Riding a Horse at 6 a.m.

What were you doing at 6 a.m. this morning? I was attempting to read the Bible and have my quiet time. I try to get up at 5:30 every morning so I can have 30 minutes or so to myself. Then I can inject coffee into my veins and get a little Jesus peace. This morning I had to search for peace next to a squeaky rocking horse.

Paul got up with me this morning and while I often can get him to snuggle while I read and pray, today it was a no go. He wanted to play with Legos, and his toolset, and a squeaky horse. I placated him with fruit snacks and tried to focus.

In the Bible, Jesus welcomes distractions, no matter what he is doing. So this morning, I gulped coffee and tried to be grateful for a loud horse at 6 a.m.

Love and Logic Skirts

This is what Paul looked like when I rolled out of bed this morning. Notice the lovely ballerina skirt. I could say this is the first time it's happened, but that would be a lie. One time I put him to bed and he woke up in a grass skirt. As part of our "Love and Logic" parenting, we put the kids to bed (together if they want) and let them go to sleep when they feel ready. Sometimes this means they go right to sleep, but sometimes it means they stay up late playing dressup together. Last night when I went to bed at 10, there was a tea party going on in Claire's room. For some reason, Barbie had a teacup on her head. Paul's skirt happened sometime between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Adam and I took a Love and Logic class when Claire was about one year old. We have consistently benefited from the course. There are several one-liners that we use consistently: "Uh-oh. Little bit of room time coming right up!" and "I love you too much to argue with you." are our favorites. We use them so much that the kids have taken to saying them. I have heard both Claire and Paul in a dispute say, "I love you too much to argue with you!" It's pretty awesome.

Raising Ducks in Your Kitchen

These are the ducks. From left to right, we have George Washington Quackers, Skeletor Stinkor Washington Boyette, and Ducky Strawberry Shortcake Washington Boyette.

Last year for Lent, we raised chickens in a coop in our kitchen. Our kitchen is quite long, so we were able to separate them from the food areas and tried to keep it as hygienic as possible. The chickens stank, though, and made noise into the night as well as had floating feathers. We took them to a chicken farm where they were going to be raised to live into long life. Nugget was promptly stolen by a hawk but word on the street is that Birdie still is there.

This year we decided on ducks. It would be easier, we thought, to let them go in a local duck pond than search for a farm for them to live at. We did some research and adopted three baby ducks from a local feed store.

The ducks were quieter and there weren't any feathers flying around like the chickens. They did somehow manage to poop outside of the coop while they were in it. They would line their rears up to holes in the wire and poop on the floor. This was frustrating as was the wood shavings that got all over our house.

On the plus side, they liked to play in a kiddie pool in the backyard and would clean off their shedding feathers that way. They slept all night and put up with whatever position they were held in.

Two weekends ago we released them at the local pond. They were about two months old, nearly full-grown and very healthy. Ducky did have an incident with our dog Wesley, but was healed minus a bald spot. I had been feeding them high-protein duck food and leaving them outside during the day as much as possible to acclimate them to the outdoors.

They jumped right into the pond. The next day we went back and found only Skeletor. He had paired off with a mallard duck and denied knowing us. The other two have yet to be seen.

So we learned several lessons through this experience.

1. No matter what the species, birds in your kitchen are generally not a good idea.

2. Pond ducks are much different that ducks raised indoors.

3. Duck poop and chicken poop stink about the same.

4. We don't want to be urban or rural farmers.

Please, dear reader, learn from our experience.

Getting over myself

Dear Blog readers,

Yep, I haven't been blogging a lot lately. This is due to my illusion of self-importance. I haven't been blogging because I've been thinking to myself, "This is not worthy of my blog. My blog is only seriously intelligent stuff." I know. Isn't that hilarious? So now I've gotten over myself and will be blogging regularly.

Last week I read the book The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I highly recommend this book. The book contains practical advice on how to be intentional about being happy. I am very happy, but I am guilty of several "happiness drains" and I'm trying to fix them.

One happiness drain of mine is clutter. There are few square inches in our house not covered with papers, books, or toys. I'm working on it.

I also have e-mail clutter. I'm slowly unsubscribing to lots of e-mail newsletters and deleting unused accounts. Today I went to delete my myspace account but then waxed nostalgic when I started printing off my old blog posts. I blogged on that site for four years and have lots of memories stored there. I printed them and will bind them. I realized that my writing is not always worthy of a professional publisher, but it's full of memories and usually funny. How can you not laugh at blogs about poop?

That's all for right now, but you know more will be coming soon. I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack in action!