Happy Birthday...

...to the butterflies! Today 3 of the 5 butterflies made their grand entrance. I think the other 2 will break out tomorrow. The kids were SO excited!

When butterflies split open their chrysalis, they hang vertically for awhile and flap their wings to fill them with blood. Their wings also have to dry before they can fly. Our butterflies haven't done much flying today (although there's really not much room in there). They have done a lot of flopping around, though. They also secrete a red substance called meconium that looks a lot like blood. (Official definition: a metabolic waste product from the pupal stage that is expelled through the anal opening of the adult butterfly.) Once I convinced the kids that the butterflies were not bleeding, Tyler was fascinated by it. (It's kind of hard to explain "metabolic waste" to a 6 year old, even one as smart as Tyler.) You can see some of it on the net in the first picture.

We are supposed to feed them a mixture of sugar water sprinkled on fresh cut flowers or a saturated paper towel. They recommended using carnations or mums. The kids bought me a pot of carnations and a pot of mums for Mother's Day. Today is the first day since May that my carnations have bloomed. (The mums still haven't.) It was perfect timing! We also put a fresh sliced orange in there for them as a treat. We haven't seen them eat yet, but we did see one of them coil and uncoil its proboscis.



It's hard to see the butterflies through the netting, and even more difficult to get a decent picture. We also didn't want to disturb them too much. I'm sure we will get better pictures over the next week. The inside of their wings is very pretty. The outside is a little dull, but the kids think they're beautiful.




Today was also my birthday. Our weekend getaway was kind of my present, but the kids made me wonderful cards and decorated a cake for me. Apparently they really enjoyed decorating the cake. I think they used all my green & pink sprinkles. (Ron "supervised" the decorating.) Tyler captured exactly how many sprinkles were on the cake when he took his first bite: "Mmmmm. Crunchy!" It was really good despite the crunch.



This last picture is of Danielle's "toy(s) of the week". She has been carrying around these three stuffed animals all week. What I think is cute, though, is the way she has dressed them all up. The first one is wearing a cape from her Prince Philip doll. She says this kitty is a super hero. The second cat is wearing one of Barbie's scarves. The last one is wearing one of Danielle's hair clips, her bracelet, and a skirt from one of her other toys. She is so girly.