Don't Hate Me Because I Raise Butterflies

WARNING:  This post is long and contains more info than you probably ever wanted to know about the life cycle of a Monarch butterfly.

First, let's backtrack to a few weeks ago when I overheard one of my favorite teachers at the boys' school talking about collecting milkweed plants to find caterpillar eggs to raise monarch butterflies.

Um, HELLO?!  Sign me up!!!

I've been tempted to buy one of those kits to send off for larvae and set up a habitat and blah, blah, blah.  So to find out we could do this all in our own little town was like the stuff that stay-at-home moms' dreams are made of. :)

So we packed a lunch, grabbed the neighbor girl (with permission, of course), and headed to the lake...

I'm not going to lie.  The kids had more fun skipping and picking flowers than collecting leaves with microscopic eggs. 

Can't really blame them.  It wasn't quite as magical as I had hoped either.

So we took a break for lunch...

These kids gobbled up the chicken salad on croissants like they had never eaten before. 

I love that!

I picked a bunch of milkweed and crossed my fingers that we scored some eggs.

Then we went for ice cream because, well, that just sounds like how you'd wrap up a fun day of butterfly egg hunting, right?

While the kids ate their ice cream I started poking around at the milkweed leaves.

Science Lesson #1: Monarch butterflies only lay their eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves.  One Monarch can lay 400 eggs, fluttering leaf to leaf, laying one egg at a time.  Milkweed provides the caterpillar its entire diet which makes it poisonous to other insects and birds.  Only 10% of the eggs will become butterflies.

Sure enough!!! 

We had some eggs and even two caterpillars! 

Phhew! 

I was worried we had only collected weeds.

The little guy above is only a day or so old.  Do you see it?  Just to the left of the hole it created.

Sorry, wish I would have used my nice camera to get better pics.

Science Lesson #2: Its first meal is eating the egg it hatched from.  Then it spends its days eating milkweed CONSTANTLY.  Over the course of several days it will shed its skin five times, also eating that.

It was really incredible to see this transformation...

And of course, with all that eating comes a lot of this...

Frass.

Known around these parts as caterpillar poop.

You cannot even imagine how much frass these little guys create.  Wow.

And don't you just love that word?  Frass.  Might have to keep that one in the vocabulary.

And then finally, after all that eating and pooping and growing, the caterpillar leaves the milkweed for the first time and climbs to the top of the container for its next stage of life.  This was really fun to see and unfortunately my pictures didn't turn out very good.  From my observations it looked like the caterpillar spit out (for lack of a better term) a silk-like substance from its mouth, then turned around putting its rear end up to the silky substance and dropped from that spot forming a J with its body.  This is the pupating stage. 

(Ok, I'm not calling that crummy description a a Science Lesson.  You'd think I'd do a little better research, but whatever.)

Here's the best shot I have...

This was taken at night, with no flash, while holding a flashlight with my left hand. 

Yep, I'm officially the Crazy Butterfly Lady.

Finally I busted out the good Canon and started taking better pics...

This is the pupa or chrysalis.

It stays in this phase for about two weeks.  Then just before its final metamorphosis into a butterfly, it gets darker and you can start to make out the wings...

Until POP!!!...

This photo was taken literally minutes after the previous ones.  I left the room to throw a load of laundry in and BAM!!!.  We had a butterfly.

It then hangs from its pupa until its wings are fully dry.

We slid a piece of fruit into the container and observed them for a bit...

Please excuse the vodka bottle in the background.  No, I wasn't boozing during the photo shoot.  This butterfly container was kept in the dining room by the bar. 

At least that's my story. :)

Notice the other pupas hanging in the back.  We started with a total of six caterpillars and four made it to "butterfly".  Not bad. 

Notice the dried pasta in this shot...

That was Luke's doing.  I guess he figured the butterfly would like pasta as much as he does?

Then it was time for the big release...

See it there?  Just left of center?

The kids loved it!  I probably loved it even more. 

I'm pretty sure I'll be 70 years old and still raising butterflies each year. 

I can see it now...  

The neighbor kids will call me the Crazy Butterfly Lady and I'll forgo the containers and have pupas hanging from the light fixtures. 

Ok, maybe not. 

I'm not that into frass. 

And based on my experience with talking to some of my friends about this, you either want to smack me right now for wasting the last ten minutes of your life or you're making a mental note to go out and collect milkweed next April. 

