The other day we had our first birth at the cabin!

(This is an iPhone snapshot. Seriously! And in case you were wondering that big pink spot on the chick is the thigh, nothing is wrong with it. Seconds later a big clawed foot popped on out, connected to that plump pink thigh.)

In my garage at the old house there was a hen sitting on eight eggs in a box in the back of the garage.  I waited until the eggs started hatching to move her to the cabin because I didn’t want her to get panicked and abandoned half incubated eggs.  That would be sad.

I’d lost track of how long she’d been sitting on her nest.  (It normally takes 21 days for them to hatch.)  The girls and I had been candling them every few days. Luckily the hen sitting on the eggs was one of our favorites Silver.  She is very tame and didn’t mind me touching her nest as long as I came with treats (kitchen scraps) in hand.  We could hear the eggs peeping and tapping one day.

Finally we showed up the following afternoon and they were beginning to pip!  (Pip is when the chick uses its tiny tooth on the tip of the beak to pip through the air cell at the end of the egg and poke a tiny hole in the shell.  If the chick doesn’t get through the air cell it will drown inside the egg in its own fluids. After the chicks are a few weeks old the egg tooth on the tip of the beak falls off or disappears somehow.)

Since the eggs were hatching Silver the hen was not about to leave her nest, so I was able to carry her entire box out and stick it in a huge dog crate.  She’s now residing on the front porch of the cabin.

When we got here all the eggs had hatched except for two.  One hatched out shortly after arrival!  The second one never hatched even though it was fully developed and we’d heard it peeping earlier in the day.  Not sure what happened there.  I didn’t open the egg to find out. That’s why you never count your chicks before they hatch. Ever heard that saying?

A third chick hatched halfway then died.  It had some kind of disturbing defect–a clear bubble over the heart that popped and left an open cavity. We could see its heart stop beating.

Never seen anything like that on a chick before.  It was a mixture of amazement and horror.  I didn’t even take a picture of it.

This is Silver, the mama hen.

(See the pale blue ear lobes she has?  There are tan flecks on them..those are chicken lice.  They catch them from wild birds.  SO NASTY!  But not contagious to mammals, thankfully. I found an all natural spray at Tractor Supply that actually kills lice and mites, but you have to repeatedly soak the chickens and clean out the bedding over and over to stop hatching eggs. Kind of a nightmare. Too many lice can make them anemic.)

The black rooster in the middle of this picture is the daddy of the chicks.  His name is Mr. Big, or Big Foot as the kids prefer to call him.

Mr. Big takes his rooster job very seriously.  He settles fights between the few other roosters we have and protects his hens with gusto.

Unfortunately that also includes attacking the kids if he sees them too close to his hens…he thinks the girls are predators or other roosters trying to mate with his ladies!

I usually get around this issue by luring him into the coop with scraps and shutting the door so that the kids can safely play with the hens inside the electric fencing.

The black speckled hen in the picture behind Mr. Big is the sister of the mama to the chicks.  Her name is Trixie.

Trixie and Silver are Appenzeller Spitzhaubens.  (I love that breed, super recommend them! They came from McMurray hatchery, I think.)

Another couple from the iPhone–

All of the chicks look similar to their daddy as a baby, except I think they don’t have as much white on their chests as he did.

 (Yep, her nails are dirty from hours of digging in the dirt prior to the chicks hatching. Believe it or not I cut those suckers short once a week!)

Below is a picture of Mr. Big as a tiny chick!

Silver is on the right as a chick, but a few weeks old not newly hatched.  Her sister Trixie is on the left.

It will be interesting to see what their offspring feather out to look like.  So far based on the wing feathers that are sprouting the chicks all look to be growing solid black feathers.

Genetics are fascinating!  I can’t believe  a) All the chicks are identical and b) None have top hat crests, not even partially.

The last mix I hatched of Silver’s babies and a Cuckoo Marans rooster looked like this…weird poofs on the backs of their heads:

They feathered out to have the black and white cuckoo barring of their father with something akin to a rat tail hairdo. Isn’t it weird how the crests were on the backs of their heads?  The Spitzhauben mother has a crest neatly on the top of her head.

So the chick in the picture above would be the half sibling to the chicks that hatched the other day.

I don’t have any of the half siblings left though.  We killed and ate two of them (roosters, at the end of my pregnancy with Ada) and the others were oddly stupid and all died of random freak accidents!

