Nature Girl

Amelia is definitely my little nature girl.   I have a biologist friend from early in our days at Lejeune when Rafe was still flying Cobras that gifted her as a newborn with her very own fishing rod (which we still have, by the way).  I'm convinced that was secretly a fairy godmother touch, because she loves all things nature.  Someday we'll go visit this lovely woman and her children, because Bianca now lives and works in one of the coolest places in the United States - Yellowstone Park.

My fairy princess daughter regales me with tales of time at the playground playing with worms, and how some of the "mean kids" are not very nice to the worms.  She likes flies because they tickle.  She hunts ladybugs when she can and was seriously disappointed this year at the diminished ladybug population in our back yard.  She wants to be a dragon when she grows up and sometimes I wonder... 

Amelia and one of her little girl friends had an experiment feeding fire ants bread and once they all came out she decided to collect some in a tic-tac box.  Every time this little girl comes over, I give them both my stale bread, nuts, and anything similar and they throw it around outside and try to find what's left of the last stuff they put out.  I've never seen two happier girls, running around and giggling and playing with bugs.

She had a pet roly poly named "Holy Moly Roly Poly".  The name alone still makes me laugh every time I think about it.  I think Rafe tried to convince her to call it Rock and Roly Poly.  

 We have a dead fly in a dish right now because she's not quite done looking at it with a magnifying glass, although I am really ready to have that thing gone. There are cups everywhere in my house with dead bugs that she was certain would live this time with just the right addition of dirt, grass and Spanish moss.  I tried to throw one away today and OH. THE. TEARS.   

She's always outside digging in the dirt and making things out of sticks.  She recently made a stick house in one of my flowerpots, and sometimes takes my plants and decides to help me by planting them in the yard, where they promptly get mowed over by the lawn service.  She's undeterred, however, and is soon back at it.   She gets so tickled by helping me and is so proud of herself that I think a few brutally murdered plants are worth it.  

Amelia  has a Special Treasures box and it's full of  feathers and shells and rocks and even pieces of concrete that she finds fascinating.  We had it in a small box and it's now in a large shoebox.  I convinced her the other day to let me use some of her special rocks in the bottom of some of my pots, but it was hard work at first until she realized they would be more protected that way :)  

Recently we decided to try and have a vacation in Silver Dollar City on our way back from Texas to see one of my nephew graduate.  Gas is so expensive, we were looking to save money by camping out when we got there.  When she heard that we *might* camp, I thought she was going to have a heart attack from excitement.  She's never camped or fished before, but she has asked for both for several years.  Amelia went running down the hallway, hooting and jumping and running in circles.  

She caught a salamander in a jar earlier this week, but we convinced her to take it to school and then let it loose in the garden after showing it to her friends.  Tonight as we left the house for a walk along the water to see the stars and the Super Moon (her reward for helping clean the house today), she made me catch a tiny frog climbing the wall of our house.  Mia thought it was hilarious that the frog "pottied on Mommy!!!" but I'm still traumatized from frog urine in my face.  It's sitting on our front porch right now, waiting to be released back into the wild.  

She loves walks in the dark and looking at the stars.  Tonight with the breezes blowing and the moonlight shining off the water, I realized once again how lucky I am to have her as my daughter and how uniquely she is her own person. She'll take me places I would never go on my own (Frog hunting, for one) and I'm better for it.  

This is Amelia three years ago, when she was 2 - the same age Olivia is now.