Chick Bios

Aunt Marge and Aunt Petunia
These two hens are New Hampshire Reds and are good layers. Basic big brown hens, they are always busy, clucking and scratching and keeping the other hens off their few inches of dirt. Named after muggles in Harry Potter books, these girls waddle about, bossy and complaining, rather like their namesakes. To tell them apart take a close look -- Aunt Petunia is the skinny one and Marge is fat, just like in the books. (taken from The Hen Cam)

I decided that since a bunch of chickens on the Hen Cam have bios, I ought to do some bios of my kids as well. I mean shoot, if their chickens deserve them, I certainly think my kids should have them...they are at least as special as Aunt Marge and Petunia....

Aidan, 5 years old, a "basic" kid, somewhat "bossy"...

After giving Madeline a special treat of M&M's, she exclaimed: "Thank you Mommy, I love you! You are the best mommy in the whole wide world!"

Quick-on-the-draw Aidan, saved my heart from melting with, "No, she's not, Madeline. You don't know if she's the best Mom in the whole wide world because there is no way of knowing who is the best Mommy."

Although I had to use our large, red pancake spatula to scrape my deflated self off the floor, I realized this is very much Aidan in a nutshell. He needs to be the one with the most knowledge in any given conversation, with the last word edgewise, feelings be damned! I will be the first to admit, he is right: I am not the best mommy in the whole wide world. BUT HE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT YET....(It has been said that the truth will set you free...if by that they mean it will completely wipe out your entire ego, then yeah, I buy it.) The thing is, Aidan takes everything very literally and almost like a philosopher his life mission thus far is to find, and then point out, the truth; that is "the truth according to Aidan."

Another example is when we had to stop by the side of the road for him to go to the bathroom while in Florida. Madeline started screaming she had to go, too. Knowing she could probably wait until we got home I said, "Just hold it, Madeline," to which Aidan replied, "Mom, she can't hold it. She only has a crotch and a bum." He's my literalist.

Madeline, 3 years old, potentially "a good layer" (hopefully later than sooner)

Underneath the theatrical three-year-old is a very sweet little girl who ADORES her brother. We went around the table saying why we loved Aidan the other night and she said, "I love Aidan because he is my sweet brother." Nevermind the fact that he treated her like a rotten piece of liver the entire day. All she sees is her hero. In fact, last year at some point she told her daddy she was going to marry Aidan. When Kurt explained that she couldn't marry her brother, she burst into gigantic tears, which flooded the bedroom (the same reaction Aidan had at this age when told he couldn't be Darth Vader when he grew up). 

"Well then, who AM I going to marry?" she wanted to know. And it doesn't stop there. Just yesterday she asked me the same thing:

"Mommy, who am I going to marry?"

"I don't know, Madeline. We won't know that until you grow up," I said.

"But Mommy, I need to know NOW! Who am I going to marry?" and after a short pause, "How long until I grow up?"

It's amazing to me (and quite terrifying!) that she thinks like this already. And I am guessing she will have a long list of boys she is going to marry by the time that day actually arrives! 

She is the girl who actually doesn't mind cleaning because it makes her more like Cinderella and will sometimes ask me to talk like the evil step-mother while telling her to do her chores. She is also the girl who will spend 10 minutes yelling and crying that she can't make her bed and then turn right around and make my bed as well. But what I find most endearing about Madeline is her utter honesty at this point. Today she had a rough day with her little brother and had bit him on his arm and had done something else to make him cry as well, but I wasn't certain what. During dinner, we were talking about the Lord's Prayer and I was trying to explain what "trespass" meant. 

"Trespassing is when you do something bad, that you know you are not supposed to do; like when you bit Liam today," I explained. 

"Yeah, you shouldn't bite Liam, Madeline. Not even just once," Aidan said. 

"Oh....well I bit him twice," she admitted. That's Madeline. 

Lily, 2 years old, "always busy"

If you have kept up with The Graceful Chicken, you know Lily well. Like most two year olds, she is into everything (or in her case, on top of everything!) She is the child who licks iced coffee off of the coffee shop floor; who asks for daily random bandaids ("For my bummy, Mommy, see?"); who is comforted by carrying around an ice pack (hey, she was born in the North Pole, I mean, Minnesota); who has become ULTRA territorial over the kids' toilet and refuses to let anyone else use it (she actually runs and jumps on the thing if anyone even suggests they may need to go in the near future, which has become quite the game to her loving siblings...); and who was found sitting with the (plugged in) power cord to the baby monitor which she was using to shock her tongue, over and over again! (I did it once to see if it did anything and HOLY SMOKES, BATMAN!) She is full of energy (especially after that!), and a bit on the feisty side, to say the least.

One night, a while back, she was having a hard time getting that energy settled down for bed so I went back to sit there next to her (so that she wouldn't jump on Madeline's head and wake her up like she had a few nights before). Lily was apparently setting up shop on her bed which she had filled with every toy she could find (think books, puppies, dolls, superheros, plastic and wooden food items, an entire tea set and a few random Mega Blocks.)

"Close your eyes, Lily," I said.

Lily closed her eyes and continued right on playing, groping around for toys that were in her reach, picking up this or that, feeling a toy and putting it in her mouth or rubbing it against her cheek. Finally, after some time, she gave up and spent the next few minutes trying to balance a teapot on her forehead, eyes still shut of course. (She's truly talented.)

And just last night, she had climbed up on the bathroom counter to brush her teeth and I heard her start yelling, "Mommy, mommy, get it, mommy!" Then silence......THUMP! 

"Got it!" she exclaimed.

And sure enough, she had used the end of her toothbrush to squish a little spider. That's Lily. 

Liam, almost 7 months, "named after muggles" (hee hee)

What can you say about the perfect storm? He is sweet, cuddly, and has such a infectious belly-laugh it is hard to refrain from eating him up! But when he's hungry....well, it's best just to keep him fed! At almost 7 months, he isn't quite the mover and shaker just yet but he does have a huge fan base and a rather adoring audience. And we plan to keep him this way...at least until he learns to cluck and scratch, keeping the others off his few inches of dirt...