Wasn’t a good genetic mix at all for some reason.  Hopefully Mr. Big and Silver have made chicks that are more intelligent than Silver made with Lunch the Cuckoo Marans a couple years ago.

In case anyone is curious, the above chick turned into a rooster and this is one of his testicles from when we butchered him.  My friend’s son is holding it. Chicken genitalia are all inside their bodies, they don’t even have penises.  Weird, right?

And did you know the egg and the poop all come out of the same hole? It’s called an oviduct, but I prefer to call it the multipurpose shoot.

I don’t plan on butchering any of the current chickens we have since they are all pets with names, but it was an interesting learning experience to incubate, hatch, raise, and butcher your own.  Full circle!  (I’m hardcore, I even built the incubator we used for the eggs complete with wiring it myself.  Bahahaha.)

I’m glad I know how to slaughter, pluck, and cut up a chicken now in case the need should arise for whatever reason.  Honestly the worst parts were the plucking (it smelled awful when we dipped it in scalding water to loosen the feathers) and the unfamiliarity of touching warm raw meat since we’re so used to cold dead meat from the grocery.

And all of this while living in a suburb. Urban homesteading for the win, right? If I can do that in town IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES NOW AT THE CABIN!

I’m trying to pace myself over here.

Ok now that I’ve scarred you for life with chicken information, here are some cute pictures of the girls playing with the new chicks.

(Pretend my porch wasn’t having the weirdest lighting ever…)

She was looking at this:

Now it would be cute to say this chick is getting ready to take a flying leap back up the little ledge to get to its mama.

However, this is actually the position the chicks assume right before they squirt out a tiny poo…

No worries. They are still incredibly cute.

 Had an awkward moment this afternoon.

We were petting the goats when one of them managed to shove her head through a square in the fence!  It was kind of funny at first, until we realized it was actually completely stuck.  When she tried to pull her head back through the fence her horns would catch and prevent her from getting out of the headlock position.

This was when only one horn was through the fence square.  Soon both horns were stuck through it.

Then it got extremely awkward when all of the male goats decided to take this prime opportunity to gang rape her.  One of the long bearded pregnant female goats ran up and started repeatedly head butting all of the goats involved in the…orgy.  I’m not sure if she was annoyed at the chaos or trying to rescue her female friend from repeated rape.

My girls have seen the ducks do this, but somehow it was more horrifying to them with the goats. Probably because the poor goat with her head stuck was bleating in terror!

Finally Tyler was able to hold the goat’s head tightly in the right position to shove it back through the fence.

Shew!

Goats…

I am very surprised at how much Tyler likes the goats.  He was actually asking me questions about goat breeds and goat care.  (Because obviously I’ve already over researched owning goats over the past three years, just in case…)

They are hysterically funny creatures.  And friendly too!  Kind of dog-like, actually.  Except with “rectangly rectangle eyes that are not right” as Ada would say.

This is my favorite goat.  It’s a she goat.

She *loves* to be scratched behind her horns.

This is the sassy pregnant mama goat with the beard who was doing the head butting.

The little goat just underneath the one eating the apple is named Baby Frank.  He’s recently weaned.

These horses are so shy.  We have yet to actually touch them, even when offering treats.

Ada didn’t want to leave the goats.

I had to tie Hank to the porch so that we could pet the goats.  He barks and scares them if he follows us up there.

Luckily he doesn’t mind napping right there…for hours.  When I unclipped his collar to let him free he thumped his tail and resumed snoring.

We’re building hoop coops out of cattle panels for the chickens.

This is how it looks half done, in its current state.

It still needs chicken wire on the front and back, and the super strong tarp over it.  The tarps were in the mail at our house in town when I got home tonight.

Side view.

I can’t wait to get it finished!  Then we have to build the second one…

They are 8×8 feet, and a little over six feet tall inside.  They’re so strong you can hang the feeder and waterers from the top.

I’m going to put Premier electric poultry netting around them, but I haven’t ordered it yet.  I hate how expensive that stuff is!

Everyone I’ve talked to and everything I’ve read says it’s totally worth it though.

Both the electric poultry netting and the hoop coops can be moved around so that the chickens have plenty of fresh grass and bugs!  Basically they’re free range chickens without the neighbor’s dogs eating them.  (Hopefully.)

