some time, maybe go to the zoo! I don't understand why! I mean, I'm not that cool. We didn't really have anything in common, other than being moms and liking the beach and owning cars. We didn't have any deep, meaningful conversation. It was just the basic getting-to-know you stuff. The chatting-with-a-stranger stuff. No social security numbers were given out.

Of course, I gave her my number and asked for hers and said that would be nice. And then when she left, I wondered if I was lying. I would never have asked for her number, nor would the idea have even crossed my mind that we should hang out if she hadn't brought it up. But maybe it would be nice. Maybe that's how you make friends. Maybe it's not so strange. She seemed normal enough. She's a real estate agent and teaches swim lessons at the Y. Her husband is an electrician. They're about to go on vacation to the beach. Maybe I need to be more open to actually connecting with people. Maybe I should have made that conversation more meaningful. I don't know why I feel I have to stick to the shallow topics with strangers.

Anyway, I have decided that, if for no other reason than an interesting social experiment, I will text her after she gets back from the beach and see if they want to go to the park or the zoo. We'll see!

Artistic round-up in photos

Making tortillas. Cooking is art!

Painting

Body as canvas

Creating ocean scene before beach trip. That's real sand, baby!

Adding fish and shell stickers

Playing dress up

Creating ocean in a bottle to take on beach trip

Open-ended art activity: I put out paint, glue, paper, scraps of paper and felt, cotton balls, q-tips, etc for him to use as he pleased.

 

 

...Ultimately, he didn't do that much with it. :(  I think it was too "messy" for him. We'll try again another time!

New art table arrangement, with materials out on table instead of in cabinet. He went straight for it as soon as he woke up from his nap. Amazing how just changing up the location/presentation of something will get him interested.

Very intent.

That's it for now! Sensory play round-up coming up soon! See how cheaty these posts are? I get to share a bunch of things that we've been doing without actually writing about them that much! Ha!

Abraham and the Three Bears

Another literature connection we did last week (omg, can you tell I'm an English teacher? awkward!) was to create scenes from the story of "Abraham and the Three Bears" that I have told this kiddo for almost a year now. Still a favorite, but now he likes to help tell the story and decide what toys Abraham and Baby Bear play with at the end.

I got this idea because we have a normal sized rocking chair and also a kid-sized. So we just needed one more to make three! I made a small one out of cardboard. It was...how shall we say...not very sturdy. For some reason I was expecting it to be very easy to make and expecting it to hold up well. Neither of those were true. It broke as soon as Abraham sat on it. (But I suppose, since Abraham breaks it in the story, I could say that was intentional...)

Baby Bear's little rocking chair

Big hard chair, medium soft chair, little chair

Three bowls of porridge

Abraham tasting the porridge

Abraham trying out the three beds

The Bear Family

Abraham hugging the bears

They all lived happily ever after...

He really got excited about acting out the whole story. If I can find a sturdier small rocking chair, I'd like to try this again, and maybe make it a semi-permanent installation that he can play with on his own. The main problem was the scale of everything, because in the story, of course, Abraham is supposed to be the same size as Baby Bear. But this didn't really work out in reality. But I don't think he minded!

In the kitchen

For some reason lately cooking dinner has been annoying. I'm sick of everything that I know how to make, Anderson has made his two dishes, and I don't want to look up recipes. Too much work, too much time. Also, we're trying to eat healthier, cutting out as much processed food as we can. Sooo...we subscribed to The Fresh 20! Basically, this is a meal planning website. For $5 a month, you get 5 recipes a week (classic, vegetarian, or gluten-free), plus a shopping list for each week. The cool thing is that each week's worth of recipes uses only 20 fresh, whole-food ingredients, and then some pantry staples (rice, pasta, etc). So the meals will be really healthy! It's a little intimidating, though, because several of the recipes use ingredients that I rarely or never cook with, like fava beans, eggplant, kale, portabello mushrooms, jicama. Maybe that's not so weird to some of you. I've eaten these things, but they're just not usually on the rotation of things I prepare. I was tempted to pick and choose which recipes I wanted to try, but decided that that would defeat part of the purpose of the subscription in the first place. So I'm going for it, even if it's weird. (We went with the vegetarian meal plan, btw. Cheaper and healthier, and more normal for us, since we cook meat at home less than once a week.)

