Exactly what demographic is Noggin attempting to draw with these Jumparounds videos? The all-important "Desperately longing for youth so we'll take a role we're 20 years too old for" group? Perhaps those "I really wanted to be in Scooby Doo as a kid" folks you hear rumors about? Seriously. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

No, really. I don't get it. These people are all at least 30, pretending to be teens. Nothing new here, I know, but it still boggles the mind. They do lameass dance moves that Perp is trying to copy. I find this both amusing and horrifying. Yes, I love that she wants to get her groove on, but dude. Can't we put on Code Monkey* or something instead?

Also: I don't care what anyone says, I love Yo Gabba Gabba. Biz Markie! There's a party in my tummy! It reminds me a bit of the Sid and Marty Krofft acid trip extravaganzas of my youth. I honestly thought I'd come up with H. R. Pufnstuf during a febrile nightmare one night. Seriously. What. the. fuck.

Oh, and using periods for dramatic effect has officially jumped the shark. I saw it on the cover of some gossip rag at the grocery store yesterday. Shit.

In other news, Jabba is nearly sitting up on her own. She does crunches when she lies down (uber cute), and today went from propping herself up with her hands to fully sitting. On her own. Awww, crap.

She cut two teeth on the bottom and is busy trying to gnaw my fingers off whenever she has the opportunity. She has tried bananas and avocados and loves them both, but I don't think she's getting much down her gullet. I just park her in the high chair and give her a slice of either (long ways) and let her go to town. I have to say, I don't miss the purees at all and I don't think she does either. Since we waited to introduce solids until she was 6 months old, it seemed reasonable to just skip that whole stage. Whee!

I ate cheese today. I suspect I'll be posting tomorrow about the hideous night she (we) had. But maybe we'll luck out. She still does not approve of coffee or wheat but I'm just not ready to give up the latter, given that dairy and joe are out.

Holy shit, ya'll, it went from 47 to 87 today in about 20 minutes. The wind started to shift around noon, with a HUGE wind storm, then it calmed down just a few minutes ago and no shit, it's 90 at our house. In town? fifty-nine. That's crazy, yo.

Dude is still cute and has oddly adult mannerisms, none of which I can bring to mind at the moment. Thanks, lactation lobotomy! He and Perp start summer school mid-June and we're all v excited about it. It gives Perp the perfect opportunity to get familiar with the school layout, introduce Dude to new kids and possibly neighbors (playdates!), and give Jabba a few hours a day of pure, unadulterated Mama time. I think this will be a good thing.

Perp is in an ... interesting ... stage. She's 5. I think that's probably all you need to know. It pretty much says it all:
"Oh, yeah, sorry about X, Y, Z that Perp did. She's 5."
"Ohhhhh, gotcha. Sorry!"

Mary Poppins will be coming to our house for the summer again. She'll be splitting her hours between us and some friends in town with a toddler, so I won't have her daily, but I am so sublimely blissed out by this that I don't even mind it much when Dude tries to headbutt me on the way to naptime. Much, I said. I'm not stoned.

Random mix of news that I'm not even trying to tie together in a coherent post:

I got Husband a Kindle for his birthday and he's in the trial phase, trying to determine if he'll use it enough to keep it or if he should trade it in for blowjob coupons. I suppose I chould just give him both.

We got three pallets of concrete blocks delivered so I can make raised beds where the fenced gardens used to be. The wood was rotting and I decided that a few raised beds made more sense than 55' of mostly unattended garden. Also, I can reorient them so they run N/S instead of E/W. A friend's rockstar husband came over and tilled the spot for the first bed last week, so I just need to level the edges and place the bricks. She said, casually, as if it were just that easy. I think a friend is coming later this or next week to ride herd on the kids while I work.

We have our second batch of meat birds in the garage. I moved the first batch of chickens and turkeys out to the bird yard, and they're all doing really well. We lost one chick to spraddle leg/trampling, and I think two each to general failure. I found the remains of one turkey outside the fence. Since the pigs trashed it last year, the birds have been just ducking underneath a section and going on walkabout. Not so much with the safety, there.

The first batch of chickens is due to go to the slaughterhouse at the end of next month and I honestly don't know if they're going to be big enough. Since they're actually free range, they don't sit and eat crazy high-protein all day long, which means that while they are gaining faster than the layers, say, they're still not going to be mondo birds by 6 weeks, like the ones you see in the grocery store. You read that right. Six. Six weeks. How sad is that? But at least mine are running around, eating bugs, taking dust baths, and doing crazy chicken things, instead of living inside a building loaded with their own shit and devoid of sunshine and grass. Also, I think this first batch will be more like 8 weeks.

