Homebound in December

Despite being homebound with sickness for half of the month of December, life was never dull at Timmerman de Casa.  One morning over Christmas break, we woke up to the sound of gobbling.  Upon further investigation, we found this on our front porch:

Mrs. Turkey was kind enough to leave us a gift before she flew off the porch.  Fortunately, Mr. Turkey, as seen below, didn't venture up.  They are huge birds, and belong to our neighbor across the street who eventually came over and herded them back to his house.

Speaking of poultry, the perfect storm happened for our chickens this past month.  We usually feed them all of our table scraps.  With a toddler and a preschooler in the house, this amounts to a good amount of "people" food each day.  Once we became sick however, we had to toss our table scraps in the garbage, since chickens are highly susceptible to human respiratory illnesses.  Around this same time, it snowed.  It was the first time our chickens experienced the cold white stuff, since none of them are over a year old.  It turns out, chickens hate snow.  They refuse to walk on it and so stayed huddled in or directly under the coop to avoid stepping on it.  This led to very tight quarters and boredom, as the snow was covering where they would otherwise be hunting and pecking for bugs.  This trifecta of no table scraps, tight quarters and no protein from bugs led them to start pecking each other as they searched for protein in each other's blood.  The runt of our flock got pecked so badly that a fist-sized chunk of feathers was missing from her back and she was bleeding.  Several YouTube videos later, we knew what the problem was and what we needed to do about it.  We upped their protein, shoveled the snow out of their run (yes, their run is now shoveled before our driveway) and put a band aid on the hurting chicken's back, which was no easy task.  YouTube advised us to nab her at night when she was sleeping, as chickens cannot see very well in the dark.  Will convinced me to go outside with him in temperatures in the teens by promising me I could blog about it when I was done.  YouTube said it would be easier, not easy, Will reminded me as we kept grabbing the chicken and having her slip through our hands before we could get the duck tape and cotton ball "Farmer's Band Aid" on her.  Here are the chickens below, sleeping in the coop.

We finally got the makeshift band aid on her, and she is healing quite nicely.  I am happy to report that our chickens are no longer pecking each other and have even upped their egg production.  We are now getting anywhere from five to seven eggs a day.

There has been a lot of translating going on in our house lately.  From the behavior of our chickens, to the words of our sweet Emma, it is really all just a guessing game.  Fortunately for us we have the internet for the chickens and Lucy to help us decipher Emma.  Without fail, if we can't understand what Emma is adamently telling us, we bring Lucy in on the conversation and she tells us exactly what Emma is trying to say.  Emma smiles with relief then, and Lucy laughs at what she thinks is Mom and Dad just being silly.  Why Lucy understands so easily what Emma is saying is beyond us, but it is a very useful resource that is for sure!

We have entered a new phase in positive behavior reinforcement here at the Timmerman house.  Lucy has graduated from stickers and now earns cold hard cash - $3 to be exact - every time she fills up her apple tree for good behavior.  This past month she saved up her money to buy some fabric at JoAnn Fabric to make doll blankets out of.  Lucy ran into a small problem though.  When she arrived at the store, she couldn't decide which fabric she wanted.  After she proclaimed her undying love for over a dozen different bolts of cloth, I got her to narrow it down to four.  Thus began phase two of her education with money: layaway.  In retrospect I should have held firm and only allowed her to buy what she had money for, however Emma had pooped while we were narrowing down the choices and I had left the diaper bag in the car.  I am happy to report that Lucy has diligently worked her way out of layaway.  Here she is below in a fort she made out of laundry baskets and her new fabric.

Not only did the new fabric work well for forts, it also made for great fashion designs, as witnessed below.

After all of the fun with the raw yards of fabric, Lucy and I sat down and sewed up some doll mattresses for the new bunk beds Will made the girls for Christmas.  Lucy had a blast using the sewing machine for the first time and I have to say that these four yards of fabric brought more creative fun to our house than anything we have bought so far.

Almost four is a fun age.  I am excited to start doing more hands on crafts with Lucy that involves more than just crayons and markers.  I am also super excited that she is finally of the age where she understands and enjoys playing board games.  She received a great assortment of games for Christmas, and we love playing Memory, Chutes and Ladders, Cooties, Candy Land and our family favorite, Chickyboom with her.  Besides playing lots of games, we have spent our sick days watching way too much Dora and Clifford...

...as well as reading lots of stories too.

Baths were far and few between in December, due to high fevers.  Here they are below before the great sickness of December 2012 occurred.

About a week before we all got sick, we had some fun at Bass Pro Shops where we saw Santa, had an indoor snowball fight and got to ride a carousel.

Finally, the day before we got sick we were fortunate enough to have my brother and his family, who were in for the holidays from Minnesota, over for lunch.  Below is a picture of the cousins, with my brother's mother-in-law in her element.

We definitely had a lot of family bonding in the month of December and although it was nice to be cozy inside while the snow was falling outside we are looking forward to experiencing January out rather than in!