Jiminy Cricket

It was a scorcher today and our house being the wonderfully insulated unit it is logged an 85 degree temp on the thermostat. Being the energy conscious people we are, we opened some windows and put the screen doors to some good use although we soon found that warm summer nights brought not only the heat, but bugs as well. Loud bugs.

As dinner ended this evening, munchkin froze, flashed a look of awe and said, "Where did it come from?"
"Where did what come from?"
"Hug?" she said with a scared look.
After a minute of confusion and, yes, hugs, we found the problem.

Turned out, this was baby's first experience with the sound of crickets chirping. Kind of an eerie thing for an almost-two-year-old to just sort of hear suddenly coming from outside. We tried to explain what crickets were without any real success. She even went through a few minutes of, "See it?!" with a scared sort of tone. We told her it was a bug and she wanted to look at one. Not even 10 seconds of being outside looking for where the sounds were coming from and she wanted to go back inside. (big surprise)

Long story longer, Melissa ends up pulling out her laptop to look for pictures of crickets. [aside: Google... We get the sport. Bing. Now there's a search engine.] Now, up close, crickets are ugly and scary. After the first couple of pictures we decide to go with the cute and cuddly and let school handle teaching her what a real cricket looks like. AND... who's the most famous cute and cuddly cricket? Jiminy! We turned to YouTube for her first experience with it and SHE LOVES HIM.

We had to play it quite a few times before she headed to bed. Over and over.