4 Tidbits on a Tuesday

I decided this afternoon to give you some fun tidbits from my life. Just in case you needed to laugh at someone's completely preposterous life, or even give you the chance to say, "Good heavens, at least we aren't in Beth's shoes!!" I wouldn't blame you if you did say that. Sometimes I even catch myself saying that before I realize that, yes, this is MY crazy preposterous life. And not someone else's.

Tidbit #1: Shopping locally and in season is easier said than done. And in the winter, I'm not so sure I can live without my citrus fruits and avocados. In the last two days I have eaten two very large and completely personal bowls of homemade guacamole all by myself. I would be perfectly happy doing that every day for the rest of my life, but let's be real here, I only get to the store every so often these days.

Tidbit #2: Due to the high number of young children in our home and given the fact that we lost our christmas shopping day to a day of family illness and barfing instead, I have had many friends offer to chip in and lend a hand with christmas shopping this year. I am not only deeply thankful for these lovely people, but I am also convinced that THIS IS THE WAY TO DO CHRISTMAS SHOPPING! Text or email your list and voila! It's delivered to your door (along with some cans of soup and more crackers and gatorade). Seriously, personal shoppers must make a killing. Also, Amazon and I are inseparable. Thank goodness for Prime.

Tidbit #3: Remember all those cute little ducklings that hatched this summer? They grew up. Aren't they handsome?

And then we ate them. 

Oh my YUM, they were so delicious. Yard-to-table Thanksgiving success. Even Lexi approved. ;-)

Tidbit #4: One of the things that I don't love about winter is all the inside living that we do. If you know me, you know that I am a complete, 100% introvert who doesn't like to go out much, really. The more out and about I am, the more stressed I become. In the summer I spend my days in the yard working in the garden, playing with the kids in grass, or walking around the neighborhood and visiting local parks and libraries. In the winter, we stay home. Yes, this get's old fast, but wouldn't you be stressed by the thought of taking four children three and under anywhere? Just thinking about going to the grocery store with all of them just about gives me a panic attack. So don't judge me just yet. You can do that in a minute, when the story gets really out of control.

Ok, so back to inside living. When everyone is inside all the time, with the heat on and windows shut, what is the logical thing that happens? You start noticing smells. Everything and everybody stinks. The kids stink, the cats stink, the bedrooms stink, the garbage stinks, the whole house stinks, and then, the worst part of all, the refrigerator starts to stink.

I noticed it about two weeks ago. Every time someone would open the fridge to rummage for something, a powerful smell would seep out and literally almost knock you out. If smells had a color, this one wouldn't even be green. It would be brown. It was THAT bad. So out of the goodness of my heart, I planned on searching the fridge for the answer. But then we got the stomach flu. And everyone was throwing up anyway, so cleaning the fridge became less of a priority and cleaning Lyla's crib for the fifth time became more of one.

We got better, everyone stopped puking, and people started to want to eat real food again. Which meant opening the refrigerator to retrieve the food. In retrospect, I think I could have gone on eating crackers and drinking gatorade for a bit longer... I almost died when that door was opened. I really believed something was dead in there. It smelled that bad. And not only did it smell just when you opened the fridge, but the smell would seep out and linger. In fact, someone on the other side of the house would know when the fridge was opened because the smell was so strong. After two weeks of cringing in the house when someone wanted food, I finally worked up the resolve to FIND WHATEVER IT WAS THAT HAD DIED IN THERE.

And find it, I did.

Way back on the top shelf, hidden by bags of whole wheat flour and various salsas, was a plastic jar (with a lid on it) filled with water and (what used to be) little crowns of broccoli. Now it was mostly just a garish green liquid and GAAaaarglebbblththththth did it smell something awful! After all, it had only been hiding there since mid October......[insert disgusted stomach wrenching groans here]. As soon as I removed it from the fridge and put it in its rightful place in the dumpster outside, the smell had completely 100% vanished from the fridge. Gone. Just like that.

