happy Cinco de Mayo!

doing the Mexican hat dance

five months old today!

our little gal in a big world

A few musings on Zor as she currently stands (or lays, really):

She is really into rolling over, although she doesn't just roll and roll. It's once over from back to tummy and sometimes back the other way. She's taking her time on it, along with laughing. She still hasn't fully laughed. Just her big smiles, screaches, deep breaths, and other indications that she's happy.

Loves to suck toes! Her own mostly, but anyone else's that get in the way.

Has been enjoying teething biscuits, and reaches for beverages when people are holding her and trying to take a drink. My mom gave Zor her first biscuit one evening when we were at a concert. These are shots from that:

Loves to pull blankets and clothes over her face and lay there breathing strangely, like she's suffocating. Naturally, I pull the blanket off in a high state of agitation, and there she is underneath, smiling. The other day, she was lying on the floor beside me while I worked at the table, and I heard her doing that breathing. I looked down in alarm, and there she lay watching me - with no blanket in sight. Then she smiled big. What a pickle.

For the most part, sleep is okay. She alternates; one night she'll sleep for long stretches, and the next she'll be up every four hours to nurse, or more often to fuss. The last couple of nights have been real sketchy for sleep, but I know the problem. Two nights ago I succumbed to a billboard advertisement for a coffee frosty at Wendy's. I split it with Jason, so come on - there shouldn't have been THAT much coffee in it. I drank it about 8 p.m. Zor went to bed around 9 and slept great, but when the coffee hit the breastmilk for our midnight feed, boy, howdy. She was up on the hour, and from 3 - 5 a.m. she was plumb awake and sociable. This wasn't good since I was leading worship the next morning at church and had a practice at 8:00 a.m. I hadn't lead worship in awhile and was anxious over it, so this didn't help. Needless to say, it took us the rest of Sunday to recover, into the night last night, and some today. I won't be making that mistake again soon.

She has started smiling for the camera, though that isn't any wonder, as many pictures as we all take of her. I try to be somewhat discreet so she doesn't get a big head.
She is interested in any one toy for less and less time anymore. We only have a few for her, which is intentional, but I might have to break down and make others out of household items or something. I dunno - she seems a little young for tupperware and pots and pans and whatnot. She isn't even sitting up. I remember when I was still pregnant and looked over at her up-and-coming toy basket. It cracked me up real good, because, gee whiz, talk about toy deprivation for a little kid. Now she's got a few more, so don't worry. Zoralee likes to watch the animals on the lawn. She especially loves Molly the Schnauzer and reaches for her, but Molly doesn't pay her much attention. Murray the Chihuahua, playful as can be, wishes she'd hurry and grow up. The horses are curious about her, and I have to keep the chickens from pecking her little worm toes.

conversations THROUGH babies (?)

I'm curious about this thing we adults do whereby we use babies and pets as conversation mediums. For example, the following conversation took place a couple of mornings ago while Jason was playing with Zor and I was cooking breakfast. (Rated PG)


Jason, to a fussy Z: Zoralee, what's your problem?
me: Be gentle with her! She's just tired.
Jason: Mama's trying to do attachment parenting with you. I'm doing dis-attachment. She's yin and I'm yang, because she has a yin and I have a yang.
me: Oh, Papa's not trying to do dis-attachment with you. That's ridiculous. Anyway, it was Papa's yang and Mama's yin that got us into this predicament.

I mean, we were talking to each other through our 5 month old daughter. I remember doing the same thing with our dog, Beth. I guess we only do this with people/animals who don't have a voice of their own. It would be a little loony to use a perfectly conversational fellow adult as our medium, with them sitting right there.

