Espinosa Footprints: Butterfly in the sky...

The painted lady butterflies emerged several weeks ago. I didn't mean to leave you hanging in suspense....

But they emerged and we released them. Quickly.

I always killed my pets (by accident, of course) and didn't want to experience this failure again in front of the kids. My parakeet Teddy, my hamster Hammy, another two or three parakeets... I don't even remember their names they died so soon. There were two turtles as well, and my friend's pet monarch butterfly. That last one fried on a halogen lamp when I let her out to fly around my house one evening. Most of them died because I would love them to death, like Elvira on Tiny Toons. I thought Hammy loved going down the slide!

Noemie, following in her mother's footsteps has already experienced a pet-fatality of her own.

Her precious millipede didn't even make it out of the strawberry patch we found it in. It was squashed by a nearby rocking chair. There were tears.

There were tears at Noemie's birthday party as well. She celebrated her fifth birthday with an elegant tea party at a park, alongside Giannina, who was celebrating her first. Noemie enjoyed herself immensely for most of the event. She was surrounded by some of her favorite people. We served lemonade and chicken salad sandwiches, and croquetas, pastelitos, and bocaditos. (It was a Cuban tea party). We ate blackberries out of a fancy sugar bowl, painted birdhouses, blew bubbles, and had a hula hoop contest with dollar store hula hoops. (It was a modern tea party as well.) The funny thing about dollar store hula hoops is that they're not actually big enough for a child to hula inside of it. The winners were the girls who filled up the hoops the most, thereby providing the most friction against the hoop as it made its way to the floor. Noemie didn't win this awkward little game and she cried. So to make it up to her, I told her she could coordinate the goody bag station, where the girls filled their goody bags from a tray of assorted cookies. Unfortunately, no one heard Noemie's elaborate instructions (the process was somewhat self-evident) and this, naturally, made Noemie cry a little harder. Once most of the guests had gone, Danny, a friend, and I set ourselves to packing up the tablecloths and tea cups. Noemie had gone to the playground to swing on the monkey bars while we wrapped up. She came back down the hill with a broken humerus. And the crying would continue for a few hours more.

She would not cheer up again until we opened presents that evening. Among her gifts was her favorite movie (Peter Pan), a bathing suit that was both "a bathing suit AND a tutu!" and a Minnie Mouse T-shirt, purchased expressly for our trip to Disney in 11 days. "This is going to be AWESOME!" she exclaimed. She also got a purple cast. The cast was finally removed last Friday- praise the Lord. That girl spends more time on her head than on her feet. I was sure she was going to break her shoulder. Or the cast itself.

Giannina is unaware of the countdown to Mickey. She is also a whole entire year old! That was fast! Like Noemie, she enjoyed her birthday party very much. She broke no bones. She ate cake. And by the end of it all, I am pretty sure, she was more tired than she had ever been in her 12 months of existence. These days she's been working on walking. She will stand for seconds at a time without holding on to anything. Occasionally she will brave a step. It's imminent. And she seems to be giving up her penchant for mid-meal expulsion and observation of her food through its stages of pre-digestion. Thank goodness!

At some point we fit in a trip to the Dade County Youth Fair. Dominic in particular enjoyed this extra time with us. We haven't seen a lot of him lately. We enrolled Dominic at our church's school for a brief season. Dominic needed the extra discipline. But really, Mami needed the extra discipline. I hate discipline. I hate waking up at 6:45 in the morning after having changed pee-peed sheets and shooed kids back in to bed at 1 am the night before. I don't care for the extra expense in gas. I could really do without having to plan breakfast, snack, non-perishable lunch, and dinner 7 days in advance. Except, the truth is I needed to be waking up at 6:45, with or without the traditional school-life schedule. If I had been spending the same amount of money in gas taking kids to the park, the museum, the library, the YMCA, or on field-trips then I probably wouldn't have had to put Dominic in school in the first place. (One of the primary reasons we enrolled him is that this 6-year old, at home in a 2-bedroom apartment with no yard, had the countenance of a child in a straight jacket.) And having all the meals planned ahead of time helps me make sure we're all eating balanced meals at reasonable hours. Dominic is adamant about doing school at home next year. He misses the fieldtrips, the hands-on science projects, and building Legos in his pajamas till 9 am. But most of all, I know he misses being with us. On picture day, he jumped out of the van proudly with his dress shirt and slacks, gushing to his headmaster as he walked by, "My mom makes the best suits!" I had to laugh. I knew he meant that he is proud of the way I pick his clothes. I felt honored. I don't know what I am going to do come mid-May but I plan to enjoy him a lot more, that's for sure! Lessons learned.