Chicken love

I finally had enough hands to video Isabella with "her" chickens.  Don't mind my exasperated mumblings at Declan who was WHINING THE WHOLE TIME!  Anyway, it's a long video, but she is so happy hanging with the chicks...I practically have to drag her out of there...

Disclaimer: I now have children who are curious about life. Life, as in, how we got here. So, if you're weirded out by kids talking about how we got here, stop reading.

One of the things that we wanted to do when we got the chickens, was to use them as a teaching tool. We can use the whole 'chicken experience' to teach the kids lots of things (me too, considering how I thought chicks came to be...but that's another story that I'm sure Ryan would love to share as he's laughing his face off!) Anyway, one of these lessons was to be able to teach the kids about where their food comes from. They all love eggs and we use eggs almost every day. Once the hens start laying, we can get a great lesson out of the process.  Now, the other night at dinner, when I was asking Declan if he wanted chicken, I revoked my willingness to use the chickens as a lesson. He looked at me and said "where chicken mama?"  I pointed to the plate of barbecued chicken and said "right here, Declan. Do you want some chicken?"  He scanned the room, "where chickens mama, where are they?" Ugh....so I just said, Declan do you want some meat (he calls all forms of meat, meat, rather than the type of meat they are)? To which he replied "yes, lots."  I have to think on this one.  Declan's the type of kid, I feel, that would never touch a piece of chicken again if he thought it was the same thing that is outside in the coop.  So I'm going to have to be tactful with this lesson...we'll see how it goes.

 I can promise it won't be anymore challenging than the lesson Isabella is so curious about....as you saw in the video above, she's pretty insistent that one hen in particular has an egg "coming out of her bottom." And you can only imagine where that conversation ended up.  Shortly after, she was watching a video in which a puppy and kitten were born.  Both came out and were covered in all things that birth covers you in and she was mesmerized.  She's seen pictures of Declan and Quinn seconds after they were born so she knows what babies are covered in. She held Quinn before she had even been cleaned and bathed, so she knows the purest form that a baby comes in. But now she wants to know how the baby (or egg, kitten, puppy) actually went from belly to life outside of belly.  I asked her what she thought and she said "Well, you just push and push and then the baby pops out." I asked her where the baby pops out of and she said "Umm, it just pops out. Like, out of your belly button. It just pops out."  I'm sure we'll be re-visiting this whole episode again soon.

Talk about weird...I can remember being pregnant with Isabella, sitting in our Bradley birthing class, and watching videos on birth. Often, our teacher's 3 1/2 year old son was in the room. He had been watching birthing videos from the beginning, because it was a part of his mom's life and sometimes he happened to be there. It wasn't a big deal though and I thought that was pretty cool.  To him, birth was normalized, and hopefully to him, birth will always be normal. And now, here I have that little girl that I was pregnant with, asking me about how she came to be here in physical form.  She deserves to know and it needs to be normalized for her now.  If I want to advocate healthy, safe pregnancy and birth, and wish that for my children, then I feel as though they need to know that birth for all animals is normal, healthy, safe, and natural.  It's not something I take lightly, but it's something that I want to have a plan for, but not make a big deal out of. Isabella's only four, she doesn't need much more than a basic explanation. But I just want her to always know how incredibly amazing birth can be and is. How perfect and amazing her birth was, her brother's, her sister's and all those that she encounters in the future.  I know that one day, she will appreciate the video and the pictures of her snuggling up, skin to skin, with her baby sister only moments after she entered the world.  And hopefully she will love that memory as well as memories of collecting eggs from the hens, seeing a baby chick be born (hopefully only one or two....no more!), watching her new cousin grow in her aunt's belly and emerge as a tiny little human, and appreciate this cycle of life that is unfolding before her young little eyes.

                                                   And just for a few little things that I love:

When it's warm enough that kids can eat meals without clothes on.  Bodies are so much easier to clean than cloth...and takes much less time.

This picture is a two for one.
I also love Quinn's curly-ques around her ears. This girl has her daddy's hair-thick and wavy.

And when she's tired, and nursing, and wanting to fall asleep, she puts her hand up to her head, rubs her hair, drifts off to dreamland and awakens looking like the above picture.

I made Isabella a dandelion crown the other day.  It fit perfectly with her new favorite game (wait for the next picture...) and her and Declan think that dandelions are beautiful yellow flowers, not annoying ugly weeds.  They taught me a mantra this week: "Dandelions are ugly to some, but beautiful to others."

So, Isabella's new favorite game goes like this: "Mom, pretend I'm Tangled (insert me saying for the umpteenth time 'her name's Rapunzel, not Tangled') and I run away from the tower and you try to find me. Come on, Declan, You're the prince, you find me too. Yell for me, look for me, tell me you love and miss me." And from then on we re-enact the entire movie "Tangled" and Isabella flits around in all her princessy glory and Declan is her prince and does whatever she says.  Oh, and this game only works on the front porch. With me sitting on the porch swing.  That is they only way this game works.

They're like an old married couple. One minute they can't live without eachother, and the next, they're pushing each other's buttons like you wouldn't believe. Oh, and do they ever know which buttons to push!  They love eachother though. And they protect eachother. And they know that they belong together.