Yesterday, Day 1, the meal was portabello melts, kale chips, and cantalope. The portabello melts were awesome! Portabellos, avocado, cheese, tomato, onions, on a toasted sandwich. Definitely will make this again. Very simple and good, yet not something I probably would have tried without a recipe. I didn't make the kale chips, though, because we've had them before and didn't really like them. I made edamame instead, for an easy baby-pleaser.

Anyway, point is, if anyone is in a meal rut or looking to eat healthier, I would recommend the Fresh 20! Well, for Day 1, anyway. We'll see how it goes from here! Next meal is Southern Squash Casserole, Tomato Salad, and Fresh Blueberries.

Artistic endeavors

I've been meaning for months to post about some of the fun art and activities we do: finger painting, painting with brushes, making prints, coloring and stickers, sensory trays, felt boards, puppet shows, etc. Here's one we did today - a great literature connection!

One of Abraham's favorite books (and mine, I will admit) is Little Pea. I bought this book for him before he was born. Basically, it's about a pea who hates candy, but has to eat it every night before he can have his dessert...which is spinach! Very cute, and the illustrations are great. So we have read this book a lot and all have it memorized at this point. I wanted to do something to go beyond the story*, so I thought of creating a felt storyboard. Abraham has an ocean felt board I created that he really likes, so I figured this would go over well too. Here is how it turned out:

Litte Pea felt storyboard

This was so easy and cheap to make. Felt pieces are 29 cents at Michaels, and most of this came from pieces I had already bought. Then I just free-handed the drawings based on the book. I'm sure these would be a little better if I were a better artist, but hey, they work for us! You can see the Pea family (Little Pea actually has a sad/angry face on the back for when he has to eat his candy), all the different types of candy, the bowl of spinach, the spoon that Papa Pea uses to fling Little Pea high in the air, and the hill that Little Pea likes to roll down. Abraham really liked watching me actually make all the pieces. He got so excited when each piece was done. I let him color his own piece of candy too, which you can see up there. Then we sat down and I told him the story from memory, adding and moving pieces on the board as needed. Big hit! Now we'll see if he plays with this on his own and tells the story himself.

*Besides, ahem, using the example of Little Pea to get Abe to eat things he is not fond of...and peaking his interest in spinach.

Things to remember

Abraham was pretending to be sad, as he does sometimes (weirdo), and then he said....that candy would make him happy. HA. Hahaha. Nice try, buddy! Luckily, the novelty of eating pretend candy was enough to do the trick.

We are mostly/practically/almost weaned over here. Whew/Hoorah!/Sadface all at the same time. But the point is, he wrote a song yesterday about nursing. As he played the drum, these are the lyrics he sang: "Breast, nurse, Abraham nurse breast, I do, yes." Ahahaha. It cracks me up every time I think about it. And, even though he can pronounce "Abraham" very clearly now, he still often refers to himself with an earlier pronunciation, as he did in this song: Abadaboo!

Another cute thing: he is getting the hang of apologies. If he hurts me, he will often say "sorry." But he also says sorry if he gets hurt. Say I bump him accidentally. He says, "Sorry." Or if he bumps his head on the table or trips on something, he'll say sorry.

Speaking of social graces, he also says please quite regularly and unprompted. And I think he is fast learning that it totally melts my heart and that he will get his way. I need to video this. He'll be yelling, "Pretzel! Pretzel! Pretzel!" and then all of a sudden his voice gets soft and sing-songy and he says "Please pretzel." Okay, it's really more like "peas petzu" but you get the idea.

email from my husband that made me laugh for a long time:

i went to the goodwill outlet store and it was traumatic because it was just crazy looking people frantically digging through large bins of unsorted crap.  like monkeys looking for fruit hidden under straw or i dunno chewbacca digging for robot parts.

