creepy crawlies (but cute ones!)

Donovan and I went to Gymboree this morning. The classes are starting to fill up again so I guess people are getting over the swine flu fears. I started thinking this morning about when I should move him up to the next next age level for the class-- the "break" is at 16 months, just a few weeks away, but he's already kinda bored by the group time at the end of class and tends to walk off to play with the equipment again. So who knows, maybe I'll ask the teacher on Wednesday if she thinks he might be ready for the next level.

In the afternoon we went to a nearby nursery to pick up a few things--a bigger pot for our rosemary plant that's starting to show, um, unhappiness; bird seed for my cute new bird house; ladybugs. Lady bugs? Well, we have a couple of rosebushes out front and one of them looks very sad, and a friend pointed out that it seems to be getting attacked by aphids. Which ladybugs love to eat. So I bought a jar of ladybugs at the nursery. Donovan was instantly drawn to the wriggling little bugs and was doing his best to try to pry off the lid. The instructions suggested to let them go in the evening, out of direct sunlight (apparently they're much less likely to fly off if it's darker) so once Zach got home and before starting dinner, all 3 of us went outside to let the ladybugs go.

It was pretty cool to watch, actually. There were probably a couple hundred ladybugs in the container, and we shook most of them out on this one bush so it was then pretty covered in them. A bunch of them stayed on the lid and wouldn't shake off, but eventually walked out onto my hand as I held it. Unfortunately I didn't grab the camera till most of them had fallen/flown/been shaken off, but for several minutes there I had a good 50-100 ladybugs on my hands. And it felt really WIERD.



I got some better, closer-in shots with my point & shoot camera (since I can use the macro-mode on it, as opposed to my slr lenses that require 1.5ft of distance *pout*) but haven't downloaded those yet.

We also have 5 painted lady butterflies that I got from a kit, we've been watching them grow ever since being tiny caterpillars. They're ready for release, but I'm waiting for overnight temps to go above 55F which should be in another night or 2. So far Donovan and Sierra are both greatly enjoying having them around, though. I've taken pictures all along, will share those in one big post once the whole process is complete (I'm hoping to get some good butterfly-release shots, but that may be aiming kinda high).

And now... to bed.