Our preschool co-op visited Springton Manor Farm last week. It's a lovely historic farm with a well-stocked butterfly house and some of the friendliest goats you've ever met.
Our first stop was the butterfly house. The butterflies were plentiful and varied; we spent some time trying to identify every butterfly we spotted, until the little boy holding our identification sheet decided he'd rather play silly baby games with his little brother.
To lure the butterflies to us, we dressed in bright colors. Lucy found a flowered dress and noted that the "butterflies will suck me up!" it's an accurate description of butterflies and flowers, to be sure, but still sounds borderline obscene.
No butterflies were tempted to land on Lucy or Peter, perhaps because they're always moving, but some did land on my hat and on Thomas's hat. Despite the high potential for jealousy and/or frustration, neither Peter nor Lucy seemed that bothered by butterflies who ignored them. Perhaps because they could grab a net, visit the outdoor butterfly garden, and catch their own!
(Except they couldn't catch their own butterflies. It's tough when your butterfly net is as tall as you are.)
Later, after lunch and some rock climbing, we visited the farm animals. Thomas very much wanted down and out and to get in the pens with the different animals, pig poop or no poop. I spend a good portion of my days thwarting Thomas's wishes, and I have a feeling it's going to haunt me when he's a teenager. ("Mo-om! you never let me do anything!" It's true, you know: I never let him play in animal poo, or with sharp-beaked creatures, or with choking-hazard marbles...)
That's not entirely true: when Thomas wants to make new friends, he's more than welcome to. Here he is with another little one, playing baby games and reveling in the awesomeness which is other kids his size.
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