Woolbert.

Today when I was pulling weeds I came across a very, very tiny woolly worm.

Do you know what I'm talking about? Those hairy, fuzzy caterpillars that are brown and black? The amount of brown and black on their bodies is supposed to predict how mild or harsh the winter will be...at least that's what old people here say.

This woolly worm I found is the smallest one I have ever seen. I've never found one in the spring before, usually you see them when they are full grown and out in masses during the fall months.

When I saw it I immediately called Rosie over to look. She was enthralled, but didn't want it to crawl on her and screamed when it tried to. When she screamed the woolly worm rolled into a little ball to play dead. It had her tricked for a second, instinctive little creature.

We took it inside and put it in a jar with some weeds. Rosie carried it around for several hours. She noted that clover was its favorite food, we could see its tiny mouth eating holes in the leaves!

Eventually we looked up how to care for them. The care sheet suggested planting dandelions in a container then covering the dirt with old leaves. I think we might try that tomorrow.

It seems that the caterpillar will eat tons and grow all summer until it makes a cocoon this fall, then it will hatch out as an Isabella Tiger Moth in the spring. I wonder if we can keep it alive that long...

Might be exciting.

Did you know Isabella Tiger Moths have no mouth or way to eat food?

The woolly worm spends its entire life growing big enough to make a cocoon and transform into this stunning moth, and then it hatches out, stretches its wings, mates, and dies.

At first I thought, how sad! Then I realized that maybe I'm looking at it from the wrong perspective. Maybe the entire point of its life isn't the end goal of becoming a beautiful moth. Instead it lives each day in bliss--wandering around, eating, growing as fat as possible, making the most of the period of life when it actually can eat.

I don't know. It's strange to think about--that nature would work this way. The woolly worm's metamorphosis is so intricate and mysterious, yet it doesn't include something as basic as a mouth to eat with.

We had a better day today--Rosie, Ada, and I. Ada was a bit happier, which was wonderful.

First thing this morning...this is what I wake up to everyday!

Rosie loves to help me with Ada in the morning. They lay in bed together while I get dressed, put on make-up, and sometimes I can get as far as filling up the buckets of chicken feed before Ada starts crying.

But other times Rosie is...too helpful...and Ada morphs in to Captain Angry pants.

Rosie had a good day today, I think. I took a suggestion from a blog I enjoy and transformed her binder of worksheets for "school" into a dry erase binder. I put all of the papers in page protectors so that she can do them, erase, and try again later. This will save so much paper and ink! I can't believe this never occurred to me sooner, what a great idea!!

Rosie absolutely loved it too. She worked on different pages on and off all day long. She's learning her letters, the sounds they make, and how to write them. I put a lot of different tracing pages in the binder for her to try out. and some printed out lined paper to practice writing her own letters. I mixed in some fun things too, like mazes and connect the dots.

The only downside is that the dry erase markers stain clothing. They never wash out, trust me. Learned that the hard way when she got a dry erase board for Christmas. Aside from that the dry erase busy binder is perfect.

We also spent some time reading in the Little House on the Prairie book. Reading this book is going slowly because I only read it when she wants to...she'll be interested for a few days, then not interested for a month or more. Today she was really into it. It was so fun watching her enthralled in the book, using her imagination instead of looking at pictures. When Jack the dog went missing in the rushing water she was so upset. When Laura thought she saw a wolf in the night Rosie was on the edge of her seat gripping my arm!

Love it.