Other times, we'll put words into Zoralee's mouth, as though she's backing us up on some point, like, "Papa, Mam's really thirsty and could use a glass of water." Do we really think that a baby's supposed opinion lends credibility to what we're saying? If anybody has psychological insight into this phenomenon, do tell.

hellooo, ladies

Cock-a-doodle-doodle-doo-ster

You're our one and only rooster

If the hens had only knew, Sir

They'd have practiced shoo-a-shoo-ster

You'll take any hen to do-ster

Even though you're nothin' to her

They might wish for someone tru-er

But that's the nature of a rooster

We got ourselves a rooster last week! A friend had three, and begged us to take one off of his hands...for $6, so maybe it wasn't a total beg. Evidently, his hen to rooster ratio was too small, so the roosters weren't acting kindly toward one another. We got the trouble maker of his batch, whom J has named Six Dolla' Roo. We introduced him to the ladies at dusk when everybody was roosting, and we watched in the shadows for any drama. There wasn't much. The hens pecked at his bright red waddles and combs, an anomoly in their otherwise black-and-whiteness, and he explored the coop slowly, making small hesitant vocalizations. We left after 10 minutes, because nobody seemed too concerned with each other. Well, Jason peeked in about 3 minutes later, and who was on the top roost, with three hens on either side of him, and all the rest of the hens relegated to the bottom roost? You guessed it. Old Sixey.

looking the new guy over and cackling amongst themselves

Old Sixey might be my name for him, a blend between the fact that he was $6, is old compared to the hens (he's a year, and they're like three months), and that he's supposed to be sexy. Reminds me of this Jack Handy deep thought:
*

For a while there, instead of calling Grandpa "Grandpa," I started calling him "Grandpappy." But he didn't like that, and asked me to go back to Grandpa. So I did, but I changed it a little. I put an "e" in instead of an "a," so it became "Grendpa." At first he didn't notice, but then he said, "What did you call me?" "Grandpa," I said. But then I went back to calling him Grendpa. Finally he just said to go ahead and call him Grandpappy, which I did, only I changed it a little bit to "Grendpeppy."
*
Today, a bunch of us sat out on the lawn, watching how the dogs would respond to the chickens free ranging. They are behaving themselves, so we left the chickens out for the afternoon and evening. Near dark, Jason went out to see how Six Dolla' Roo had done in rounding the hens up into the coop. That's one of a rooster's main jobs, see. He was inside alright, settled in for the night on the top roost, with five hens. The other five were huddled together near our back porch, apparently waiting for Jason to come out and lead them home. Old Sixey better get it together. Jason figures he's so un-used to being top guy on the totem pole that he thinks having five hens is good enough.


If nothing else, I've got to say he is a quite stunning addition to the flock. He's huge compared to the hens, and it keeps surprising me how perfectly he MATCHES them. They are the same breed, so I don't know what I expected. It's like we special ordered a water pitcher to go with our dinnerware, and they all look perfect together.

Old Sixey and the coming storm

elks and deers

I think of Corky from the movie, "Waiting for Guffman," when I say elks and deers in the improper plural like that. That's a GREAT movie, if you're a fan of dry, mockumentary style humor.

Now then.

Doesn't Jason look determined here? Shoulders back. Jaw set.

He was getting out of the way, thinking I was photographing Zoralee.

It makes me giggle.

We went walking as a larger family group a few evenings ago (so, including Mom and Pops), to the woods nearby in search of the elk. It was blustery and cold, but we were rewarded with a fieldful of critters, which we watched for about twenty minutes. Here's a short clip that shows them in the distance. Sorry about the cruddy quality - it's with my point and shoot camera. Especially watch for the running deers' reflection in the puddle.

status of "the other" chickens

As for the chickens who aren't in the freezer, there are 10 egg-layers of the breed called Barred Plymouth Rocks. Someday they may be totally free-range, but there are a couple of steps between now and then: 1. our dogs and the neighborhood dogs must realize they shouldn't eat the chickens, and 2. they must then yearn to protect the chickens from hawks, eagles, coyotes, and foxes. Meanwhile, we'll keep them in this portable daytime yurt that Jason built. It is easily moved around the yard for fresh grass and bugs.



We think that PVC pipe would be great material for kids to fort-build with. What you see there cost less than $30 and is infinitely adjustable, and you could use tarps, blankets, sheets, whatever for walls. If the whole thing caves in due to design flaws, it's so light it wouldn't matter! Some zip ties and chicken wire rounded off the supplies we needed.

