Bees, Bugs & Squitos

E got a bug vaccum for Easter from his grandparents, along with the bug sucker, he also got a bug net, magnifiying glass and telescope.  He LOVES these toys.  I love how he says "Buugs."  We frequently hear, "I'm gonna go get some buugs."  The funny thing though, is that he was afraid of these buugs.  We were trying to tell him that he was bigger than the bugs, blah, blah, blah and it was starting to work.  We forgot to tell him one important thing about the buugs though, he could kill them.

This small little fact would have been helpful for him to know, when a mosquito landed on his arm.  Instead of brushing it off, or smashing it, he let it sit on his arm for quiet a while, while he yelled.  The mosquito did what mosquitos do and sucked his blood before dad came and killed it.  E has not been bit by many mosquitos, so he has not built up an immunity to the mosquito bite.  His arm swelled up pretty big, got hot and red and I thought that he had cellulitis.  He didn't and all is well with his arm now, but this incident increased his fear of these buugs.  We then had to have the talk that he could kill the buugs and that he was bigger than the buugs and he could squish them.

So now, all he wants to do is kill bugs! The poor ants around our house don't stand a chance.  He looks for bugs outside everynight when we get home and wants to squish them.

There is one buug that he is fascinated with though.  That is the very large bumblebee.  I don't think that he thinks that bumblebees are buugs.  Every morning for the past two weeks, E has rushed outside to the front yard to look for the bumblebees collecting pollen from my flowering plants.  He is so excited when he sees them and he is so sad when it is raining and there aren't any bees on the flowers.  The same exploration happens when we get home at night.  He is so excited to see the bees that we hang out in the front yard for at least 10 minutes, watching these bees at work.  We talk about what the bees are doing, we listen to the beating of their wings when they move to another flower, we count how many bees we can see and he can now count them up to four!

Parents always talk about seeing the world through their child's eyes and how it opens up the eyes of an adult.  This is so true.  How often have you stopped to watch and listen to the bumblebees collecting their pollen or counted how many were on your plants?  Bees are pretty amazing, they have very heavy bodies and they physically shouldn't be able to carry their large bodies with their wings-but they do.  What have you done that someone said you couldn't do?  I work with children everyday who prove "those people" wrong!  Parents ask me a lot, will my child every be able to write their name, catch a ball, be toilet trained, etc?  I tell them that my crystal ball is broken so I won't be able to answer that question for them, but I don't see why we can't try to make those things happen.  No one told the bumblebee that he couldn't fly, and if they did, he obviously didn't listen.

Bee a bumblebee and do something that someone said can't be possible!