We had a tragedy over here the other night.

Benny was fine when I went out in the snow and wind to put the roosters up for the night.  (I put the roosters in a dog crate covered with a thick rubber backed rug in the garage to block their crows in the morning for the neighbors.  It works very well.)

Benny got injured while we were at the beach back in October.  He got a random string wrapped around his foot, and it got caught on some brush and pulled tight around his ankle. I cut it off when we got home, but his foot has never been the same.  He had a limp that got worse, then better, and then lately worse again.  His foot was dark colored and not quite right, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.  It was just damaged internally.

This past week I noticed Benny was dirty.  He’d stopped grooming himself.  Ducks are fastidious groomers!  They keep their feathers snow white, even in the muddiest of mud. They can somehow make their feathers white by bathing in a mud puddle in my yard.  It’s quite impressive.  For any animal to look disheveled is a bad sign regarding their health.  I made sure he had plenty of food and water, and at night the ducks had access of the chicken pen once the chickens were in the coop.  They have an extra large dog house with lots of straw in there.  But they never go in it ! Instead they prefer to huddle in the snow and wind with their beaks and feet tucked under so all that is visible is one beady black eye peering out from each white bird huddle on the white snow covered lawn.

I heart them.  A lot.

I find this at my back door many mornings.  They await the toast and egg scraps from breakfast, daily.  Cheeky beggars!

Once it gets warm out I have to lock them off the porch and pressure wash it.  Downside to their awesomeness is their lack of anal sphincter.  Their poop just squirts out like mud.

Anyway, back to the tragedy.

We woke up the following morning after the snow and Rosie let the dogs out.  She yelled to me, “Mom there’s a duck laying down and not moving in the snow!”

I knew right away it had to be Benny.

Sure enough it was.

We already knew he was unwell, it wasn’t a surprise.  I was actually pretty surprised Benny had carried on with the injured foot for this long.  A lot of times when birds have a foot injury they die quickly. I think they know they will be slow and picked off by a predator before they can heal, so they just lay down quietly and die.  Birds have more intelligence and grace than most humans ever notice.

The sad part was that the other ducks were huddled around Benny’s body.  They wouldn’t leave his side.  We watched them all morning.

Benny was patriarch of their flock.  He led them everywhere, even with his limp they would stay behind him patiently.  June, the mama duck, was solely dedicated to Benny.

As we watched them we noticed that the other ducks would go off to get food and water, but June just laid next to him.  Duck Face would come up and nudge Benny’s body every now and then, as if trying to get him to stand up.

Honestly it was like something from Discovery or Animal Planet that you tear up while watching. I couldn’t believe how dedicated to him the other ducks were!

A little while later while we were doing school work we heard the chickens and ducks screaming.  The ducks have this loud warning quack, and the chickens do this repetitive honking cluck sound when they spot a predator.  I thought it was probably a crow or something startling them and didn’t bother to get up and look.

The next time I walked by the window I glanced out and I was completely startled to see that Benny’s body was gone from its spot in the yard!  There were no foot prints of any kind in the snow near him other than the duck prints.

Then I saw his body laid out on top of the little chicken pen.

Hrm.  That awkward moment when your dead duck relocates himself…

The ducks can’t even fly up on top of that pen when alive, let alone when dead.  I guess a vulture or something must have picked him up then realized a 15 pound frozen duck was too heavy and dropped him a few feet away.  That’s the only possible explanation I can think of.

His body is still out there.  I want to bury it, but I don’t know where.  He would just get dug up by something, which would be highly disturbing.  I have to do something with him soon because the snow is melting and he’s defrosting.  Ick.

Yesterday evening while Rosie was at dance class Ada and I went outside and fed the chickens and ducks.  Ada had a cup full of treats.  She was having so much fun I couldn’t get her back inside!  (Can you spot the dead duck?)

She had ketchup all over her face. I didn’t scrub her face off before we tromped out in the mud.  For shame.  Wiped it off with a dry rag and it didn’t all come off.

Ada’s thoughts on Dead Benny:

Upon realizing her attempts to pry open his beak and fill them with treats were failing:

Sorry Love, dead ducks don’t eat any longer.  :(

Let’s feed the live birds instead…

  

    

Our yard has some kind of weed grass that has web like roots under the ground and it turns brown and dies in winter, but it cannot be killed ever.  It’s prolific during the summer and invades EVERYTHING.  It kills all grass seed by choking it out.  I spend hours ripping it from my garden beds.  The neighbor next to us has nice year round green grass because the previous owner resod the whole thing.  Lucky them!

Ada’s fat cheeks kill me.

Hank, the baddest hound beast ever.  He’s so old lately. His face used to be all brown with just white freckles.

The mud makes me want to die just a little.  The weed grass is lying dormant and it will be up in a few months.

The remains of our beautiful, huge Bradford pear tree.

 

I need some kind of possum repellant spray.

These ugly beasts (or Tools of Satan as we jokingly call them) are terrorizing my backyard!  They have ripped the heads off of a few hens over the past few years, and they love to steal eggs.  This past summer they ate an entire nest of duck eggs that were close to hatching.  Poor Mama Duck was panting and paralyzed with fear in the corner next to her nest under the chicken coop.

The most troublesome part is that my dogs go insane over them!  Abby, my black lab mix, is very protective of the chickens and ducks.  Last night she got up and kept whining at the door.  She has an unresolved diarrhea issue, so I rushed to let her outside only to find that she didn’t have to poop.  She went and laid in the rain and mud between the chicken coops and slept there for a few hours until the middle of the night, when she got up and started barking her head off. I can’t leave her to bark all night in our neighborhood.  She has a loud piercing bark, I think she’s a shepherd mix.

I went out in the dark, pouring rain, and sticky mud in my pajamas and boots and marched across the yard to discover two possums up in the tree above my brown chicken coop.  Abby was freaking out because she couldn’t climb the tree to murder them.  Usually my coonhound Hank will corner them and Abby will rip their bellies open and kill them, but last night Hank was in his new crate asleep inside.

