We had a pet butterfly for about a week, and the girls named it Tomato (toe-mah-toe). Ben found it one afternoon, and it seemed to just hatch from its cocoon, but didn’t want to fly away. He brought it in to show the girls and then it turned into a week of observations underneath a glass dome. They would even feed Tomato some combination of rainwater and sugar.

One night, Tomato was flying around the house, and then landed back on Ben. We liked to joke that Tomato was a trained butterfly because it kept coming back to us. Tomato really liked Brave a lot too and would spend a lot of time chillin’ on her hand. It was definitely not your regular butterfly. There was another night we forgot to cover Tomato back up in her dome, and for sure thought she would be somewhere in the house flying around, but we found her hanging out right next to her dome. Oh silly butterfly!

We spent a Saturday afternoon painting Tomato, and I always love seeing how the girls in their different stages interpret life around them. Glow’s painting of Tomato are random shapes all over the place, Soul’s looks like a cartoon butterfly, and True and Brave try to depict her as accurately as possible. Brave is my detailed-oriented girl, so I think she’s is the most precise.

Finally, it came time to release Tomato back into the wild. The girls put up their best arguments to try and keep her. Poor Glow, she was so heartbroken and kept crying; she didn’t want to say goodbye to Tomato. Brave took her out and put her in a lemon tree, and as we sang (to Mariah Carey’s tune), “Spread your wings and fly, butterfly,” Tomato was off. Goodbye Tomato!