The Year of the Butterfly

Every year, a part of our holiday tradition entails the kids collecting a new dated ornament to put on the Christmas tree. There's only one requirement --- it must be representative of something that happened during that year. Sometimes they pick up one from a family trip, sometimes they're crafted by little hands, and sometimes they're acquired by a trip to the Hallmark store.

This year, I just knew what would be perfect for the Littles. Butterflies. Their fascination started when we bought the Butterfly Pavilion and watched those little caterpillars turn into beautiful Painted Ladies. Since then, they have used butterfly binoculars to search the yard them, caught them in their butterfly net and placed them in their butterfly cage. Even Holden has captured them from his mother's flower garden and brought them over for them to see. They've fed them, taken pictures, admired their beauty and then set them free to go about their butterfly business.

We have drawn pictures of them, painted them, colored them, shared serious and silly discourse concerning them, and done our very best to emulate Heimlich's German accented "I am a beautiful butterfly!". We've read The Very Hungry Caterpillar so often that when Madelyn is trying to speed up delivery of her vittles she'll whine, "But Mom, I'm a very hungry caterpillar!", and Miss Carlyn has been accompanied by her Eric Carle butterfly blanket for every visit to Nappers House and Night-Night Land.

So, in the spirit of the Shēng Xiào, our house has dubbed 2011 'The Year of the Butterfly'.