Fireflies

You know it's summer in the south when the fireflies start to come out.  The twinkling of those little bugs are like fairy dust sprinkled in the air.  Magical!

As most child love to catch fireflies, so do my littlest ones.  With some guidance from the girls on our street, they have discovered the magic of fireflies.  They giggle with delight trying to catch them and jump as high as they can (about 3 inches off the ground) with not much luck.

Their joy in fireflies has prompted a bedtime routine centered around these fairy tale creatures.  On a whimsical night, instead of reading a story to Kate and Luke, I started telling a story about fireflies.  Every day we tell a different story but they all start out like this:

"Once upon a time there was a little boy named (Luke jumps in with a name he likes to add, usually "Luke") and a little girl named (Kate's addition to the story usually involves a girl named "Momo" her favorite name for herself).  

And they lived in a castle *way up on the hill*.  (said together)"

Then they story always involves the boy and girl's love for fireflies and usually involves a firefly named "Buzz" after a certain little boy's favorite movie.  Sometimes the story is plotless and requires lots of quick thinking on Mom's part just to get through it and other times it just rolls off the tongue.  The kids don't seem to notice, they just hang onto every word.  Sometimes even the bigger kids join in listening to the crazy adventures of Buzz the Firefly.

It's a family tradition turned into a deep love for story-telling for me.  I was over the moon, however, when my babies decided to tell a firefly story on their own last night.  The plot was a bit thin and it required a couple of questions. but the story line was Buzz was sad because he was missing his friends.  Eventually he found his friends and...

*They lived happily every after!* (said together)