Wormy

My daughter loves worms. She actually loves them to death! She will beg me to find her one, I do feel bad giving her a healthy, juicy worm, knowing that, within hours it will be near death, stretched out, skinny and dry. My daughter thinks she is showing the worm love, by putting it in her pocket so it won't run away.  She thinks the worm is having fun, being slowly rolled down the hot slide, or being swung on her swing....really, really high!

 I watch as she dances with wormy, declares her love for wormy,  then chucks wormy across the yard when wormy poops on her hand. She spends the next hour trying to find her lost love, while whining and crying the whole time. By the time she finally finds wormy, he's lifeless and dry. Lunch time (for the kids, not wormy), my daughter uses all of her toddler skills to try and get wormy into the house with her. After many minutes of a borderline nutty (tantrum), I talk her into letting wormy take a nap outside, while she eats her lunch.

Lunch is always full of drama, my daughter forgets about her pet that is outside on the patio, in a bucket with 4 pieces of grass, in the hot, summer sun. I ship her and her brothers off to bed for their naps, trying to keep the focus on tasks at hand, we don't need anymore drama. Once they are all in bed and quiet, I sneak outside, carefully pick up the bucket with my daughters new best friend in it and carry it to the garden. I empty him out, being sure that he is hidden from sight. I place the bucket back where it was on the patio.

My daughter wakes up an hour later in a panic, "Mom, I gotta go see wormy!". She runs out the door, hair sticking up all over, still half asleep. The drama begins again, wormy is gone! I tell her that he must have crawled out of the bucket and went back home to see his mom. Since this is something she can relate to, she is sad, but understands. She tells the boys the sad news and runs off to go swing. Ten minutes later, shes digging, "Mom, can you help me find a worm?"