Monarch Butterfly Re-Wind: From Egg to Worm!

I love it when I can do something super fun and educational at the same time with my kids, and watching monarch caterpillars turn into butterflies has been one of those things.  Just a couple days ago we got to release another butterfly that we watched transform and hatch in a jar!

If you enjoyed my recent "Our Very Hungry Caterpillar" post, this one will re-wind back to an even earlier stage in the butterfly's life...a single egg!  I was out the other day picking milkweed leaves to feed our 2nd "very hungry caterpillar," and looking on the undersides of the leaves it only took me seconds before I spotted an actual monarch EGG.  They are incredibly tiny, perfectly round little specks on the underside of the leaves, and are only about the size of a period at the end of a sentence.  Here you can see it next to my zoomed-in fingertip:

I put it in a little bug cage and a couple days later, sure enough, "out popped a very tiny and very hungry caterpillar."

I can't get over how tiny these things are.  This one above is maybe 1/16th of an inch long at the most.  He's so tiny, I have to stare for a while, inspecting every inch of his little cage to find him.  Yesterday I had to stretch a piece of pantyhose over the top of the lid so he couldn't crawl out of the air holes!

So, we've currently just let loose our 2nd monarch, are watching our 3rd caterpillar eat and grow that my parents gave us last weekend, and now have this teeny speck who will be our 4th!  So amazing to watch, and what a cool nature lesson for the kids!!

So, if you want to find some yourself, just look for milkweed.  Here's a photo I took of some of ours last month:

 Right now the plants are starting to grow their pods.  I used to love opening up the milkweed pods as a kid, letting loose the silky seeds in the wind!  But, you can be pretty sure if it's milkweed if you break off a leaf or stem and this white "milk" oozes out:

 

So next time you're outside and come across some milkweed, take a peek under those leaves!  If you come across any tiny white eggs, it's a great way to teach your kids about the miracles of nature, and just how tiny and fragile we all start out!

Our Very Hungry Caterpillar!

Here's a very cool way for you kids to get up close and personal with nature and learn about how caterpillars transform into butterflies!

A couple weeks ago my mom brought over a monarch caterpillar in a jar for Sammy.  Each year she and my dad find them on their property and will put one or two in a jar to watch it transform into a butterfly. Sammy's caterpillar built it's chrysalis before he made it to our house, so my mom emailed photos of his progress...

 Here he is eating a leaf and, of course, pooping it out!  These caterpillars like milkweed plants.  We have a bunch in our back yard but unfortunately couldn't find any of these guys this year.  Maybe next year!  But that's where you want to hunt for them.

 My mom puts a stick in the jar which is usually where they build their chrysalis, however, this guy decided to use the jar lid instead.  Here he is starting to attach himself.

These little things just always amaze me. They're so pretty and green and I love the little gold "details!" It's almost like a little gold zipper across the top.  This is how it looked when she brought it over, and we've been waiting for our butterfly to emerge, which happened today!

Last night it started to turn black...actually, the chrysalis doesn't really turn black, it gets clear, enabling you to see the black of the wings inside.

 Here's what it looked like this morning.  You can definitely see it is a monarch now! 

We left to take Toby to his 18 month checkup, and when we returned we found this...

So, for a half hour we all forgot how starving we were for lunch, and went out on the deck, where we opened the jar and enjoyed the tame-ness that comes with a newly hatched monarch!

 "Wow, this is cool! Almost makes me forget about you holding me down while the doctor tortured me with that enormous needle, Mom!" 

 Climbing on Sammy's hand

Okay, so I went a little nuts with the camera.  But hey, how often do you have the opportunity to take close-up photos of a live butterfly?

 (Of course it was only a matter of time before we had to introduce our butterfly to Puppy!)

 By this point it's wings were starting to dry enough to flutter around the deck.  This part of our deck is fully screened so it was like a little butterfly house for about an hour!

We ate lunch, played with him a little more, and then said our goodbyes when he was ready to fly away!

I'll try to remember to post a link back to this post next summer and give you a heads up that it's time to go caterpillar hunting!

The Great Minnesota Get-Together 2010

Hey Minnesota Mommies and Daddies!  The MN State Fair is going on right now and you need to get out there and enjoy it with your kids!  We went today, and it was very hot.  Unfortunately we didn't get to do EVERYTHING we wanted to, but did our traditional must-do's and made it home for nap time (me included).

We always (since having Sammy) start out at the "little farm hands" area, probably because we park on the north in and walk by it, and it's not usually busy in the morning.  Here our little farmer got to go through the process of planting and harvesting milk, eggs, and crops, then sell them to the grocery store, earn his "dollar," and then spend it on a treat at the end.  It was fun to see how much more he could do this year at age 2.5 compared to last year!  It's fun and all free.

