Guest Blog: Lessons of a Butterfly by Princess

A few weeks ago, we made butterfly houses after a family dinner. All the kids wanted some real butterflies to live in them and Grandma and Grandpa made that happen. 

Well, then there was a bit of confusion and, long story short, on Memorial Day we went home with a tiny cup full of chrysalises. I thought I had a while before they would hatch so I ordered a little butterfly cage off of Amazon (to put the houses in), placed the cup in the kitchen window and forgot about it. 

On Thursday morning, I was washing dishes when movement in the window caught my eye. I looked up to find a beautiful little butterfly stuck in a tiny confinement. Well, I started panicking. The butterfly cage was scheduled to arrive that day, but I had no idea what time. 

Then, I watched another chrysalis pop open. Seriously, that butterfly busted out of there, and I knew I couldn’t wait for the Amazon guy. 

I ran down to the toy room and dumped the hamper of dress up clothes. Then, after thirty minutes of chaos and sore arms, I got the little makeshift butterfly houses all set up. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any room for the little wooden butterfly houses. (One more butterfly had hatched while I was squeezing inside the hamper. It was exciting.)

Well, for a few days we spent a lot of time sitting at the kitchen counter watching butterflies. The two that opened in the cup had some messed up wings, but they survived. We even had our friends over to see them. The butterflies got included in our family prayers and Tadpole begged to let them live on the counter forever. 

But, some things can’t last forever, no matter how much we want them to. 

On Saturday night, we let our little butterflies free. Some took off like rockets, others needed help. So Polliwog and Tadpole carried our two little crippled butterflies over to their favorite part of the yard and carefully set them down. We came back in and Tadpole lost it. The poor kid just cried and cried. He knew they needed to be free. He knew that was what was best for them, but he loved them and he didn’t want to see them go. 

Sunday morning, as soon as the sun came out, Tadpole was in the backyard searching for them, but they were gone. I thought we were about to have another round of tears, but he only smiled. 

“We caught a grasshopper.” He said. 

That thing is not living on my counter.