This is the day we moved the main chicken coop to a better spot in the yard, pulling it with the pickup and rolling it on logs. (Yes, Zoralee is referred to as Zoey, a common mistake since she has a little friend named Zoey.)

all settled in and roosting for the night

haikus on parenthood

all things that you drop
socks, pacies, blankets, toys, fruit
go under the bed

got cricks in my wrists
babies are hard on bodies
chiropractor says

Friends! Want to have a haiku-off in celebration of parenthood / your folks / your kids? The haiku style I'm thinking of has three lines: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, and 5 syllables. Email or comment me your haikus (stillwalking2002 at yahoo.com). On or around Mother's Day I'll post them all in one big blog.

two new Zoralee videos

I advise not having a beverage in your mouth when you click Play on the first one. Also, click "HQ" after it starts to see in higher quality.



Some people might wonder why there is a video of Z doing NOTHING. Well, that's just it. She is never this non-wiggly.

the contemplative element of love

This quote goes out to anybody who gives of themself day in and day out. I think of Joanna, who, along with her husband, adopted premature special-care twins about the time our Zoralee was born. Within three weeks of bringing the girls home, they got pregnant (after 8 years of infertility - good times - and she is super sick all the time). I think of Darbi, who has given and given to her brother, with very few positive results. I think of all mothers.

"In the West we have a tendency to be profit-oriented, where everything is measured according to the results....In the East - especially in India - I find that people are more content to just be, to just sit around under a banyan tree for half a day chatting to each other. We Westerners would probably call that wasting time. But there is value to it. Being with someone, listening without a clock and without anticipation of results, teaches us about love. The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. Of course it is natural in love to want the best for the other person, but whether it turns out that way or not does not determine the value of what we have done. The more we can remove this priority for results the more we can learn about the contemplative element of love."
- Brother Geoff, as quoted by Mother Teresa in the book, "A Simple Path"

(bolded emphasis mine)

chicken butcherin' day

(I don't think the pics I've chosen to display are disturbing, especially if you've ever bought a whole chicken at the grocery store, FYI.)

So! The end of the line for the Cornish Rock Cross chickens finally arrived. There was some skepticism within the family as to whether or not we'd go through with the killin.' But at $15 a bag for feed, with these ripe birds going through a bag and a half a week, we were ready.

Jason wanted to do it the most humanely, which after much research he determined was to hold the bird upside down until it fell asleep and then slit the jugular with a very sharp knife so that it'd bleed out. If you don't sever the spinal cord, it supposedly does less flopping and flapping. Well, we never could get a single bird to "fall asleep," and I'm not sure how upside down-er we could've held them. But I'm happy to report that every kill took only a couple of minutes and was done with the utmost of care....with one exception. I'll let Jason tell anybody that story who cares to know. The short of it is that he thought he'd try his hand at breaking one's neck, and it didn't quite work.

He was the executioner and the main eviscerator (skinner and gutter), with me helping as I could get outside between caring for Zor. The thing that struck me the most was how easy it is to skin them, like unwrapping a feathery coat. Also, their little innards are so beautiful and colorful. I did the final cleanup and packaging inside. The whole thing was easier than we'd both anticipated, but more time-consuming. It took us a whole day to cull and process 14 chickens, which seems like a long time! We watched some youtube videos of people processing a bird within a few minutes. But we were inexperienced in the ways of chicken butchering, save a day I participated in 15 years ago. Anyway, are some shots from the event, and I'll summarize our thoughts about the whole experiment at the end.

We culled the chickens at 10 weeks old, and they ended up being 2.5 to 3 pounds apiece, skinned. That, my friends, isn't much. Even if you don't count the setup cost, this is probably NOT the most economical way to eat chicken, even antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken. Of course, cost is only one factor, and in the right season with the right breed, they can forage for bugs, which cuts down significantly on feed costs. The main thing was getting the experience under our belts in case it's ever a necessity. There's definitely a sense of accomplishment in raising a portion of our food and in knowing the chickens had a decent life rather than being squished into cages.

*

However, our feelings were summed up in this 10:00 p.m. conversation:

Jason, shouting wearily from the shower: Man, that was a long day of butchering chickens, huh?

Me, still packaging chickens: Whoo, yeeeah.

[long, long pause for contemplation]

Jason: I don't want to be a chicken farmer.