Easter and Some Catching Up

This feels like it's been a busy busy month! It may not have been but it seems like it's just flown past and I have a ton of catching up to do!

First order of business is what we did on Easter. I was scheduled to work the entire Easter weekend so it meant we couldn't really do a whole lot, but luckily the elementary school in our area had an Easter egg hunt so at least I didn't have to organize that! It was nice the way they had it set up. They covered the basketball court with plastic Easter eggs filled with candy and divided the kids up into age groups. There was ages 1-4, 5-8, and 9+, or something like that. They'd blow a whistle and the kids could go collect 3 eggs, then everyone had to come back and wait, then when they blew the whistle again it was a free-for-all. That way everyone got at least 3 eggs. Mira actually did really well. One of her things right now is picking things up and putting them into something else so I only had to show her once what she had to do and she had it. Obviously the older kids got a lot more eggs but luckily Mira didn't care too much. Here are some pictures of her stash:

Unfortunately most of the candy wasn't safe for her to have - there was some hard candy and some chewy candy but there was a little bit of chocolate and she can handle that. She seemed more interested in opening the eggs and then trying to close them again versus what was actually contained in the eggs. She doesn't get candy very much so she doesn't really know what it looks like yet. That, of course, will change. :)

Then on Easter we went to Mark's parents' house for a family dinner, which was very nice. I left straight from there to go to work, and found out later that when Mark got home that there had been a bit of a disaster. We'd been keeping the baby chicks in a big cardboard box on top of our dining room table so the animals couldn't get to them. I guess the cats could have if they'd wanted to but the cats have been largely uninterested in the chicks. Anyway, Mark got home that night and found on the floor a lot of feathers and blood and one of the chicks was missing. We never have found the carcass so apparently she was eaten by one of the dogs. Sad but honestly chickens have so many natural enemies because they're too stupid to defend themselves so I always expected we'd lose at least one of them. So sadly our flock is down to 8 now but that's all right. It was one of the yellow-orange ones. At least it wasn't our big egg-layer.

Like all babies our chicks are growing amazingly fast! Just look at the difference in size and appearance a few weeks makes:

Mark finally finished the chicken coop a few days ago so over the weekend the chicks graduated to living outside. They're at that awkward in-between phase where they still have some fluff that's falling off in clumps and random feathers poking out everywhere, and a couple are starting to get little feather tail-stumps growing in. One is getting a little bit of a comb too! They still cheep but in appearance they're definitely looking more like chickens than chicks. We still have some fine-tuning to make to the coop, like building little nests for them and such but otherwise they're on their own. They spent the first day or two completely huddled together and refused to go anywhere without the rest of the flock because they weren't used to so much open space, but they're much more comfortable roaming around their fenced-in area now. Now we just have to keep them happy and healthy and wait for the eggs to show up!

And speaking of happy and healthy:

This child of mine is not a baby anymore - she looks like a little girl now! (Although whenever we go out in public people, especially kids, will point to Mira and still call her a "little baby" even though she's walking.) Sometimes I watch her walking around like she's always done it and chattering away to herself and I just feel so bewildered because I swear she was a little baby just yesterday and to me she really doesn't look like a baby anymore. She definitely doesn't act like one anymore. She's basically self-sufficient with eating now. She's not great about using her fork or spoon all the time (most of the time she holds the utensil with one hand and picks up the food with the other hand) but I can set her food in front of her all cut up and she digs right in and eats like a freaking horse, I swear. I cannot believe how much food this kid eats! She can eat an entire banana and at least half a slice of bread for breakfast. Once she ate an entire slice of pizza for lunch! She'll eat a whole plate of dinner and then still eat most of an entire kiwi for dessert. And yet she's below average for weight! I guess she has my metabolism. Although with how active and busy she is it doesn't surprise me that she's always hungry. She never stops or even slows down. My sister Sara was over visiting and was trying to take a picture of Mira on her cell phone and she couldn't get a good shot because Mira was moving too fast! I told Sara she needs a really good camera with a super fast shutter speed to get pictures of Mira these days - I have to put my camera on "sports mode" if I'm going to try to get a decent picture of her. Video is the best way to handle photographic memories of Mira right now. She's exhausting to take care of - I love this age and she's absolutely hilarious, but she's busy and I'm getting some Mommy Guilt dilemmas because I get excited about the prospect of someone else watching her for a couple hours but then I rush back without getting done everything that needs to happen because I feel bad leaving her for someone else to deal with.

Here's a video of Mira walking - it's amazing how just a few weeks of practice can improve walking ability!

She still reminds me of Maggie Simpson - walk, fall on her face, pick herself up and keep going.

She loves to have her teeth brushed and when we wash her hands she thinks it's hilarious for some reason. At least hygiene ranks high on the list of good experiences for her. She ends up in the bathtub almost every night now that the weather is nice and warm because we spend a good part of the day outside and she gets sweaty and dirty, not to mention her table manners still leave something to be desired for awhile. One of the first things she does in the morning when she's gotten dressed is point to her shoes because she wants to go outside. We haven't been reading books or playing with toys much at all lately because all she wants to do is run around outside. It's still busy chasing her around but at least she's getting exercise, which wears her out. She's been sleeping much better these days. Maybe once or twice a week she'll wake up in the middle of the night because she's hungry and she won't go back to sleep until she gets a little snack, but otherwise she sleeps through the night. Yay for sleep! I've noticed that even though I'm tired a lot from working night shifts, I still feel much more rested because I'm finally getting longer stretches of uninterrupted sleep. It's been a long time - you forget how awesome sleep is.