We sat out on the porch and watched a big thunderstorm come up over the hills.

After the storm!

This picture above was taken while standing right here, in my kitchen:

The cabin is really rustic.  But in a fun, quirky way.

I can’t wait until we get our beds moved in.  It already feels weird to come back to the suburb and our other house.  It’s so vastly different.

I’ll choose the cabin and that view any day!

The only major, major downside is the internet.  The speed is 1.5 compared to the 10 or 11 we have here in town.

1.5 is so slow that it barely functions.  I’m not sure how I will upload pictures or anything.  Netflix works, but it’s blurry.  Even Facebook is slow to use.

That’s the best option.  We explored every possibility.  Maybe they’ll upgrade the service out there soon?  Just a few miles away they don’t even have the ability to use wifi, so we’re lucky in that regard.

With no cable, poor internet, and living way out in the boonies we are definitely going to be in an isolated bubble.  Good thing there’s lots to do outside.

By the way, because several people always ask:  All the photos in this entry are iPhone pictures.  I took them using the VSCO CAM app, and used the filters from PicTapGo app to adjust the contrast and everything.  Those are my two all time favorite photo apps!

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!

Today is my birthday.  I’m now the ripe old age of 26.

To be honest it wasn’t a very great birthday.  The girls have been sick with a cold and Ada hasn’t slept more than two hours in the past three days. I am totally exhausted, like to the point of being non-functional.

When I went out to check on our chicks this morning something had eaten the skin off of the head of one chick.  The poor little thing was still alive, but it had a bare skull.  The rest of its body was unharmed.  Disturbing and sad.  I held it for several hours this morning to keep it warm while it died.  I thought about putting it out of its misery but then I didn’t really know how to easily do that.  It was still peeping and trying to open its eyes and move around.

What is really creepy is that the same thing happened to another chick the night before.  There’s a serial chick killer!  It scalps my chicks!

The chicks are in the garage with two Silkie hens brooding them.  The garage door is closed, and I know the Silkies didn’t do that to their own babies because they are very protective and loving mamas.

When I called my mom to tell her about it she suggested that it could be crickets.  My garage is infested with these freaky monster crickets. They’re called camel crickets, or cave crickets.  They’re huge, the size of a man’s thumb, and they have humped backs.  They even have toes.  There are so many of them in the garage. They only come out at night.  If you go in there in the dark the floor is just solid with them.  They are on the walls too.  Chickens sleep very soundly in the dark, so it’s possible that these disgusting creepy freak monster crickets could sneak into the nest and eat a chick.

Since the broody hens have been in the garage I’ve been closing the door, thus trapping the cricket population inside without food.  Before this the door was always ajar because it doesn’t latch well.  I already knew that it’s not safe to leave crickets overnight in the lizard cage because they will eat the lizard.  I guess they eat chicks too.

My mom suggested I put up lights over the nest so that the crickets are deterred. My garage is lit up like a Christmas tree tonight.  I went in there earlier, after dark, and I didn’t see a single cricket.  Fingers crossed they don’t murder anymore of my fluffies tonight.  :(

On top of that tragedy, I must have eaten something wrong by accident because my intestines had that awful flaming sensation brewing inside of them today.

I found out that I am extremely allergic to rye–did I ever write about that?  The testing also showed I’m allergic to pistachios, which are easy to avoid.  Unfortunately it’s hard to avoid rye because of cross contamination.  Really annoying.  I must have accidentally eaten some rye hidden in bakery goods (like crumbs on it by accident or mixed in the wheat flour) because eating rye gives me liquid fire in my lower abdomen the following day, plus my mouth feels irritated and swollen, and my nose is extremely stuffy.

Awesome.

I’m glad I figured out what causes it, I just wish it was easier to avoid.  (I’m also lactose intolerant, which isn’t as big of a deal to me as the stupid rye allergy.)

Randomly I am not allergic to any other grains even though they are closely related. Just rye.  Not gluten, or wheat.  My body hates rye!

Anyway, I spent the day feeling like crap and doing nothing.  My kids were grumpy from being sick and tired.  Tyler had to be at work early.  My house is a mess. My intestines were too angry to even eat birthday cake or go to birthday dinner with my parents. How sad.

Tomorrow will be a better day, right?  Right.