Which reminds me of an inside joke I have with, well,  myself.

Man, that sounds lame, eh?

Whenever I catch myself doing something totally dorky or a little out there, I bust out the old line from the 80's Pantene commercial, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

Remember that one? 

It became a big joke.  A line people would say to make fun of themselves.

So mine tend to be things like, "Don't hate me because I cut cheese into the shape of flowers and pickles into leaves for an afternoon snack." and "Don't hate me because I then proceed to photograph them on a macro setting."

or...

"Don't hate me because I raise butterflies."

Hmmm...

Maybe I should have kept that inside joke inside?

I'm going to blame it on the muscle relaxers.

Until next time...

xo,
Jess

Once You Go Honey You Never Go Back?

Allow me to explain:

My kids don't like to sleep in...ever.  The one time Luke slept past 7am I knew for sure something was wrong.  Sure enough he ended up in the hospital for three days with pneumonia.  True story.  Anyway, this is a trait I attribute to Steve because he is a morning guy while this. girl. can. SLEEP.  I mean sleep.  I could go to bed at 8pm and still sleep until 8am.  I'm not happy about it or proud of it, but lately I'm just not a big fan of early mornings.  Or really mornings in general.  Unless there's a 10am nap scheduled (for me).

But back to the point...

The boys love Cheerios.  I mean really love Cheerios.  I don't understand it; they do nothing for me.  I thought it would be a fabulous bribe encouragement if I served them Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast last weekend.

 

The catch?

They must wake up, go downstairs, flip on the tube, and eat their new delicious "honey cheerios"...

BY THEMSELVES.

As in DO NOT WAKE UP MOMMY AND DADDY.

I know, I know, fabulous parenting going on over here.

But it worked!

The kids were in heaven.

I was bragging about my genius bribe encouragement.

Steve and I were high-fiving.

Life was good.

Fast forward to Monday.

AKA the day we went back to regular Cheerios.

Luke gave me an earful:

"Mom, I want the good ones."

So the next day I mixed some regular ones with some honey ones to try to wean him.  (Isn't that what they do for addicts?)

And I got another earful:

"Mom, I don't like how you mixed some regular ones in there."

Great.

I created a monster.

"And Mom, next time I want all honey ones and I want you to leave the box on the counter so I know they're the right ones."

So bossy.

As if I couldn't pour a bowl of regular ones and leave out the honey box.

Pshawwww! 

He has no idea who he's dealing with here.

But I like the way he's trying to out-think me. 

Well, "like" is strong.  I'd really just prefer him to go back to the damn regular cheerios.

So, the moral of the story?

I'm not really sure, but I think the Food Nazi was right to hold off on sugary cereals for this long because apparently once you honey you never go back.

Well looky at me on a roll writing two blog posts in one week. 

Did you catch that error?  It has been well over a week now.  Let's just say I had some technical difficulties.

Let's recap Christmas while we're at, shall we...

I really enjoyed the holidays this year.  Like really enjoyed them!  The boys are at that fun age where they find everything magical.  I love seeing that twinkle in their eye. 

(See, I am a good and loving mother.)

And I also like that you can pull out the whole "Santa and his elves are watching you" bit to get them to behave.

Darn! 

There I go again. 

My mom says it's my shtick.  I say she should try living with them and see how long it is before she loses her marbles too.  I'm fairly certain she'd be bribing with sugar cereals and threatening with elves within days.

Anyway, back to the magical holidays...

These were taken from my phone.  Yep, I got a new phone and it takes pictures, sends texts, the works.  So current of me, eh?

I should note this is what caused the delay in my post.  I had no clue how to get pics from my phone onto my computer.  Not very current of me, eh?  Any sane person would carve a moment out of her day to read the user manual and complete the task.  Not this gal. 

Slim pickin's at the Salado Christmas Tree Farm. 

We will be going back to Elgin next year.

Cutting down our ugly tree.  (It was the best in the bunch.)

Sorry, can't figure out how to rotate the cell pics.  Baby steps.

Hayride.

Heading home.

Decorating the ugly tree.

Ditto.

School Christmas party

Ditto.  Zach had fun decorating cookies.

Luke and Kayla at the mall.  The train ride was closed so we let them get on the carousel.

Zach on the carousel.  I was so dizzy at this point I thought I was going to throw up.

We went back to the mall the next day just to ride the train...

