The Emus go for a swim

  

The Emus are turning out to be wonderful pets. I continue to be surprised by how friendly, curious, and fearless they seem to be. They have now graduated from living in the house (Thankfully!) to sleeping in the rabbit barn and playing outside during the day, to finally living 100% of the time with the goats and chickens in the goat pasture/and shed. Logan brings them out every day to play in the yard and munch on clover in the lawn. They follow the kids around wherever they are playing and generally enjoy having human company. They are getting quite tall now, about the same as Emmett at the moment, but I expect they will pass him pretty soon.

In the first couple of pictures Logan was trying to build a little play-stand perch for his cockatiel and the emus being ever curious had to be right there in the middle of the action. They kept picking up the tools he was using and standing in the middle of his project and in general being rather pesky! But they adore him, and he them, so while his project took considerably longer than it might have otherwise, I think he was fine with the interruptions. They love for Logan to scratch them under the chin, and tend to fall asleep standing up when he starts. It looks hilarious!


About a week ago we got a little kiddie pool for Claire and Emmett (in shocking pink, thanks to Claire helping pick it out!) One thing we did not know about emus when we got them is how much they love water! I don't think they can actually swim, but we don't have any water around here deep enough to let them find out. But when they saw the kids playing in the kiddie pool they came running. at first they stood outside and watched the babies splashing, and in a few minutes they where drinking water over the side. When Emmett got out and then climbed back in it was like a light-bulb moment for them, "Oh!! So that's how you get in there!!" And that was it, Emmett and Claire had very wet, peeping, playmates for nearly an hour after that. The emus would lay down, roll over, and splash themselves and the kids with water. Every few minutes they would get out, run a few laps at top speed across the yard, then come and climb back over the side of the pool to play some more.

Bloody April

(Flowers Claire brought in and arranged on the windowsill) 

I'm really kind of glad April is over. It turned out to be a rather bloody month. 

My sweet Ethan went outside to play with Matthew and the two little ones for a while, so I could start dinner. I gave the bigger boys instructions to stay close to the house and keep an eye on the babies for just a few minutes. Well, Ethan "forgot" what I had just said and took off for parts unknown leaving Matthew playing with Claire and Emmett on the back porch. Matthew realized after about 5 minutes that Ethan wasn't coming back and started calling him. When Ethan didn't answer he took off to find him taking the little ones along. Ethan in the meantime had climbed up a tree and fell out head first. He managed to knock himself out and Matthew found him in the woods on the far side of our goat pasture, dazed on the ground in a pool of blood. Matthew slung Ethan over his shoulder and carried him wounded soldier style, telling the babies to follow him and screaming for me to come help. Thankfully we had the windows open and I heard Matthew as soon as he started screaming for me to come help. By the time I made it to him he was over half way back to the house. Poor Ethan ended up in the emergency room and had to get 3 staples in his head. Other than the cut just inside his hairline on his forehead, he was fine. 

My boys make bows and arrows out of sticks and string. They also have toy bows and arrows with rounded safety tips that they use for practicing archery in the yard. They set up straw bales with paper targets and shoot into them. They are quite good at hitting their targets. But before I tell this story I should probably throw in here a little side note so it makes more sense. 

One of our English bulldogs Ginger was bred two months ago and her due date came, and we got puppies!!! Four adorable bulldog puppies, with wrinkles and spots and puppy breath! All four boys, we have a lot of boys around these parts it seems! 

So the morning that Ginger had her puppies I was helping her get situated and latch all the puppies on to nurse. Claire and Emmett were being very "helpful"! So I sent them out of the room to go play with toys somewhere else. Emmett went and found Ethan and they went off to play together, and Claire went to the big boys bedroom, right next door to the room I had Ginger and the puppies in. Just a second later Claire started screaming! Matthew (who was helping me with the dogs) and I jumped up and ran to see what was wrong. Claire had picked up one of the boys safety arrows (you know, the ones with the rounded tips!) and somehow had fallen and impaled the roof of her mouth with the arrow. The arrow was on the floor before I rounded the corner. There was blood gushing out of her nose and mouth, and she was screaming and choking. I ran to the bathroom with her and and told Logan to call his dad, and I tried to calm her and wipe away some of the blood so I could see how bad it was and what I needed to do. Matthew went back to the puppies to make sure they were ok, and I decided that I needed to get Claire to Children's Hospital ASAP! I left all the boys home with Logan watching the baby, and took off as quickly as I could. Rodrigo met us on the way to the hospital, and finished driving us there. Turns out the arrow had scraped her soft palate, bounced back further and actually cut all along next to one of her tonsils.  In the end, they decided not to do anything for her, since the bleeding had stopped. But it was really scary! 

