Field Trips

We have a really nice butterfly house in our area and there's talk about taking the kidlets. I'm not so sure. The main reason is that my sweet and very sensitive boy likes to stomp on things. This is what boys do. Plus, I'm always telling him to "Be my big, brave boy and stomp on that bug for Mommy". I didn't think for a skinny minute this could be a problem, because one of my kids needs to be taught how to kill things that freak me out - what would I do if John was out of the house and some spider was stalking the family? Someone has to squish the horrid thing and it certainly isn't going to be me.

So I was showing the girls some crocuses that were just popping up and they were appropriately ooh-ing and aah-ing over them. Then Johnny stopped by for a looksie and, after I repeated "look at the sweet little flowers!", he appropriately (in his mind) tried to stomp on them. As I said earlier, that's what boys do. But if his response to something pretty like these:


is to smoosh them, what's to keep the child from extinguishing an insect this beautiful?



Knowing my luck, he'd probably do it in front of some little school children...or start a chain reaction among his siblings and it would be like a horror-show grape-stomp and we would be forever banished from the butterfly house.

Decisions. Decisions.