He has come back to us . . . again!

Violet asked all winter where he was and when we were getting him back.  And this spring we had a boy for him to meet.

And here's V on top.  "Mommy!  Look!  I'm a cowgirl!  YEEEHAWWW!!"

Yes, she actually hollered that as she rode by.

And Calla just wants to go fast.  The faster she goes, the bigger she smiles.

Mr. C even got a turn. He was pretty thrilled.

Here he is waiting for his turn.  The fence rails were just the right height for him.

Whoa . . . that's BIG!  And it has pink boots on!

Not at all intimidated.  Such a boy.

 

And he could care less about the chicken, too. 

Grace wanted to go without the saddle.  And with daddy's hat.  Our girl is getting SO big!

And a new one.  Mr. A.  He lasted about 90 seconds, even after bribing.  But he eventually went on with Brent.

I feel like our family is complete again.  It feels good.

Your dumb. My dumb. Their dumb.

Facebook drives me batty sometimes.  I will confess that I am far from perfect when it comes to grammar and such.  But I do believe that I have the basics.  And some things just make me shake my head.

Your dumb. 

I see this comment ALL THE TIME on facebook. 

Actually, that's my dumb.  Because you obviously can't be trusted with it.

Oh wait.  Never mind.

Dumb is apparently something to be had and fought over like the stupid little toys at my house. 

MOM!  I HAD IT FIRST!  AND SHE ISN'T SHARING!

YOU TWO STOP IT AND SHARE THE DUMB!  THERE'S PLENTY FOR ALL OF YOU!

Or maybe it's some entree at a Chinese restaurant with bean sprouts and sliced carrots and celery and noodles and chicken and some mystery sauce that gives me gas just thinking about it.

Don't order the Dumb.  Last time I was here it gave me gas.

Don't get me wrong.  I like Chinese food and have weird cravings for it sometimes.  My point it that if you use the word as a noun, it seems to fit well into what I hear in Asian languages.

Or walking down the street.

Excuse me.  Is this your dumb?  I think you dropped it.

No, sorry.  My dumb is pink and sparkly and cute.  Wanna see it?

Your dumb.

My dumb.

I have a dumb.  I keep it in a cage and feed it lettuce and skittles.  It's perfect because I'm allergic to rabbits.

Their dumb.

Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.

How's that for semantic satiation?

Think about it.

SUN!

Finally, we have something resembling SPRING weather-wise.  So naturally, we are drawn outside.  Carsten sat in the driveway  and played and watched.

He liked the ball.  And the kittens.  And the sun.

Violet came out, too. 

Calla rode her bike around and then she and Violet went and played in the sand.  I use the term "sand" loosely since it's an old sandbox that has since grown over.  But if you dig there's sand to be had.

Then Grace got home and was eager to join the outside crew.  I told her she should change her clothes.  After arguing with me briefly over it, she complied.  Something told me this would probably be in her best interest.  And then I went in the house to tackle a few housekeeping things.

Later I hear, "MOM!  WE NEED HELP!"  I'll translate that for you.

"MOM!  WE ARE COVERED IN MUD AND NEED A SHOWER AND THEN WE'LL BE YOUR PERSONAL HOUSEKEEPING SLAVES FOR THE NEXT HOUR OR SO IF YOU WON'T BE MAD AT US!"

And they got their bath for the night, their rooms are clean, and we got the muddy mess cleaned up without any trouble.  All before dad got home.  Sometimes their poor decisions work out pretty well for me.  Frankly, I give the credit to the energy chart.  That thing is awesome.  It's done wonders for many perspectives in this house.  Including mine.

Welcome to the zoo

Last night I discovered a creature in our basement.

I'm pretty thankful it wasn't the furry, scurrying type.

And the kids are pretty excited to have a creature pal today. (He'll go outside free later today.)

Carsten even got in on the action before Grace got on the bus.

And these little creatures are now getting out of their box and running around.  If I wasn't afraid that there was something outside that would get them, they would SO be outside.  I'm not a cat person, but still.  They are pretty darn cute.

Then we discovered this in the garage: 

An injured duck.  Not so injured that it couldn't fly or recover enough to make it.  But injured non the less and in a corner of the garage.  So my plan was to put it in with the chickens until it got stronger. 

But then it got out of the bucket and flew away with the little dog after it.  I think it was fine.  And I have no intention of chasing it down.

And this all before 10am.  Yes, we have a zoo.  I'm okay with it.

Tracking Big Birds

This spring we've had some visitors across the road.  Visitors that I don't remember since we've lived here.  But I'm sure I'd remember them if they had visited before.

