Parenting with chickens

My girls are endlessly creative.

My 14-month-old is especially creative when it comes to food. I think the Hunter-Gatherer in her has begun to come out now that we are pretending to be farmers in the city.

Do you see this face? It's not innocent, let me tell you.

In the past few days, she has hunted, gathered, and eaten (what I wasn't able to scoop out of her mouth) varying quantities of the following:
- grass
- egg shells (fished out of the compost)
- dead bugs
- leaves
- dry chicken poo
- wet chicken poo (she finger painted in it first, then gave it a lick)
- duck feathers
- dirt
- burnt wood
- an old apple core
- fresh oregano (good choice, I must say)
- rocks
- bottle caps
- plastic wrappers
- dog poo
- seeds
- dog food
- cat food
- and the list goes on...although I do think she may have a taste for poo. No wonder she's becoming such a picky eater. Good thing it's organic poo. (LOL)

Just for the moms out there, I DO worry sometimes that she is going to come down with some crazy disease related to her poo consumption. It's not like I encourage her to do this. Like I said, she's endlessly creative. And for those of you who are wondering why on earth there is so much poo in my yard, that's what happens when you turn your city lot into a "farm-yard"?

Lexi is equally creative, like the other day when she thought it would be a good idea to sit on a chicken. Do you already see how this ends? After the sobbing stopped, we cleaned up the three inch scratch on her arm with the slightly obvious, but none the less needed wisdom, "That's what happens when you sit on a chicken." Both the chicken and the girl are doing fine, albeit slightly scarred (pun intended) from the event.

And she shall be called "Beady Eyes!" Taken in early June, both the chickens and the gardens are now much more plump and full.

Thankfully though, when it comes to food she has a more sophisticated pallet that prefers goat cheese spread on toasted crackers and cherry tomatoes dressed in balsamic vinegar rather than animal poo. Love that kid. She is crazy, though. One minute, a room in the house will be tidy and have that "just cleaned" satisfaction, and thirty seconds later, I look in and can't see the floor. This morning I was watering the garden and came into the house to find that my kitchen had been turned into an imaginative space, where Lexi was mixing up her own concoction of leftover green smoothie in my salad bowl, and picking greens to put in it from off the floor....
Yes, the kitchen floor was now growing grass.
Kidding.
It was just covered in freshly picked grass and oregano leaves.

You might be wondering why she was in the house alone? You can ask her the same question. Clearly it's way more fun to be creative when Mom is distracted with something else. This happens, um, a lot.

I can't get this pic to turn for me. Either way, she's an alive one!

In farm news, Ice Cream is continuing to woo the ladies with his manly waddle and swaggle, and Oreo and Cookies & Cream are continuing to lay eggs. I believe in the two nest boxes, we now have a total of 12 eggs. By the looks of things, we should have ducklings by the first week or so of August! And speaking of babies, LOOK AT MY CUTIE BABY PEAS!!! In a mere handful of days, they emerge from their flowers and dangle on their vines like little green Christmas ornaments.

Also, this steaming beauty came out of my new bread machine (yay for Craig's List!) today. One more check off the list to make Real food a daily reality. Love.