We got Hank a new crate that has a different kind of latch on it he hopefully won’t be able to bust open.  I’m so exhausted from his antics–running away by climbing the fence, destroying trash and stealing food.  He’s super sweet, loving, cute, and bad.  Very, very bad.  I’ve spent the past seven (!) years training him to be a good dog and he’s come a very long way.  He sits, stays, and lays down on command.  He’s house trained.  He used to pull on your clothes an rip them, knock you over, and poop in the floor and pee onthe walls.  (No wonder he was returned to the shelter, right?)  He will even reliably walk off leash with you now.  He just can’t help his hound beast ways when it comes to taking himself for a run, ripping open and rolling in trash, and eating any and all food/vomit/poop he can find.  Truly he needs to be out running with a pack of other hound beasts chasing game or something.  I have a theory he was a failure as a hunting dog because he’s terrified of gun shots and thunder.

Anyway, back to the possums.  It’s not legal to shoot a gun in a neighborhood, and there are too many of them to trap.  They’re such a nuisance!  And ugly too, hissing and showing their nasty teeth.  *shudder*

Don’t suggest I call animal control. They would laugh and hang up on me.  The only time they’ve ever come out is when we had a blind raccoon foaming at the mouth in our yard. It had distemper and my dogs were licking it!  Luckily we give the dogs the distemper vaccine from the feed store–it goes in their noses instead of an injection, and I guess it works.  You can buy most vaccines, except rabies, at feed stores like Tractor Supply and they are way cheaper than the vet.  They sell needles and syringes also.  Most of the vaccines just go into the skin on the back of their neck, very easy.  The instructions are on the package insert for each vaccine.

When we finally are able to move to the country I will have no mercy for annoying possums! If they know what’s good for them they’ll go find somewhere else to eat other than at my chicken coops.  Did I ever tell you all there was a big fat possum on my front porch one night when we came home??  I think the population needs some thinning out!  There are way too many to trap and relocate and I don’t want to get bitten.  I can’t kill them in town.  Frustrating.

 

Here are last night’s visitors.  At least they weren’t hanging by their tails upside down! I ran into one, literally, in the dark hanging upside down one night last year.

There’s a baby one in the flashlight beam and a fat one over on the left kind of hidden.

 

 

 

I spent all day yesterday deep cleaning the living room and kitchen.  Rosie has been keeping her room clean and organized for me.  Today I intended to do the bathroom, our bedroom, and then tomorrow the back bedroom which now has Christmas stuff and random toys shoved in it because we have a major lack of storage space.  But I feel sick and gaggy yet again today and I was up half the night.  Maybe I’ll just sit here to prevent vomiting.  Ugh.  I also am starting to get behind on laundry.  It never ends.

I was hoping to make meatloaf and mashed potatoes for lunch.  (Big dinner type lunch since Tyler is never home at night.)  I’m not sure I feel like moving, let alone squishing raw beef at the moment.  Blah.  I can’t even remember what it’s like to feel normal.  I’m 14 weeks.  I have to start feeling better at least most of the time.  I’m going to lose what little sanity I have left.  Well, I might have already lost it…

 

The girls are starting homeschool co-op next week. It’s one day a week. Before this pregnancy I’d been getting together with a group of women who are also doing Charlotte Mason style homeschooling.  We did a book study on Charlotte Mason’s sixth book, discussing one chapter per week.  We planned out a co-op and it’s finally come to fruition!  It’s going to be awesome.  I am super excited.  The person leading the co-op and book study has done an amazing job leading the planning.  She’s organized it so perfectly that we even have insurance.  It’s all fully legal and legit down to the last detail.  There are about 13 families with about 45 kids.  Several of the families have 6 kids!

This is what Rosie is doing at the co-op:

(Rosie will be in Form 1, which is first grade.)

– Nature Study w/ dry-brush watercolor: Birds and Plants, including the turkey, peacock, ducklings (if they hatch in time), dandelions, grapes and clover. The children will also be participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count. Wild Birds Unlimited is donating bird feeders for class observation.

– Drill: cardio health and endurance, coordination, flexibility, strength, agility, balance, speed. This includes jump rope, relay games, team and individual exercises.

– Artist Study: Six works by Albrecht Durer of the Northern Renaissance period

– Composer Study: Six works by John Williams highlighting the different sections and instruments of the orchestra, including concertos for tuba, violin, contra bassoon, harp

– Literature: Form 1 will read a living book about the Sami people of northern Scandinavia (Norway). Form 2 will read Norse Myths by the D’Aulaires. Form 3 will read from Bulfinch’s Mythology, Age of Fable, specifically the Norse myths.

– Bible and Map Study: All Forms will be studying the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. They will read from the Bible and plot out Paul’s journeys on Biblical-period maps.

 

I’m the assistant teacher for Ada’s class, the 2/3′s.  We’re doing something similar to the older kids, but much more relaxed of course.

These are Ada’s class plans–I’m excited, it’s going to be so fun!

We hope to design a day that is in keeping with the CM philosophy of spreading a feast before the children. In this case, it is through activities and exposure to things (like poetry and art and nature) that would develop good habits in the children – particularly habits of observing, listening and rightly communicating with each other. We hope that in each activity, their curiosity might be peaked and they may seek to further explore the world around them.