I don't know why this video makes me giggle so hard but it does. This will be great blackmail material when she's older.

I have lots of plans for pictures and videos that I want to get of Mira but it's getting tricky to catch her in the act. I just need a camcorder on her 24/7.

Spring Has Sprung!

Can I just say I'm SO happy springtime is finally starting to come around?? We've had some gorgeous sunny 70 degree weather and it's been great to get out of the house at last! And the plus side is now that Mira is walking we can actually do stuff outside. I've been taking her outside on nice days and she loves just walking around the yard. I have to say, her walking has really improved a lot over the last couple of weeks. It's a bit trickier to walk on the uneven ground than on the floor so she still trips a lot but she gets right back up and keeps going!

I wonder when she'll figure out that she doesn't always have to walk with her hands up near her shoulders like that - but it sure is darn cute!

Another talent this little girl is perfecting (which really increases my stress level) is her climbing ability. Lately when she climbs the stairs she stands up near the top, holds onto the banisters, and climbs the last few steps standing up! Eek! She's even tried that for going down the stairs - it's actually pretty clever, and she'll go down sideways facing the banisters and holding onto the railing. Her legs are still just a little too short for her to do it without slipping so she usually just goes down a step or two and then climbs back up to the top. She does know how to go down the stairs backwards (I've seen her do it) but she doesn't want to do it that way (I guess using the stairs like Mommy and Daddy is more fun).

One of the first things she discovered about our yard is a little bench. Within a couple of minutes she'd figured out how to climb up onto and back down off of it, and it was fun enough to keep doing that over and over again about 26 times:

And of course we had to start going to the park! We're lucky and have 3 small playgrounds within walking distance of our house. Mira still needs lots of supervision and help since she's still too small for most of the stuff on playgrounds (not to mention she occasionally tries to eat the sand or whatever) but she can climb some of the stairs and I'll take her down the slides on my lap. And of course there are swings. Here's what she thought of the swings:

She's a very social little girl - whenever she sees other little kids at the playground she starts waving and says "Hi!" and babbles and smiles at them. It'll be interesting to see how she behaves as she gets older and goes to preschool and stuff. (Yikes, that's only a couple of years off!)

Here are some pictures of Mira exploring the yard.

 In other news, we have a few new additions to our zoo. Mark has been toying with the idea of having fresh eggs so last week he went out and came home with these little cuties:

Six little baby chicks! They're all hens and they should be laying by the end of summer. When my family and I lived on the farm in Tennessee we had a huge flock of chickens so this is bringing back some nice memories for me. The hard part is getting set up for them and then after that chickens are fairly low maintenance - definitely not like having a dog, for instance. We have an old wooden shed in the back yard that Mark is working on converting to a coop, so when these babies are ready to live outside they'll have a nice little house. For now though they're living in a big cardboard box with a heat lamp in the house. We now have a nice constant cheeping for background noise. :)

They look dead - I promise they're just sleeping!

The chicks are all hardy egg-layers, and we've been enjoying these guys so much that a few days after Mark brought them home he went back and got 3 more - so now we have 9 little chicks!

It's kinda hard to tell from the pictures but the newer ones are the two white ones and there's one mostly black one. The white ones are those fancy crested chickens that look ridiculous and are obviously just for show - we'll get maybe one egg a week out of those, if we're really lucky. So to make up for those two we got the little black one that lays really well - 3 or more eggs a week from that one by herself. It sure will be nice to have fresh eggs again, and chickens are nice little pets too. Dumber than a block of wood, but that's partly what makes them so fun. And I definitely enjoy the background noises that chickens make. I'm really excited about this. Mira is too and she loves to be held above the box to watch the chicks run around. We have to watch her really closely when we take the chicks out in the yard to run around because Mira's idea of being "soft" with the chicks is to pounce on them and grab them.

I took a couple of videos of the chicks doing what chicks do.

I think it's so amazing that chicks can figure out how to scratch, fly, peck, roost etc. without ever seeing it done. For being stupid in pretty much every other aspect, they're really smart when it comes to that. Or maybe they're so stupid they need especially strong instincts to survive. 

One last video and then I'll have to save more for the next post. Mira has been doing this for a little while now - I have no idea where she learned to do this but it's so funny.

I guess I could blame her lack of equilibrium on her ear infection. Not really, but it is true that she got another ear infection. Not even a week after her first one cleared up and she started to get a massively snotty nose again. I thought there was no way it could be an ear infection again but after about 2 weeks and no improvement I took her in and sure enough, both ears were infected this time - her ear drum on one side was even starting to bulge. Poor baby, I really feel like an idiot mom for missing this again. Most likely the antibiotics didn't completely clear up the first infection since it came back so fast, so she got on some stronger ones this time. After a few days her snotty nose went away finally, but then she got a diaper rash that looks a lot like a yeast infection. She just can't seem to catch a break! So I've been putting antifungal cream on her bum and the rash is finally starting to look better - just a couple more days on the antibiotics and I'm hoping the rash will clear up soon after.

I'm going to get some video or pictures of Mira "talking" on the phone, brushing her hair and teeth, and running around naked after her bath. Now I know why so many people feel like this is the best age - she really is so much fun! Hopefully there will be some super cute stuff for the next post. Although given that this is Mira we're talking about, it will be cute anyway. :)