They wanted to keep the caterpillars, and I figured they be fun to watch.  We dug around on the web and learned they’re black swallowtail caterpillars.  Their favorite foods are  parsley, fennel, and rue – all plants we’ve got in abundance.  These were mature looking caterpillars – they go through three stages after hatching from eggs and before pupating.  We set up a caterpillar house for them in a glass jar with a layer of sand on the bottom, a stick to climb, and lots of fennel and rue in a small plastic cup.  We put water in the cup to keep the plants fresh, and surrounded the stems with cotton balls to keep the caterpillars from drowning.  While picking some rue for the caterpillar house, we found a fourth caterpillar! In it went.  We topped the jar with cheesecloth.

Here’s one of the caterpillars in their new (temporary) home, which stays on the porch:

The rue and fennel stayed fresh for a few days, or at least fresh enough for the occupants.  They ate and pooped up a storm.  Their whole objective at this stage of life is to be an eating/pooping machine, and they were living up to it until this morning.  Claire came in alarmed – two of the caterpillars were smaller and not moving.   It was nothing to be worried about.  These caterpillars were in position, getting ready to pupate! Their back ends were attached to the stick, and you could see the strands of silk they’d used to dangle their front ends.

We kept an eye on them all day in the hopes of seeing the skin split open and fall away, but apparently a watched caterpillar never sheds its skin.  I came home from church to find the girls were very excited.  One of the caterpillars had become a chrysalis!

A crumpled little pile of skin could be seen on the sand below. They had more news.  We have a fifth caterpillar – a baby!  The newly hatched black swallowtail caterpillars are black with a single white stripe.  I don’t know how they spotted it in there, it blended in so well with the poop.  Poop doesn’t climb the walls of the jar though. There must have been an egg on one of the plants we put in for food, or maybe a tiny newly hatched stowaway. I managed to get a picture of its underside as it crawled up the glass – it’s less than half a centimeter long.

I was looking forward to not having to worry about picking fresh plants for them once they were all done pupating, but it looks like we’ve got one more to bring up first.  I don’t know when they’re going to emerge.  Fall caterpillars overwinter in their chrysalis and summer’s a wastin’, so if the butterflies don’t emerge in a couple weeks we’ll have to keep them in the unheated garage for the winter and be patient.

If all goes well, eventually we’ll get to release some of these into the yard!

Claire nabbed a prize that was either ambiguously labeled or was a hastily distributed end of the prizes as we’d all tired of bingo.  Her pride and joy is a green plastic pot scrubber with a handle.  She has dubbed it “Mr. Scrubby.”  Claire loves Mr. Scrubby and in the past two days has lovingly and frequently detailed how she’s going to use it to scrub bacon off pans, and to help me clean up after baking, and how she’s always wanted a Mr. Scrubby and now she has one and Oh!  She loves him so!  We’re going to have so much fun with Mr. Scrubby!

I swear to you, my children do not want for “real” playthings.

She demonstrated her new skills to Grammy:

When she was two, she’d bring me this book and demand “Read Ham Ham!”

Friday morning at breakfast she couldn’t tear herself away – would the man try the green eggs and ham?  We were on the edge of our seats!  (note cereal growing soggy in the background)

I wouldn’t be at all disappointed if she grows into a total bookworm.

“No.  There are two Claires in the world – me. . . and. . . um. . . the other Claire!”

It made total sense to her, I’m sure.

I’ve made it to March and nobody died, which is always a good thing.  All progress on anything house related has ground to a halt.  I promised myself I didn’t have to do a thing as long as I’m back to school.  A PhD is looking more appealing every time I contemplate finishing painting the stairway.  I toyed briefly with the thought of giving up knitting for Lent, but in the same way that I toy with driving past my exit on the turnpike on my way to work in the morning and driving straight on ’til Florida.  My brain likes to come up with crazy scenarios like that to amuse me. 

Knock on wood the girls are both plague free.  Claire is still impressed with having had a fever for three days and talks fondly about the good ol’ days (six weeks ago) when she Had A Fever.  She’s registered for preschool and asks how much longer until fall at least once a week.  Anna has pierced ears now and is wearing ladybug earings today.  She’s got a thing for ladybugs.  She gives them baths (drowns them) and water to drink (drowning them) and plants to eat (I don’t believe ladybugs eat poinsettia leaves, but I could be wrong) and sneaks them to church (I also didn’t know ladybugs were Catholic).  It’s an improvement over the days when she had a collection of lovingly named pillbugs for her “friends.”

When we put her to bed she was feeling warm, but she’d already been dosed with Tylenol, so off she went with a cup of water and instructions to call me if she needed anything.  (at which point Anna piped up with, “What about me?  I’m sick too!”)  Around 11:30 she woke up crying, miserable, and burning up.  Into bed with me she went, with more Tylenol and cool wet wash cloths and lullabyes and back rubbing.  I got her comfy (She was being a total bed hog – I spent the night on the outer 6″ of the mattress curled up with the Little Toaster that Could; Parenthood means not minding sleeping with a little vector of disease breathing all over your face) and settled down, she flung her arm over me and said, “I’m so glad I have my family back!”