Themes of importance

So, since I changed the name of my blog, this might have messed up the (few) people who were following me. Not sure? Anyway, I changed it on FB, so it should be importing properly now. And then all you people should follow me, rather than just reading it in your newsfeed. Why? So I can become rich, obviously.

I wanted to find a video of Ryan Adams singing "Tennessee Sucks (in the summer)" to post here, but apparently it's not a popular enough song. But c'mon, my Tennessean peeps, do you feel me on this one? I hate when it's too hot to be outside.

Also, I'm so mad at my yard. It's full of chiggers. I have - not even joking - over 20 bites all over me at this point. We tried an all-natural repellent in the yard, but I guess it didn't work. Need to do some more research, because I hate that I'd have to put poison in my yard in order to be able to be outside without getting bitten. Any suggestions?

I've got a hankering for writing again now thanks in part to Ashley's post about how hard it is. But I have a sort-of idea for some poetry inspiration, so maybe I'll work on that, and post something here if it turns out decent. You know, in all of my spare time. Gugugugoo!

Meanwhile, here's the last good one I wrote, and the last bad one. I'll let you decide which is which. No titles.

Sept. 21

At the door, a man stood.

Backwards twisting words of his.

Dark hole of a mouth shaping forms.

Rolling, foggy sounds escaping.

Covered by my hands, my ears.

Muffled.

On the table, fists pounded

            firecrackers

into the night spewing.

Colors, shapes, and blocks.

Verbally sentences diagrammed.

Trees of sentences.

Prepositions of.

Quickly adverbs.

            Dark, beautiful adjectives

through my fingers squeezing

            my ears into.

Nov. 30

And I hear the “ding” that is you

playing Mario

while I lie in bed under a pillow

and I get mad

and I want to crush all your Oreos.

 

Also, I made peach cobbler tonight! That's summer!*

So many things. That I haven't written about. But they happened, I promise! All of them. And look, I redesigned and renamed my blog! Because it was less work than actually writing a post. Yes, I will for sure be a famous blogger some day at this rate.

Anyway, one of the things I want to write about is summer! Oh summer, sweet summer. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? I love summer. Except for all the heat and bugs. But I think I have this made up idea of what summer is like - homemade popsicles and sprinklers and fresh foods with lots of tomatoes. Made up in the sense that, I get all nostalgic about it, but did I ever really have summers like that? I mean, I've done (and eaten) all those things, but maybe not in the storybook summer way that I have in my head. And also, you still have to work during the summer, apparently. That's a little bit of a bummer.

But what this leads me to is, Pinterest! I joined and I've got a board pinning all sorts of stuff about my fantasy summer. Yeah, look at all that new jargon I just introduced you do. You don't even know what I'm talking about. You're just nodding and acting the part.

So, that's all for now. It's late. I'm tired. I'll try to write with more substance soon.

PS - Look! I didn't mention a baby this whole post!

*And homemade salsa with homegrown (though not by me) tomatoes and jalapenos!

A delicacy in some parts, I hear

As you may have heard, the world is ending this Saturday. I'm realizing now that there have definitely been some signs! For instance, the plague of locust at my house.

Okay, cicadas, whatever. The point is, science is crazy and freaky! It started with all of a sudden over night hundreds of the exoskeletons or skins or what have you (pictured above...and below) attached to our house and trees and bushes.

Seriously, EVERYWHERE. So many. These pictures don't do it justice at all. At first we only saw a few of the actual adult bugs, but then, unbelievably, even more crunchy skins everywhere and now swarms of adult bugs! They are slow and big and gross and everywhere and LOUD.

 

So we did some research, and it turns out they have a 13 year life cycle. So for 13 years they live underground, and then come out just once to mate and die. The picture above shows the holes that are all over the ground where they have emerged. Thinking of suing for property damage.

Here's what the adults look like. Luckily, they are pretty harmless. They don't eat the plants or bite or anything. They just swarm and then die all over your porch.

I showed the little bug shells to Abraham, and of course he didn't know that they're gross, so he picked one up immediately...

 

And smashed it gleefully between his hands.