Booful Buffly!

Most mornings, since Monkey started school 3 years ago, his first stop of the school day is the water table.  It’s a calming sensory activity that helps smooth his transition into the classroom.  We actually wrote that he should have access to a water table each morning into his IEP for 2 of the 3 years.

So, nearly every school day morning for 3 years, we’ve gone through the same routine. There can be some variations.  Sometimes he’ll choose to paint and sometimes he’ll choose another sensory activity, like a water table filled with rice but he has a strong preference for the water table.  It’s the only activity that the teachers need to ask him to move on from…until last week.

The class has been doing a unit on caterpillars and butterflies.  Monkey is suddenly enthralled with butterflies.  Last week Monkey stayed seated at the science center watching the cocoons with a magnifying glass for 20 minutes and would have stayed longer if they’d let him.  Over the long weekend his teacher let him borrow 3 of the books they’ve read.  Each morning we’ve been awakened by happy cries of “booful buffly!!!”  He knows each stage and will quietly go through the steps from an egg to a cocoon but as soon as he sees that butterfly the boy loses his mind.  It’s frickin’ adorable.

This morning when Monkey and Duhdee went into the bathroom to take a shower I heard him yell out “buffly!”  I assumed he was just fixated on the word, it happens.  After breakfast Duhdee asked Monkey to show me the butterfly in the bathroom.  I looked at him like he was nuts and then it dawned on me.  Our shower curtain, the shower curtain that has been hanging in that bathroom since we moved in here 7 years ago, is covered in embroidered butterflies and dragonflies. 

I don’t feel so bad for forgetting about it considering that the shower curtain has been hanging there his entire life and Monkey just now noticed it, lol.  You’d think we were related or something.