Poor Sick Baby

We've seen a lot of this around:

D has had a fever for a few days with a congested cough and runny nose.  He has been doing a lot of sleeping and crying.  The illness is one of those where we are unsure if he should go see a doctor.  We made an appointment, but cancelled after he started running around and playing again.  He is up and down.  Every day he gets a little better.  But not better enough for us to resume normal life.

They didn't dress in matching outfits on purpose, I promise.  D takes turns with our laps.  Sometimes he is absolutely inconsolable and only wants his daddy.  M does not like it when his babies are sick and suffering!

The other kids got an entire day off school today...almost.  They had to do history and literature.  But the rest of the day was spent watching a cartoon series they discovered at the library.  Anyone ever hear of King Arthur and the Knights of Justice?  Yeah, I didn't think so.  According to Wikipedia, the show was ranked  as first on the lists of The 10 Most Ridiculous Adaptations of Arthurian Legend (2009) and the 8 Mostly Forgotten '90s Cartoons (2011).  This was done by a site for nerd news.  I haven't explored the site yet so I won't post a link just in case, but it looks funny so far.  Anyway, my kids LOVE this show.  It's like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-only the heroes are football players transported back in time to rescue King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  I can barely sit through it.  I must be old.  And female.

Happy Birthday, M!

My dear, sweet, hardworking husband celebrated his birthday weekend by:

...cutting and packaging enough chicken to last a year...I think...AND:

...boiling up the carcasses to make stock.  The meat we picked from the stock carcasses is REALLY GOOD. Grubaliciously good! 

We also celebrated with pizza, italian sodas, and ice cream.  Party in style!

More Life Cycles

Life and death.  Life and death.  Our Life Cycle Unit has grown past the hours of school time and encroached upon every area of our daily life. 

I've been so tired this last week with the growing of this little life inside me.  I just want to sleep all day (one day I took four naps).  I'm tired of going into public and having people ask me if I'm having twins or if I'm due any day now.  Don't they know any better than to mention anything like that to a pregnant woman?  Shouldn't they just keep their mouths shut? Or say something like, "You are positively glowing with new life!"  Not, "Oh my gosh! You are HUGE!"  I have only gained 17 pounds as of this morning.  So all those people can just go to the lake of fire and fry!  Okay...getting past the cranky.  I haven't had a lot of motivation to get anything done.  In the last paragraph of this post, I wondered how motivated I would be to...

...pluck and gut our meat birds while 8 months pregnant.  Well, it's done.  All 20 birds are dead and resting before their trip to freezer camp.  Was I supremely motivated and full of energy like I was a month ago making freezer meals? NO!  My motivation was: I'm not getting any less pregnant!  It's a three day weekend!  And I don't want to pay their feed bill anymore!  And when it is done, it will be DONE and I won't have to do it again (like laundry).  I won't traumatize you with butchering details, but these birds are the fastest, easiest birds to process.  One of them died when M picked him up.  Two heads fell off all by themselves (practically)! I am getting very good at my job in the processing and we have become quite efficient with our routine...okay, enough with the death...

...on to the LIFE!  Funny how we spend two mornings (four hours total) taking care of our food and then the afternoons saving little guinea keets from the big mean hens in the yard:

I found this little one being pecked by a hen in the nest.  It is our first guinea to hatch!  I quickly rescued it and brought it inside to treat its wound and keep it warm until we could get a warm spot set up.  It's living on the other side of the chick brooder until some siblings can come and keep it company.  Two chicks ended up with the pasties (a chick problem that can kill them), so I spent some time nursing them and trying to save their lives.  Really, a very strange way to spend the day.

We captured some frog eggs at the pond and S now has his very own life cycle project:

Watching the tadpoles turn into frogs!  We will let them go in the pond when the project gets boring or forgotten.  Like the butterflies.  M let them go yesterday (without warning me) so he could use the terrarium for guinea keets.  Out with old, on with the new, eh?

Life Cycles continued...

We've had a total of 9 chicks hatch (two died) and many of our butterflies have emerged as well.

The two chicks that died happened to hatch under a hen that wasn't broody-just sitting there laying her daily egg.  When the chick came out, she killed it and tried to push it out of the nest.  I hate it when that happens.  We try to avoid killings by going out to the coop every few hours.  One of these days we will set up a solitary confinement area where a hen can set to her heart's content without other hens getting in her way. 

Since we can't tell who the biological parents are, we call them all "barny" variety.  We have two austra-likes and five buff orp-somethings.  We have at least ten more eggs, maybe more!

Butterflies

Our butterflies are emerging, right on the heels of the chicks!  I haven't been too pleased with the Classroom kit.  The individual cups each caterpillar lived in were too small and several crysallids either formed crookedly or fell off the lid because it was too slippery to form a good base. 

Another one JUST emerged, so I'm going to go watch it!

Surprise Chicks!

Last night, IJ celebrated his 10th birthday with a small sleepover.  He had four friends stay over after having a bunch more here for the afternoon.  One of their activities was chicken chasing.  I asked them to stay out of the chicken yard because I didn't want my broody hens disturbed.  I had no idea that the chicks were actually hatching!

Aren't fluffy chicks the BEST?

I candled the eggs last night to see if I had any obvious duds.  One eggs was so opaque, I couldn't find an air space no matter what direction I turned the egg.  I held it up to my ear to listen for the rotten egg splash, but instead I heard a tap-tap-tap.  I love that sound.  I came back in the house to tell the kids and M about it, but M didn't believe that I could hear tapping.  He said I made it all up.

This one is still slightly wet-not cute yet!

This afternoon, I finally convinced him to come out and see for himself.  When I reached under the hens (there are three brooding in the same nest box), I heard the peeping of a new chick!  I pulled it out (it was the little black one above) and I heard more peeping!  I had to reach even further behind the three hens to get that fluffy one in the first picture.

The Mamas (one is facing backwards)

Those chicks totally caught us by surprise.  It takes only 21 days for a chick to hatch, so I guess those eggs were a lot older than I had thought.  Most of the eggs were placed on May 7th, but I knew some were older.  I just didn't think they were that old!  We have no chick food and had to quickly throw a brooder together so the chicks wouldn't get squished under their three mamas.  What a fun surprise!

Double Digits

Happy 10th Birthday, IJ!