10:30: Little Morning Matins – Pledge of Allegiance, prayer, learn/recite
Psalm 51:10. (The 4/5 class will participate in Matins with the Forms)
10:40: Handicraft
11:05: Physical Play: jumping, games, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, etc.
11:15: Manipulative Play: pattern blocks, shapes puzzles, I Spy
11:30: In Nature: cloud watching, play outside (parents, PLEASE dress kids
for outdoor walks)
11:50: Lunch
12:20: Working in our class garden
12:45: Story Time – e.g. The Ox-Cart Man, Make Way for Ducklings
1:00: Imaginative Play – dress up, blocks, etc.
1:15: Artist Study – looking at animals illustrated by John James Audubon
1:30: Poems – by Robert Louis Stevenson
1:45: Play – puzzles, games, etc
1:55: Clean up together
2:00: Dismiss

Even though that’s a lot of activities for little kids it’s going to be WAY better than the other co-ops I’ve done.  Usually the preschool is super boring and the time passes painfully slowly.  With so much to do it will be fun and not drag!  I’m especially excited about the class garden. I love digging in the dirt with my kids.  Ada loves helping garden at home.

We’ve been slacking on homeschooling while I’ve been freaking miserable with this pregnancy.  We’ll have to do work in the summer to make up for it.  I desperately want to feel better and get my life back to normal!

 

I’ll close this long entry with pictures from yesterday!  My grandma stopped by and gave the girls their Christmas gifts.  She didn’t want to shop during the Christmas rush, so she gave them cash for Christmas then later went out and bought a couple presents to give them after the stress of the Christmas season was over.  It’s nice to spread out the gift giving too.  The kids are so lucky to have doting family, but it can be overwhelming.

My Grandma got them the Calico Critters mansion.  (I know…$$$!!!)  And she got Ada a set of Thomas and Percy trains to go with her train table.  My tiny house was overwhelmed by packaging in like 3.5 seconds!

(Ada was still in her pajamas…)

One from my iPhone from last night before bed, out of order–

After that Ada and I made some chocolate chip banana bread muffin tops.

Rosie wasn’t interested, she was happy to play by herself with the Calico Critters for a little while!

The Zyrtec is working!

Ada slept so well the past few nights.  One night she went to bed at 9:30 and didn’t wake up until 4:45 in the morning, and that was only because one of the cats woke her.   Amazing.

But I think it might be making her too drowsy.  She’s been complaining of being tired all day, which is unlike her.  I gave her Claritin tonight instead.  We’ll see if it works.  If not I’m going to give her 1/2 tsp of the Zyrtec instead of the full 1 tsp to see if it helps without making her sleepy.  I know Zyrtec makes me feel like I’m in some sort of fog when I take it.  It also makes my throat dry and sore.

After sleeping for a few consecutive hours several nights in a row the world has come back into focus.  It’s no longer a fuzzy dream state like it’s been for the past several years.  I may be able to regain some sense of normalcy!  Thank goodness.  I was starting to get concerned that I might actually become insane.  Not joking.

Now if only I could get my own allergies under control.  I’m allergic to tree pollen, various grass pollens, and mold.  I was also allergic to cats, dogs, horses, and rabbits, but I’m not anymore after taking allergy shots for years throughout middle school and high school.  Animal dander would give me red itchy eyes and a runny nose.  Now the cats can sit on my face and nothing happens.  The only time I have an allergic reaction to a cat is when my outdoor cat comes in and rubs on my face, then I get red itchy eyes.  I think it’s because she has pollen from outside on her fur.

I stopped taking the allergy shots when I was pregnant with Ada and my allergies have gotten so much worse.  I’m going to start taking them again when we have better insurance, sometime in the next few weeks.

I’m terrified to research allergy shots because they work so well.  I think the benefits for me outweigh almost any risk.  I don’t have minor allergies. Natural remedies do nothing for me. (I have tried many of them out of desperation!)  I need the big guns.  I have horrible, life altering miserable allergies where I’m choking on post nasal drip and feeling sick all the time, and getting repeated ear and sinus infections.  Lucky me!

It’s not from food intolerances.  I’m super allergic to the freaking outdoors, which sucks because I spend every possible moment outside or with animals!  I am the hay fever queen.  It’s hereditary.  My dad has the exact same allergies, so do my cousins. I’m afraid Ada seems to have them too.  I hope when I restart the allergy shots things will settle down like they did when I took them before.  I’m also going to try the chiropractor when we get on better insurance because I’ve heard they are great for opening up the sinuses and ears.

Speaking of getting on better insurance, TONIGHT IS TYLER’S FIRST NIGHT AS A REGULAR EMPLOYEE!  He’s no longer a temp at Toyota.

How exciting is that!!!

HR called him on Saturday (randomly) and offered him a permanent position starting tonight!

We’re still trying to get our house ready to sell. This weekend we repaired some drywall where there was a leak in the bathroom and did a lot of painting.  I’m hoping to finish painting this week, and then we will clean out the garage this weekend.  We’re almost done!

I’m having trouble finding someplace I want to live.  I just don’t know.  We want to have a large family and some land.  It seems impossible at the moment, yet continuing to live here seems impossible too.

Between the house and homeschooling I feel so busy!  I wonder what I used to do with all of my spare time.  Funny how that goes.  After I had Rosie I marveled over what life used to be like when I had no kids.  Then I had Ada and I thought back about how easy it was with just one kid and wondered what I did with all that free time.  Then we started homeschooling and I look back and wonder whatever I must have done before this.  What next??

This weekend we went to the Cincinnati Zoo, which is two hours from here.  I went to my future sister-in-law’s bridal shower.  And we did chores all weekend.

The girls are going to be flower girls in SIL’s wedding.  The wedding is on 10/11/12 at Holden Beach.  (Near Myrtle Beach.)  We’re flying down there on the Monday before–I’m flying alone with the kids because Tyler has to work until Wednesday.  It will be the kids’ first time flying and also Ada’s first time at the beach.  Rosie went to the beach when she was 12 months old, but of course she has no memory of it.  I’m nervous and excited!

The girls tried on their flower girl dresses at the bridal shower this weekend.  They will also have red sashes.  (SIL is in the white shirt standing up.)

Zel is the little girl on the right.  She is SIL’s niece.

Rosie thought she looked like the bride.  She was very pleased.

