Butterfly Update

We've had lots of fun with our Monarch caterpillars this spring. Here's a picture of one of the ones ready to make a chrysalis any day now. We've already had one metamorphasis take place and let that one go. We currently have roughly 8 more caterpillars on our Milkweed plant munching away at leaves and growing everyday. We made the choice to keep them inside this year just by keeping a potted plant on our table and watching them from time to time. The kids get more interaction with them and they're not trouble at all. Maybe we'll get a picture of one of the butterflies to come. =)

Very Hungry Caterpillars

This past week, our Monarch butterfly eggs have hatched on our Milkweed plants and we've been exploring them the past few days. They are definately hungry! We're keeping one Milkweed plant in our house by the windowsill and I'd say we have around 15 baby caterpillars on it just eating away the leaves. As they get bigger, they eat more and more, so we have two more plants out back to transfer them to once they've eaten this plant. We kept them outside last year and then have also tried them in a container just changing out the leaves and I would definately recommend not doing those. A storm killed most of them when they were outside and keeping them inside in a container was just too much hastle. This seems to work great and they don't leave the plant. We just water it every other day and watch and observe. As they get ready to form crysalises, we'll transfer the plant out into our butterfly house where they can crawl up the wood and then change into beautiful Monarch butterflies. We'll then hang a baby food jar with a sponge attached and fill it with Gatorade (they like the purple kind..."Fierce" the best) and then eventually let them go into the wild to make more butterflies. Give it a try this spring. It's great fun!

*If you're really interested in getting started, just take a trip to Home Depot or Lowe's, look at their milkweed plants in the garden section and look for little, cream eggs on the underside of the leaves. If you see some, buy the plant and happy hatching! If you live up north and it's still cold outside, just keep the plant inside on your widowsill like we're doing and then transfer them to your homemade butterfly pavillion. Click HERE for directions on how to make your own (we made one for Avonlea's room and she chose pink tool and some sticky gems to decorate it...turned out pretty cute).

Ahhhh... Spring Time

Here is some "stuff" (lovely Florida pollen) that I have to say I hate. I don't use the word hate often (and never around my kids), but this stuff I do. I can't think of a good reason for it. I'm sure it's needed somehow in our ecosystem just like cockroaches or termites or something, but this stuff makes me gag...literally! For those of you who live in Florida, you know what I'm talking about. The pollen counts have been out the window this past week and myself and our kids have been suffering tremendously from it, like never before. We have an entire pharmacy in our kitchen, I'm not kidding. We're on Albuterol breathing treatments around the clock, taking Claritin (love this stuff) and Augmentin (a stronger version of amoxacillin (also love this stuff) for some major sinus infections which they both have. We have the runny noses, itchy, watery and gunky eyes (Lincoln's were swollen shut today poor boy!), dry coughing and wheezing from asthma and we're CRANKY. I think that sums it up. =) All from this lovely pollen. So, although I know God is in charge of how our earth works and everything in it, I do think this may be a question I ask Him in eternity, "God, why is pollen necessary?" The amazing thing is that none of this is contagious, just everyone has it. Let's all pray for rain okay? =)

On a side note...we're also ready to begin watching the exciting process of metamorphasis take place in the Bates house. I stopped at Home Depot to pick up some things to get rid of our squirrel and rat problem in our attic (mesh wire to block around our sofits of our house and steel wool to block up other holes) and splurged on two milkweed plants covered in Monarch butterfly eggs. Now is the time (from now until May - which is the best month to find the most eggs) to start looking for them when you're at the park, the Home Depot/Lowe's or your local nursery. We did this experiment last year and actually built a butterfly house in our backyard to maintain all our butterflies. It's really neat and the kids get a kick out of it. You can go large scale with it or just buy a few plants with a couple eggs and watch it happen on your kitchen counter. Happy hunting!


Here are three eggs (the little cream specs on the leaves) that will change dark in color and hatch out caterpillars in approx. 3 days.


Here are what the flower buds look like when they're still closed. They look beautiful when open, they're just not a large bloom so you wouldn't want to decorate your whole yard in them for cosmetic looks. Plus the fact that you'll be attracting lots of Monarch butterflies, hence eggs, hence caterpillars eating up all your plants!


This is the best milkweed you'll want to obtain to feed your hungry caterpillars.

Welcome Butterfly and Responsibility

Our butterfly emerged from his/her chrysalis this afternoon and is getting used to his/her wings. Not flying yet, but I'm sure there will be some fluttering around later today. =) I was at our local home improvement store yesterday getting some plants for our front yard and I grazed by the butterfly section of the gardening area to look at the milkweed plants for caterpillars or eggs. Low and behold, there were SO many that of coarse, I had to embark on just a few more (okay, I took 29!). They don't want those pesky caterpillars eating their plants anyway right? =) So, we currently have 1 butterfly, 1 caterpillar big enough to create a chrysalis, 8 more little caterpillars and 28 eggs (1 hatched last night). I'm telling you, I should go into the business!! I'm just glad I didn't fork out a million bucks for this experiment, Avonlea gets to learn about metamorphasis and our butterfly garden will soon be full of butterflies!