I was feeling rather sorry for myself and considering a lame pity party until I went outside this afternoon to water the birds and the garden.  I heard this huge commotion and suddenly my duck June came marching out from her hidden nest way back under the chicken coop.  She quack honks so loudly when she comes out.  I think she likes to announce her presence.

She had four ducklings following her!

I couldn’t believe it.  She’s been hiding under the chicken coop on and off for months but nothing has ever happened.  I was beginning to wonder what she was doing under there.

Benny and June made adorable babies!  Squee!

She hatched ducklings ON MY BIRTHDAY!  Of all days!

All the chickens were staring at the ducklings as if they were thinking, “What the heck are those things?”

Here they are trying food and water for the first time.  Well they didn’t try it so much as just look at it.

Watching their daddy duck eat:

“Hey guys, what is this wet stuff?”

Warning me to scoot back from her babies.  Shocking, she’s usually very tame and will eat from your hand.

Don’t mess with Mama Duck, huh?

Oh, hello there!  See how tiny they are?

I love it when ducks peer upwards with one eye.  (Especially when they all do it in unison.)

Ah, they are so cute.  It’s nearly unbearable.  I just love ducks.

I’m thrilled to have surprise birthday ducklings!

They totally made my day better.

Alas, I have survived the wisdom tooth removal.

Barely.

I psyched myself up beforehand so I wasn’t even that nervous.  The night before I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink after midnight, and I dreamed realistically that Ada was unwrapping foil covered chocolates and stuffing the candy in my mouth.  I was like, “Om nom nom this is so delicious.  I can’t swallow or I won’t be able to have my surgery.  But it’s so goooood…”

Then I woke up and it was time to go.  Tyler took me to the oral surgeon and my mom took the girls over to her house.

When I went back into the surgery room it just looked like a regular dentist chair.  Anticlimatic much?

They put that gas over my nose, which I didn’t like because it smelled like vomit.  Gross.  I didn’t realize they were going to use the gas, I thought they were just going to give me something through an IV.

I guess the gas was to make the IV less scary, except I’m not the least bit bothered by needles.  If I ever need this again I’m skipping the gas!  It didn’t have much effect, it just made me feel really heavy all over.

This is when the unfortunate panic inducing part happened.

They gave me the IV, and the dentist put the drugs in it to make me lose consciousness.  You’re still awake technically, you’re just not aware any longer.  I watched him inject something into my IV and I wasn’t able to see anymore. I don’t know if my eyes were open or closed, but everything was black.  Except I could still hear them.  I could still feel everything that was happening.

I felt him give me a shot in my gums and I tried to move, but I couldn’t.  I tried to say something, but I couldn’t make any sounds.  I was blind and immobilized.  I was horrified! It was like I was in this deep, dark tunnel.  It was warm and soft there, and heavy, and I couldn’t get out.  I felt him give me six shots.  I was laying there panicking trying to force my body listen to my brain.  I was terrified that I would hear and feel him removing my teeth and not be able to say anything.

Finally I managed to make a noise.  In my head it was a loud moan, but it may have been different out loud.  I heard the dentist say, “Oh hang on she needs more propofol!”  Then they poked me and I moaned again and I heard him exclaim, “Even more?”

The next thing I remember I could hear the nurse talking to me.  I felt her removing my IV and it pinched a little.  Then I was sitting up on a bed in another room with my glasses on.  According to Tyler she gave us after care instructions and I told them prednisone makes me feel like a boss.  I have no memory of any of that.  The next thing I remember I was sitting in the car, but I don’t even really remember riding home.

Tyler said the nurse told him that I had to have more than double the normal dose of propofol for my size.

I don’t go down without a fight.  My insomina even beats out levels of propofol high enough to kill Michael Jackson.

It’s funny in hindsight.  It was not funny when I was conscious and paralyzed.  That’s the stuff nightmares are made of right there.  I never thought that would happen to me.

I have red hair.  I’ve read before that redheads react differently to pain and anesthesia.  Maybe that has something to do with my experience.

The recovery after the surgery has kind of sucked.  The one impacted infected tooth they removed left the worst spot.  My jaw bone is all bruised along my cheek and it throbs.  Eating is hard and I have been really hungry.  For the first two days every time I moved my mouth would bleed.  The gauze felt like soggy tampons stuffed in my cheeks, but without it I was swallowing salty penny flavored blood.  The first night I drooled red saliva everywhere and woke up encrusted.  Really gross.

