It takes a village. Or maybe a newsletter?
Each month, we'll bring the best stories from parents on raising their CBC Kids. | | | BY SUZANNE GARDNER | This summer, for the fourth year in a row, my family will raise and release monarchs. We find them as teeny tiny eggs, watch them hatch into caterpillars, transform into chrysalises and eventually emerge as the most stunning butterflies.
What started as a simple nature experiment has now become a full-on family obsession. When I told a friend last year that monarchs become my entire personality in the summertime, I was only somewhat joking.
After a few years of learning, I feel like my crew now has the whole system down pat. | | | First, we find monarch eggs in the wild, which is honestly the hardest part because they’re smaller than a sesame seed. While we wait for them to hatch into the teeniest little caterpillars, we all take turns naming our newest family members (some favourites: Caterpie, Heimlich and Mirabel — because yes, our family had an Encanto phase, too), and filling their enclosure with fresh milkweed leaves.
Of course, I’m the one who always gets stuck cleaning out the caterpillar poop every evening after the kids are in bed. I’m hoping that this year I’ll finally get my almost eight-year-old to share that task with me — a bit of payback for all the diapers I changed, right? | | | "It’s truly the most vivid reminder that change is natural and inevitable." | | | Even though I’ve now witnessed it almost a dozen times, the butterfly evolutionary process still seems like pure magic to me.
In just about a month, a monarch goes from a miniscule egg to a beautiful butterfly. And in the weeks in between, you have wiggly little caterpillars who basically eat a ton of milkweed leaves, wrap themselves up into a green burrito, dissolve into goo and then transform into one of the most stunning creatures on Earth. It’s incredible.
And as a mom who’s constantly wondering how her own once-tiny babies keep growing into bigger and bigger kids, there’s something particularly poignant about witnessing a butterfly’s metamorphosis up close. It’s truly the most vivid reminder that change is natural and inevitable. | | | Like most parents, I’ve repeatedly been told that “the days are long, but the years are short." But when I’m deep in the trenches of parenting two young kids, it can be extremely hard not to dwell on that first part.
With monarchs, however, we see them move through their life stages in rapid succession. Just as monarchs can’t stay as eggs, caterpillars or chrysalises, my kids can’t stay as plumpy-cheeked babies, waddling toddlers or even hormonally-charged teens — and thank goodness for that.
When my kids have gone through periods that I’ve found particularly challenging, I remind myself that “everything is a phase” and that this, too, will pass. And like it or not, the phases we love will pass us by, too.
I may not have any more human babies in my home, but I hope to keep welcoming in baby monarchs each summer (even if it means scooping up caterpillar poop at 10 p.m.). Watching them evolve reminds me that change, even when it’s messy and hard, can be beautiful. | | |  | | When a mysterious rival uses a time machine to frame Detective William Murdoch of a murder he didn’t commit, Macy and her friends travel back to 1910 to determine the real perpetrator of the crime. | Watch Season 2 on the CBC YouTube channel | | | |  | | Suzanne Gardner is a writer, editor, project manager and social media specialist based in Toronto. A longtime butterfly enthusiast, she’s spent the past four summers raising monarchs with her family — and recently commissioned a monarch mural for her garage. She was even married at a butterfly conservatory, complete with a butterfly release ceremony. She swears she has interests beyond butterflies. Really. | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | |
