You Did What to Your Chicken?

As you know, we have chickens.  We had some casualties last year and so we got 3 new chickens in the fall.  We still have one of the originals but all the rest are young.

They just started laying eggs for the first time about a month ago.  It's been great. They are great layers and we are enjoying them.  I did make a cheesecake with them the other day and it was very yellow because the yolks of these eggs are so dark and healthy.  It tasted good but kind of creeped me out in the color.  Oh well.

We noticed at the end of last week that one of this chickens was always in the coup.  She was constantly sitting on the eggs.  Even though we have no rooster, she thought that these eggs were going to be chicks.  She sat and sat and was getting kind of mean.  The technical term is called being "broody".

You can't let her continue to be broody.  She would just get more aggressive and the other chickens would stop laying eggs. We looked around and found a couple solutions.  The first was to just keep her out of the nesting box and put her in a metal cage.  We don't own a metal cage and didn't really want to buy one.

So we moved onto the second option which is to lower their temperature enough to snap them out of it.  The way you do this is to dunk the chicken in a bucket of water.  Seeing that I hate holding things that flap, Ryan was responsible for dunking the chicken.

He had to do it 3 or 4 times but it worked.  She is back to normal and all is well in the chicken world of our backyard again.

Here is a video of Ryan "water boarding", as we like to affectionately call it, the chicken.

Pulling the Weeds

Every year about this time the world goes nuts with talk of gardens and flowers.  I am no different.  Well maybe on the flowers part.  I have a strict If it doesn't produce food don't plant it rule.

Spring has definitely sprung and it is indeed time to plant.  We work so hard to get the soil ready and to build rows.  I weed.  I plan the layouts.  I even drew a map.  And then we carefully place these plants and seeds into the ground.

And then we wait.  And wait.  Harvest doesn't come for quite some time.  In the meantime we have to keep up with weeds and watering.  We have to fertilize.  It's hard work and it feels like forever before any fruits of our labor are seen.

Then the fruits begin to show up.  A few at a time at first.  And then it feels like you are overrun with all this food.  I struggle to keep up with the canning and freezing.  But I do it anyway. 

And then there comes a time when I feel like I just can't do it anymore.  The weeds are high.  The pantry is almost full.  The garden doesn't look all nice and neat anymore.  It looks like a mess.  Where there used to be 9 distinct tomato plants is now just a mangled mess of vines and tomato cages.  Some are falling to the ground rotten. 

But we must press on.  There is more food in there.  More vegetables to be harvested.  It was during this time last year that I really wanted to give up.  I was running out of steam.  But I pressed on.  I picked that last batch of tomatoes and ended up with another 12 pints of salsa. 

And I am thankful I pressed on.  That salsa tasted good yesterday on my rice and beans.  My hard work paid off.

There are so many areas of life that this can compare to.  I think about parenting.  I think about my job.  I think about my husband.  I think about my friends.  I think about the call to evangelism.  I think about my own spiritual journey.

There is work to be done. There is watering and weeding.  There is fertilizing.  There is harvesting.  There is preserving.  And there is joy in the fruit.

I have been in the world of newborn baby.  There have been many areas of my life that have been neglected.  The weeds are high in some areas of my life.  I am looking forward to pulling out those weeds and digging into the other areas of my life.  It will take work but I am ready for it. 

My Newest Accessory

There is this blog post that is floating around Facebook.  I even re-posted it.  It's really good.
 
This blog post has me thinking so much about how I spend the time I do have with my kids while I'm not working.  Time seems to be flying by so fast.  It seems like just yesterday it was Ainsley that I was breastfeeding and Ainsley that I was washing diapers for.  And now she's almost 4 and cracking me up with her commentary on life.  When did that happen?

It makes me look at David in a whole different way.  With Ainsley I was just trying to survive these early stages.  Becoming a mother was just such an adjustment.  This time it wasn't so hard so I am really getting to enjoy the little moments with this little guy.  I am begging for time to slow down so that he will be little forever. 

I've been attending a group that promotes baby wearing.  It sounds hippy and it kind of is. (I'm actually learning to embrace my hippy self but that's another post altogether!)  And yet it's one of my favorite things I have done with David.  I go to this group to learn more about how to strengthen the bond between us.  I am learning so much about the benefits of keeping him close to me.  I don't think it's a coincidence that when I put him in his carrier, he almost instantly falls asleep.  He feels secure and safe and loved.  I think my favorite part is when he's in his carrier, his head is so close to me that I just can lean down and kiss him as much as I want.

Yesterday I went shopping with my mom.  Instead of putting David in the stroller, I strapped him on.  He was awake and looking around for a bit but then he fell asleep.  I had so many comments about how sweet a baby he is.  I think you get more comments like that when you wear a baby because they are at eye level. 

But in this case, they were all right.  Sweet baby indeed!

The Curse of Maternity Leave

I haven't posted in a while.  I would give you the all too common excuse of I'm busy but it sounds just too cliche.  And I will have to say I love this busy.  So what have I been doing?

First we had a baby.  Then I got thrush and had to deal with a screaming baby.  Then he got over that and we were all thankful. 

We got into a routine of preschool and the gym and the library and naps (for the kids - not me!).  It has been glorious.

There were some big things that happened in there too.  We took a trip to Florida to visit Ryan's grandparents.  I am ashamed to say that I hadn't seen them since our wedding 12 years ago.  Ryan had visited them a couple years ago but Ainsley was little and so I decided not to go.  This time it felt right for all of us to go. 

Oh and they live in Orlando.  So what better thing to do than to introduce Ainsley to the wonderful world of Disney!  She loved every second of it and David was a trooper and endured it.  Her highlight was definitely meeting Rapunzel.  I think I see a birthday theme developing.

Another major event is that we have started the path of testing David for urinary reflux.  We had to do it with Ainsley and now the process starts all over again.  It broke my heart to put Ainsley through this and now it's breaking my heart to put David through it.  So far we know that he has a "pretty good" chance of having it.  I say that's pretty bad.  We will know for sure on May 8th.

And with that the time has flown.  David will be 12 weeks old on Tuesday.  That can only mean one thing.  Back to work.  When Ainsley was 12 weeks old, I was kind of ready to go back to work.  I was bored.  Not this time.  I am not sure what changed but I am sure of one thing.  It has changed.  And that is the curse of maternity leave.  It has to end.

The Year Winter Lasted a Day

Now that Ainsley is old enough to really enjoy the snow, we have been waiting for it to arrive.  Oh the irony of the warmest winter I can ever remember.  Then they started predicting snow for last night.  It was hard to believe it would really snow since the day before it was 60 degrees.  We didn't tell Ainsley about the possibility but prepared ourselves just in case. 

Well, we got a whooping inch of snow, but it was really sticky and wet snow, perfect for sledding and snowmen.  So we decided to make the best of it.  I called my neighbor, Marci, who has been giving me a hard time for not getting Ainsley out sledding the past couple years.  She agreed to meet me this morning to take Ainsley sledding. 

We bundled up and we were ready to go. 

 Even David had his snowman outfit on that included boots.  He's pumped.

Marci provided the sled and we were off.  We drove to the library where they have a hill that isn't too big but big enough.  It took one time down the hill and Ainsley was hooked.

She quickly graduated to getting pushed down the hill by herself.

And she squealed with glee on each trip.  At the bottom of the hill, she would say "Let's do it again" EVERY TIME!

I even got to get on the sled with her. 

It wasn't fast enough so we went back to pushing her down the hill.  Side note, only in NC can you wear jeans and a sweatshirt sledding and not be freezing!

And don't think for a second that I wasn't going to teach her that she has to bring her own sled up the hill.

The excitement was all just a little bit too much for David

When we got home we had to make a snowman.  Actually, we made 2.  A big sister snowman and a baby brother snowman.

And what caps off a snow day better than a cup of "Hot Chocolate Tea"?  (We may drink a lot of hot tea around here)

And now it's 12:00 and the snow is almost gone and it's supposed to be 54 tomorrow and 63 on Wednesday, we will look forward to winter again next year.

