Our Caterpillar Journey

For some background: As a child, I would ride my bike down the road to my Aunt Leone's house where there was a big patch of milkweed on the ditch bank that I could always find monarch caterpillars every summer. I was so fascinated by the process of it changing into a butterfly! So for the last few years I have looked on that same milkweed patch, as well as other random milkweed patches, to find a caterpillar to show Johnny this magical event. But I never could find one! That is until THIS summer! And now I had TWO kids to show! Matt said my excitement that day was not far behind the day our children were born. haha But now he understands, because he's seen it for the first time too. Everything about them is neat: the unique stripes on the caterpillar, the pretty cocoon, and the gorgeous monarch. So here's the journey we've enjoyed these past couple of weeks...

July 1st
The day we found our first caterpillar.

Such a good looking specimen. :)

So when I went to get more milkweed leaves two days later, I found not one, but TWO more caterpillars! And then one more day later I found a 4th one! As Johnny said, now their family is like our family! :)

They just eat and eat and eat for several days.
(And for you hungry caterpillar book lovers: no pie, pickles, or lollipops were involved Ü)

Then it gets really exciting when you find them like this because it means they are going to form their cocoon! 

And that cocoon just happens to be one of the prettiest things ever! A pretty sea green color with a gold line and gold dots.

Then you just wait for about 8-10 days and then it gets darker and darker until you can see the monarch butterfly through the cocoon skin. At this point, you find yourself always glancing at the jar because you know you'll look over and see a butterfly any time. Somehow, we still missed ever seeing it break out though...

The first one came out while we were at church this past Sunday. We came home and there it was!

This is all that's left of the cocoon.

We helped it get in the tree and the kids watched it for a long time.

Johnny, especially, did NOT want to miss its first flight!

Here's the pretty lady! You can tell it's a female because of how dark the veins in her wings are.

Our 2nd butterfly was actually a male. Their veins aren't as dark and they have those two dots that you can see in the middle wings, that the females don't have.



These two would just sit and watch the new butterflies for so long, waiting for them to be ready to fly off. It was so cute to see their fascination.

 Only two out of the four caterpillars turned into butterflies successfully. One caterpillar got really fat and we thought it was going to be ready for its cocoon any day, but then it suddenly got really skinny and didn't move much for a few days. So instead of having the kids find a dead caterpillar one morning, we took it back to the milkweed patch. The other one got in its cocoon and even got to where we could see the monarch colors, but it never hatched out. Not sure how either of those things happened...But it was still an awesome experience and we can't wait to find new ones next year! So if you have any milkweed by you, look for the caterpillars! It's one of the coolest things you'll ever see!