Madama Butterfly

This year, I picked out a costume for Her Royal Highness (HRH) Berkeley. One that she could wear and that we all could coordinate with. She was Madama Butterfly and we were butterflies in waiting and our friend Karene, the chemistry teacher, was a crazy entomologist following us around with a magnifying glass! 8-)

Here is HRH's outfit. Pink and purple wings with a headband antennae (our wings coordinated, of course!).

HRH was pretty good about letting us put the outfit on her. The hard part was figuring out how the outfit went on. Here we obviously have it wrong. The front part goes in front of her front legs!



Then we had to figure out the back ties. They were made for a much bigger lab. We think HRH might be a pygmy lab. She is the runt of the litter and is only 42 pounds at 6 months.

I finally gave up and just tied the back in a bow. It worked.

She gave me a big lick in the face when we were all done with the wings. But there was one more part of the costume to go: the headband!

Would you believe she wore it for the Entire Day! Never once tried to take it off. I think she thought it was a crown or a tiara. 8-)


Here she is watching the little lower division kids parade by with their costumes. Their reactions were awesome. Every time they caught sight of her, they would say, "Look at BERKELEY!" And they pointed and smiled and laughed. It was SOOOOO worth it. All the middle division kids loved it, the upper division kids loved it and the faculty loved it. She made EVERYONE'S day. She was a happiness generator on Wednesday. It was so cool.

After the parade, I put her coat on and then put the wings on over her coat. She still looked cute.

And they didn't impede her napping.

Truly, she was a Monarch Butterfly!


Here we all are with Her Royal Highness.