The funny thing is, even though the fridge no longer smells, I still find myself cringing every time I or someone else opens it, and then am shocked to not be gagging by the smell that no longer exists. Yep, I think we waited a little too long to take care of that one. Blame it on the kids.

Anyway, the kids still stink, as do their bedrooms and some of the rest of the house (can someone please come over and potty train two cute little girls???), but at least our food portal is clean.

Hope you enjoyed some of our crazy. Happy Tuesday!

In the Business of Saving Ducklings

We wake up early every morning just to prepare and eat breakfast together as a family before Eric leaves for work. This morning is no exception. Eric is doing morning chores with the animals while I flip pancakes on the stove and receive tight leg hugs from the two girls.

Breakfast is ready. "Beth, look! I let the mamas take the ducklings out today!," Eric calls. I look out the window. The ducklings crowd together on the sidewalk in the backyard, mamas herding them on both sides. I run for my camera squealing something way too high pitched about them being so adorable I have to take pictures. No sooner had I snapped a few shots when it begins to rain. And not just your drizzly one drip here one drop there kind of rain. This is an all out downpour.

I run into the house. The ducks are racing with their ducklings back to the shelter of the coop. The four of us stand at the back door for a minute, watching the empty spaces between ground and sky fill with rain that falls hard and fast. "I'm going to make sure the ducklings made it back into the coop ok," Eric says. He runs outside.

A moment later I hear him call frantic. I tell the girls to stay inside and keep the screen door closed. Lexi is angry, but I rush out anyway. "Take care of your sister!" I call as I run into the rain, barefoot in my running clothes.

I am soaked to the skin in thirty seconds. Eric is at the back of the coop, behind the pile of scrap wood that is haphazardly stacked there between the coop and the back of the garage. "I need your help! Take these and get them into the coop, then come back for more!" He shoves two peeping, soaking wet ducklings into my hands. They weigh less than a slice of my whole wheat bread. They are wet and scared. I sprint with them to the door of the coop and set them down inside the entrance, where they run to their mamas and the rest of their brothers and sisters for warmth.

The rain continues to pour. Eric keeps handing me ducklings. In the commotion of the sudden rain and a mad dash of chickens to the coop, the babies were separated from their mom and lost their way. A duckling escapes Eric's grasp, running on it's webbed feet to the side of the coop that edges our neighbors yard. Eric chases it towards the front and we catch it, huddled under the edge of our overflowing rain barrel. Back at the scrap pile we hear distressed peeping. "There is one buried!" I yell. "We have to find it!" I am almost crying. We have to find it! We lift up the scraps of wood, trying our best not to let anything fall and potentially crush the duckling underneath. Layer after layer until finally, it hops free and runs, not into Eric's outstretched hands, but through the chain link fence and into our neighbor's yard!

I am frantic. It's barely 7 o'clock. It's storming like crazy, and this duckling is going to die if we can't save it within minutes. Eric runs around the front of the house into the neighbor's yard. The duckling runs into the hardest place imaginable to catch it - the space between the fence and the garage. I climb over the scrap wood barefoot, in the rain, and scale the fence, dropping into the mud below. I find the duckling under a hasta plant, but it runs away from me, heading towards the next neighbor's yard. Eric, at this point, has come back into our yard and now has to jump over the rain barrel (that is heavily overflowing and spilling water everywhere), hop the fence again and try to catch it before it is lost forever.

The duckling races along the side of the neighbor's house that is furthest from us, Eric is close on it's fuzzy little tail and fast little legs. He finally catches it cornered next to a flower pot and the front steps in the neighbor's front yard. He hands the rogue bird to me and I race it back to the coop, where the mamas promptly come at me angrily as I hand back their missing baby.  We set a heat lamp on them in the next few minutes and they all huddle beneath it for warmth. The rain is settling. All 24 are safe.

I remember my own babies waiting for me inside.
I run into the house, dripping cold rain everywhere, hoping that Lexi heeded my instructions.
My daughters are in the kitchen, happily munching on grapes that Lexi got from the fridge. "Mom, I got Lyla and me a snack!" she says proudly. And she is not the only one who is so proud.

