Eggs!!

One of my favorite Christmas presents was an egg from Miss Scarlett!! The smaller browner one on the left is her very first egg ever. Betsy was laying before we got her, so that is why hers is bigger. Eggs start off small and get bigger as the chickens mature. You should have heard Miss Scarlett crowing her heart out after that first egg. She came down out of the nesting box and started making a huge racket. I don't know if it was pain or pleasure or pride... Yesterday (Dec 26) we didn't get any eggs, but today we got THREE! So now one other chicken has started laying. Who could it be?

Christmas morning

Thank you, Auntie Molly, for the fairy wings!! Also, much loved is the Hello Kitty shirt from Auntie Rachel.
And the ballet costume from mommy, and the many, many, many pairs of wonderful tights from Grandma.
Here is Queen Celeste, in her royal pinkness.
Jesse pretty much loved everything, but I think the kazoo from Santa was the most enjoyed.

Looking for a place to live?

Click on the title of this post to see the website I made advertising our downstairs apartment. You can see the pictures of the almost-finally renovated space. Kevin has done an awesome job. Our friend, Matthew, who just got his liscence to do real estate re-wrote our originally sparse and to-the-point bulleted list of features into this totally over the top description. Gotta love the "..cozy up to the gas fireplace as the sun sets over the Japanese maples..." Too funny. Whatever works!!

Betsy laid an egg!

This morning, we noticed that Betsy was not hanging out in the sun with the other chickens.
We found her sitting in the nesting box and watched her closely for the next few hours. She got up once to eat, then back to sitting. Around 2 pm, Elena I went to check on her and...We found an egg!!!
It was admired by young and old alike.

Here is Betsy enjoying a well-deserved treat of calcium rich yogurt with Daisy. Well done, Betsy!

Coincidence?

In the bath

Sleep update

We made Jesse a big boy bed last week. It is just a futon on the floor in Elena's room for now. Kevin and I were getting a bit crowded in our bed and I was hoping that sleeping in another room might help Jesse sleep longer stretches at night. Also, the little creature likes to stay up till 11 pm. This drives me insane-- no time for me to work or relax in the evenings, and I end up staying up way too late (like tonight.) So far, new bed, no big improvements... the first night he did sleep a 5+ hour stretch on his own, but that was probably because he had a 15 mintue nap the day before. Then for several nights, I played musical beds and moved so many times a night I never remembered which bed I was in. The kids would wake each other up and a couple nights they both ended up in bed with us, which felt a bit like we were moving backwards in the sleep game. I started getting insanely sleep deprived and gave up trying to keep Jesse in his own bed for the last half of the night/early morning. Then we started trying to shorten his nap during the day hoping that would make him go to sleep earlier and sleep for longer. The first couple days of cutting his 3 hour nap short, he turned into a demon child and was so miserable I almost called CPS on myself. He did end up going down at 8:30 with Elena, which was absolutely gorgeous for me, but it wasn't worth the misery during the day. So we are back to 3 hour naps, bedtime around 11 pm, and Jesse in bed with us most of the night. In short, we are back where we started. I am trying to stay zen about the whole ordeal... I have living proof that I can get a child to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and sleep through the night in her own bed (thank you Elena), so I figure it will happen with Jesse eventually. He is a different beastie, for sure, though... much more into nursing and much more extreme in his misery. Also, I am lazy about going through the inevitable stress of transitioning... night weaning is horrible and I just can't think of a good time or reason to do it. My rule of thumb is that you keep doing something until you get really resentful and unhappy and then you change it. WIth Elena, I was pregnant when she was this age, and I desperately needed sleep, so we had to do the whole night separation at this age, but I seem to be functioning okay with Jesse nursing a couple times a night. So I haven't quite gotten to that point... though the 11 pm bedtime is really horrible. I think we'll keep working on shortening naps a bit... Not sure what else to do. I suppose I could also try shifting all of this sleep (naps included) earlier, but that would mean waking up at 5 am??? No way no how. Anyhow, that's the sleep update.

