31 for 21

Emma Sage got to 'babysit' her class's butterfly project for the weekend......



We started out with a pupa.....actually there are still two pupa's left

Last night, she was excited and told me all about what happens when the butterfly will emerge......'green goo'

This process happened last night while we slept.

When we awoke this morning, Emma Sage happily informed me that she had a 'Butterfly' at her house and she had to call it 'Noodle' I told her that I think the first butterfly that hatched was 'Noodle' but she insisted that all the butterflies were 'Noodle'

So here is 'Noodle' [the class had voted on this name at the beginning of the lesson when they were all still just catapillars]










One of my most favorite features of Emma Sage's extra chromosome...is her hands. I can sit an marval at her sweet hands for the longest time. They are just precious.


Placing the butterfly on a flower....in a warm sunny spot. Today was a beautiful day....we pray 'Noodle' found the nector delightful and that he found his way to where the Butterfly fly......







Life with Emma Sage is.............................delightful!!!

and my thought about Down syndrome in this post? Well, the story below kinda sums it up for me......

The Butterfly and the Cocoon

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. The man sat and watched the cocoon for several hours as the butterfly struggled to force its body through the little hole.

Then it seemed to stop making progress. It appeared as if the butterfly had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further. The man decided to help the butterfly in its struggle. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon.

The butterfly then emerged easily, but it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.

He continued to watch the butterfly. He expected that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to be able to support the body. He knew that in time the body would contract, and the butterfly would be able to fly.

But neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.

What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were Nature’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.


Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been.

We could never fly.

~ original author unknown (sometimes attributed to the American writer and painter Henry Miller)