...and to wait in line for over an hour to see Santa.  Fun times!

Luke had a lot to say.  It was really cute. 

We made more than 300 of these little guys.  They were shared with teachers, neighbors, friends, and family.

Which meant my kitchen looked like this for a few days.

The think the packaging was my favorite part.

The boys had fun delivering them to our neighbors.

Opening stockings Christmas morning.

Santa can still get away with shopping the dollar bins at Target...

...and giving practical items like new water bottles.

Opening presents.

Ditto.

Feels good to get Christmas knocked out.  I am probably the last blogger in the world still working on 2010.  Oh well!

Adios Amigos!

xo,
Jess

Wrecked

Hi there. Remember me? The lady who writes this blog...

occasionally.

Well, it's been a rough few years weeks. :) I kid.

I'm not sure whether it was the cold weather, or the post-holiday blahs, or the potty training, or the car accident, or the kid that won't stop pooping in the front yard, or the cold weather, or going without a car for 3+ weeks, or the kids, or the cold weather, or the kids (see where I'm going with this?), but I have not been able to get my act together. Actually I am pretty sure that it was all of these things (and more that I will spare us all from hearing about) that formed a Molotov cocktail of bummer-dom for me.  Don't you like how I just make up words to suit my needs?  Fortunately I have my priorities (somewhat) straight and have managed to keep the family fed and the laundry (somewhat) done, but as always the blog (and my toenails) have been neglected.

Did someone say cocktail?

Oh, yeah.  That was me.

I've been having way too many of those lately.  Between the box of wine tucked in the cabinet next to the oven (meant for cooking) and my sweet neighbor who invites me over to sample her latest cocktails, I have had no self control.  I'm not going to lie, it helps with de-stressing.  And I'm not going to lie, I delivered a couple drink recipe books to my neighbor's doorstep hoping she'll continue with her experimentation and feel obligated to invite me over to try them. :)  Did I mention I love her?

So anyway, back to the goings on around here...

Yes, I had a car accident. 
Yes, the kids were with me. 
Yes, it was my fault. 
And yes, I feel like a schmuck.

I'm one of those people who say they don't get in accidents and they don't get tickets. 
Because I'm suuuch a good driver. 
And I'm suuuch a defensive driver. 

Well, I've been eating crow for the past three weeks and six days. 
I know this because that is how long I have been without a car.  Do you know how important it is to have a car?  Do you know that is how more times than not we get from Point A to Point B?  Do you know that without one we are pretty much stuck at home?  And without one we have to do a lot more planning...and walking.

Sure you do.

And what the heck does 'eating crow' really mean?  Might have to Google that later.

I keep replaying the accident in my head over and over and over again, and I honestly don't think there was much I could have done differently.  It was one of those wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time moments.  Or maybe I'm justifying?  And no, I didn't get a ticket.  I only found that out after my insurance agent asked if I was given a ticket and I was like,

"I don't know.  Did I?" 

And she asked, "Well, did an officer give you a citation, have you sign it, and then give you a copy?"

Me: "Ummm, no.  I guess I didn't get a ticket."

Hello?! 

What idiot doesn't know if she got a ticket or not?

Yours truly.

I'm going to blame it on the damn airbag that popped out of my steering wheel and smacked me in the face.

And since I can't stop thinking about the accident, it's no wonder Luke can't either.  But geeez, I wish he would.  Here are just a couple of the many conversations we've had since the accident.

Steve (helping us into the Sequoia):  I love you guys.  Drive carefully.

Me: We will.

Luke: Mom, why weren't you driving carefully when we had the accident?

Me: Silence (head drops)

AND

Luke:  Mom, why did we have an accident?

Me: Sometimes accidents happen.  That's why they're called accidents. (Thanks for that one, Dad!)

Luke: Well, how come Daddy doesn't have accidents?

Me: Doh!

This last conversation was particularly painful.  Steve and I tend to be a bit competitive, especially when it comes to driving.  I get on to him for not using his turn signals and for reading work e-mails while driving.  He gets on to me about...well, I'm not sure.  I am a perfect driver. :) 

 See what I mean?

I knew I was not going to handle his teasing well and that I didn't want to wish an accident upon him (which crossed my mind -- SHAME!), so I quickly came up with a solution:

Steve has been wanting a flat screen tv for our room.  

Sounds reasonable, right?