Sandhill Cranes.  A couple evenings ago there were about a dozen of them and I decided to go check them out since bedtime was under control and it was so nice out.  So I put on my rubber boots (or as Violet calls them, Scrubber Boots), told Brent I'd be back in a bit and headed over.  The mountains were amazing.

The birds were close.

And our stupid little dog chased the cranes off before I could get a good picture.  They are big enough that they could probably just eat her.

But, look what I found!

To back up a little, not too long ago I decided that this summer we are going to try to find animal tracks and make plaster of Paris casts of them.  So, before I would let Brent come home yesterday, he had to find some.  (Actually I called a few places and found some for him to just stop and get.)

And after dinner, off we went!

For once, mom wasn't behind the camera.  And daddy did a pretty good job. 

The dog came, again.  But she apparently is a part of the family now.

We found a few really good prints. (Violet calls them train tracks.  That does sound strikingly similar to crane tracks to a two-year-old.) They were on a slope, but we made them work.

Calla felt she needed to wear her helmet in case she slipped on some ice and landed on her head.  Smart kid.  And it's amazing that nobody landed on the track, as close as they were.

We got the two of them set and headed back to the house for baths and bedtime.  And then I went and retrieved the casts. 

Can we say AWESOME!?

I'm super pleased with our first ones!  They will cure for a few days and then I'll clean them off.  I was thinking that originally we'd try the process on chicken, cat or dog tracks.  But this is fabulous! 

I dream of a collection of tracks with the kind and date and where we found them to display somewhere in our house.  A kind of tribute to our adventures.  I'm so excited!

**EDIT**  Wanted to add the link to the instructions I used.  And also, the big round metal thing, while cool looking and perfectly round, may not have been the best choice since now I have no idea how I'm going to get the cast out of it. 

Sometimes I feel pretty brilliant

Lately I've been feeling like the kids have just been sucking every last bit of positive energy out of me.  They've been arguing, demanding, ignoring, mean little demons in those cute little bodies.  And on Sunday I was up to here.  Grace interrupted me and was being so rude while I was trying to talk to someone at church.  I took them all out to the car and poked her in the forehead to demonstrate how it felt when she interrupted me like that.

Not my best parenting moment, I'll admit.  But it's those moments that make me really sit back and look at what's been happening and come up with a new strategy.

This time it's an energy chart.  On Sunday night after they flat out ignored me for the umpteen-millionth time, I went up to their rooms that had not been cleaned after countless reminders and the entire day to do so and collected everything that was not put away.  Everything. 

And then I came back down stairs.  They weren't happy.  But I was less happy.  And they needed a way to earn back the laundry basket of their now precious treasures.

They had no ideas.  So we tabled the discussion and they went to bed.

Then I had a brilliant thought.  What if I made a chart to track mom's energy throughout the day.  Brent thought it would be a great lesson in mom's mood swings.  I told him it was a great lesson in cause and effect.

The next morning (Grace didn't have school because Idaho is cool and we get a 4 day Easter weekend) I sat them all down at the table and we had a little talk about mom's energy that went something like this: 

So, if you get up in the morning and I ask you to go potty before breakfast and you stomp your foot, cross your arms and yell, 'NO!', what does that do to mom's energy?

It goes down.

Yes!  And what happens if I ask you to go potty before breakfast and you say, "Okay, mom!" and then you run and do it?

It goes up.

Yes!  And what happens if Grace tries to talk to Calla and Calla ignores her on purpose?

It goes down.

Yes!  And what happens when I ask you to take your clean clothes upstairs and put them away and you ignore me or tell me you hate doing chores?

It goes down.

And what happens when mom's energy goes down too far?

It's not fun.

I think they understood. 

The deal:  They end in SAFE ZONE three days in a row and they can have their stuff back.

Here's the chart I made.  I can't spell "Energy" apparently.  But I got that fixed. 

(Yes, it says "DANGER ZONE   BEWARE")

The first day they were almost off the charts.  I almost passed out when I asked them if they were done playing with the blocks in the living room and heard, "Yes.  I'll go pick them up."  We had a great day.  Quilting, cookies, nobody yelling, only Violet crying because she always cries about everything from the fly dying on the floor to tripping on a sponge.  But honestly, I can handle one emotionally distraught child without getting too distraught.  It's multiple emotionally distraught children that I can't handle.

Yesterday was pretty good, too.

Today was a bit of a struggle.  Grace noticed this after she got home from school.  I'm sure she was wondering what on earth her sisters did all day.

Then she went down stairs and didn't practice her piano until two hours later when we had dinner to clean up and pajamas to get on and teeth to get brushed and books to get read.  That didn't help, either.

