You know you're raising a city kid when you tell them you're going for a long drive (long being 45 minutes) to see a farm, and their response is "Wow, I didn't know there really were farms in this world".
She has been to a farm before, but was too young to remember it. We play "farms" at home and have learnt about farm animals on TV and online, but she didn't realise that farms really exist. Let alone a 45 minute drive (or less) from our city home (If you call Canberra a city, that is).
On the weekend, we went to a hobby farm for a birthday party. The birthday girl was a girl who goes to daycare with Bub, and they live on a small farm South of Canberra. The parents went overboard with a delicious spread of gourmet food for the adults (thank you!) and even made REAL coffee for all their adult guests (life savers).
The children were happy playing outside where they could pat the roaming chooks, watch the bunny rabbit or feed the horses. We tried getting the kids involved in party games, but three year olds don't really get pass the parcel yet. After that attempt, we decided to make the rest of the games for adults (winning kids prizes, for their kids) while the kids did their thing with the toy box and swing set.
The result of the day was that Bub brought home all of these prizes / presents:
She even got some glamorous princess tattoos. Talk about a cool birthday party - I would fail at organising one in comparison. And if you're wondering, she didn't actually wear this mismatched ensemble - this was her choice of a change of clothes once we got home.
In other news, we removed these caterpillars from our lemon tree (they are pests, after all) and Bub is keeping them in a box:
Meet "Spikey" and "New Spikey" (I'm hoping she'll develop creativity as she gets older - LOL)
We plan to see if we can keep them alive until they turn into butterflies. The caterpillar might be a pest, but the citrus swallowtail butterfly is truly beautiful if we can get that far:
Source: What's that bug?
If you have these brown and white striped caterpillars in your garden, they will apparently turn into the above.
Speaking of insects, did you know that we have pet stick insects? I have nothing to do with them, apart from occasionally spraying water into their enclosure because they like damp. Insects really aren't my thing - I leave the cage cleaning and leaf collecting to Bub and her Dad (who bought them randomly one day, as men do).
They are actually quite interesting, and have gone through many transformations. They started out about 1/4 of the size they are now, and have shed their skin several times, grown wings etc. If I had known that this would happen, I would have taken photos of the stages... but I only started paying attention to them when it was a little late. Here they are in their current form:
This one has grown slightly deformed wings which look like shriveled lettuce leaves. Apparently this happens when their environment isn't hot and humid enough. It started off small and brown, and looked like a stick, but is now huge and green with wings.
This is a spiny leaf insect. Apart from growing wings, it looks the same as when it was little, maybe a little redder in colour.
I didn't know you could even buy these from pet stores, but apparently you can. They cost us about $25 each.
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