Toad Games

This week is a busy week. Maggie has Art Camp in the mornings, both girls have VBS in the afternoons, and all three kids have numerous events for the Library's Summer Reading Program (most exciting of those: a ride on the local paddle boat tomorrow!!). While that means a lot of running around and gallons of gas zooming out of the minivan, it also means that for two hours in the morning Beatrice gets to be the biggest girl in the house. (And for two and a half hours in the afternoon, I get to put Obie down for a nap and be childless!! Childless!!!) Beatrice is a girl who really likes her space. She loves her brother and sister, but you can tell that she really enjoys, relishes even, the time she gets to play just by herself with her imagination. She hosts Pet Shop Tea Parties, rescues Zelda from the dungeon, joins the circus, or just gathers up every stuffed cat in the house (all nine million of them) and lines them up and has them all carry on intricate, squeeky-voiced conversations. Her imagination is boundless and those cat conversations are usually hilarious!

So yesterday she was spending her morning quality alone time outside and I didn't bother to check on her. She's safe here, she knows the rules and boundaries, and I don't worry too much. When she finally came in for a snack I asked her what she'd been doing. "Playing toad games," she said. My girls can find a toad within 2.5 seconds of going out into the yard. So I asked her, "Oh, did you find a new toad," because the one from the previous day was left out in the sun and even though we'd had a lengthy conversation that morning about how to take care of toads, where not to leave them, when to let them go, how they are our friends and good for our garden, and how it makes mommy really, really angry when they let a toad die from negligence, I didn't really trust that Beatrice had remembered all of that conversation. She said, "No, with the dead one." I said, "Ew. Go wash your hands." And I didn't think much more about it, except possibly that I needed to go find the dead toad and drop it in the mulch pile.

An hour later when we went to get Maggie from class, I popped out the door to find this waiting for me on the sidewalk:

Toad Games, indeed.

*Sigh*