They BARELY made it.  Barely.  But they did.  And I didn't have that want-to-poke-you-in-the-forehead feeling today at all.  I'd say it's a pretty accurate chart since that feeling means they are definitely in the "DANGER ZONE."

Tonight Violet was crying because she fell down.  I told her that I was so tired of her crying ALL.THE.TIME.  She looked at me, stopped crying and said, "Does it make your thing go down?"

A different kind of unassisted birth story.

This weekend we got some new babies with feathers.  And today we got some more new babies.

You'd think it was spring.  But you wouldn't know by all the snow still hanging around.

Anyway, last summer we got some kittens.  And those kittens grew into cats.  Now since we are irresponsible pet owners, two of them ended up knocked up.

I've been offering everyone a pregnant cat.  Unfortunately pregnant cats are not that hot of an item these days. 

And there is the fact that my girls would be heart broken if I gave their cats away.

Anyway, these cats have been looking mighty pregnant.  And then today I had one of them trying extremely hard to get into the house.  She was super persistent and evidently got past me without me noticing.

Late in the morning I was letting the dog in and thought I heard some squeaking in our coat room/entry way.  At first I thought it was mice.  I did a little searching around and find the cat kind of shuddering, all curled up in a box. 

Dangit, I thought to myself.  She's having her kittens IN MY HOUSE! 

And sure enough, she was.  At that point kitten number three had arrived, in the caul for you birth junkies out there.  Pretty cool, actually.  I'm kicking myself for just standing there staring at it and not getting a picture.

I had a friend over.  I went and got her.  She was equally fascinated by it.

Then we got the kids.  They were glowing with excitement.

Calla thought her cat was laying kittens. No, honey.  She's not a chicken and those aren't eggs.

But this is a placenta the cat is eating. 

This was equally confusing to Calla.  I told her that is what kept the baby kitty alive when it was in its mommy.  The placenta fed and breathed for the baby.   Later Calla was talking to Grace and asked me what the babies came out of.  I told her the kittens came out of the va.gina. 

"Yea!  And then she ATE IT!"

"No, honey.  She ate the placenta."

Then she proceeded to make a "placento" out of the play dough they had spread all over the table.

Two things struck my friend and I as we stood there watching this cat give birth.  1)  The mama cat had chosen, to quote my friend, the smallest box in the world.  And 2) the mama cat was purring contentedly as she labored and gave birth to FIVE kittens.

"Yea.  Didn't you purr when you were in labor??" 

"No."

"Oh.  That's weird."

Okay, I added that last part.

There are five brand new babies in total.  And after she birthed all of them, ate the placentas, and cleaned them all up, she just curled up and purred and kneaded her box and her nursing kittens all afternoon.  As far as I know, she's out there still doing that.

Calla had to watch them all nurse.  It's pretty phenomenal how they all, blind and as far as we can judge, helpless, root around and latch on to their mother.  Yea, it took them a while, but last I was out there they all were content and nursing and sleeping and their mother doesn't look a bit worried or stressed.

This is what stressed her out.

I had the nerve to pick up one of her babies and take a picture of it.  THAT is what stressed her out.  She actually got up, came out of her box as far as I was, grabbed her baby and quickly retreated back to her box.

Did I mention that this cat is a first-time mom?

Recently I've been reading a lot about babies and instinct and how it serves us and our babies and how our society seems hell-bent on turning off a mother's instinct.  The comparison made me kind of giggle.  I certainly didn't see this first-time mom questioning everything.

Are they big enough? Are they small enough? Is it my due date?  Am I overdue? Is it too early? Should I try for a natural birth or do I think I'll need an epidural?  Is it okay to push? Am I getting enough fluids? Are they warm enough? Are they too warm? Are they nursing yet? Are they getting enough? What if they get too much? Is my milk coming in even? What about their latch??!! OH MY GOSH!  Am I doing it right??!!

No.  None of that.  She's just curled up in her smallest box in the world oblivious to pretty much the rest of the world purring away and relishing every moment.  (That is unless I try to take one away.  We figured that out.)

We can learn a lot from this new mama.

Birth is so amazing.  Instinct is so powerful.

I realize now that she picked the smallest box in the world on purpose.  All the more warmth wrapped around her brand new babies.

Brent emailed me from work telling me that he would have to work late one night next month.  I emailed him back saying that I see his working late and raise him five kittens. 

"Yay," he deadpans.  "Did she tell you who the father was?"

No, and he didn't even show up.  But the kids just got a pretty awesome example of natural birth and instinct and nursing and all that fun stuff that is so amazing in and of itself.  All from the smallest box in the world.

Anyone want a kitten?  We have five.  And probably about that many more on the way here soon.  I wonder if I have any more of those little boxes.