My baby

My baby girl is almost one.

She loves peas and kitties, and her thumb. She hates socks and her car seat, and hats of any kind. She is one tough little cookie, since she gets run over by her older brothers all the time.

When I learned that I was pregnant with her, I cried for two days and didn't sleep for two weeks.

Now?


I am so in love. I can't keep myself from scooping her up to kiss her sweet soft cheeks, and her eyeballs, and her chin, and her neck... all the time.

I can't believe it's almost been a year since the truth hit me smack in the face (well, actually it was a different body part), and I could no longer be in denial that in fact, she was.

And she is.

And she is almost a year old.

Green and yellow

(green and yellow)

(just a little mud)

(recycled, frugal, homemade weight thing)

(just the right size)

(the world is his sandbox)

(and there was much rejoicing!)

Animal handling skills

We had a dramatic celebration of victory!


After a quest of epic proportions, my youngest boy courageously captured his adversary, the skunk. (Really. You have no idea.)

He protected himself with socks, of course. There was also a backpack, a bowl, and a toy chainsaw involved.

The socks were multipurpose. At one point he also used them to cover his nose, because as you know, skunks tend to be rather stinky.

I later found the skunk in it's final resting place, a boy's dirty clothes hamper.

This week's challenge at I Heart Faces is "Dramatic black and white". Although, maybe this isn't the type of drama they were after?


Come join the fun!

A tractor

Have I mentioned we recently bought a tractor?


Well, not that one.

I guess that means we have two, both very fun.

A moment

I have tried so many times to get a good sun flare.

I had a moment yesterday when I thought I finally nailed it, until I looked at it on my computer screen.

Can I just say it?


Stupid cheap five-blade lens sun flare artifact! Just look at the pentagon that ruined the photo! A pentagon! Don't say you can't see it.

Yeah, I could clone it out.

No, I'm not going to. It's just laundry.

Yes, I know this is the worst photo I have ever used for You Capture. There are better ones I took of the clothesline. Then again, the flare is a darn good flare.

There you have it, a moment (yet again) when I swear I'm gonna get myself a better lens. And someday, someday soon, a moment will arrive that I actually do.

I hope this is not the moment you say to yourself, "Wow. I'm never visiting her You Capture again. That girl needs help."

There may yet be a moment I realize that I really shouldn't participate in You Capture when I'm grumpy (or at 2am).

You Capture - "A Moment"

Socks

Around here, no one wants to wear socks. I find discarded socks everywhere.

Summer can't come soon enough for all these bare feet.

I also can't wait for summer.


I was a rebel and used my clothesline today.

I admit it was really not warm outside, but it was windy. The laundry almost got dry.


The little bean asked to see chickens today (she loves watching them through the window), so I grabbed her and some bread, and went out the back door.

We sat on the back step. I threw bits of bread at the hens and she laughed and laughed as the birds squawked and bounced off each other. She held a piece of bread tight in her little fist, and the chickens nibbled at her fingers trying to get to their snack.

She thought it was great.

After we were out of bread, she threw the one sock that she was wearing at them.

The birds checked, of course, whether it was something edible. I'm just glad they didn't run off with it (like they did with someone's glove last summer). Chickens are thieves.

Discarded socks are one thing. Stolen socks are another thing altogether.

The neighbor's babies

We had a blast playing with a few of the many new babies over at the neighbor's ranch.

My baby called them kitties, and then she cried.


It wasn't too long, though, and she was petting three-day-old Lucky...


with her sock-gloved hands while she laughed and laughed.

Now if that doesn't look like a kitty, I sure don't know what does.

Lucky's mama had eaten a few things she shouldn't have, yummy things like wire. She wasn't feeling too well. He was born by cesarean.

I wish I could have seen that.

My boys reluctantly helped bottle feed.

Just look at the milk dripping down on top of the cat. (The little bean was right, there were kitties around.)


The cats lap up what they can of the milk that dribbles down, while more blops onto their heads. After the milkfest, the cats clean each other off.

Maybe in a year or two (if my barn hasn't fallen over) we'll be ready to buy a bottle calf, like one of these, and raise it.

Do you eat beef? We do. Guess what, it really doesn't come on a plastic tray wrapped up neatly in clingwrap.

Although that is convenient.

It actually comes like this.



As Americans, we are horribly disconnected from our food supply. It is all too easy to open a package from the grocery store, and without thought consume whatever tasty meals we make of it.

I think that we all ought to slow down once in awhile, take a moment or two and think about where our food comes from.

