After supper, we were sitting on the porch & I saw an orange butterfly out on the butterfly bush. I sneaked up to it & swiped at it with the net, missing. It flew to a crepe myrtle and I swiped again and caught it. We put it in my daughter's "bug-looker" and admired it for a few minutes. Then, she let it go by some blooms. It could be a Monarch, but also a Viceroy. [/img] [/img]
My sentiments exactly. Thanks for sharing your little beauty. I have two beautiful daughters, 23 and 15 years old.
Thanks Thanks for the compliments, folks. I must admit to being a very, very proud daddy. We are fortunate that, thus far, she has saved all her tantrums & misbehavior for us and has not pulled it on daycare-providers, or school teachers. She is in pre-Kindergarten right now. She has my mother's facial features and my mother-in-law's coloration. Both grandmothers passed away before my daughter was born, but I got pictures of each of them in their early 20's and had an artist paint portraits of them - portraying them as angels - which hang in my daughter's room. When my daughter was an infant and still being breast-fed, my wife was up late feeding her in the middle of the night, when my daughter stopped eating & looked over my wife's shoulder and smiled. My wife turned around - nothing there but a bookshelf. But my wife had a feeling somebody was there. We think, one or both of our mothers dropped in to see their newest granddaughter. I would like to instill in her a love of nature & gardening and so far, she is intrigued by the creatures that come into & live in our yard. She thinks I plant too many flowers though, but I'm sure that's because it takes away from my time to play with her. I figured out, if I get a friend of hers to come over to play, I get a full day's work done in the yard, because she does not demand so much of my attention & time. Funny - the other parents feel terribly indebted to me, when I have their kid(s) come over - they have no idea how much easier it makes it for me! But I do set aside time to play Barbies & paint & color. We've made three stepping stones this Summer out of kits, but we buy those glass half marbles in the craft section of the stores & push those into the wet cement to make our stepping stones. They're kind of pretty. Being a daddy is easily, far and away the absolute best thing I've ever done and will ever do in my life. It has brought out a caring, nurturing side of me, which I did not know was in me. I've also always thought of myself as a reasonably intelligent person, knowing a good bit of "stuff" about a lot of things. I thought I knew what love was, having experienced filial & romantic love. But parental love for a child is the most powerful, pure, overwhelming and selfless emotion I've ever experienced. I wish I hadn't waited 'til age 42 to find that out. So many things are permanently etched on my heart - the first time she looked at me and said, "Da-Da", the time I picked her up from pre-school and she ran to me, turned to her classmates and proudly announced, "This is my daddy!" And the time her teacher told me, she's so funny when we pray. She says, "Thank you for our snack and thank you for my daddy and thank you for my toys and thank you for my daddy and thank you for...." The teacher remarked, she brings me up in thankful prayers several times. I felt so good and tears welled up in my eyes. I love being a daddy, or at least, being her daddy. I am blessed beyond my wildest dreams.