We are finally dry and munching pancakes when I look at my happy three-year-old and say, "Thank you, Lexi, for doing such a good job of taking care of your sister while Daddy and I were outside saving ducklings!"
Eric laughs. "Who even says that?!"
Even so, this is our normal.
Saved more than ten ducklings from imminent death before 7 AM. Check.

Duck...duck...duck..........Chicken!

I have had ducklings on my property for four days and still had not held one, petted one, or been anywhere within two feet of one. Thank goodness for long camera lenses, right? Our two mamas, Oreo and Cookies&Cream and extremely good at team parenting. They have decided to co-parent all the ducklings together, which is actually very common for Muscovy ducks. This is all well and good for the ducklings, but terrible for us when it comes to wanting to hold one. Instead of fighting off one Mama to borrow her baby for a bit, we have to fight off two. With the instincts of a Mama Bear. 

Now you know why I still hadn't held one.

Thankfully, my sisters came to visit. Convincing Eric to ward off the crazy Mamas turned out to be extremely easy with seven pairs of female puppy eyes and whiny voices added to the mix. Eric bravely crawled into the coop, held the ladies back with a big tree branch, snatched up the closest duckling in sight, and took off, closing the coop door behind him, with the Mamas bawlking, hissing and running to attack his heels. We are forever indebted.

And, we got our wish.

Lyla can now point and say "Duck!", adding one more word to her teeny tiny vocabulary of about, oh, four words. ;-)

 Finally, it was my turn! I tossed Eric the camera and cradled the fuzzy duckling in my hands. It was so warm and started to settle in, closing its eyes as I stroked its head. It felt like it was humming. Perhaps a ducklings version of a kitten's purr.

Mama moment. "My turn" holding the duckling actually means I'm just holding it for my kids to crowd around and pet. 

 This is what happens when an (almost) 16-month-old gets her hands free....

Thankfully the duckling was spared, no harm done.  

I can't get enough of this cuteness. It's a good thing we don't eat ducklings. 

Speaking of eating, I am no longer giving Lexi naming rights to the animals. When she began calling the ducklings, "Chips," "Salsa," "Peanut-butter," and "Coconut oil," I drew the line. We are NOT naming these ducklings. Unless of course, it's something appropriate, such as "Thanksgiving entree," or "Christmas a la duck."

Getting so big already at four days old!

And lest we not forget our other feathered friends...

Abby sporting "Chubby Buff", one of my favorite Buff Orpingtons, due to her mass amounts of fluffy feathers

...CHICKEN!

Make Way for Ducklings!

The ducklings have arrived!

All day long on Saturday, the ducklings hatched. One by one, deliberately. Cookies&Cream is an excellent mother, and only let us sneak glimpses of the babies every once in a while.

 Fresh, and still wet from their eggs, they snuggle in to stay warm.

By the end of the day, all the eggs had hatched. Thirteen beautiful ducklings. Every egg hatched.

Today, Sunday, she has been out with her babies all afternoon. Here they are on their second day of life.

 While I was in the coop taking pictures, all the ducklings started hopping into Oreo's nest box. Oreo, annoyed at all the ducklings climbing all over her, lifted up her wings and tried to shoo them away. Lo and behold, tiny fuzzy heads popped up like popcorn from underneath her to see what all the commotion was about. Oreo's clutch has hatched! Still have no idea how many she has, but if all hatched, 27 would be our grand total. That's a whole lotta ducklings...!

 This is when Cookies&Cream's babies decided that maybe this nest was best. They began nestling under Oreo's wings and didn't leave her side when there own mother headed home. Hopefully they will all sort it out eventually. In the meantime, I can hardly stand the cuteness!

It's Almost Time

I open my eyes to a grey ominous sky lurking just past my bedroom curtains. A chilly breeze blows in the window and I shrink underneath the blankets so only my nose is showing. There goes the beach plans for the day. Isn't it supposed to be the hottest part of summer right now? Maybe I should start reading the weekly forecast.

