This is a zoomed up picture of an egg, as you can imagine it looks super small! Its really hard to spot. Next time your tending your milkweed look for the little egg, which really looks like a small white dot to the human eye.

As it is the larvae is super small like its egg, but right after it hatches it eats its own egg so you don't have to clean up dozens of eggs. though its still small since this is a zoomed up picture of a larvae eating its egg.

The caterpillar is quite big with it body, almost always eating milkweed 24/7 until it decides its time to go into a chrysalis. with its white, yellow, and black stripes are almost distinguished against the green milkweed, but watch out its still poisonous!

Congratulations, you made it to the chrysalis stage! You know they are about to make their chrysalis when they hang down in a J-shape. When they are done with making their chrysalis, it becomes this pretty jade green, hence the top picture to the right. As it progresses it becomes black showing its getting ready come out of the chrysalis, (don't worry its not sick) hence the bottom right picture. it will take a few weeks, or a few days depending on the climate and the butterfly. you know its sick when the jade green gets brown or black dots on it, what I would suggest is to put it down, because it probably has a illness that could spread to the other butterflies.

Yay! You have reached the final stage! after they get out of their chrysalis most likely they will sit there since their wings are damp. Once their wings are dry its take off!