We let the last of our four butterflies into the world today. It was a very fun project this year, planting milkweed in our window box, watching the monarchs lay their eggs, finding teeny tiny caterpillars on the leaves and picking them off when they became big, fat caterpillars. We brought four inside and put them in our butterfly house. We got to watch them make their chrysalis’ and then finally emerge. Throughout the days leading up to their arrivals, we read butterfly books, played butterfly games, I made her a felted set of the “parts of a butterfly” and we played with Aly Parrot‘s beautiful Monarch life cycle set (of which I made cards to match). We let the first Monarch go in our garden. Ellie named her Marigold. She hung around the longest, sitting on Ellie’s finger and on the lettuce. Roy was the next to emerge. Ellie was with her Grandparents at the time, so Jeff and I released him onto the milkweed. The next day, Lavender emerged. She seemed to not want anything to do with us and flew off pretty quickly (which upset my little butterfly girl, who desperately wanted to hold her on her finger). But then two days later, Morning Glory came out of her chrysalis. She didn’t stick around too long either, but long enough to flutter on Ellie’s finger and it was neat seeing her fly off into the sky. Ellie was proud of herself for raising these butterflies. When we got back inside after releasing our last Monarch, I asked Ellie if she wanted to draw pictures of her butterflies, so we could remember them. She drew a fantastic drawing with oil pastels, naming the different parts of their bodies, “here’s the head and the thorax and abdomen, this one has orange antenna.”

What a great spring this is turning out to be.

FUZZY WUZZY CATERPILLAR
INTO THE CORNER WILL CREEP.
HE’LL SPIN HIMSELF A BLANKET,
HE’LL SPIN HIMSELF A BLANKET,
AND THEN FALL FAST ASLEEP.
FUZZY WUZZY CATERPILLAR WILL WAKE UP BY AND BY,
TO FIND THAT HE HAS GROWN TWO WINGS,
NOW HE’S A BUTTERFLY!
FLY BUTTERFLY, FLY THROUGH THE SKY!
-Spring Tales collected and written by Suzanne Down

16/52

eloise: so very curious about the world around you. You are always soaking it all in. You tell me about Poison Dart Frogs and Island foxes and point out the thorax of the butterfly and remember things like that there’s banana man lyrics in Day-O and that Raffi sang it on that movie you saw a long time ago. It’s amazing hearing the things that you remember and know. Some days I think you might already be smarter than me.

14/52
Eloise: this is a terrible photo, but it was an important day, so I’m going with this one. You saw your first feature film in a theater this week. Dada and I went with you as well as Nana and Papa. You saw Zootopia. It was a little scary (I thought), but you seemed to really enjoy the whole thing. You looked like such a little girl in that seat. Growing up so fast!

15/52

Eloise: My spunky girl. You are so very social these days. Asking waitress’ for your dinner, playing with your friends and usually “running the show, putting on shows for your grandparents and telling us detailed stories about your imaginary friends at dinnertime. Always chatting it up and always on the move.

-joining jodi for the 52 project!

Next weekend, Nana and Papa head home to Boston. So we got in as much time with them this past weekend as we could. We spent Saturday at the  Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens. It was a gorgeous day and everything was in bloom. We had lunch downtown and dinner back in Carpinteria. Sunday was a lovely bbq at their place in Carp. (Jeff and I snuck away for a little bit to meet up with some friends at the local brewery). It was a really nice weekend.