(Yes, that’s a bubble wrap veil.)

The weather outside has taken a distinct turn towards fall now.  Even when it’s warm out the air just feels different.  The light is more golden, the air is more…something I can’t quite put into words.  Rosie says it smells like Halloween outside.  This weekend I saw a few leaves beginning to turn for the first time this season.

These pictures are from Sunday afternoon.

Duckface!

The baby ducks, safe from their murderous father in their own little pen.

Lazarus Duck is so tiny.  He eats well.  I have no idea why he isn’t growing.  At least he appears to be starting to feather out like the other two.

He’ll probably be fine.

Laz, as I have started calling him.

They are all afraid of us now, since they’ve spent so much time in their pen.  Oh well.

They’re still cute to look at!

(That orange extension cord goes to the baby ducks’ heat lamp and the random board on top of their pen is to cover up water drips onto the lamp when it rains.)

He will kill me if he finds out I posted these.  Bahahahaha!

Here’s me with Ada.  I look like a hot mess because I just scraped and shoveled chicken poop from both coops for the past hour, plus cleaned up a lot of stuff outside.

I even have paint on my arm from working inside earlier.  Ada looks so goofy!

Ok.  I’ll stop now.  Zoo pictures later.

Oh my gosh we are sick yet AGAIN.

I’m so fed up with this.  We’ve been sick over and over for months.  We’ll be better for a week, two at most, before coming down with the next illness.  Tyler and I both get sick every time too no matter how hard we try to wash our hands and not catch it.

This time it’s another cold.  Super sore throat, stuffy nose.  I still wasn’t fully well from the last illness either.

We take vitamin D, multivitamins, probiotics, vitamin C, and try supplements to ward off germs when we feel them coming on.  Nothing helps.  We used to never hardly get sick, until Rosie turned 5 last year.  I don’t know what the deal is.  Every illness starts with her.  I think it’s because she’s developed a disgusting nose picking habit and she just shoves germs right up her nose then spreads them all over the house.  I’ve tried multiple things to get her to stop doing it.  It’s like a compulsion or something.  She hardly got sick when she was a toddler or preschooler because she never put things in her mouth.  I guess her immune system has a lot of catching up to do.

Kill me now.

Pretty soon we’re going to have had every illness out there. (Except chicken pox, which is the one thing I wanted them to catch and get it over with!)  Rosie had four stomach viruses this past year alone.  FOUR!!!!!!!!!  The last one was in May.  She never threw up in her ENTIRE life until she turned five.  After that stomach virus in May we were sick with some cold and fever for about two weeks in June.  Then sick for a week in the middle of July with a cold.  Sick again the last week of July and the first two weeks of August with a horrible cold and high fever and congestion thing. I think that was the flu because it came with severe body aches and days of high fever.  Then immediately after we got sick with a tonsil infection, we all had puss in our throats.  I was just recovering from that one.  My last puss filled sore burst yesterday afternoon.  Now we’re sick again the for the last week of August with another cold and low grade fever.

I’m desperate to make it stop.  Yesterday I even ate a raw clove of garlic to ward off sickies.  Apparently it did not work, because after staying up the entire night with a crying sick Ada I am now sick with the cold.  My throat feels like someone sliced it with knives and the snot is starting up.

Ugh.

Now that I am done complaining, I’ll post pictures.

First new Instagrams of the ducklings from yesterday!  I moved them to their little pen instead of the box they had been in.

This is the pen.  The extension cord goes to their heat lamp.  (It’s so hot and dry outside here!)

They need some straw.  I was going to buy some today, but we’re all too sick to go out.

Did I post these already?  I’m too tired to look back.  They’re from a couple days ago.

See little Lazarus back there?  He’s doing great!

Duck face is all grown up, on the left.  June is in the middle and Benny is on the left–they are the parents of the ducklings.

This is a picture of the hardware to my garage door.  The wood is the ceiling of my garage.

Every time I walk in the garage I look up to check for large dangling spiders–learned the hard way to make that a habit.

I looked up the other day and did a double take.  That’s a bantam egg stuck up there.  She must have climbed up there to lay it!?

I also have pictures of the kids from the last few weeks that I never posted.  Most of them are of Ada because Rosie is always off playing with friends or something.  A bunch of the Ada pictures were taken while Rosie was at dance class.

Bath crayons stain my white tub and tile and make it look filthy.  I’ve given up.  They have fun.  The whole tub needs a good scrubbing in the grout, I’ll get right on it if I’m ever not sick for five minutes…

There was a bunch of light coming in the window above them.

Ada has an obsession with this owl mask that my soon-to-be sister in law gave her.

These were taken while Rosie was at dance class last week.

And lastly a few of Ada last night while Rosie was at dance class.  It’s so dark in front of my house in the late afternoon.

Now clearly I need some portraits of Rosie!  She’s getting new glasses at her one year check-up in September and I’m definitely getting that non-reflective coating on the lenses.

Glasses reflections ruin most pictures of her, so frustrating!

Back to laying in bed and feeling like death…

I have to interrupt my regularly scheduled homeschooling post to share pictures!

I don’t think I ever updated about The Birthday Ducklings.  They were all murdered by their father, Benny Duck.  He broke their necks one afternoon and I found them all three floating in their little pool.  I’d seen him chasing them the day before and thought about separating them, but I never dreamed he would actually kill them.  Apparently male ducks sometimes murder their offspring, who knew?

It was incredibly sad.

BUT…they are back!  The three ducklings, reincarnated. ;)

June, the mama duck, sat on eggs this past month.  For some reason she abandoned them a few days before they hatched.  (She’s an awful mother, she should have protected the other ducklings and didn’t even miss them when they died.)  I stuck the two eggs I found under my Silkie hen.  Silkies will brood anything.  This particular hen had been sitting on a box of river stones she found in the garage for a few weeks hoping to hatch them.

A couple of days later we could hear peeping and pecking from inside the eggs.

Rosie was thrilled and spent a lot of time listening to them.

  

  

After 48 hours of noise there were cracks! The first egg finally pipped!

We waited and waited, but nothing else happened.  The duckling got the tip of its beak out of the shell but could move no further to hatch out.

With a sinking feeling I realized a terrible error in my Silkie-hatching-ducks plan.  Ducks get out and swim, then get back onto their eggs wet.  This makes the eggs warm and humid.

Chickens…well chickens don’t do that.  They are much more dry.  I SHOULD HAVE MISTED THE EGGS!

The baby duck couldn’t hatch out because the membrane inside of the egg had dried out and essentially glued the duckling to its own egg shell.  Crisis!

There’s no such thing as a bird c-section.  Eggs have veins running along the inside that attach to the membrane.  If you rip open the veins then the bird will bleed to death and die.

What to do, what to do??

 I had to try and do something, otherwise the duckling would just die inside of the shell.  So I started at the little hole the duckling had made with its bill and I gently chipped away while moistening the dried out membrane I exposed using a warm, wet sponge.

I managed to mostly avoid the veins I saw.  I was holding my breath.

I love seeing how the duckling was all packaged tightly inside.

See all of those veins in the shell?

I wasn’t sure if it would be ok since I peeled it out of the egg.  It fluffed up and it’s fine now!  Rosie named it Junior, after the mama duck June.

Then the second egg pipped, and the beak was sticking up out of the shell with the duckling unable to move around and hatch out, just like the first duckling.

 I held my breath and attempted to rescue it without killing it.  This one was more bloody and took a long time to perk up.  We thought it was going to die for sure.

It laid there limply for hours.  The girls named it Sleepy because they didn’t believe me when I said it could be too weak to live. Obviously it was only sleepy!

Please don’t die, please don’t die….

(Here are some pictures from my real camera.)

Sleepy, next to its empty shell.

Sleepy next to the shell, and Junior happily napping while fluffing up.

Rosie and Kirsten watching the ducklings.

DUCKSSSSS!

While waiting for Sleepy to wake up (or die) we had a tea party in the weird red glow from the heat lamp.

Then we played soccer, which ending up being dangerous after the ducklings almost got knocked out.

Finally, fluffing achieved!

I don’t know what this face was about.

And Sleepy look like it might live!

Rosie before her first dance class of the season, the evening of Hatch Day.

He knows not to eat them…

I swear, he won’t touch the ducklings! But they smell good…

She wasn’t squeezing, she knows how to be gentle. Most of the time.

Yesterday I found a third egg peeping outside!  June left it unattended all night long, and it got cool out.  I was surprised it was still alive.

I tried to let it hatch, but it was stuck too.  So I helped it gently like the others, but there was a lot of blood.  A lot.

I managed to get it out, but something was wrong.  I think where it got too cold it didn’t finish developing properly.  It didn’t absorb the yolk all the way.

Basically its ducky belly button is like a big hernia.  It hasn’t been able to open its eyes.  It twitches and scoots around the box on its side, but its almost been more than 12 hours and it hasn’t opened its eyes or gained any muscle control.

I thought for sure it would die over night, but it didn’t.  It’s still flopping around in there.  I’m not sure what to do.  I hope it dies soon to get it over with.

The other ducklings are snuggling it, and occasionally it stretches out and yawns.  Poor little guy.

We took the two healthy ducklings outside to play yesterday evening.  They are big enough now to waddle along.  Yesterday they could barely walk in the grass. They loved it today!

How do I keep running out of time to post here?  I love writing down thoughts and sharing pictures on my blog, if not for any other reason than I enjoy looking back at it years later.  I’ve been doing this for quite some time, since maybe 2002.  I’m too tired to look back and check the date of my very first entry, but it’s been years!

I can’t seem to catch up on anything lately.  I need a pause button.  Or maybe a part time nanny, and while we’re at it I’ll also take a house cleaner and heck, why not a butler too.  Oh and a professional dog walker would be pretty awesome.

Wait.  Then I wouldn’t really be living my life.  I’d just be directing it.  I might have time to post on my blog, but I wouldn’t have much to blog about.

Ah, well.  Conundrum.

I’m over tired and rambling.  Tyler accidentally woke up Ada at 4:30 this morning when he came home.  Tyler then slept until I woke him up to leave for work at 3 in the afternoon.  I feel like my eyeballs are melting in my skull.  I really need to go to bed.

But first, before I go cross eyed, I’ve got to share a couple things.

I met Rachel, a long time blog friend, today!  She has two daughters just a bit younger than Rosie and Ada.  Her daughter Ella and Rosie had a blast playing together at the park.  I think she’s the sixth person from the blog world I’ve met now.  Kind of thrilling. Who wants to meet up next?

(Rachel I hope you don’t mind if I post these pictures!  Feel free to steal them if you want any of them.)

It was super windy and kind of cool today.  I think the girls had fun anyway, despite Rosie not making it out the door with her coat.

Why does Rosie look so very old here!?  (My children are both huge compared to their peers.)

What an awesome “cheese” face!

They really liked that thing.  I think I need one in my backyard.

The sun was blinding today!  Too bad it wasn’t warm at all.  We’re even supposed to have a freeze tonight.

After playing on the playground we walked down to the edge of the lake to look at the geese and ducks.

The water level was abnormally low and there were way less birds than usual.  I’ve never seen the water that low before, it was weird.

We stepped down onto a spot that should have been underwater, but it was now a dry dirt bank.  Ada ran over and scooped up a baby duck.

She’s always trying to pick up wild birds because she thinks they are just like her pet chickens, domesticated. Usually of course the birds all fly away and she is dismayed.

This time the duckling didn’t run away.

See how small it is in comparison to Ada?  It has no feathers at all, so it must have just hatched in the past few days.