When looking these babies in the eye, letting them try to suck milk out of your thumb, and feeling the soft swirl of fur on their foreheads, you realize just how precious they are.

That is not a gift to take lightly.

Three

Can't we just skip three years old?

I have this quote from Monty Python and Search for the Holy Grail running through my head.

"First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."

As always, Monty Python speaks the truth (although we will count to four, and beyond).

We must proceed through three, and believe me there are times (read: many, many times every day) I would like to throw a holy hand grenade at him. Not to destroy him, but to transform him into the well behaved boy I know he can be.

Terrible Two's has nothing on this kid.

He is a stinker. Plain and simple.

I should have five hundred rotten things to write that he did just today, but as survival (or foggy mommy brain) would have it, at this moment I can't think of a single darn thing. Not one.

OK, so it's not all bad.

He is so darn cute. Cuteness is a survival strategy, absolutely.


His new haircut makes him look like one of The Three Stooges, don't you think? I can't figure out if it's the hair or his ears. Or both? Maybe I'm just looking for comic relief wherever I can.

Tomorrow, I am going to tell myself over and over, all day long, "He is only three". It will probably echo through my head at least five hundred times.

Reaching

Every morning he reaches out with his voice, with his piercing eyes.

He sits up in the barn loft and waits.


He reaches out with every ounce of his being (and he is very large), as he waits for his breakfast.

You Capture - Reaching

Fritz's new kingdom

So sorry, people! I didn't mean to be mysterious about Fritzy's sudden exile from our little farm. Was it really that much of a cliff-hanger?

A rooster can only have so many chances, you know. And, well, he had more than he deserved.

That full-body aggressive maneuver against my leg the other day was the last straw. Well, not technically. Three shiny new straw bales arrived in my barn today, but you know what I mean.


That's an eight second shot, by the way, so just imagine the kind of light I was dealing with.

All I really know, is that I am rid of my rooster headache.

I had even gone so far as to consider trading my mother for a cat she has been threatening to get rid of for years. He's a very bad cat.

Darn lucky for Fritz, it turned out that a neighbor (in as much as anyone within ten miles of us is a neighbor) wanted him. Not in a pity poor Fritz kind of way either. The kids came with to pick him up, and they were excited. In fact, their Dad said he would likely whack his Leghorn rooster before Fritz, if it came to that (which made me smile). Barred Rock is a great breed. Leghorn, not so much, unless you like high-strung chickens with brains made of fruitcake who aren't amazingly cold-hardy but do lay lots of boring white eggs.

So it was that as the sun set, King Fritz growled as he rode off in a dog kennel, loaded up in the back of a truck. Transportation fitting of his royalty, don't you think?

Curious how things are going at the new place palace?

Here is how it went, as far as I understand the story.

It was evening when he arrived, and Fritz roosted up in the rafters of his new coop. He was on one side, by himself. The Leghorn rooster and all nine hens were squashed together on the other side, as far away from the intruder as they could be. The next morning Fritz and two hens were on the ground, and he was bossing them around, and crowing. Then, apparently there was some fighting between the two roos. Last I heard, the Leghorn spends his time sitting in the corner, and Fritz marches around doing his thing, and acting like he owns the place.

So there you have it. The dude basically walked into his new kingdom and set up his throne.

Looks like it turned out well for everyone, except maybe the Leghorn. That, and my mother, who is still stuck with her cat.

I will be in trouble if I don't announce that things turned out especially well for my husband on Monday. He has been busy leaving wheel tracks like this,


all over the place, as well as odd snow formations.


We have been waiting and waiting, and it finally arrived.

The muddy muddy

We went into town Saturday.

We went out for supper, which was a really huge deal because it is such a rare thing for us. Other than the broccoli, my food was awesome. I swear that was the worst broccoli I have ever had, and broccoli is one of my favorite foods. Truly.

Little frugal me moaned and groaned about whether I should spend ten dollars on a pie.

I came home with the pie.

A whole pie.

A French Silk Pie.

I have already eaten three-quarters of it by myself. And now, honestly, the remaining quarter doesn't even tempt me at all. But I really don't want to talk about that.

I want to talk about mud.

The guy we parked next to laughed and said, "That caddy is muddier than my truck, I don't feel so bad now."

Yeah dude, you should see where we live.

We have mud.

Lots and lots of really squishy wet mud.


I realized my photos of mud were rather boring. Then the chickens arrived, and they got the party started as usual.


And this guy,


has an attitude you would not believe.

Meet King Fritz, in all his muddy, crusty dried blood glory.