And now the arrows are way up, out of reach...but all of the sticks...? We live surrounded by woods and trees. There are "dangerous" things everywhere. So I pray, a lot. And I warn them to be extra careful. And to please never, ever, ever put anything like sticks or arrows into their mouths. But they all still climb trees and they still play with sticks, and I try to remember that ultimately I can't wrap them in bubble wrap and keep them on the floor next to me 100% of the time. I worry, more than I should probably, but I'm the mama, and that's what we do. I just try not to let that be the mama that my children know. I want them to know that I love them and I want them to know that I am very concerned for their safety, and their well-being, and I want them to learn to take care of themselves and be smart. But this whole growing up and having accidents really scares me some days! 

In other news, both of my goats had babies! Daisy had twin boys and Larkspur had a single boy. So now we have to figure out what to do with three little bucklings. I was hoping for at least one doeling...but no. We all just seem to have boys around here :-). Having Claire was a total surprise, I mean I have boys...it's what I do! But what a fun surprise she has been!

P.S.The park pictures are from a new to us park that we found close to home and went exploring last week. I love catching pictures of my big boys playing with their littler siblings. They hold their hands when we walk and talk to them and teach them things, under no prompting from us. They are usually (but not always:-)) extremely patient and attentive with them. I love watching that, it makes my heart swell! 

The Emu Invasion

We have a pair of Emu chicks.  Actually, Logan has a pair of emu chicks in the house. Well, after that sentence I'm not really sure what else I should write about them.

I guess a bit of an explanation might be in order. The year after we moved here from Guatemala, in September of 2004 we took the boys to the Tennessee Valley Fair for the first time. Logan was seven years old. Of all of the animal exhibits there his very favorite thing was the petting zoo. They had a tame emu. Logan had never seen anything like it before, it was a giant 5 foot tall bird that looked like a dinosaur. He was smitten! All he talked about after that trip to the fair was that someday he wanted an emu. Every year we would go back to the fair and Logan would head straight for the petting zoo, and the emu.

 Any time we talked about getting a farm, or a pet or animals in general over the next 9 years Logan was sure to bring up emus. He wanted one, and he wasn't going to let us forget it! When we sold our house last summer and started looking for a small farm, Logan mentioned that he hoped it would have room for an emu. Rodrigo and I hadn't seen any emu chicks for sale in years so we nodded our heads and said, "Sure son." Haha, little did I know...

On Sunday afternoon Rodrigo and Logan were looking at the farm and garden section of Craigslist trying to find me a livestock guardian dog to take care of my goats and chickens. We've spotted coyotes in the fields across the road (in broad daylight ) and hawks are constantly flying over head scoping out the rabbit arks in the yard, hoping for an escapee. So I really need a good dog to help out around here! Well, they didn't find me a dog, instead they spotted an ad for emu chicks. And that, as they say, was that. The phone number was called and the directions given, and within a couple of hours Logan became the very happy almost 16 year old owner/ caregiver to a pair of adorable emu chicks.

For the moment they are living in a old baby play-yard converted to emu brooder in our dining room. The lady we got them from says that within two weeks they should be over two feet tall, so other arrangements will have to be made as soon as possible.

Honestly, this is just exactly the kind of thing that I would have begged my parents to let me do when I was a kid. They probably wouldn't have let me, they were pretty strict about the no weird livestock or pets. In retrospect they did let me have a pretty wide range of "normal" pets when I was a kid, but you know, I always had aspirations of starting my own zoo. Gerald Durrell was my hero, he traveled the world collecting animals and started a zoo! I read all of his books cover to cover so many times they became quite ragged and tattered after years of being carted around the globe with me. I always thought that when I grew up and had kids of my own and they wanted something that really and truly interested them, and we were in a place where we would be able to provide it with the type of home it needed, and it wasn't going to pose a threat to any little ones, or require a fortune to buy or for it's upkeep that we would let them have it. So here we are now with Logan's emu chicks in the house...

Spring Weekend

We couldn't have asked for nicer days. We had no where we had to be and nothing that we had to do other than enjoy each other! Well, there were lots of homesteading chores that were attended to, but with Rodrigo home from work and everyone pitching in together, we got them done in no time and it barely even felt like "work".

We slept with our windows open on Friday night and awoke early to the sounds of birds and squirrels playing in the woods behind our house. We ate breakfast quickly, eager to get outside and enjoy the sunshine on bare arms and faces! Claire declared that we should have a picnic, so we did. We spent hours eating, talking and laughing on a giant quilt spread out in the sunshine in our front yard. We played with the dogs. The big boys and their Daddy played with boomerangs, and chased each other and acted silly. Emmett discovered pretty flowers. Claire picked wild onions and made mud pies with them. Rodrigo and the boys built me a bigger brooder for my chickens. We planted flowers, and planned where our veggie garden would be going. We had fun.

We came in when it started to get dark and had a late supper of warm, buttery scrambled eggs, toast and homemade re-fried black beans. Everyone was calm, and happy and glowing from a day well spent together, outside playing and working and enjoying each other.