Nothing is wrong with it, it’s just tame.  Very, very tame.

Why is it so tame?  I think it was abandoned by someone.  An Easter gift that peeped too loud and pooped a lot.

Really, if you saw this giant toddler running at you, arms outstretched, grinning a la Darla from Finding Nemo…why in the world would you not run for your life?

Not only did it not run, when I put it down it hid underneath of me.  Then it wanted to follow me.

It was cold outside, windy, and there was no mama duck in sight.  No other baby ducks around.  I looked nearby on the lake and no other duck was worried about this poor shivering peeping ball of freaking adorable cute fluff.

WHAT ELSE WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?

Rosie named it Duck Face Amos.

It’s in a rubbermaid tub under a heat lamp, snuggled up in pine shavings at a nice toasty 100 degrees, basking in my living room.

Either my kids will remember they had an awesome childhood, or they will tell their therapist how crazy their mother was when they were growing up.

Tonight Duck Face Amos fell asleep snuggled up on Rosie’s shoulder by her neck.  When it was time to put Duck Face Amos in the brooder so the girls could go to bed Ada insisted on singing the duck her own version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which is something like this:

Twankle twakle little star, how I wonder who you are.
Up above the noodle so high.
Like a farm in the sky.
Twanke twankle little noodle star
Har har har har har har har.

“Good night Duck Face!”

And she kept blowing it kisses.

I die of teh cute.

Anyway, it was great to meet Rachel and her family.

I wish you all lived closer so our girls could play together!  Rosie loved Ella and has talked about her all night, even calling her by the correct name and not Emma. Haha.  Rosie tried to make us name the duck Emma too, and when I said no she picked Duck Face Amos.  Thinking we might have to change that once we can tell if the duck is male or female in about a month. 

Now, I have to go watch my one trashy TV splurge (16 & Pregnant) and go to sleep before my eyeballs really do melt in my skull.

Tomorrow I’m going to share some of the Easter pictures.  Egg dying first.  Then maybe the next day I’ll share the actual Easter day pictures…

If I survive.  Must force self to go to bed now.  I’m such a procrastinator.

Ok. Saving this.  Really.

Rosie has her speech evaluation tomorrow at our local elementary school.

I’m kind of nervous!  I wonder what it will entail.  Rosie is nervous too, more so than I am.

She has trouble saying her R’s.  They are like W’s.  She also can’t say the letter J, she says a D sound instead.  Like “dam” for “jam” or “poil” for “pearl”.  “Girl” sounds like “gal”.  She’s improving slightly as she gets older, but she still has such a baby voice compared to her peers.  I don’t want it to be something that she gets made fun of over later on.  It’s most noticeable when she’s reading out loud.  That’s what finally motivated me to seek the opinion of the speech therapist just in case.

The speech therapist told me that they only offer therapy to the very worst cases in public school.  The preliminary evaluation will tell her if Rosie needs to be evaluated further for free speech therapy at school, or if she should get private speech therapy (out of pocket, yikes) for a mild issue, or if we should wait another year or two for her to grow out of her speech issues.

On the phone the speech therapist told me that the major speech issues they treat are ones that interfere with learning in the classroom.  I’m not sure Rosie’s speech is that terrible, it’s just a bit wonky.  I would be surprised if her speech was found to be poorly enough to be approved for public school speech therapy, but I’ll gladly take the speech therapist’s free opinion of what we should do.

Just to clear up any confusion we’re still homeschooling, but Rosie can get public school services like speech therapy the same as any student in the district.  I had to call the speech therapist and schedule the evaluation a few months in advance.  If she were in a classroom at school her teacher would set it up.  If Rosie does qualify for their speech therapy then I would take her to it and pick her up just like I would for any appointment.

 

I kept thinking that she would start talking more clearly at any time, but it just isn’t happening.  I have no idea why.  I started getting concerned when she couldn’t sound out words. She sounds out words and writes them really wrong–like she would mispronounce them.  For example if she were to sound out the word “reading” she would write “weeding”.  Speaking of reading, she is doing really well with it. She can read and comprehend books like Frog and Toad, and she’s starting to read harder books like Junie B. Jones.  (I dislike Junie B. Jones quite a bit for her bad example of behavior and I banned it from our house, but it’s crept back in.)  She reads books to herself every night in bed while falling asleep and then tells me about them the next morning.  It’s crazy how she’s suddenly so much older.  She’s wanting to spend more and more time off by herself reading and writing, and playing games on the iPad.

 

 

Rosie broke her glasses today.  We ran into each other in the hallway.  I was carrying a huge indoor slide we have, that one shaped like a school bus.  Rosie was running down the hall.  She fell under me and snapped the ear piece off of her glasses so hard it scratched her face and made it bleed.

She was utterly devastated that she’d broken her glasses.  She sobbed and sobbed.

We went to the eye place to see about a replacement.  They were under warranty for a full year!  But they had to order the frames and it will take at least seven business days before they come in, so in the mean time the lady frankensteined another mismatched ear piece onto Rosie’s pair so that she could still wear them.

Ada tried on every pair of baby glasses they had while we were waiting.  Most of them looked ridiculous, except for this one pair.  If they weren’t so expensive I would have bought them just because Ada and I both loved them so much.  (Red stuff on her nose is from a fall down the one step out the back door…)

 

 

Bad eyesight runs in Tyler’s family.  Tyler got glasses as a preschooler.  I didn’t take Rosie to the eye doctor as a baby and I regret that in hindsight.  I made Ada an appointment for April 11th.  If by some chance she needs glasses we are so getting this pair!  I’m a little nervous about how the appointment will go.  What if she won’t let the eye doctor near her?

 

We’ve been spending all day, every day outside.  This weather!

Rosie is tending to her garden of strawberries.  She has two 4×4 beds of them.  They send out runners and make new plants every year.  One bed is less full than the other and I’m thinking about condensing them all to one bed.  I think they can be quite close together.  Or maybe I’ll just plant the green beans around the strawberries in the less full bed?  Google told me I could do that.