 Had to take our photo in the plywood cutout at the end too!  This is one thing I love to do with the kids too.  There are so many of these things all over the fair, it's like going on a treasure hunt to find them.  I got photos of me and Sammy in probably more than a dozen of these things in previous years!

 When we found out that Choo Choo Bob's was at the fair this year, we decided we HAD to go.  We only made it just under 3 hours that day at the fair, and around 45 minutes of that was spent at Choo Choo Bob's!  We were there around 9:40 and they were not charging (normally it's $2/person), so we lucked out and got in free.  We would have paid though for that amount of entertainment with our train-crazy little boy.

 The model train inside was great, and there was a huge setup of wood tracks for the kids to play with too.  We stayed for a live show with Choo Choo Bob himself, which they have regularly throughout the day.

 Engineer Paul even stopped by and picked Toby right up out of my arms.  I have a feeling he's an experienced grampa.  ;-)  Toby liked his beard and glasses of course.

 Yup, another cardboard cutout photo-op!

In addition to Choo Choo Bob's, we did our usual traditions...ate some Sweet Martha's cookies, rode Ye Old Mill (now 97 years old!), and got our photo taken in the photo booth at the arcade.  I also got to ride the giant slide with Sammy, which was equally as fun for both of us.

(That's him in the orange shirt)  It's really not a bad deal at $2 per person.

The fair can get very expensive very fast.  I got my advance discount tickets at Cub Foods, but wish I had known that one advance ticket also works as a parking pass...it was $11 for parking at the fair this year.  Ouch!  Of course, you don't have to park there.  You can park and ride the bus for FREE!  Last time we did that we waited 45 minutes for our bus to show up though, so in the interest of time and our tight schedule today, we coughed up the 11 bucks.  It can add another whole fun adventure though if you have a little kid who loves buses like ours does.  ;-)

You can also save some money with the Blue Ribbon Bargain Book.  It's nice they list the coupons online here, so you can see if it is worth it for you.

Once you're in there is always a ton of stuff to see and do for free...climb on the tractors, see all the animal barns, and collect free pencils, stickers, buttons, etc in the Education building.  That's barely scratching the surface of course.  We were not there nearly long enough to scout out much else, but then discovering cool stuff and great deals is part of the fun too!

One way we save some money is by bringing our own water jugs.  I fill a few water bottles/jugs with ice and water, and when they run out, we re-fill them and have more ice water.  It leaves us with more cash to spend on food, rather than over priced pop and lemonade!  We even saw a family having a meal out of their cooler in the parking lot this afternoon on our way out.  One way to do it if you'd rather skip the food altogether, but then again food is a big part of the fair too!

Moms Like Me has a list of ways to enjoy the fair on a budget.

Hope you all are able to get out there and enjoy the fair, and if you're in another state, enjoy yours too!  The fair comes but once a year!

Family Fun at the County Fair

Sunday marked the end of the Dakota County Fair, in Farmington, Minnesota.  I have not missed a single fair in my 30-some years of life.  (I'm not being sensitive about my age...I'm just so old I honestly don't even remember how old I am off the top of my head anymore!)  For the past 13 of those years, I've had a booth at the same fair for my face painting business, which you may have read about in an earlier post. If you're a follower of my other blogs and multiple Facebook identities, then you've seen all these photos, but just in case, I thought I'd share a few here from "Fair Week 2010!"


Me and Sammy at my booth:

The midway:

We always have some rain storms during the fair...I liked how this reflection looked in the puddle, framed by the traffic barrier.

New food vendor this year: spaghetti sundae!

I always love to touch the pigs' noses!  I'm going to do a painting of this if I ever get some more free time...

Future farmer!  That's not a piece of grass in his mouth though, which would be very farmer-like...it's a sucker. ;-)

I love to take my breaks from work over in Dakota City village.  It's peaceful, there are lots of shady benches to enjoy ice cream on, and cute little old guys admiring the tractors.

Sammy got Thomas and James engines painted on his legs from Mommy and asks me every day where they went.  He says "Mommy's fair's all done."  I told him we will get to go to the big STATE fair in a week, and he's pretty excited!

If it isn't too late in the season, be sure to check out your local county fairs...they can be a great source of inexpensive fun for your whole family!

See 'ya next year, Dakota County!

Children Drown SILENTLY.

Last summer my in-laws came to town from Arizona.  Being that my brother-in-law and sister-in-law drove up to our city with their little girl as well to hang out, we thought it would be a fun opportunity to check out our local city pool/water park.  Little did we know that what we'd witness that day would leave a chilling and lasting impression on us.

