In Which Autumn Makes Friends with Butterflies!

And now we return to our regularly scheduled program! If you didn't get a chance to read the rest of the Celebration Week posts, definitely take some time to read and also see what Autumn and I made for Mike and P'd for Father's Day! I'll post a link at the end of this.

After we got back from the beach, the caterpillars I ordered for Autumn's birthday finally arrived! I didn't photograph this nearly as much as I should have but it was a really cool project. Autumn got to watch the caterpillars eat and crawl and grow. Then, one day they climbed to the top of the container they arrived in and hung upside down a while before building their coccoons. We moved the disk they built their cocoons on into the butterfly net and waited. I had kind of told God it'd be really cool if one became a butterfly on Garrett's birthday and sure enough:

That's one of Autumn's videos from her camera but it's a pretty funny one. Plus I think you can kind of see that the one butterfly is just kind of hanging out letting its wings become functional and the other 4 cocoons are in the background. They all emerged by the next day after turning really black. And "strapped" as Autumn says instead of "striped." Molly was particularly interested in this phenomenon. All that stuff is, by the way, the tea party Autumn set up for her new friend Butterfly!


I convinced Autumn to let the butterflies go partly because I was worried Molly was going to find a way to eat them. But they also seemed to really want out to have room to fly. Penny was able to come over to help me package the flip flops last Sunday and afterward we let the butterflies go in the backyard. Autumn seemed appropriately dressed.


The butterflies seemed pretty excited by seeing the outdoors. They were fluttering around like crazy.


They got a little shy though after we unzipped the net. Penny helped urge them out. Autumn wasn't overly interested in having one on her hand, much to my disappointment, but she enjoyed seeing this one hang out on Penny's hand for a while.


Isn't this the best face??


I definitely think we'll do this again. Although I'm kind of eyeballing this ladybug house. Autumn looooooves ladybugs so this might be what we do with some of her birthday money. Learning is fun!

Don't forget to drop in at Passing Pinwheels!