After I snapped that last photo, my camera battery went dead. I stood up, and something bounced off my leg.

It was not a friendly gesture.

Guess what who it was?

Yep. It was him.

It made me sad, because it meant Fritz was now on death row, awaiting his yet undetermined execution date.

But tonight, as it turns out, all is well. Instead of an appointment with the axe, or being used as coyote bait, Fritz is at this moment riding in his chariot to his new kingdom.

There is already a Leghorn rooster there.

But the rooster drama, here, at The Old Nichols Farm? It is finished. At least for now.

Bundled up

A memory from a crisp autumn day, and one of my most favorite photos of our little sweetheart.


Was that only a few short months ago?

She has been working on her walking skills lately, and I cannot wait to get photos of her toddling around the yard this summer (not bundled).

The first butterfly

During the fall, we have flies that somehow get inside our windows, and I assume they get into the bathroom vent, and I'm not sure where else. They seem capable of squeezing through a space that you wouldn't know existed otherwise.

It is there that they freeze, and thaw, and re-freeze, and thaw again.

Lather, rinse, repeat, all winter long.

So it happens that all winter long, a random thawed fly or two finds a way into the house. Just often enough that we don't forget about them.

We live in the country. It's just the way it is.

Hence the fly excitement I documented a few weeks ago.

When I saw yet another one in the kitchen last evening, I wasn't too surprised. But in between a three year old boy doing his best to imitate a deafening power tool noise, trying to listen to my older boy tell me a story with the word 'very' repeated five-hundred times, noticing my husband throw one end of a sump pump hose across a snowbank and attach the other end to our basement window, and trying my darnedest to get supper ready while waddling around with a baby hugging my leg... I noticed the fly was not a fly.


That might be the worst photo I have ever posted. Considering what I had to work with you're darn lucky I even got one at all.

Lucky for me too, or you might have never believed it was a tiny butterfly. Seriously. A butterfly, in my house, in the middle of March when the snow is deep and slushy outside.

It must have come from the same magical place those flies come from.

Thanks to ToadMama for suggesting black frames on my photos. The funny thing is that at one point I had played with a black background for the blog. I loved how it made the photos pop, but then I had this little problem of white text on a black background which was absolutely impossible.

I may subject you to a lot of nasty things, but white text on a black background will never be one of them. I promise.

Simply putting black frames on my photos had never crossed my young-child-raising, sleep-deprived, foggy brain.

Anyway, I like it, even with such an awful photo to test it on. What do you think?

Quiet

Here I sit eating a bean and rice burrito for breakfast, and contemplating images that represent the word quiet. Bean and rice burritos are quiet, but you know those bean and rice burritos have a reputation, and for good reason.

Hmmm... my day is not likely to be quiet for long.

We've had a few warmish (above freezing) days, and some rain. Our snow is changing, getting slushy, which is technically called "ripening". The melt is coming, water will begin running. We wait to see just how much water we'll be dealing with this year, and just how much it will affect us.

But before all flooding chaos begins, it is quiet.

Last Saturday I got outside and the calm, quiet of pre-Spring was hanging heavy in the air.








And the color of the day, apparently, is rusty orange. I rather like it.


You Capture - "Quiet"

The trouble with roosters

Ugh. I am just sick.

This afternoon I walked out to the barn with my baby in one arm, and a jug of water in the other.

I had to bring the baby with because I cannot trust my three year old around her anymore. I am completely at a loss of what to do with him. It became apparent today that I can't step out of a room for even a minute, if he can get to her... so to the barn she came.

After I made it through our sloppy mud to the barn, I happened to see the Barred Rock rooster, Fritz. He was muddy, and blood was dripping off his head. The frostbitten part of his comb had finally fallen off.

But something didn't seem quite right, and yes indeed, it was much, much worse than that. (no photos, I promise)

Hiding in a corner and squinting at me through one eye was the Buff Orpington rooster, Red. To say he looked awful would be an understatement. He was also muddy and dripping blood. His swollen face, his droopy wings, everything about him read utter defeat.

These two roosters have gotten along with each other marvelously. I have been amazed daily, as I see them puttering around with the hens, always tolerating one another. Once in awhile Red would give Fritz a dirty look and chase him for five seconds. If one rooster saw the other mount a hen, he would come running and with one swift kick dismount his rival. Although, that was more hilarious than menacing, and I laughed out loud every time I saw it happen.

That was the full extent of any turmoil between the two of them.

It might sound crazy, but I am frustrated beyond belief, because I thought I was constantly aware of the relationship these two had. I knew there was a real potential for fighting, but I expected to see some bickering and picking at one another before anything meaningful happened.