We were all talking and enjoying catching up sitting around a picnic table, drying off after a little fun in the water, when suddenly all of the life guards started blowing their whistles and screaming for people to exit the pool immediately.  At first I thought it was one of their routine safety checks that they do about every half hour.  However, this time was different.  Looking across the pool we noticed a young life guard hurl a 7 year old boy's limp body up onto the concrete, where he'd lay like a rag doll for several minutes, receiving chest compressions and mouth to mouth for what seemed like an eternity.  Some of us couldn't watch.  I couldn't NOT watch, holding my breath as I waited for the boy to regain his.

By the time we realized what the commotion was all about, a woman sitting at the table right next to us went running, screaming around to the opposite side of the pool...it was her son.  Apparently a good swimmer, he had tried to make is way across the pool, and got too tired to reach the water slides on the other side.

The mother knelt down, grabbed her boy, sobbing, trying to pull him into her lap.  We watched what felt like a game of tug-of-war as the lifeguard dragged him back to continue her efforts to save his life. While the laughter of kids at play had gone completely silent, those screams of a mother helplessly watching her son receive CPR from a lifeguard is something that will not soon leave my mind.  A couple family members with us could see his little ribs cracking under the violent efforts of the lifeguard from our view across the pool.  After what seemed like an eternity, she rolled the boy on his side as he coughed up water.  The crowd around the pool erupted in cheers and applause as the ambulance finally arrived, and the heroic young lifeguard disappeared, weeping, into her locker room.

Yes, this all really did happen, and aside from a few broken ribs and some time spent in the hospital on a nebulizer, this boy survived thanks to the keen eye and quick action of a high school girl who took her summer job seriously that day.

With all the posts I've been doing lately about getting your kids outside and playing in the water, it is so incredibly important to remember to NEVER, EVER turn your back on your kids when they are playing in or around the water this summer.  Don't ever assume that anyone else is watching your kids, not even your own family or the life guards.  The seconds that it takes someone else to notice your child is drowning could be the few seconds needed to save their life.

Read this eye opening post, Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning, to learn more about what children look like when they are drowning.  Contrary to what we see on TV and the movies, people do not flail their arms, splash, and holler when they are drowning...they drown SILENTLY. 

We are in the process of trying to move into a home on a lake, and in addition to swimming lessons of course, I'm planning to pick up one of these cute "Puddle Jumper" life jackets from Stearns. They are more secure than water wings, and provide more range of motion in the water for your kids to play than a traditional life jacket. (see Sammy above, 2 summer's ago, on Gramma & Grampa's boat!) Please do enjoy your summer, and stay SAFE!

 

Two Great, FREE Twin Cities' Splash Pads to Check Out This Summer

We had a blast today, during what is supposed to be the only day this week without rain, playing at the Oak Hill Splash Pad in St. Louis Park with our church play group friends! 

If you live in the Twin Cities, this place is definitely worth checking out.  It's completely free, and fully fenced in, so you can really let your kiddo's run wild.  There's a great playground right there as well, if getting drenched isn't their thing.  Sammy wasn't so crazy about getting his head wet last year at 1 and a half, but this year, he was LOVING it, as you can see... 

There are plenty of benches and lounge chairs around the perimeter, as well as a few large umbrellas, and bathrooms both indoors and portable.  Just outside the fence you can enjoy a picnic on a table or in the shady grass.  The water park is open June 1st through August 31, and is located at 3201 Rhode Island Avenue South in St. Louis Park.

If you live south of the river, Nicollet Commons Park in Burnsville is a fantastic splash pad type park as well, also completely free!  This one is very different but also very fun.  It is NOT fully fenced, and is very spread out, so it can be a challenge if you have more than one kid to keep track of.  It is not painted all colorful and playground-like, like the previously mentioned park...if you walked through it and didn't see kids playing in it, you might think it's just a pretty park full of water features and not know that it's actually meant for kids to play in. 

This park is very spread out, and features waterfalls, fountains, rivers, and all kinds of fun areas for kids to get wet.  It was surprisingly not busy, even when we went on a very hot Saturday afternoon last month.  I'm thinking that either not a lot of people know about it yet, or people are just too afraid to let their kids climb on waterfalls that go over jagged-edged rocks.  ;-)  Yes, there are quite a few jagged cliffs at this park, so you definitely want to keep an eye on your kids and make sure they don't get hurt.  But, there are other areas of the park (again, spread out) that are more harmless if you can keep your kids in one area.

This park is surrounded with a lot of nice grassy areas where you can spread out on a blanket for a picnic, as well as a few picnic tables.  Water features are running from mid May until the first week of October, and close from 5:00-9:00 am for maintenance.

I know I'm planning on chasing around these little wet footprints a lot this summer!