This month, we had this conversation.
You: Can I have a granola bar?
Me: Yes.
You: Sometimes I need help tearing them. But not this time.
Me: Okay, good to know.
You: Did you just call me fish nut?
Me: ...No, I said, "Good to know," fish nut. What is a fish nut?
You: It's a fish with a nut up its butt.
We got a report card for you, from Mrs. Hedley. She seems to think that you love doing school work, which makes me laugh, thinking of all the times that you pout over your homework. You don't get any grades right now; you get an assessment on whether or not you are on track to meet academic standards by the end of the year. It's actually very similar to the ways that you were tracked in Montessori, so it makes sense to us, although I gather there has been confusion among other parents who don't know how to interpret it. Mrs. Hedley thinks that you're doing fine, so that's nice.
You got yet another birthday present this month. Grandma had told you that she would buy you a scooter when you were ready for one. You and Miriam and I were out playing one afternoon, and both of you wanted to ride the tricycle. I suggested that maybe it was time to get you the scooter, and then Miriam could ride the trike. You thought that was a good plan, so we picked one up at Target that weekend. It was even on sale--it was good timing. Dad put it together for you and gave you a strict lecture about always wearing shoes. Then he tried it without shoes and promptly injured his foot on the break lever. You have escaped injury so far, thank goodness.
It was mine and Miriam's birthdays this month. You and Dad bought Miriam another set of dinosaurs, which also came with a volcano (appropriate), a human (inappropriate but understandable), and a woolly mammoth (what?). She loves them, of course, but we had to expand our dinosaur toy storage to a larger bin. I got a new serger machine, which is great. I'm looking forward to having the time to explore all of the options that it has, that my old machine did not.
The interesting thing that happened this month is that our milkweed plants started sprouting monarch caterpillars. There were so many that they ate our two milkweed plants down to little twigs and then went crawling off around the yard. So I went to the nursery and bought more milkweed plants. I had to make sure that I didn't bring home any extra caterpillars with the new plants. We managed to keep the caterpillars alive, but we only saw one make a chrysalis. We brought it into the house to keep it safe, and you and Miriam and Grandma got to watch it hatch out and eventually fly away.
This all happened at the same time that they sent home the sign up sheet for science fair projects, so we signed up to do a research project about the life cycle of monarchs. Low hanging fruit, maybe, but every mad scientist has to start somewhere, right?
I hope that you always find ways to support the nature around you. Every species on earth has an impact on their environment, but only humans impact the earth globally and on a huge scale. Just like we can nurture our friends and family, we can nurture our environments, too. Earth is the only planet we have right now. We should try to make sure that we all die because of an unavoidable asteroid impact, and not because we just all wanted to take long showers.
Love,
Mom
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