The bleeding has finally stopped now, on day three.  But I have some minor swelling today and more throbbing than before.

The entire time I’ve just been taking ibuprofen for pain.  I’m also taking an antibiotic because of the infection that was under the impacted tooth.  I had three teeth removed in total, so both sides of my mouth are sore.  I’m terrified of dry sockets.  I’m so paranoid I’ll knock the clot out.  The impacted tooth area periodically oozes puss, which is absolutely disgusting.

I cannot wait until they are all healed.  The one good thing I can think of about wisdom teeth removal is that your wisdom teeth never grow back.  I’m never doing this again in my life.

And you know what?  I completely forgot to ask the dentist if I could keep my teeth!  Darn it!

Bahaha.  Misery.

I spent the night at my parents’ house the first night so my mom could help me watch the girls. I still had to take care of Ada all night, which was hard.  I came back to my house the next evening and I had a lot of cleaning up to do.  Tyler didn’t do a very good job taking care of the pets or helping me get caught up on chores.  The hard part is that my mouth throbs and oozes if I move around too much or talk a lot.  Taking care of the girls by myself has been hard.  I’m hoping I’ll feel a lot better tomorrow.  It will be a full three days since the surgery.

Now for some things cute and fluffy, and not teeth related.  Brought to you by the world of Instagram!

The girls played with a neighbor girl at my parents’ house while I was putting frozen peas on my swollen jaws.  My parents’ court is very safe and the kids can just go out and run and play.  They loved it.  Our street is…not safe…at all.  There are also very few kids that I would want my girls to play with here.

That’s my mom with Ada.  Ada and my mom look exactly alike, which is weird because I look like my dad.

This little girl was so incredibly sweet.  I want to take Rosie back over to my parents’ this summer so they can play together.  She’s 8 and Rosie is (almost) 6, but they got along fine.

You can see Rosie way ahead up there.  And yes, my just turned two year old is huge and can race on her new birthday scooter already.

Of course she’s still my baby when she needs a break from her new scooter.

Did anyone else play with these elves and read the books as a kid?  I loved them!  My mom still had my whole set!

I think she’s called Herself the Elf.

These next pictures are from today, back at my house.

Rosie’s eyes are bugging out of her head in this one, ahahaha!

She still carries Bitty Baby absolutely everywhere.

Ginny the Old English Game bantam sits down inside the feeder to eat undisturbed by the bigger hens.

My Silkie hens are so broody that you can just stick chicks and eggs under them.

Benny and June!

Duck Face grows rapidly!  We had to put him/her outside with the heat lamp because it was just too messy and smelly in the rubbermaid tote inside now that (s)he’s a bit larger.

I found out that this is an Ancona duckling.  They are considered critical, just a step above endangered, and they are a heritage duck breed.

This is a silver laced Sebright bantam.  (Please ignore the random yellow coop wall.  I’m in the process of painting everything red and white.)

Abby sunning herself.  She looks small in this picture but she’s actually a 60 pound lab mix.

Ok.  Aching jaws need to be iced or something.  Time to read books in bed.

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.

The weather has been so gorgeous this week!

We’ve been outside enjoying it a lot.  I’m still sick with this stupid cold, the same one I had two weeks ago.  I’ve been battling sinus aftermath, which just sucks.  Go away germs, go away!  May we have a healthy spring and summer.  Fingers crossed.

Yesterday we had severe storms.  Once the storms passed by evening it was pretty outside again.  The girls jumped in a mud puddle and we watched the sun set.

There were tornadoes all around our area, but the evening turned out perfect!

Birds were happily chirping and roosting in trees. They too were glad the tornadoes were gone!

I love that you can see the buds on the trees, ready to burst forth with leaves, outlined in the darkness.

The spring-like weather outside has really cheered me up.  I think I have a bit of SAD.  Not a fan of winter and cold at all.  If it didn’t mean leaving our families I would move somewhere warm year round.

I’m getting excited about gardening this year.  I have to scrape together money to erect a fence around my garden plot so that the ducks don’t decimate it this year.

My seeds came in the mail right on schedule today, welcoming in the first of March!

