Clucking Nuts!

I went for my first run in the country, and when I came home, I announced to Alex that I was never again leaving our house without my phone, a can of mace, boots and bug spray. Here's why: I had planned for weeks that on the day I was 6 weeks postpartum, I would go for a run. Since I had such an easy labor and delivery with Declan, I was approved to begin exercising early, but nothing intense until 6 weeks. I was dying to get back into shape, but also remembering my first run after Eden . Two months after having Eden , I attempted a run. I made it a quarter of a mile, and was a wheezy, sweaty mess, and feeling undiscovered levels of discomfort in the area that used to be my abs. So I had somewhat low expectations for my run. Nevertheless, I was excited. I took my car out and measured the shortest trip by road, making a block around our property. It is just under 3 miles. I made note of landmarks every quarter of a mile, so I would know exactly how far I had run. On th...

We have the greatest and strangest cat. I am not a cat person... at all. I like other people's cats, but never wanted one of my own. Well, then Alex and I bought a house. It was nearly a hundred years old and was not what you would call a tight house. Our heating bills were atrocious. So, we knew we had leaks. Shortly after moving in, we began to discover mouse droppings. So, I went and bought some mouse traps and Alex set them out. Days went by and we kept finding droppings, but did not catch any mice. So, I bought more traps. This was before we had children, so I was at war. Our house was a gauntlet of traps. Still we did not catch anything. One morning I woke up and watched a mouse the size of a hamster walk across the middle of the floor and help itself to the dog's dish. When it saw me, it calmly walked back across the middle of the floor and disappeared down the cold air return. I was furious. I told Alex that if he did not figure out where they were coming in...

My son has a cardboard fetish. I can't tell you how many times he has come up to me carrying an empty cardboard container with a hungry look in his eyes, and asked, “Mom... Can I have this?” His room is a sea of diaper boxes, shoe boxes, and other random boxes. He does not just hoard them. He builds with them, using in his words, “good, strong tape.” I did not start labeling this a fetish until one night, after the kids were asleep in their beds (or so I thought), and I went to the bathroom. Once past the point of no return on the toilet, I looked over and noticed that there was no toilet paper. Now this happens often. I should have bought stock in toilet paper before Eden started potty training. You would think I would learn to look before committing myself to the toilet... Oh well. Anyway, when I noticed that the toilet paper was used up, I called out to Alex my predicament. And I heard a little voice from Micah's room. “Mom? You know that round cardboard thing......

We now have 14 chickens and 4 more coming in a month. My house is beginning to smell like a barn, but the coop is not done... not that that matters as the older chicks are not yet fully feathered, and it is too cold for them to live outside. I'm becoming impatient to get these chickens out of my house... mostly because they are escaping. A few days ago, when we got home, we did a quick head count and found that one chicken was missing. Our biggest bird, Gwendolyn, was hanging out in our laundry room. This is not the first time that Gwen has escaped. Chasing chickens around my house is not what I had envisioned when I agreed to this crazy scheme. I have now completely gotten over my chicken phobia. Our birds are very friendly, and will hop right into our hands and snuggle down. Chickens are strange animals. When we got our first brood, one was injured. The little fluffball baby chicks were going at the injured bird trying to peck it to death. We learned that thi...

I'm a person who is naturally wired to raise boys. My son makes sense to me. He and I speak the same language. I always wanted to have a girl also, but the idea also scared me.  Well, then Eden came along, and broke every preconceived idea I had about having a daughter. She is the perfect little girl. And by perfect, I mean that before her first birthday she knocked out a tooth, she wears clunky boy's boots with a pink fluffy skirt, laughs when boys throw rocks at her, and is the world's best cuddler. She is already tall and slim for her age, has porcelain skin and looks like a small angel. In contrast, her laugh sounds like a witch's cackle, her smile has a hint of crazy in it (which is aided by the missing tooth), and she has wispy hair that flies in every direction. She has a vivid imagination. Recently I was sitting on the couch and she came running up to me in a dramatic frenzy. She scrambled into my lap, tucked her feet in, and said in a mock terrifie...

Early on a Tuesday morning, I got a phone call from an excited lady at the post office, "I have a package here for you, and it's peeping!" I knew the chicks had been shipped the afternoon before and were safe in the box for 72 hours, so I made arrangements to pick them up in the afternoon. I decided that with 2 very excited preschoolers, it would be better to wait until Alex was home to open the box. It also bought me more time before I was committed to actually touching a chicken. Picking up chickens from the post office was a new experience for both myself and the post lady. With a grin she confessed that she had been peeking in the holes all day, and sent me off with my box, wishing me luck. I put the box on the floor of my van where the kids could hear the cheeping, then drove home slowly. When we got home, I had Micah place the box on the kitchen table. And after a few minutes of the kids bumping the box trying to peak through the holes, and whispering ...

Two weeks before the arrival of our third child, I went into labor... that's right. I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions for a while, and they were getting more intense, but one day they just kept coming. I kept track of them all day... 15 minutes apart... 10 minutes apart. We went about our normal business, taking care of our children and put our kids to bed. Alex and I sat up watching a movie, timing contractions, when we heard the unmistakable sound of vomit. We ended up spending most of the night cleaning up our son and changing sheets, while he fought the stomach flu. By 5 am , my contractions were 5 min apart and a minute long... time to head to the hospital. So we packed up our kids, and brought Micah a bucket. I sat in the hospital for an hour or so while the nurses monitored my contractions. It seemed I was in labor, the contractions were real. But when they checked my cervix, there was no progress, which was not normal. Well, then I started vomitting. The low po...