No eggs yet!!

But... the girls' waddles are getting redder and plumper, which is a sign of fertility. Also, they now hang out in the coop in the evening chatting and walking around, which means that the light is keeping them awake. The first few nights of the new light, they tried to sleep with the lights on.

Where are our eggs???

We have launched Operation Fresh Egg. After consulting many sites, we decided to try the lightbulb in the coop method. Most of the really "I love my chicken more than myself" websites warn that this method is "unnatural" and thus, not something they recommend. Afterall, chickens should not be tampered with. However, after realizing that we "unnaturally" lengthen our day with electric lights, and I have even "unnaturally" tampered with my hormones for many years, we decided that anything good enough for us was good enough for our chickens. So we put some really nice heat lamps with super bright light bulbs in the coop and turn on the lights at 4 when it starts to get dark and cover them with foil (so the chickens still get the warmth without the light) at 11 pm. That gives them 14 hours of light-- natural and unnatural-- enough to get their little pituitary or endocrine glands activated and get them chickens laying some eggs.
We also put a couple of golf balls in the nesting box to give them the idea that eggs belong there. Just in case they want to lay one and are wondering where they should go.
The girls enjoying some unnatural rays, all thanks to Mr. Edison.

After four nights, no eggs yet... we will keep you posted.

Meet the Erickson Five!

Elena and Jesse are being taken care of two days a week by a wonderful stay-at-home homeschooling mom (and wife of one of my colleagues in the psych dept). They have three wonderful kids and I am really amazingly happy that we were able to convince Miss Amy to be a mother of five two days a week. Most days, Elena doesn't want to come home at the end of the day and always looks forward to seeing the Ericksons. Jesse still cries every time I leave him, but is fine within minutes of me leaving. The other two days a week I have a couple college students named Becca to take care of the kids at our house. They (the two Beccas) are very sweet and loving and Elena loves them a lot.

I just found out that the Erickson's have a blog, and I thought it would be nice for you to see where the kids spend their Mondays and Wednesdays!

www.ericksonfamilyfive.blogspot.com

Ellie's instrument

We got a piano! After many months of looking on Craigslist, we found an old Weber mahogany upright for $300. It needs some cleaning, tuning, and probably tons of expensive refurbishing, but it will definitely do the trick for the time being. Here is a video of Elena and Jesse discovering the piano for the first time.

Random news

1. We found Care Bear! She was "hiding" under a pile of dirty clothes. Elena kept it together during the day, but getting to sleep was very hard without her. She ever reverted back to Missy Mouse for a night-- I guess she still has her mousy charm.

2. We had some adventures in tiny bones and joints this week. No, Jesse has not br0ken his first bone, amazingly. Elena and Kevin were roughhousing and he tugged her arm pretty hard and she started holding it funny and complaining that it hurt. We shrugged it off that evening, but she was pretty miserable during the night and by the morning I was totally freaked out. We rushed to the doctor's office, expecting the worst... then miraculously, 30 seconds before the doctor entered the room Elena says, "mommy, my arm doesn't hurt anymore." Just like that. I am completely confused and embarrassed when I have to report a minute later that the horrible pain in my daughter's arm has suddenly disappeared. It turns out that Ellie had something called "nursemaid's elbow"-- she dislocated it, then it just slipped back into place on its own, probably when I was taking off her shirt. (Yep, Yuki, we got it, too!)

3. Our new chicken has not yet laid an egg yet. We think that perhaps she is too stressed out to lay; she is the lowest in the pecking order and gets bullied a lot. We are considering chicken therapy or antidepressants. It is also possible that she had a light in her old coop that simulated a longer day and that kept her laying through the dark short days of winter. In any case, we still have not had one fresh egg from these little beasties. Lucky that they are so fun to watch!

4. We got the Christmas tree up! It is truly the most beautiful tree we have ever had. I will post a photo soon. In the meantime, here are some idyllic pictures of the kids playing with the lights.