Sunday, May 6, 2012

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.

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After two whole years of waiting and begging we finally took Max to see the butterflies at the Wild Animal Park! (And for the record, it's not that we didn't want to take him before, but every time we remembered we either had something else happening at the same time or we had missed it). Max was BEYOND excited and Lia couldn't wait to see a blue morpho (her favorite after seeing it on Diego).

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The exhibit is REALLY cool. Even for a squeamish bug person like me, it was pretty cool. Although I have to admit that I pretty much clung to Tyler the whole time begging him to make sure none of them landed on me. The butterflies were everywhere flying all around, on the plants and flowers and on the ground. You had to be careful not to step on them.

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Max's main goal was to have one land on him. He was getting pretty discouraged after we had been there for about 5 minutes and it hadn't happened. We told him he had to stay really still and calm and then they would come to him. Well, if you know Max AT ALL you know how asking him to do that is asking the impossible. This kid can't even hold still for money or candy, two of his most favorite things. But OH WOW how he stayed perfectly still and calm. For a REALLY long time. Like 7 or 8 minutes. Completely still, no movement, no talking. And eventually this happened...

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And then THIS started happening...

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And I promise, he was actually really loving it despite the look on his face. He was concerned the butterfly would get it's leg caught in his eye and break it off so he was squeezing them shut as hard as he could. Eventually he had one of the butterfly keepers take it off of his face and put it on his hand. Everyone around him was pretty impressed that he let it climb all the way up his face, poking his mouth and eyes with it's little curly tongue thing. It was pretty awesome! Oh, and this butterfly is called a Grecian Shoemaker. Totally in love with that name!

And of course Lia got in on the action, too. The butterflies really liked her dress (that she has now dubbed The Butterfly Dress).

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And we stopped at the bat house, too, and took these awesome photos.

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2 comments:

Your Pal, Al said...

My mom made us go to a monarch forest once and I absolutely hated it, then she yelled at me for being scared. Glad to see Max enjoyed it. And also love the bat pic, v. cool.

sally said...

i was enjoying the butterfly post and kept looking and smiling...then laughing - then really hard!!! that was so funny to watch max as the butterfly slowly crept up and took over!