Here’s the fuller bed.  I just weeded it and pulled out all of the fall leaves that had piled up in there.  The strawberries were happy to see daylight again!  I’m going to mulch them as soon as I dig up the cash to buy mulch.

 

 

This green house I found at Tractor Supply is awesome.  It works!  It’s warm and wet inside, perfect for my sprouting seeds.

(Warm and wet inside. I can hear Tyler making an inappropriate joke in my head.)

 

 

We did something great today.  We found out that we could consolidate our $7,500 of credit card debt by rolling in into our small second mortgage and refinancing the whole shebang into a principle and interest 15 year low fixed rate loan.  We did it through the credit union so there were no closing costs or any fees.  Now we have no credit card debt!!!  NEVER AGAIN!  The main reason it accumulated in the first place was when Tyler lost his job while I was pregnant with Ada.  We paid bills with our savings and bought food and gas with the credit card.  Desperate times.  Hope that never happens again.

I feel such relief to have it gone.  We still have to pay off the second mortgage, but it’s so organized now.  Just one payment every month that’s even lower than all of the minimum payments we were making before on several cards, and lower than the interest only payment we were making before on the scary adjustable rate second mortgage we had.  This is a total win-win situation beyond what I could have imagined.

Now we only have our main mortgage, our small second mortgage, our low car payment for the van, and our basic household bills.  This is very good.

Plus paying off those credit cards will really raise our credit scores, which in turn will enable us to get a better mortgage rate and amount for a farm/house when we are finally able to move.  It’s looking like that won’t be until after Tyler is hired on and we’ve saved some money.  I’m trying not to think about it. Maybe it will go by fast.  Hopefully I will be complaining about cramming a third kid into this tiny house…

 

I think it’s supposed to be rainy and in the 60′s this weekend.  Maybe our random brief summer has ended and we’ll get back to regular spring.

I’m a bit sad about that.

 

Rosie looks a lot different without her glasses on.  I love this picture of us together though.  We have almost the same color eyes.  At least I was able to sneak in one little part of my DNA.  Tyler’s DNA took over the rest of Rosie’s appearance.

 

 

 

I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  I feel sad lately.  Weary.

Depressed maybe?

I want to be pregnant SO BADLY.  Yet I’m not.  Everyone else I know is pregnant or just had a baby.  Even my best friend is pregnant now.  I am overjoyed for her.  I love talking about pregnancy with her.  I am extremely excited to find out if her baby is a boy or a girl, what the baby’s name will be, the baby’s personality, everything.  I just wish I could shut off my brain.  I want to be pregnant too.

I don’t know why my fertility has taken so long to return to normalcy.  I had my first real postpartum period a week ago.  Maybe I will ovulate this coming week.  I hope.  I keep remembering those long eight months it took me to get pregnant with Ada.  I don’t want to wait eight months again.  I haven’t used any birth control at all since Ada was born and I had hoped to be pregnant before now.  Maybe part of my depressed feeling is the complete fear that it will take months again.  I also have a terrible, horrible, quaking terror of another miscarriage at 12 weeks.  I still haven’t emotionally healed from that.  (It happened before Ada’s pregnancy.)  Everything seemed well–growing belly, heartbeat on the doppler of 163 bpm, loads of nausea, sore boobs.  Then one day right around 12 weeks I choked on my glass of water and coughed hard, and red blood started gushing out.  No warning, no cramps, no spotting at all prior to that second.  The placenta detached.  I pray every day that it never happens to me again.  I wouldn’t wish the physical or mental pain from that experience on my worst enemy.

I guess I just feel like so many things in my life are beyond my control at the moment.  I mean, things in your life are always beyond your control to some degree, but even more so now than usual.  Waiting to get pregnant is hard for me.  I want to have a large family, and I don’t want my children all so far apart.  I’m not willing to wean Ada over it–I loved child led weaning with Rosie.  But at the same time I keep wondering what the plan is here.

One reason I like the idea of faith in God is the security of knowing that something greater than you has a plan.  We aren’t just stumbling around blindly all over the face of the Earth.  Sometimes, like now when I feel as if things are out of my control, I have lapses in faith.

Then I think to myself that it really doesn’t matter–what if,  WHAT IF, I die and find out there is no God?

What if I find out that I lived my entire life believing in something that wasn’t real?

What if I die and that’s just it, there is no afterlife?

What will I have lost by having faith?  I can’t think of anything, honestly.  I will have gained reassurance, purpose, and direction, love, humility…and when I think of it that way I see no reason to let that doubt take over.  I have nothing to lose by having faith and instead everything to gain.  My life is going somewhere important, even if it doesn’t seem that way in this moment.

In the very least faith is reassuring in times of depression, at least for me.

I am also having a lot of anxiety waiting to see if Tyler will be hired on at his job.  His three years of being a temp are up in October.  The countdown is killing me.  It’s like waiting for Christmas as a five year old, only worse.  It’s so much more important than Christmas.  It’s…essential.  It’s everything we’ve been working for during the past three years.  It’s the future.  This should tie in with faith, I suppose.  I’m just afraid he won’t get hired on for some reason and it will be hard, and scary, not to mention disappointing.  I should just not think about it, but in addition to be anxious I am extremely excited about it.  He will finally have a real permanent career job, where he can move up to better paying positions and have job security knowing he won’t get laid off, good insurance, and a retirement plan.  Like a real grown up.

And moving, oh I shouldn’t even get started on that one.  We went to look at another house that seemed WONDERFUL on the website listing. We only saw the outside of it, but that was enough.  It was another vertical driveway leading down into a holler between two steep hills. The five acres had no flat or clear space.  People that don’t live in mountainous or hilly areas don’t seem to understand when I describe this on my blog–imagine having no where to put your swing set.  No where to ride bikes.  No area flat enough for chicken coops.  The house is on one cleared bulldozed patch and that’s it.  The rest is just vertical earth.  You walk out your front door and aside from your narrow gravel driveway there’s nothing unless you want to climb the side of giant wooded hill by holding on to tree branches and pulling yourself up.  Yeah.  Disappointing, again.