If we can get our shit together this weekend, we'll put the electric in the temporary pig yard and get the first two of four. We can't get any until we're ready to build the main yard, though, and I realized that we might need to change our method of building after I saw the fence a friend put up. Seriously, it's a thing of beauty. We could use it for pigs, sheep, AND cows if we wanted, and I suspect we could put birds in there and keep them safe.

Said friend also has Muscovy ducks and I'm going to bring a few home. They are very good setters and mothers and I suspect that the only thing that will keep ducks safe is starting with wily adults.

I got a few dozen minnows for the pond and released them yesterday. I think the pond freezes enough to kill all the fish off, since we NEVER see any feeding dimples in the water, but I don't mind getting a few dozen a year to keep the mosquitoes down. Maybe we'll even see some predator birds.

My mom wants me to take a Master Canner class. Should I? I do a little bit most years, but I'm kind of afraid it would raise my interest in an unhealthy way. That is to say: I'll go apeshit and try to can everything I bring home and we'll never get the kitchen back.















*Known as "Code Monkey love you" chez Smacky.

Anyone need some eggs?

That's two eggs short of eight and a half dozen. I'm sure there's some kind of crazy joke to be made in there, and I wouldn't begrudge you one little bit. I really wouldn't. Husband found the motherlode today, almost three dozen in a tipped over cardboard box out in the pole barn. I've seen that box I don't know how many times, but it never occured to me it would present itself as the Ideal Nestbox. Silly me.

Yeah, so hi! Hello, how are you! Um, I guess I don't have a good reason for not posting. Post partum derangement, perhaps? Yes! Why not? We've had two birthdays, not including Jabba's, a couple days where I sat for a friend's kids and had something crazy like eight preschoolers, toddlers, and babies in the house with just me in attendance*. If that ain't crazy, I don't know what is.

So, a roundup of our activities over the last few months (shameful!):
I flew with all three kids to my dad's place on the East Coast. By. my. self. And we were all unmedicated! I KNOW!

Actually, when it comes to flying, my kids are rock. stars. They kind of suck in the airport itself, but really, where would you rather have the good behavior? In a relatively small, exceptionally contained space, or a hundreds of thousands of square-feet facility with room to run? Yes, exactly.

We spent two weeks out east, with Husband coming out for the second half, which is when we turned it up a notch and dispatched 500 clams. Dude didn't have a chance to repeat his astonishing oysterfest, but he made do. We took a couple dozen out on the dock and tossed them in, hoping they might take a liking to the place and settle in for a stay. Who knows, it could work.

My folks and I took the kids to the beach for a foot-dip, but it was pretty windy and cold, and really too early in the season for a beach day. Perp was ecstatic about being able to stick her toes in the ocean, though. Dude managed to handle the wind pretty well; he HATES it when it blows in his ears, always has. Even as an infant, he'd burrow his face into my chest at the least sign of a breeze. Freak.

Unfortunately, we had a minor tragedy. Let me just say that a four-pound box of shortbread cookies and I cannot coexist in the same house together. Good thing I got the stomach flu yesterday and managed to unload a few pounds in the space of 16 hours. My pants almost fit again.

We all flew home togther and managed to survive the cancelled flight, reroute to Chicago (go see the dinosaur!) and late-night drive from Big City airport to our little burg. Instead of arriving home in time for a late-ish bedtime for the kids, we got home at about 2 am. But we still got home, so okay.

We got our first batches of birds last week, 25 turkeys (bronzes) and 25 meat birds. I have them all together in a wading pool, but they announced their displeasure with this setup by starting to pick at each other. I had to put three bandaids on the butt of one of the chickens. I'll try to get a shot of that, it's actually kinda cute.

So tomorrow, I'll move them out to the new old chicken coop, set up the lights, and let them have more room to roam. I think it'll do them a world of good and I bet the picking stops right away.

And! One of our hens hatched a chick! And she's raising it! For those of you what don't have chickens, this is a Big Deal. Most birds have had the setting/brooding instinct bred out of them, so the only way to increase your flock is to buy chicks or use an incubator/brooder setup. But I managed to score an excellent mama hen, who is doing a bang-up job, and I hope she'll hatch out a full clutch this summer. I suspect that any chicks she raises that have the least natural inclination to motherhood be more likely to get the job done. The other birds we've had who managed to set long enough to hatch eggs out were suckass mothers and smothered the hicks or abandoned them. This is too cool. Me, I'm remarkably easy to please. Cheap date!

So far, no indication that I'll get into school early --holy crap, it's POURING just now-- and frankly that's good since we have no childcare leads. Helps to look for some, I suppose..

And now, cute kid pics!





































*I don't mean eight of each, of course. That would be insane.