But there was none, and I was bloody wrong.

I did not see this coming. At all.

The battle had obviously been a vicious one, and it started with no warning. I had been out just hours earlier, and at that time all was well.

I couldn't do a thing to inspect them. Besides not being dressed for mud and blood, there was a baby in my arms calling them "tee tee" (kitty).

Back to the house with a heavy heart, to deal with an out of control three year old boy.

By the time I was able to return to the barn, the birds had gone to roost for the night. Red was cowering in the coop with one hen. King Fritz was just outside the coop on their porch (the location they normally put themselves to bed, much to my dismay), with the other nine hens.

A line had been drawn, invisible but powerful. Despite shake-ups being horrific, the social structure of chickens is fascinating. They don't hesitate to take care of business.

Sleepy chickens are easy to handle.

I grabbed Red first, and I just wanted to cry. There are laws against cockfighting for a reason. He was sulking, and just plain miserable. I covered his entire swollen, sliced up head with antibiotic ointment.

Fritz was clearly the winner. I used half as much ointment on his head, and then locked him out of the coop with everyone else inside.

He wanted in. Badly.

He was clucking and growling at the coop door. The hens wandered around inside the coop making a noise I haven't heard since they were tiny. They sounded like lost, confused baby chicks. They wanted their king.

Poor Red just stood there among the hens, invisible to them.

What is clear is that I will not have two roosters for long. What remains to be seen is which one will survive.

Red usually keeps better watch of the hens, while Fritz prefers to march around the barn loft looking pretty and listen to himself sing.

I want my rooster to be useful, not just barn decoration.

Tomorrow I will make Red a safe little place to rest and heal away from the other chickens. I doubt that he can escape an infection, but if it becomes apparent that he can survive his wounds, I will make certain that Fritz does not survive his.

Just like the roosters, I can take care of business when necessary too.

Snowy boots

It was a good day.

Grandma and Grandpa watched the kids,


while my husband and I got our boots full of snow.

Together.

I love him, even if he buys grapefruit when I ask for oranges.

A purpose

There is a little army waiting quietly in my attic.


Canning jars are patient like that. They sit forever, have a very exciting couple of hours, and then sit some more.

These particular jars (a ridiculous number of them) sat for years and years with food in them. Boxes and boxes of them. Really, you have no idea.

Someone who loves me very much disposed of the contents, cleaned them all up, and hand delivered them to their new home here. THAT was not an easy task.

For better or worse, I will never want for canning jars.

Oh cool! A green one!


Are you as easily distracted as I am?


I have a stash of seeds waiting patiently too. Very soon, some of them are going to begin the journey towards their purpose.

That is where the destiny of canning jars and garden vegetables collides.

Well, not literally. I hope.

Hopeful

Us humans, we are such limited creatures.

We see what our eyes can see. We see what we think is there to be seen. We see what we are supposed to see.

The moon was huge as it rose the other night. As in, one glance out the window took my breath away. It was a full moon, and low in the sky the atmosphere warped the sunlight bouncing off it, which made it look even more enormous and impressive.

To my eyes (perpetually wearing corrective lenses because I honestly can't see anything on my own) the moon looked something like this.


Beautiful. Red. Slowly rising through wispy clouds.

Yet, there is more. So much more.

Open your eyes, open them wide.

You still can't see everything.

There is so much in this world we cannot see, so much we don't understand. Mysteries of life and death are confusing, and the world beyond this one we can only wonder at.

We are small. We get scared.

We want to see and know, and we try to understand.

Oh, do we try. And we fail.

But I have hope because I believe there is One who is bigger than me. A God that knows and sees and understands all there is. And He is. And He cares for me.

Even though I am small.

God is.


I believe in what I cannot see. Believing gives me hope.

That is not a sunrise... or a sunset.

That is the same full moon rising in the black night. (long exposure)

The moon looked nothing like that to my eyes.

But then, I cannot see.

So I put my hope in Him.



You Capture - "Hopeful"

I Heart Faces - "Hilarious Outtakes"

There is some seriously funny stuff going on over at the I Heart Faces "Hilarious Outtakes" challenge.

Just think, a challenge based not on talent, but lack thereof! Finally, I feel like I am really qualified to play along.

Ahem.

Here is my disastrous attempt at a Christmas card photo of my kids this year.

Overexposed. Shutter speed too long and aperture too wide. But hey, I had little more than a month's experience venturing off full-automatic.

At least I tried!

And my kids?











Life as usual here at our place.

Sigh.