It seems there are no houses (besides old trailers) on nice useable pieces of land in our price range.  That means we’ll have to wait until Tyler is hired on and then save up money.  I want to cry.  I just don’t want to live here, in this house with its tiny rooms, for any longer.  I am thankful we own our own house.  Don’t get me wrong.  I just long for certain comforts, like a pantry or a room bigger than 9×10 feet, or a bedroom that can fit a dresser.  I am going to resolve not to complain about it any longer.  I just have to continue waiting.  My day to move will come, assuming Tyler gets hired on in October.

I have lots of other things to be thankful for too.  I’m loving this weird early spring.  I’ve been throwing all of my anguish, anxiety, and depression into my garden.  It had better be awesome this year.  I’ve been digging and weeding for days.  I put up fourteen fence posts by myself the other day.  My garden consists of five 4×4 ft raised beds, plus a 17×1.5 foot strip of tilled ground down the middle of the garden area.  I still have to finish weeding from the end of the year last year and the winter–Bermuda grass is horrible and never dies…not even with weed cloth, newspaper, and cardboard.  It keeps popping back up and choking my garden plants.  I also have to plan and build the gate for the fence.  Ducks will not eat my produce before I do this year!!

I can barely type because my fingers are so sore and swollen from digging and weeding.

I’ve also got these two awesome little girls to be thankful for.  I look at them and can’t help but long for more children.

Out of the blue the other day Rosie said to me, “Momma did you know you can talk to God in your head and He can hear you?  I ask him every day for a baby brother to grow in your belly!”

I have no idea where she got any of that from, we haven’t really talked about it at all.  Kids.

This is my mother-in-law’s new puppy Dax.

Ada actually bit into, chewed, and swallowed an orange.  I was shocked!

Rosie is grown up and no longer a baby at all.

These evenings are like June summer evenings.  I don’t know what to think!

You can see a part of my garden in progress here.

The girls found unattached garden hose sprayers and were playing with them.

I love them both so much.

I can’t help but imagine what a third baby would be like.

Ever wondered how chickens lay eggs?  Here’s an up close and personal video of Rosie’s favorite little hen Jenny laying an egg.  Jenny is an OEGB, or an Old English Game Bantam. I highly recommend them as pet chickens for kids or small spaces.  Cute, friendly, and small.  You just use two eggs in place of one since their eggs are smaller.

See the egg crowning and popping out…!  I have no idea why she was on the water dish and not in the nest box like she usually is.

 

My daffodils are blooming a month early.  I’m not about to complain!

We took our chicks outside into the grass for the first time yesterday.  They were not particularly impressed, preferring to be held and hide under us more than anything.

They may be a wee bit spoiled. :)

This is Minnie Pearl.  Tractor Supply had a sign up saying she is a Barred Rock, but she doesn’t have the white spot on her head like Barred Rock chicks should.
I asked the store employee if he knew why the spots were missing from every chick and he said he didn’t know but they were definitely Barred Rocks.  I got one anyway because they were adorable.  I’m hoping Minnie Pearl is a girl.

When I got home I looked up some other breeds of black chickens and sure enough Minnie is a Jersey Giant chicken.  I thought she didn’t look like any of the Barred Rocks I’d ever owned.  I don’t know why Tractor Supply is always so clueless.  Oh well.  I’ve always wanted to own a Jersey Giant!

 

These sisters are Golden Comets, or also called Red Sex Links.  Bred for laying large brown eggs.

I’ve had some Golden Comets in the past that were standoffish, but these girls are super friendly!  One of them in particular.  She loves to hop up on your hand and be held any time you reach into the cage.  The friendliest one is named Cinderella (might change that later…sorry Rosie.)  The other one Rosie named Kami.  You can only tell them apart from behind.  Kami has longer wing feathers, Cinderella’s wing feathers are abnormally stunted though oddly that doesn’t stop her from flying.  Kami also has darker stripes down her back, which will disappear when she feathers out into her adult feathers.

 

Amber, the Amberlink chick flew in to Ada’s lap to visit.  They didn’t like the grass!

Chicks are so fun! :)

Ada looks just like my mom.  Sometimes it kind of freaks me out, the amount of resemblance.

Sleeping Beauty the bantam gold laced thing on the left, a white Silkie in the middle named Snowbell, and Queenie the silver laced bantam something on the right.

The chick is thinking, “Please don’t twist my head off!!”

The other Silkie chick, which is also named Snowbell.

YAY SPRING!!!!!11!!11!!!!!!!!!!!

Sitting on my father in-law’s truck.

Tyler and my FIL were installing these doors for our laundry closet while we were playing outside.

I’m so excited.  There was a sheet nailed to the wall there before and it was so annoying.  Every time I tried to do laundry I got tangled in the big sheet.  Not to mention it looked fugly!

Our kitchen seems so different with nice doors there.  I love it.  I can’t wait to install doors on the rest of the closets in our house too, currently there are none.  One has curtains and the rest are just open because the old doors didn’t stay on.  I got tired of those big wooden sliding doors falling on my feet and hitting me in the head so I took them off.  Who knew proper closet doors could improve your quality of life so much?  AH!

The rest of my house is a disaster. I’m decluttering and reorganizing everything, especially our out of control toys.  Time for Ada and me to take a shower and get back to the cleaning…Ada is currently dancing mosh pit style to a CD of children’s songs.  Rosie is happily playing in her room.  We took down her loft bed and set up the bottom bunk only and rearranged her room.  She’s quite happy and can’t wait for her own pair of non-dangerous closet doors, haha.