This morning, it's damp and warm and the yard is too muddy and full of bees to play in, so after breakfast* I said, "Henry, do you wanna go to the park?" He shrieked excitedly, which I took as a yes. I got his shoes on, got the dogs leashed up, fetched the stoller, and opened the door. The dogs ran out into the yard, Henry toddling after them. He adruptly stopped on the first step and began poking at a large, dead cicadia.**

"No, Henry!" I called. "Don't touch the dead bug."
"Nuh uh." he said, and grasped it in his tiny fist. Then suddenly he shrieked and opened his hand, and the cicadia buzzed from his hand and took off into the air. I screamed, dropped the stroller, and slammed the door, effectively locking my son outside with the gross bug. It took me a second of heavy breathing and grasping the baby to my chest before I realized my toddler was on the loose and probably going feral at that very moment, and wrenched the door open again. The cicadia had fallen to the sidewalk and given up the ghost, presumably permanently this time, and Henry was sitting on the step, waiting for me, gazing at me with the saddest look on his face that I've ever seen.

There are two things to be learned here-

1) I am a horrible mother. I feel really terrible.

2) My son can resurrect the dead.

* He did have applesauce and a scrambled egg for breakfast, so I did at least feed him a relatively healthy meal to start things with.

** I hate cicadias. I hate, hate, hate them. We are just deep enough itno the south to get those horrific seventeen year cicadias, and there's a mini-cycle of them out now, so being outside has been a nightmare for me.