Did I mention we already have one facing the bed and this one would be for the sitting area?  And that we actually have one in the sitting room but it's one of the "old timey ones"?

Hello?!  Excessive, right?

I mean, some people don't have enough food to eat and we are going to have two fancy tvs in our bedroom?! 

Out of the question.  Ridiculous.  No way.  Not gonna happen.

Until now. 

I offered Steve a deal:  He is to never speak a word about my accident or him being a better driver because of it, and I will never complain about the second tv in our bedroom.

Except for on my blog.  Cause it's my blog and I'll blog what I want to. :)

He thought about it for two seconds, smiled, and we shook on it.

Isn't this how all married couples operate?

No?

Well, it works for us.  Goodness only knows what our kids are learning from our strange behavior.

Speaking of strange behavior, who are these weirdos?

Before you go thinking that I must have picked up a one-gloved crack-smoking bum off the street, let me clear things up.

That is my cousin Ashley on the left.  Classy broad, eh?  She is not smoking crack, but rather shotgunning a beer.  I'm not sure who that chick is on the right, but can you believe I own that same jacket?! :)  Whoever she is, she has good taste in clothing...and a double chin.  Just like me.  Hmmmmm.... 

I honestly don't remember what led us to shotgun beers in the middle of the day, but I'm sure it had something to do with me being on a trip sans children and proceeding to act like I was in high school again because of it.  Or maybe it was the result of being in a cabin with eight other people baking cookies around the clock for three straight days.

Have I mentioned my love for Cookie Weekend?

"What is Cookie Weekend?" you ask.

You can read more here:

 Cookie Weekend 2009

I think every family should have a cookie weekend.  It is soooo much fun!!!

Here are a few pics:



Lindsey's Choco Delight something-or-others just before baking.



Proof that the guys really do get in on the action...and looove it!



He is sooooo bad!



Silly Girls. 







Two of my favorite people in the whole wide world, my adorable grandparents.

Nothing says lovin' like baking cookies and blending a frozen concoction...

even in 20-degree weather?



This was not my grandparents' tree, but a tree my Pop made up a story about.  Something about a little blind boy who got his site back after picking out this straggly tree.  I don't remember the details, but he joked that I should write about it on my blog.  There you go, Pop.  Done. :)



The always-photogenic Ashley (I hate envy that about her) with Ozzy.







Linsdey and Matt with their cute little tree.

Group pic.

What is up with my hair????

You may have noticed that someone is missing. There was a little kid who made it into our family picture last year. We joked that maybe we'd see him again.







Guess what?

We did...

And when we did, we just had to get a picture with him.  His parents might want to keep a closer eye on him, considering all the weirdos running around this place.

By the way, his name is Dallas, which is pretty unfortunate for a kid who lives near Philly.

This was taken at Hotel Jonas, the restaurant we stopped at on the way home.  It's something like 100 years old and is still a hotel/tavern.  It's become a tradition.  They have great greasy food and cold beer.

Funny story:
Last year after cutting down trees, we sent the guys out for cookie ingredients while we went home to bake.  But instead of going straight home we made a pit stop along the way at Jonas for clam chowder.

This year we again sent the guys out for cookie ingredients, then twenty minutes later got a picture text of them bowling and drinking pitchers of beer.

What's the old saying?

Paybacks are hell.

This was taken from the restaurant. I loved the colors...and that barn. Oh, that barn. Have I mentioned that I want to live in a barn someday? Like a tricked out, something-out-of-Southern-Living-magazine-type barn. Or an old schoolhouse or church or something.

Okay, this post is getting long and down-right obnoxious.  If you read this blog for updates on my kids and not my ramblings, here ya go:

Kid #2 is potty trained!  Woo Hoo!!!!!!

Be back soon with Christmas pics!

xo,

Jess



Be Back Soon

This is how I've been feeling lately:

If only it were that easy, right?

And if only I could explain to the kids what a "mental health day" is and why I need one so badly. 

But nope.  Not gonna happen.

So I'm snapping myself out of it. 

Life is good.

I'll be back soon with some thrilling stories of potty training and other ramblings. 

Okay, "thrilling" is a bit strong.

xoxo,

Jess

PS- I'm also way behind on reading my friends' blogs, returning phone calls and e-mails, sending thankyou cards, and commenting on Facebook.  I should be getting back on track with all of that soon, too.  Man, being a stay-at-home mom in 2011 is demanding stuff. :)