How, you might be wondering, did I manage to go on a date when Jason is away?! Well, I enjoyed a glorious morning with our newly turned 6 year old! It was a long time in coming, way overdue, and I really hope 6 more years don't pass before we do it again! It should be a yearly tradition, at a minimum. A big thanks to Mom for hanging with Terah and making it possible. It felt like a selfish birthday present in that it was not only a present for Alida but a huge gift for me too. I have missed having one on one quality time with Alida, and clearly so has she! We soaked up our hours out and about, and I was reminded what an absolute delight Alida is when not competing with our other gals and the many demands of our homestead for my attention.
Alida and I did a few quick errands in the rain before landing at the Little Grill for breakfast. Alida was super chatty about how much fun we were having and were going to have! While we waited for our food to come, we played games. And we played some more while we finished eating and savored our hot drinks. We lingered there for a good while, and thankfully by the time we departed the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Then off to Gift and Thrift and Artisan's Hope for her to pick out her birthday present(s). I should have thought more clearly about how much loot one can acquire for $30 at the thrift store when choosing how much to allocate for her shopping spree. She had so much fun pushing the cart around and making her selections. The most touching part for me was she wanted to go to the dolls first thing. She wanted to buy Terah a doll with some of her money. As we were driving home she said that she wanted to be nice to Terah because Kali had been nice to her (buying her Ashley at Christmas). She commented, "Big sisters pass the love down!"
So, no dates with Jason and while I would say we are all doing ok, we are all missing him. Terah didn't talk about him much in the first few days but the frequency of the word "daddy" popping up in her babbling is increasing a lot in recent days. And the other day when she was hollering "daaaady" and I told her he would be home in 3 days, she stopped what she was doing, clapped her hands, and said, "yay." I couldn't agree more! She was even cheering for Daddy on the sidelines of Alida's soccer game today - hope he felt cheered on towards home, all the way in Missouri!
The girls are both on new teams with new coaches for soccer this spring, and both seemed to enjoy their first week of practice and games. I have to gear up for the season, as I find it rather exhausting to add into the mix, though watching their enjoyment of it does make it feel very worth the effort!
It's been a full and overall good week. I think my arm muscles might show a discernible improvement by the end of this stint of morning chores! Some of those coops are heavy! And I'm getting a little more used to getting pecked when I retrieve eggs. I'm still not enjoying checking the mouse trap and was very sad to have to bury a hen today that died (some kind of heart thing most likely). I love my stints of watching the mama and baby chicks and get a kick out of how very happy the chickens are when I let them out to range. Today when I left the compost coop chickens out the mama hen must have had too much of a hankering for some fresh aid to stay inside. She hopped up and went down the ramp, calling for her chickies to join her. My what a ruckus they made calling her back: "wait, mama, have you looked at the size of our legs and wings? we can't jump up there and join you. we aren't big enough yet! come back! come back!!" And come back she did!There have been a few curve balls thrown at me in the routine but mostly it's going as expected. The one day I found a hen meandering around the drainfield roving pens and was perplexed. At nightfall she was still there and obviously wanted to go to bed in one of them. BUT which one? I have not paid close enough attention to the moving pens to keep track of which have 5 hens and a rooster, which no rooster, which 3 or 4 and a rooster... So I thought I was smart when I opened one of the doors to collect eggs and she came meandering around the corner, calmly walked inside and up onto the roost by the rooster. Ah, she was home. But, wait, there were now 6 hens and a rooster in that pen and I was pretty sure that was above capacity. Sigh! Now where did she belong? A phone consult with Jason helped me sort out her probable home, but now I needed to get her back there in the dark by plucking her from the roost and putting her on the right roost. I took Kali along out with me to help me be brave, and hopefully convince her to do the plucking! The hen was securely tucked on the far left of the roost kind of behind the rooster and in back of the nest boxes. Bad roost placement choice hen! I looked at the job and felt like I should be on the roost as I felt more or less like a chicken myself. Kali stepped up to the plate and got as far as touching the birds on the roost. Then we both chickened out and relief surged through me as I saw a head lamp bobbing up and down over at Charlie's. Off we went to make our confession of chickennness and beg for help. In about a minute the hen was in her right coop and I imagine our neighbor has enjoyed more than one chuckle at our expense!
Now we are enjoying more chicken action inside the house that it much more my speed - the first chicks are hatching from the 76 eggs in 2 incubators. We were at 4 before Terah's nap commenced, we'll see if the numbers have grown by the time she wakes (I just heard lots of peeping and Kali just poked her head in to say another just hatched). Terah is SO excited about them - shrieking with delight when we go check on them. They were set to hatch tomorrow evening so I'm hoping we will have a good hatch, with these just being the first early ones. I'm hearing plenty of peeping from the incubators from where I sit. Come on chickies! The sooner you all hatch the sooner I can get back to sleeping normally at night. Terah is in a stint of sleeping a bit better and now I'm up every hour or two to check for pips, check temp and humidity on both incubators, or just listening to the peeping and scuffling and hatching action. Sigh...Ok, I better get a move on as it feels like my "computer related work" these days exceeds (by far) the amount of time I have allotted (and wish) to spend in front of a screen. I do want to note here that the fact that I'm putting up the second blog post since Jason left is in no small part due to my mom's help here on the home front in this time without Jason. There is no way I'd be surviving (and in part even thriving) this week without her! She has watched Terah on the days I've been at work, in the mornings while I do chores, and in many other stints (I even got the shallots and potato onions weeded!). She has read and played with Alida and invited her for multiple sleepovers upstairs. She has fed us, helped me with laundry, done activities with kids when the girls' friends came over and helped us at many of our normal pinch points (bed times and transition times when we need to get somewhere at a certain time) - not to mention helping me pull off three days of special birthday fun for Alida. Thanks Mom!
It is only because she was with us that I felt able to even add in some "extras" this week - we enjoyed going to our neighborhood potluck earlier this week and then yesterday we enjoyed a several hours long visit with our Kurdish neighbors learning how to make their bread and falafel. The girls had a great time playing and we enjoyed visiting, learning and feasting on many delicious foods! Feeling grateful for these new friends and the times we are sharing together, but also wishing that they would never have had to be uprooted from their homes and that they did not have to live worrying for the safety of their loved ones still back home! I want every bite I enjoy of the bread we made together to remind me and inspire me to keep working towards making the world a place in which communities are supported and strengthened and not torn apart!
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