Sacrifices

When you get pregnant or even dream about getting pregnant, your dreams include things like baby smiles, cooing, sweet little sleeping babies.  Your visions of what life with the baby will be like are all roses and sleeping babies. 

Even though I have had a baby before, my mind blocked out all the hard stuff.  My brain went right to 6 months where Ainsley was smiling and sleeping well.  She was easy to put to bed.  She only woke up once a night and was up for 20 minutes at most. She was just generally a happy baby.

And now reality has hit. David wasn't home a week when he was diagnosed with thrush, which is a yeast infection.  The main symptoms are a white tongue, horrible diaper rash, and gas.  The white tongue we can deal with.  The diaper rash got better with some special diaper cream.  The gas on the other hand was miserable.  When he was awake, he was screaming.  It was down right miserable.  We had a couple nights when we slept only an hour or 2. We would just watch him pull his legs to his chest in pain. At his one week checkup the doctor told me that the best way to combat the yeast was to stop eating things that fed yeast.  Gluten and Dairy.  I told him thank you very much but that's impossible.  I explained that I was a vegetarian and cutting out gluten would leave me with nothing to eat.  I went home and listened to David scream for another week.  It was painful.

At his 2 week checkup the thrush had only gotten worse.  I was again faced with the decision of gluten and dairy free.  And this time, I embraced it.  I was going to try it for a week and see if it helped.  If it did, I would do it until the thrush cleared up.  And so this became my life.

And guess what, it worked.  He's happy most of the time.  There is still a good bit of gas (he cleared out a room yesterday but I think that's more genetics he gets from his namesakes), but for the most part, he's good.  And so I continue with the diet and I am figuring out how to keep myself full.

Sacrifices in life are worth it, especially when it comes to your children.

Boy Crazy

When we found out I was pregnant with David, I asked Ryan if we could wait and be surprised on the sex of this baby.  We had found out that Ainsley was a girl when I was pregnant and I told him that I wanted to try it the other way. 

Secretly, I didn't want to know if it was a boy.  People would ask me if I cared if it was a boy or a girl, and I would give the standard answer of "Just as long as it's healthy, I don't care".  Honestly, I cared.  I wanted a girl so badly. 

I was actually petrified of a boy.  Not only did I not know anything about the anatomy (I'm still asking Ryan questions about "it" regularly!), but I was also scared of boy activity.  Boys are rambunctious. Boys are crazy.  Boys are wild.  Boys are everything my little girl is not.  And if I love my little girl and everything about her just the way that she is, how can I love just the opposite.

Everyone told me that I would love a boy just as much as I would love a girl, but I just couldn't picture it.  How was a boy ever going to fit into our lives?  So I convinced Ryan to wait and not find out the sex of the baby.  I didn't want to dwell on the fact that this baby could be a boy for months.  I knew I would stress and worry like crazy if I knew ahead of time.

With each passing day of the pregnancy, I was more and more convinced that this baby was a boy.  My pregnancies were just so different.  Hardly anything was the same.  And so I started to settle in to the fact that this was more than likely a boy.

Then came birth day.  When he was born, I was privileged enough to "catch" him.  When I turned him over in the water, there "it" was.  His boyness was staring back at me.  And I have to say that I panicked.  When Ainsley was born, they put her on my chest and it was instant love.  My little girl.  But when they put David on my chest, I was kind of in denial.  This boy, and a big boy at that, was my baby? 

While I went through all the post birth things, Ryan held David "skin to skin" on his chest.  He bonded and enjoyed every second of that time.  And there I was just staring at both of them.  Confused of my feelings.  Where was the instant love?

I'm not going to tell you that it was instant after I started breast feeding or after I held him for a bit.  I don't actually know when it happened. But I have fallen so deeply in love with this little boy. 

And I can't wait for the soccer games, the dirt, the trucks, the tree climbing, the legos, and more.  Let the invasion of blue begin!

He's definitely a sweet little boy.  And he's definitely mine to love.