Avonlea has a new responsibility chart which I made last week. She's learning how to do things on her own lately and isn't keen on being independant...which is hard to believe for a first child! Anyway, she's perfectly capable of getting dressed (for the most part) by herself, brushing her teeth (with a follow up from Rob or I), brushing her hair, getting her shoes on, etc., but I'm not sure if it's a regression due to the fact that we do everything for Lincoln. It's a work in progress. =)

Caterpillar Update

I have to share my information with my fellow bloggers. If you sparked an interest in our metamorphasis experiment, you should know this. I like to think of Rob and I as people who are smart with our money, so whenever I find things for free, I get psyched. =) As I mentioned before, caterpillars or eggs online are very expensive (roughly $8.00 each!). The kids and I took a trip to our local home improvement store and we found some milkweed in the gardening section. We did need to buy a few more plants to feed our caterpillar. I took the plants and looked underneath some leaves just to see if we could find any caterpillars or eggs and sure enough...jackpot! We found 17 eggs and 7 caterpillars that had already hatched. So, wha-la! Free eggs/caterpillars. So friends, DON'T buy eggs/caterpillars online. Just visit your local nursery or home improvement store and buy plants already containing them. The store will probably be happy that you took those due to the fact that the caterpiallars eat the milkweed leaves and the plants don't look very pretty. So happy hunting!

We have a chrysalis!

Leaves from local nursery, each one containing a caterpillar egg or caterpillar.

Caterpillar Update

Growing, growing and still growing. This caterpillar goes through about 8-10 Milkweed leaves a day! We're going to have to get some more milkweed this weekend to keep up with our hungry, little guy.=) It'll be a nice break when he actually hibernates in his chrysalis for a bit so we won't have to feed him all the time. He's SO interesting to watch. Again, if you've never tried this experiment (even if you don't have kids), it's so much fun. I'm hoping that my nieces and nephews (Izzy,Zander, Abigail, Sammy and Aleah) can help us find more caterpillar eggs this summer so we can watch this tiny miricle take place.

The VERY Hungry Caterpillar

If you read my previous blog entry, you know that we just got back from an Orlando/St. Augustine vacation (Note to self...take an actual vacation to St. Augustine and not just a two-hour visit. There's so much to do and see. The history is amazing.). When we got home, we 1. unpacked the car, 2. started the laundry and
3. fed and gave water to all our animals. As I looked into the babyfood jar and saw our Monarch caterpillar, I couldn't believe how BIG he grew! He grew more than five times his size in just 4 days! I had to take a picture. He also is outgrowing his babyfood jar, so we gave him a new home in a little bug cage we had in the garage. We'll continue to fill it with a little water and Milkweed leaves until he decides to form a chrysalis. Avonlea is so interested in this experiment we're doing with him. I feel like he almost needs a name...any suggestions?

Our caterpillar's new home

Monarch Eggs and Caterpillars

Our baby caterpillar...2 days old. He's super small!!!

Caterpillar egg (it's very small and white)

Milkweed

Our hatching jar

Okay, so I got another neat idea from Family Fun Magazine. There was an article last month about hatching Monarch eggs and watching the metamorphasis cycle take place in your very own home. Well, I just had to try this out. We had just finished constructing our butterfly house out back (I still won't sink in the TONS of money it takes just to get caterpillars shipped here!), and I thought we'd take a trip to a local park (which has a butterfly garden) and bring a few eggs back home. The eggs that we did bring home were small, yellow eggs and they did wind up hatching, but all the caterpillars died. =( So, I took a trip over to our other house we own (still haven't sold it...urgh!), and I knew we had lots of milkweed plants there (milkweed plants are the only host plants that monarch butterflies will lay their eggs on) and found some eggs. You have to look very carefully to find them (you might even be able to find the eggs on milkweed you buy at your local Lowe's or Home Depot). After bringing the leaves home, we put them into a babyfood jar and have watched them for the past few days. One eggs has hatched and the caterpillar is VERY tiny and eating away at the milkweed leaves and the other egg is in the stages of hatching and will meet the world soon, joining his brother in eating the milkweed leaves. Avonlea is really enjoying watching this process take place and being hands on with it. So much cooler than textbook pictures. After the caterpillars get bigger, we'll transport them out back into our butterfly garden and watch them transform into butterflies. Neat stuff! We'll keep posting pictures of this interesting experiment throughout the next few months so stay tuned...

Our Butterfly Garden

Rob and I are definately "project people". We love creating things, especially outside. Anything from landscaping to pond building to gardening and now to building a butterfly garden. We had some leftover wood from various projects laying around and got the idea to build one. We headed out to Home Depot to get some screening, a little extra wood and some hinges for a door. It only took us 1 1/2 days to complete and what fun it's been. This morning, the kids and I headed out to the store to get a butterfly net (caterpillars and eggs are expensive to buy through the internet so we decided to catch our own) and a few butterfly attracting flowers. We planted them when we got home and after about 1 hour, we had already caught two butterflies! Here are some pictures and a short video to enjoy. Of coarse, I had to include a picture of my handsome, little man! =)