I slide out of bed and walk out into the living room. Eric and Lexi are already up. Lexi munching on crackers and sitting in front of the old stereo, listening to her Jungle Jam stories with the volume turned low. Eric sits beside her on the couch, working on his laptop. I decide to take a shower quick before the baby wakes up and I lose my chance.

The water is warm and I am lost in my thoughts. The citrusy smell of my shampoo seems to have that effect. I'm in the middle of shaving one leg when Eric bursts through the bathroom door. "BETH, I HAVE AN EGG!!"
I stop shaving. "A chicken egg?" genuinely curious.
"NO! A duck egg!"
"Wait...to eat? Did yogurt finally lay an egg?" Clearly I am confused.
"NO! One of the duck eggs THAT'S ABOUT TO HATCH!!! Better hurry it up if you want to see it while I have it out!"
"Okay, okay! Wait, I'm coming!"

We have been waiting for this day for what seems like forever! The date circled on the calendar is still a few days away, but we are still within the 32-37 day range. It could be any day now.

I jump out of the shower, one leg shaved, the other one neglected, and with water dripping everywhere I hastily grab the nearest thing to a towel I can find. A bathrobe in a size 12 months. Awesome. I dry the best I can, streak to the bedroom, throw on some clothes and then slip and slide back down the hall and into Lexi's bedroom where the two of them wait breathless.

I look at Lexi. Her mouth is stuffed and overflowing with crackers. Really? Maybe I was mistaken on the breathless part.
I look at Eric. His eyes are glowing with excitement. He holds a smooth, glossy duck egg cradled in his hand. It is the color of cream and warm, oh so warm to the touch. The room is dark, except for the one small light that we cover with a piece of PVC pipe to candle the egg. We have been candling eggs since the beginning. About once or twice every week, we wait until one of the moms gets off the nest for food, and then sneak an egg out of the nest box. Then the three of us (and sometimes Lyla, but she probably just thinks we're weird) crowd into the darkest room of the house, which happens to be Lexi's bedroom, turn on the small light, hold the egg against the pipe and assess the egg's development.

But today is different. Today is the day we have been waiting for for weeks now.
"Look," he breathes.
I look.
There inside the egg, all illuminated with light, I can see a rough shape and thump of a tiny heart beating.
Miracle.
And there, there in the space of the egg that is filled with light and oxygen, is a tiny beak. It has broken out of its sack and is breathing air, today for the very first time.
Miracle.
Tap Tap Tap Tap
I hold my breath.
Tap Tap Tap Tap
I gently take the egg, cradling it my hands.
Tap Tap Tap Tap
In my hands, I feel it moving. There inside it's creamy white shell, I see the beak tapping at the walls of its confines. I feel it hitting the shell over and over in a steady rhythmic fashion.
I hold it to my ear.
Miracle.
Tap Tap Tap Tap
"It wants to come out!" I squeal like a toddler, overwhelmed with excited. "It wants to come out! It's going to hatch!!!"
Lexi finally swallows her crackers. "I'M SO ECITED!!!" She yells, missing the X and not caring. "THE BABY DUCKWINGS ARE GOING TO HATCH!!! THEY'RE GOING TO HATCH!!!" She dances around the dark room.
"It could still take a few days," Eric warns, "but I would bet this one will be out in around 24 hours. I need to go put it back in the nest."
"I love it so much," I croon, still holding the egg to my ear, feeling like a proud mama. But I'm not the mama this time. Oreo and Cookies & Cream have made that much clear, and I'm find with that, trust me. The last thing I need is 27 ducklings following me around peeping like crazy. But all the same, my heart swells. It might burst.
Miracle.

Beauty today, love today, and joy today is holding an egg in my hands. An egg filled with the movements and the promise of a brand new life within. Miracle.

More to come as the ducklings begin to arrive!

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.