The boys are both doing GREAT in baseball. Little Man is really starting to shine! I recently bought him a new glove and that made a huge difference in his catching ability. Apparently the teeball glove that he has had for three years was cutting the circulation off in his hand!! :0 I swear I didn't know! He never told me!! One of his coaches approached me and told me that his glove was way too small for him. It was only after this that Little Man mentioned the "tingles" he got when he wore it at games. What a BAD Mommy I am!! We made a beeline for Big 5 and I had one of their more knowledgeable associates help us pick out the correct size glove. What a difference it made!! At the next game he caught every ball that came his way and managed to get a number of players out! Yippee! Muffin Man is doing pretty well too. His team, overall, is a Joke! We have 14 four and five year old's on the team! Talk about CHAOS! Most of them are catching ladybugs for the entire game. I will admit that Muffin Man has done his fair share of bug catching, but he finally seems to be catching on to the game. In the last few games he has managed to get hold of a number of balls and tag a runner or base a few times. He gets SO proud of himself when he does it. It is just too cute!
Ok, I have a story to tell...........Last week Muffin Man announced to me that he wanted his daily vitamin. I told him I was busy and that I would get it for him in a few minutes. At that he announced that he would just go get it himself. I told him to go ahead and try. Knowing that it has a child proof cap I was not all that concerned. I could hear him in the kitchen trying to get the bottle open and complaining that there was something wrong with the lid. At this, Little Man proceeded into the kitchen to give him a hand. Little Man has never opened a child proof cap either and for a moment was stumped. At that point I walked into the kitchen and saw that Little Man was reading the cap. He started to speak and I interrupted him and told him that he did not need to read what it said out loud and that neither he nor Muffin Man needed to know how to open the bottle. Muffin Man grabbed the bottle back and started looking at the top. He carefully sounded out "Push down and turn" and then promptly did just that. As the top came off the bottle he looked over at me and exclaimed "Watch the Master at work!" The good news is he is learning to read quite well. The bad news is he may be a bit too smart for his own good! Smarty Pants!
Another story...............The other evening the boys and My Honey were preparing to go to the park and then on to a game. I had a prior commitment and was unable to accompany them. I was giving the usual goodbye hugs and kisses when Muffin Man told me he needed 100 kisses! I slathered him with kisses and then kissed his palm, folded over his fingers, and told him to put the kiss into his pocket for later. (This is from a really cute book titled The Kissing Hand) I then kissed and hugged Little Man goodbye and they headed out into the garage to get into the car. A few seconds later, Little Man slipped back inside alone and said "Can I have a kiss for my pocket too?" Talk about melting my heart! When you think they are getting too old for all that mooshy stuff, just think again. I have to remind myself daily that although he seems to be growing up into a "Little Man" right before my eyes, he is really still just my little boy. I am So thankful for the gift God gave me when He gave me my sons.
Onto the critter updates..........
We are now down to about 7 mantis'. They continue to eat each other even though I keep their cage well stocked with crickets and fruit flies. The largest is now about an inch and a half long. They are growing like weeds. They molt often and it is really awesome to watch. Below is a picture of one that was in the process of molting and we pulled it out of the cage so we could watch the action up close. If you look closely, you can see the old skin near the top of the photo. I was actually holding on to some of the skin it had already shed. They hang upside down while they molt and the other mantis' have no shame and will attack and eat them while they are vulnerable. Here is the gruesome part.......Do not read if you are squeamish...........I warned you! Whenever I notice two of the Mantis' facing off I will tap on the mesh and get them apart in order to keep them from eating each other. Obviously, as shown by the numbers, I am not catching them often enough! The other day I noticed that one was clutching another and they appeared to be fighting. I flicked at the mesh and tried to get them separated and then noticed that the one that was caught no longer had it's head. But is was still MOVING and FIGHTING! Little Man came in and started trying to get them apart as well. I told him it was too late and that it no longer was "alive" but he wouldn't believe me. He kept saying "But it is still moving!" I explained that this can sometimes happen but that since it's head was gone there really was nothing we could do to save it. The sickest part of this whole experience was that the thing KEPT FIGHTING until the very end!! Even when it was down to the last 1/6 of the body and only two little legs, it was STILL KICKING! GROSS!!!!! So the moral of the story is this..........Although this has been an awesome science experiment, it is not for the faint of heart or those with children who may be traumatized by constant death.
This first photo is of our tadpoles. I actually do not think I have posted any pictures of them until now. When we got them they were newly hatched from eggs and were the size of the tip of pencil lead. All of them fit in a medicine dose cup with room to spare. In fact, that is what I brought them home in. Since then they have been growing by leaps and bounds. As you can see in this picture some of them are sporting froggy back legs. A few days after this photo was taken, they began to pop out front legs. The back legs grow over a period of a few weeks but the front legs literally pop out of holes in their sides fully formed. It seems that over the last few weeks, there has been a new leg or two every time I look! Just today, two more went from two legs to four. Once they have four legs, it is only a matter of a few days till their tails are absorbed and they climb out of the water. The second photo shows a few of the frogs after they have completed their transformation. One still has a bit of tail left, but not for long. They are too cute but they are escape artists!! One got out last night and it was by sheer luck that I found it before the cats did. YUCK!
This last picture is of one of our resident lizards. There are a number of them that have lived in the lower part of our yard since we moved here. This is actually one of the smaller ones. Two of them are really big! We don't see much of them through the winter months but as soon as the weather warms up they start coming up the hill to eat the grass and drink from the sprinklers daily. Anyway, just thought I'd share.
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