Wednesday, May 20, 2009

I'm Not Ready for Tadpoles

My dear friend, doula, and photography mama, gave us tadpoles this weekend. They became our school today. So this is a bizarre Tot School, but it was a lesson in being humane and learning about a frog's habitat.

I thought that I could handle it. But I simply am not ready. I thought I was ready to be a tadpole, bug keeping, worm defending, caterpillar catching mom of three boys. But I just can't do it.

The tadpoles didn't come with an instruction booklet. They were growing legs that dangled. I was afraid of spilling them. After four days of cooking besides these young frogs, I decided that something had to change. I decided to free them.


And this is their journey to the Frog Pond.

They are ready to enter the wild. To wiggle in search of food. To dart from predators lurking nearby. To spread their newly forming legs.


A lesson in pouring.




See the little brown speck in the middle? That is our tadpole. Two of the tadpoles immediately explored their new habitat. However, the leggy one decided to nibble on the floating algae. They were excited about their new home. The realities of pond life floated close by.


Mission accomplished. Time to climb rocks.




4 comments:

Bridget K. Parker said...

You crack me up! Anytime you need help with all of the dirty, smelly, crawly, slimy parts of having a household of boys feel free to drop me a line...I was opposite of you and was actually looking forward to all of that and still do...even after waking up in the morning to a frog living on our counter that my biggest boy (namely DH) caught on his way home from work at 3am...Bridget

Unknown said...

OK . . . I'm calling YOU next time. I think I am a bit worked up about the ants coming to live in my house. Also, I was making ketchup and mayonaise this morning, and kept having to move the tadpoles. They were aggrivating me. I wanted to keep them in the kitchen but didn't know of a safe place from a 2 year old's hands. Then, I need to boil some more lettuce for them and clean out their poop and . . . it was too much. I had already taken care of too much poop this morning that should have been in the potty! Thanks for writing me a note!

grace said...

I have girls. and secretly sometimes I wish they would love the stinky smelly things....but then I also appreciate the fact that they don't! ;-)

We used to catch frogs at home, and it was sooo much fun. :-)

Wendy Kay said...

I'm actually looking forward to someday getting tadpoles. It's just SO amazing how they transform into frogs. With gardening and even just being outside in general, I'm constantly astounded that people don't believe God created this all!