Menagerie

Our house has become a home for arthropods, invertibrates and other creepy crawlies. Nobody warned me that homeschooling would force me to embrace insects, and yet, here I am with a houseful. Thankfully the ones I know about are caged!

Josh and the kids have been studying insects and other such gross things in science lately. So, we are now the proud owners of 5 tadpoles, 10 painted lady butterfly larvae and a few dozen ants. Until yesterday we also had a large spider, an asian beetle and a dragonfly. We had to get rid of those last night though, because the spider was creeping me out and the dragonfly (or flying dragon according to Gabe) was not allowing us to sleep at night.

Most of the kids are fine with the insects being under our roof, but our youngest is totally freaked out. Two nights ago, he was up every half hour to 45 minutes asking us to let him sleep with us because of bugs in his bed. I finally got to sleep at 5 am. That's what made me put my foot down about the flying dragon. No more of those. I think it's the name that really freaked the poor kid out. Who wouldn't be scared of a flying dragon?!

We're excited especially about the butterflies, ants and tadpoles - although when we ordered them, we didn't realize that we'd be on vacation shortly after receiving them! The butterflies are going to tour the southern states with us, the ants will have to fend for themselves and we're asking friends to tend to the frogs. I just hope we don't miss any great transformations. I thought 2 weeks in the car with four kids was going to be tough. Now we're taking 10 caterpillars and are responsible for their very lives! Hmm. We'll see how that goes.

So, here's a warning to any of you homeschooling moms out there. Be advised that homeschooling means doing ALL those crazy things that other parents can leave to the public school teachers - like keeping creepy crawlies in your house for "study". The things we are willing to do for our kids ... Yeesh.