babies

One of our chickens, Honeydew, started to act broody a while back - wanting to sit on eggs. After she kept it up for a few days, Nana made her a private nest in the old dog house annex to the chicken coop. She passed a trial run of sitting on a clutch of Sophie's wooden play eggs, so Nana went to Swampy Acres to get some possibly-fertilized eggs. Honeydew sat on her eggs faithfully for 23 days, until first two, then four, then six babies hatched!

This is Radish.

Espresso.

And Mama Honeydew, not happy with me for intruding.

There were two more eggs that had chicks inside, but sadly they didn't make it out of their eggs. Papa helped Sophie bury them in a flower bed. The other six are doing fabulously - Honeydew is such a great Mama hen! They are not yet a week old and they are already following Honeydew out into the yard, where she pecks treats and drops them in front of her chicks, teaching them what to eat. Then they all go back in their little nest house for a nap snuggled under Honeydew's wings. It's incredibly entertaining to just sit and watch them eat, drink, play, and fight. And I love watching Honeydew's mothering.

Sophie is working on taming the chicks right from the very start. Welcome to the next generation of chickens in the family: Stew, Mindy, Espresso, Radish, Darrell & Darrell. 

good advice

Sophie gave me some really great advice this morning. I'm so glad that I listened to her! First some background:

A couple weeks ago a spot in my lower back started hurting pretty badly and I began to suspect that I might have a compression fracture (lovely prednisone side effect), and it got so bad one day that I went to the doctor. Among her advice, she strongly suggested that I wear athletic shoes at work instead of my usual Dansko's. I have worn and loved Dansko shoes since I was 13 years old so I was skeptical, but I was in enough pain to give her advice a try. I bought a new pair of tennis shoes (all my old ones were too dirty from camping to wear at work) and wore them for a week. Within a day or two I felt immensely better. Then the weekend came, and I wear slippers at home and did wear Dansko's a couple times out and about.

So today it's Monday, and as we're rushing out the door (always happens...) I was hesitating between wearing the tennis shoes or the Dansko's. I decided on the Dansko's, and Sophie looked up from putting her shoes on and said, "Mom, those shoes will make your back hurt, you're supposed to wear your fast shoes." I responded that my back had been feeling better and I thought I would try wearing the Dansko's again. She held my "fast shoes" up to me and suggested I take them with me in case I changed my mind. So I did - mainly just to make her happy so as to get out the door faster.

Fast forward a couple hours and I'm on my feet at work, bending over the counter to write in a chart, and I realize that my back hurts so much that I'm practically stuck bent over and I have to push myself back up to standing. By lunch time I was more than ready to change into my fast shoes that I had left inside the car; another couple hours of wearing my fast shoes and my back was already feeling better and I was so thankful that I listened to Sophie earlier. Thank goodness for bossy, know-it-all almost-five-year-olds!