There are two kinds of zucchini, yellow crookneck squash, sweet melons, green beans and purple pod “green” beans, three kinds of carrots (one was free), black cherry tomatoes, three other kinds of tomatoes, and sweet corn.  I also have two well established 4×4 foot strawberry plots in my yard, and a tangle of wild blackberry bushes, a semi-dwarf pear tree, and two dwarf apple trees.  The apple trees have never made apples before…well last year one tree made a tiny apple that fell off, but that was it.  I think they need some kind of fertilizing because I planted them in containers thinking we were going to move.  Oh and I have a blueberry bush in a container but I don’t know if it survived the winter and I don’t think it’s old enough to make berries yet.  It takes blueberry bushes three years before they make berries.

I love gardening!  Once we have our farm I plan to do it on a large scale and can/freeze things to use over the winter.  I’ve love to run my own CSA for organic veggies and eggs at some point in the future.

I scored this awesome greenhouse shelf from the clearance section of Tractor Supply last week.  I opened it and tried to put it together today.  I was surprised to find it in a billion pieces with less than stellar directions.  There were two pictures, that was it!

It was only $20 on sale, which is a good deal I believe!  I’ve seen them for much higher at other stores.

All finished…you should have seen Ada trying to help.  Yikes.

Speaking mine own CSA and eggs, my Feathered Ladies are picking up speed too.  I’m getting 7-12 eggs per day now after getting nothing since last September.  My house is once again busy, like a drug dealer lives here.  I’ve got people calling me and showing up handing over folded cash in exchange for the goods.  I love sharing my pretty eggs with people!

Today we went to Tractor Supply to buy chicken feed and came home with nine adorable little chicks.  Two white Silkies, three bantams–one chipmunk looking one, one that looks like it will be silver laced, and one black with red face that might be gold laced.  We also got two golden comets/red sex link pullets, an Amberlink pullet, and a Barred Rock which could be a pullet or a rooster.

I love the Barred Rock chick.  I hope its a girl!  It’s super cute.

Rosie is enamored with them, she especially loves bantams.  Ada is enthralled also.  This is Ada’s first real experience with chicks.

This is one of the Silkies.

This is a Golden Comet.  They are bred for laying.  The pullets are golden with stripes on their backs and the roosters hatch as all white chicks, so you can tell the difference right away.

My girls are having a blast holding them gently, naming them, and feeding them.

Ada was very offended when one pooped on her, hahaha!

Tonight for supper we celebrated the first of March and our new baby chicks with surprise chick plates!

(We eat light meals for supper and larger meals at lunch with Tyler, since he works nights.)

Spring! I am so ready!!

I had to switch antibiotics for my sinus infection because I couldn’t swallow the Augmentin. I kept cutting it into four pieces and it was making me really sick at my stomach and making me poo way too much. I would start getting sick about 15 minutes after taking it every time.  Yuck.  They gave me a Z-Pack instead, but by the time they sent in the prescription and I picked it up, it took a day in between before I got to start taking it.  Apparently that day without antibiotics was enough for the infection to come back.

I feel like throwing a tantrum on the floor.  I hate feeling miserable. I have laundry, dishes, and toys piling up around me plus people and animals that need to be cared for.  I don’t have time to feel sick right now.  I just don’t.  I have to force my body to keep moving, and that just sucks.  I haven’t hardly sat down all day long.

It’s kind of funny.  Before I became a parent I would be a tiny bit sick and then lay in bed for hours thinking I was totally unable to function.  Now…no such luck.

This afternoon it was 45 degrees and sunny outside so I took the girls out to play.  I had to feed the chickens, wash out and refill their waterers, then spray out and refill the duck pool.

Instagrams…

(Made with the Diptich app.)

Ginny, a bantam Old English Game hen.

Ada’s two year molars are hurting her a lot. :(

Cheese!

Benny in front and June in back.

The girls are holding Silver, who is an Appenzeller Spitzhauben hen.  They are Swedish chickens and super friendly.

Hank!

Refilling the duck pool as evening hits.

Yay, fresh water!

That’s Benny in the pool.

Male Pekin ducks have a curly drake feather on their tails, see it?

They also quack differently–male ducks quack quietly like they are saying, “mwack mwack mwack” and female ducks honk “QUACK” loudly.

I love pet ducks.  I highly recommend them!  June’s eggs make baked goods extra fluffy and delicious.

This is Dumbledore the Silkie rooster.  He’s pretty much the most awesome chicken ever.

Tame and fluffy.  Excuse the edge of the coop door on the left.  The blue things you see on the sides of his head are his blue earlobes!