Butterflies!

For Taylor's 6th birthday, Bapa got her caterpillars. Her first "pet". :)

The caterpillars started out so so tiny, and it was amazing how much they grew in their little cup!

This is when a few started to form chrysalides.

After a couple weeks, they transformed to the chrysalis stage. We had to put the cup up high because the chrysalides needed to harden, and the girls weren't always the most gentle while holding the cup. :)

After 2 days, we moved them to the butterfly net - pinning the paper toward the bottom. And then the wait began.

I had to remove all the extra floss before pinning them. It was kinda gross!

It took about a week for the first butterfly to emerge! A pretty painted lady! We didn't get to see it come out of the chrysalis, but the girls were SO excited to have their first butterfly!

We went to school on Monday with only one butterfly, but came home to two more!

That night we got to actually see one more come out, and then the fifth one emerged that night. The girls named them Tiara, Sprinkles, Sparkles, Tink, and Bell.
The wings were all shriveled for a bit.

This was a typical evening scene when the butterflies were emerging...hanging out by the butterfly net.

On Tuesday, it was our one warmest day of the week, and we decided to set them free that day after school.

I think we were expecting them to fly away faster, but it was definitely more of a prolonged event. For a while the little guys didn't even know that they had freedom - and it took some coaxing to get them to move out of the net.

Three finally figured out that they could fly away.

A fourth one - we called this one Sprinkles - was more interested in hanging around, and it was fun to look at it up close!

The sad part about Sprinkles is that....while Camryn was so intrigued by the butterflies, she was also fairly terrified of the fact that they could fly and flutter around her. Sprinkles finally took off a bit, completely freaking Cam out, and in her little feet shuffle/arm waving moment, when Sprinkles landed back on the deck, Camryn accidentally stepped right on it. In her rain boots. Whoops. Sprinkles didn't get squished somehow, but was....limping...after that. Cam felt bad, but I just told her that we would take Sprinkles down to the yard and she would be okay.

It was a fun experience - and a great first pet! We are sort of hoping maybe we see some Painted Lady's flying around our house this spring/summer!