Green Eggs and Ham

Do I like green eggs and ham? As a matter of fact I do! Take a look at that egg!

Your eyes don't deceive you - that egg is green. Two of our hens are Americaunas, which do lay greenish-blueish eggs. Isn't that wild? Of course they aren't green on the inside... that would be worrisome. It's been so nice to have fresh eggs. We've been consistently getting about 3 eggs a day now, one brown, one tan, and one green. We've still been getting lots of double yolk eggs. Sometimes they're the tan eggs and a couple of times we've had a few double yolk green eggs. I'm not sure if they're coming from the same hen but either way it's pretty awesome. Some things I forgot about fresh eggs: the shells are much thicker than eggs you get at the store, the egg whites are more solid, not nearly as runny, and the yolks are orange, not yellow. Plus they just taste better. We haven't had to buy eggs from the store in a few weeks, which is awesome. Sometimes if I'm planning on baking something I have to plan ahead and hoarde the eggs for a day or two to save up but otherwise we're self-sufficient with eggs now. Although I do expect the supply to drop off as the weather cools down but we'll see how that all pans out.

I had a burst of creativity recently and tried out a new recipe. You line a muffin tin with ham slices, crack an egg into the middle, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and pop it in the oven for about 15-20 minutes. Hence the green eggs and ham - take a look:

It looks really gourmet but it's obviously really simple because I was able to pull it off! And super yummy too. And speaking of yummy, I have to brag and show off my baked zucchini fries that I successfully made:

My next project is some Nutella cookies. I'm really on a roll lately - can't explain why but apparently I'm on a mission to become more domestic. And anyone who knows me knows that this is a major accomplishment.

Well just for kicks and giggles, some pictures of our lovely chickens:

If you count you might notice we're down to 6 chickens. A few weeks ago Mark went after one of the roosters. He had a decision to make: one of the roosters crowed constantly and woke us up every morning at some god-forsaken hour, but the other one was constantly raping the hens (and arguably by doing so was decreasing our egg supply because I can't imagine the hens' stress level is lowered by constantly being attacked like that). Mark went for the rooster that was making us lose sleep. I was already prepared to help with the cleaning and cooking part - I even watched a YouTube video on it - but Mark did everything himself.

So the verdict on the rooster meat... I didn't have a problem with eating it, surprisingly. But it was a lot of work for not a lot of meat. Plus it was tough and there was a lot of gristle in it. I think the problem is we let the rooster get too old before we killed it and he was basically free-range.

Which means when this last rooster goes, we might not bother with cleaning and cooking him. Which seems like such a horrible waste, again, but it really might not be worth our time. I mean, for how big they are you'd think we'd get a good amount of meat off of these guys but I'm not kidding when I say it was just a few scraps of breast meat and some really gristly drumsticks. I was going to put off getting rid of this last one but when I go into the pen to change out the food and water he tries to attack me, and today we let the chickens roam around the back yard and the rooster actually flew at Mira and hit her in the chest so hard it knocked her down. I wasn't close enough to keep it from happening but I got there fast and kicked him off of her - and she was just surprised, not hurt, but still. We can't have Mira getting attacked by a rooster. I know from personal experience that it can be extremely painful to get attacked like that (I once got bitten and scratched by a rooster so severely I was bruised all over my legs and they got so stiff and swollen and painful I couldn't climb stairs for days). So I won't feel bad when this guy goes, and I'm sure the hens will be more relaxed too.

Well, on to Mira. She's adjusted well to being back at home - in fact her sleep habits are better now than they've been in months! Maybe because I make sure to wear her out during the day. She's finally mobile enough to really enjoy playgrounds - and unfortunately she's adventurous enough to try to take full advantage of them, especially the parts she's not big enough for! This girl has no fear, I swear. When we go to a playground she searches for the tallest slide, climbs her way up to it and goes down all by herself!!! She's only 18 months, something seems wrong with this picture.

This video doesn't show her going down the tallest slide at this particular playground but this is the first time she went down a slide on her own, without me helping her at all. I couldn't bring myself to get a video of her going down the tallest slide because it involves her having to crawl on top of a wall that's higher than my head and I can't let her do that by herself yet. Even though she sure thinks she can... Actually she really can do it herself but I'm not ready to step back that far yet. I'm a bit bewildered as to how she got this adventurous because I'm pretty sure I'm an overprotective PICU mom. There's a part of me that's really proud of her and another part that wonders if my life would be less stressed if she was more timid.

I think Mira's new favorite fruit is fresh peaches. She can demolish a whole peach by herself within a few minutes. I'm glad she loves fruit so much, hopefully that sticks!

She is such a little ham! This little girl makes me laugh every single day. I love her so much.

Tell me if this is not the most awesome case of bed head you've ever seen!

So an idea I'm tossing around and very seriously considering... I would like to get a tattoo for Mira. I know it's cliched but this girl really has changed by life in so many ways and a tattoo for your child is one of the few topics that is pretty consistently safe (as opposed to, say, your significant other - doesn't matter how much you love your S.O., it's not a good idea in general to get that person's name tattooed on you). I've wanted for years to get a tattoo but I've never known what and I haven't known where - which are really good reasons to NOT get a tattoo. I've waited until something has happened that means enough to me that I'd be willing to alter my body forever for it. Well, Mira certainly fits the bill! The appointment is made for October 3rd - I had to schedule a couple of months out because the tattoo artist is booked that far in advance, and he told me to make the appointment even if I back out at the last minute because of how busy he is. The idea I have is beautiful, I think, and very meaningful, and what I've heard from friends that have tattoos is that if I get a tattoo for my child, I will not regret it. The only thing that still worries me is the idea of it being permanent. Just like one of my biggest fears about having a child in the first place was that having a kid is quite a permanent lifestyle change. Now that I've made the dive into parenthood, yes it's full of hard work and it can be tiring and emotionally draining and stressful and blah blah blah, but it's all worth it. And it is true that you have no idea how much you can love someone until you have a child.

So I'll post more on this soon... I'm almost certain I'm going to go through with it. The artist has done work on Mark and we know he's good and he's capable of what I'm looking for, and when we were discussing the tattoo he was describing exactly what I knew I wanted but wasn't able to verbalize. So we're on the same page, which is really important for something like this. I'm not worried about it hurting... I can deal with that. (He was estimating about 2-3 hours of work for this.) And of course I'll be able to approve the final design before we go through with it, and Mark will be with me while it's happening. I guess it's just the idea of going through with something completely irreversible (even though my reasons are right and my other completely irreversible decision - Mira - I don't regret at all). And I'm worried about potential parental and grand-parental potential disapproval. Not that that would necessarily change my decision, I just am the sort of person to not want to disappoint my family. My siblings were really excited about my idea. My mom was unsure at first but when I told her my idea she seemed to be on board. I think it just comes down to generational changes. As my grandmother said, "Used to be that only criminals got tattoos. Now everybody has them." Makes me wonder what will be socially acceptable when Mira is grown up. Not that my family would outright forbid me to get tattooed or would shun me or have a public shaming session if I go through with it, of course. Maybe it's that I don't seem like the sort of person to get tattooed... although that line is getting more blurry all the time these days.

I am starting to get excited about it the more I think about it - so I guess it's a good thing I'm having to wait so long. I can reflect and make sure I'm okay with the decision, and I can get myself all hyped up for this.