magic of christmas

Tonight while filling the stockings, I was moved to tears. I knew Lillian had been busily filling the stockings over the week with a few items she had purchased for us and some found around the house objects. What I found out tonight as I stuffed was that she had given us both handwritten "letters" full of squiggles and hearts. She gave me a piece of the soap we had made together that she originally told me she was going to keep for herself. She also "gave" me my brown gloves I have been looking for all week. She gave both Paco and I rocks--one of her favorite gifts. I am so overwhelmed by love and gratitude for this child and her giving spirit.

A money job

The picture is of Lillian at the children's museum. She is brushing the dinosaur's teeth. We went down to Indy on the day before Thanksgiving to get Paco's prints done for his citizenship app and meet our friends Wes, Mary and baby Wesley for lunch and a museum date.



Well, Trouble has stayed in the barn, so far. She has not sat on her relocated nest. We will see. We will do our best to protect her, but I respect her wanderlust. I told Lillian I wanted to write a book for kids about Trouble that would make me a million, billion dollars. She said good "then you will have a money job like me and Daddy!" She, of course, has her egg business and Daddy the restaurant, and mom?, what does she do??



Lillian has grown so much lately that Paco and I had to make an emergency run to Once Upon a Child (thankfully they exist) and buy her new sneakers. She has also grown a lot emotionally and developmentally. She knows almost all her letters by sight now. She loves school and is much more socially confident. As last year, she is so excited about Christmas she is going to pop. She has helped decorate due to her fervent belief that Santa's measure of you is greatly influenced by your Christmas decorations.



We will have the La Scala Holiday party this week and she has a $7 (!) party dress. Unlike past years, this budget friendly party will be a carry-in of desserts and appetizers.



I am having a little trouble getting in the holiday mood. I don't think it is the economy, but that doesn't help. Everything seems to be flying by so fast. Everyday Lily and I try to do something holiday related. Over the weekend, we made soap together for presents. That was fun.



I have started a knitting group through GLAM and it has gone very well. We have our second mtg next Monday. And, I am almost done with knitted gifts. I am on the last hat!! After that I am going to make myself a felted bag with Noro Kureyon. Yippee!!

Gotta go, time to wake up the troops. Paco an I are going to take our Lily free morning and buy each other stocking stuffers so we have something to open on Xmas morn. No grown-up presents this year. Thanks again W!!

A Chicken Named Trouble

All our laying hens, 11 of them, are named Charlotte. Just this week Lillian and I decided that one, the hen who is a beautiful silvery white, should be called Trouble. She is the one who built a nest on the compost pile and horded 11 eggs. She is sometimes missing and then magically returns. I have seen her on several occasions slipping through a very small gap between the electric poultry netting and the barn. Lately, with the bitter cold temperatures, she is often missing in the evening and mysteriously reappears in the AM. Over the past day and a half she had not been seen and we were sure that she had been eaten or fhad froze to death. We knew her disappearing act was probably due to a new secret nest. We had come to terms with her overwhelming need to wander and brood and knew her fate was in her own hands. We have searched in the daylight and in the dark for any sign of her and had no leads as to where she was and where she was nesting--until tonight.

I asked Paco to put a heat lamp up in the barn for the hens because the nights have been brutal. He had to walk out to the lean-to in the back pasture, quite a distance from the barn, to get the heat lamp. Back in the farthest corner of the lean-to, behind a large feed crock that blocked the wind, was Trouble resolutely sitting on a nest she had fashioned out of hay. She was alive. This hiding place is quite a ways form the protection of the barn, and surrounded by rail fence. She has had to brave the weather, 3 dogs, and a long commute to get from barn to nest. Woods surround the len-to where she was nesting and our yard is frequently visited by predators.

Paco and I decided that she should be moved, by force, back to the barn. I admire her determination and respect her yearning for motherhood, as well as her surprising bravery and intelligence. She would clearly die if left on her nest. Honestly, it's a miracle she has not frozen to death or become someone's dinner.

The stall in the barn we use as a hen house joins with another stall, via a sliding window. So, we moved Trouble (she had to be forced off the nest), her 16 eggs, and hay for a new nest into the adjoining stall. This way she can still have a semi-private place to set on her eggs as well as warmth and access to food and water. Sadly, Trouble has no boyfriend on our farm and her eggs will never hatch, but we have promised her if she can make it through the winter we will get her a man and she can brood as many baby chicks as her heart desires. My own long and heartbreaking journey to motherhood makes me especially proud of and sensitive to Trouble's determination. She is one hell of a chicken. It was 12 degrees last night. She sat on those eggs, without access to food or water. She found the safest and warmest place she could outside the barn, and she has worked for weeks to build a nest of 16 perfect, yet unfertilized, eggs.

I am so glad we found her alive, but sad that we messed with her plans. I hope that she will like the nest where it is and her wanderlust is satiated for the time being.