Huh?  I have no idea what fever dreams were running through her head.  In the morning, bright-eyed, bushy tailed, and only moderately warm, she told me she dreamed about a fly that ate a frog.  Then Anna had to one-up her by claiming to have dreamed about crickets that ate people.

My 2009 in review
January: Girls turned 3 and 5; worked on the hall/stairway, took up running
February: Played with dyeing wool, failed to finish stairway, Claire potty trained
March: Knit Autumn Rose, which I tend not to wear because I’m in a perpetual search for the perfect shirt to wear under it
April: Got excited about the early beautiful spring weather, singlehandedly painted the garage (no, I’m not bitter [anymore]); sewed Easter dresses for the girls
May: Annual awesome trip to MDSW; Ran in the Race for the Cure! Bought a new car; went camping
June: Started painting house (or was that May?) Bashed rear of new car into Mr. Unreserved’s car.
July: Got car fixed; continued painting; gave up running in favor of spending all waking free time on a ladder; Mr. Unreserved fixed the hole in the porch roof
August: Tried to paint, cursed the rain; knit socks for Dad’s birthday; Anna started kindergarten
September: Painted some more; went camping for Labor Day weekend; became as comfortable on top of the porch roof as I am standing on the porch underneath
October: Continued painting; sewed Halloween costumes, began Christmas dresses
November: Still painting, curse you, indian summer!; finished Christmas dresses; decided to return to grad school
December: Welcomed snow as it meant no more painting for 2009; resumed work on stairway, still didn’t finish; had very merry Christmas; wrangled futilely with grad school readmission process causing so much anxiety that I broke out in hives (my shins are itchy again today – it’s been a fun day)

My theme for 2010: Finish what you started.
I’d dearly love to be done with my MS degree by this time next year. I’d like to get the rest of the outside of the house painted, which should be doable. I’d love to have fewer unfinished projects, both house related and knitting related. Note that I did not say no unfinished projects. Just fewer. Projects are fun, but living in a perpetual state of unfinishedness (shut up spell check, it’s a word if I want it to be) gets tiring.

“Mom, what does . . . W. . . H. . . A. . . T spell?”

“What.”

“W. . . H. . . -”

“No, Anna, I heard you. It spells ‘what’.”

“That’s what I asked you! What does W-H-A-T spell?!”

“WHAT. It spells the word ‘WHAT’” That is the word it spells!”

We got 4-5″ of snow here today, so the girls got to go out and play in the snow for the first time this winter. We put our tree up last night. Their time outside and ensuing hot chocolate warm-up was probably some of the only 45 minutes I didn’t spend telling them to leave the tree alone. Leave the ornaments alone. Put the ornaments back on the tree and leave them alone. Get out from behind the tree. Quit running around the house with the ornaments. They didn’t mess the tree this much when they were toddlers! Today marked the first of sixteen days I’ll be home for the holidays. Mr. Unreserved is betting they drive me up a wall by Tuesday. This Tuesday.

We hit a parenting milestone Sunday evening – the first trip to the ER.  Anna and Claire were monkeying around on the living room floor.  Claire was trying to drag Anna up by her arm when Anna started screaming and cradling her now limp left arm.  From family history I suspected nursemaid’s elbow right away.  I called Mom to confirm, and it was off to the hospital. 

They took some x-rays as a precaution, and we hung around for a bit reading National Geographic and spotting all the “the”s  (Anna’s favorite word to read).  Anna was very stoic; she admited to being afraid that getting her elbow fixed would hurt and she didn’t want to “yell or cry.”   When did my little girl turn so tough?  A very nice physician’s assistant popped Anna’s elbow back into position painlessly.  It didn’t quite take the first time, but a second manipulation set things right with an audible pop.  Anna got stickers from the hospital and a promised milkshake on the way home and all was right in the world again.

The butterfly turned out to be very friendly.  It hung out on the girls’ fingers by turn:

Anna found a dandelion and got to feed the butterfly lunch.  She got upset when we told her she could not take it in the house to watch a movie with her.  Even butterflies have their limits.

While I’m in picture mode, I’ll share a photo of the well-dressed Teddy.

Instead of having a gift exchange, all the students in Anna’s class were to bring in an ornament for their tree.  Each child will get to bring home an ornament from their class party.  I found this little bear (he stands about 6″ tall) at the craft store, but he looked cold.  He wanted something to put on.  So I knit him a hat.  He was still cold, so I made him a sweater to go with it.  I hope he’s warm enough now, because I’m not making him snow pants.  He went off to Kindergarten and I hope one of Anna’s classmates enjoys him.  I might have to pick up a few more bears – he was fun to accessorize!  (plus Anna wasn’t happy about the concept of trading him in)