Breakfast and Butterflies


Breakfast is well loved at our house. It's just a fantastic time of day. When your kitchen smells like warmth, you know the smell. Hot coffee, bacon, toast. All of these things for me equal a certain peacefulness within the insanity. And I love the insanity, it's two very happy, well rested hungry kids running around asking what your making and how your doing it. It's adorable puppies begging for carrots ( my pomeranians love carrots, they will beg for them over dog treats any day!) It's getting little kisses on the cheek from your fantastic husband as you both try to work in one little corner, when you have the whole rest of the kitchen to use.

When the meal is all ready and eveyone has done their part, and you can sit back, enjoy and listen to that oh so happy sound of silence. You know that what ever you have made is really good if there is no talking for a few minutes. Our breakfasts last a while. We enjoy being around each other, and I am firm believer that there is no better way to have breakfast than at home. I think that belief came after I had Little P and Boots. Both of whom LOVE to eat and when they are done are really good at sitting and talking and being polite, but there is only a certain amount of that you can really expect from kids.

I think sometimes it is a lot more stressful to go out to eat than to hang in and make it yourself. Where ever you go there is almost always a little wait, if not a lot. You order and wait, and wait and wait, with little kids you take your chances with this one. Sometimes it's okay and some times you could put yourself in the looney bin before the food gets there. Then you spend a good chunk of your time cooling and cutting and wiping up all sorts of stuff before you even look at your plate. This event often makes the A Christmas Story quote run through my head, "My mother had not had a warm meal for herself in 15 years".... So if we can avoid it, we try not to put ourselves in this position.

I would love for this to happen more, but that fantastic husband is up and out of the house on week days before the children even think of waking up. This is an occurance that pretty much happens on weekends or on holidays. So this morning I went after that illusive egg dish, eggs benedict. Go ahead laugh, I am just learning the wonders of eggs. As you will remember from previous posts, they didn't use to be my thing. So after a couple of tries at poaching, (who knew THAT would be difficult) I finally got it right.


I was very happy with it. And so where Little P, who had 2, and Boots who wanted more Lemons! That is what he calls watermelon for some reason. The fantasitc hubby was freezing his buns off out on a boat fishing...so no eggs for him!

After breakfast everyday for the last few weeks we look at the Painted Lady caterpillers that we are currently nurturing into butterflies. This was a gift to Little P from the grand rents, they live in California, a huge 3000 mile hop skip and a jump from New York. This is the gift that she recieved in the mail.
After recieving this package, you fill out the enclosed post card and send it off to get your larva. Nasty I know, but really cool to watch. They arrive in the mail in a container and are really small, less than 1/2 inch each. You then put the container on the counter and forget about it for a while. They looked at it every morning and every night and watched the progress. In the bottom of this cup is all the food these 5 Caterpillers will ever need to mature in to butterflies. They get huge and then the head for the top of the cup. Getting ready for the chrysalis stage, only after they are safely encased in thier cocoons do you open the top of the jar, take off the disk and pin it to the inside of the butterfly enclosure. We are almost at that stage!


I have never actually watched something like this, so it's been really interesting. And they both love it! They do have the coolest grandparents ever, if I do say so myself!