The FDA's frown
This week, we tried to resume normal life after all the vacation excitement. Alison is in charge of teaching the preschool co-op this month, so she is organizing everything for the kids to play restaurant at our house. It's been a very messy process; the kids made personal pizzas on Tuesday (coating the kitchen in flour) and made burgers from homemade play dough on Thursday (getting play dough stuck everywhere). The kids have been enjoying it, although Timothy would like more attention than he gets when all the kids are over.
Alison has been focusing on helping Timothy learn to crawl and other skills. Timmy can now pull himself along the floor if he's in a good mood and really wants to get somewhere. It works best on carpet; we have no carpet. He will also get up on all fours and rock, so he's probably within a few weeks of actual crawling.
Both Alison and Timmy have been enjoying their regular daily practice sessions very much. So she decided to try to work more with the girls on some of the things they're trying to learn. Rea's reading is really taking off, and she's reading picture books (rather than the simplified Early Readers that only have a few words per page) with a little help now. The current reward system is that when she reads a storybook based on My Little Pony TV shows (her current obsession), we check out the DVD from the library and watch the TV show together. (This is neither the My Little Pony Mike and I grew up with nor the current one; apparently there was a version in between, and those are the stories and movies our library has (at least that Rea has found).) Both girls are loving practicing the piano every day; Rea is working hard on Hot Cross Buns and Sara is learning to identify the notes. They are also learning to swing across the monkey bars with Mommy spotting them; Rea will probably do it independently soon, and Sara is moving from bar to bar for the first time.
All of these things went great for a few days. Then sickness struck. (Hence the word "tried" in the first line of this post.) Sara has had the sniffles for a week; it got Rea on Wednesday. Thursday Rea was actually sick (unfortunately this was not evident until after preschool, so everyone probably has it now) and Timmy got it. Friday Timmy was very sick (fever, lethargic, etc) and Rea was a little better, but everyone just laid around all day. Saturday and Sunday Timmy has stayed sick, although the girls are recovered except for a cough. They were still kept home from Church to avoid passing this on, but they are back to normal. Timmy is still fussy and hot (never more than 100 degrees, but obviously uncomfortable) and taking all of one parent's attention pretty much all of the time. We're hoping he gets over it soon; it has made the past three days rather dull. We have watched a few My Little Pony movies and cuddled the baby. It's a good thing the girls are good at playing together without a grown up.
Saturday was a big day for our cheeses: we made a 7 lb cheddar (in memory of the excellent cheddar we made last year), and we opened our first brie. The cheddar make went well, so hopefully we have more excellent cheddar in half a year or so. We also took meticulous notes, so we will be able to reproduce it hopefully.
The brie was opened after only 3 weeks of aging, and was made from raw milk, so the FDA would frown upon it. It had a nice flavor, but had not liquified very much. We liked it, and will continue to eat it as it ages. Since it is so fast to make we will probably also share it fairly freely to non-pregnant people.
We did do one other thing on Saturday: took Clarabelle to the goat stud. Before she was bred, we could never tell if she was in heat, but she was very obviously in heat Friday night. So we took her over Saturday afternoon; if we're lucky, she was still in heat and will freshen in five months. Then we'll get more milk out of her and can breed LaLa so both of them aren't dry at the same time. We'll watch her closely in about three weeks to see if she goes into heat again; if she doesn't, she's pregnant. If she does, we'll have to try again. But we're hopeful we'll get this right and no longer have to have no milk for a period in order to freshen them.
Alison has been focusing on helping Timothy learn to crawl and other skills. Timmy can now pull himself along the floor if he's in a good mood and really wants to get somewhere. It works best on carpet; we have no carpet. He will also get up on all fours and rock, so he's probably within a few weeks of actual crawling.
Both Alison and Timmy have been enjoying their regular daily practice sessions very much. So she decided to try to work more with the girls on some of the things they're trying to learn. Rea's reading is really taking off, and she's reading picture books (rather than the simplified Early Readers that only have a few words per page) with a little help now. The current reward system is that when she reads a storybook based on My Little Pony TV shows (her current obsession), we check out the DVD from the library and watch the TV show together. (This is neither the My Little Pony Mike and I grew up with nor the current one; apparently there was a version in between, and those are the stories and movies our library has (at least that Rea has found).) Both girls are loving practicing the piano every day; Rea is working hard on Hot Cross Buns and Sara is learning to identify the notes. They are also learning to swing across the monkey bars with Mommy spotting them; Rea will probably do it independently soon, and Sara is moving from bar to bar for the first time.
All of these things went great for a few days. Then sickness struck. (Hence the word "tried" in the first line of this post.) Sara has had the sniffles for a week; it got Rea on Wednesday. Thursday Rea was actually sick (unfortunately this was not evident until after preschool, so everyone probably has it now) and Timmy got it. Friday Timmy was very sick (fever, lethargic, etc) and Rea was a little better, but everyone just laid around all day. Saturday and Sunday Timmy has stayed sick, although the girls are recovered except for a cough. They were still kept home from Church to avoid passing this on, but they are back to normal. Timmy is still fussy and hot (never more than 100 degrees, but obviously uncomfortable) and taking all of one parent's attention pretty much all of the time. We're hoping he gets over it soon; it has made the past three days rather dull. We have watched a few My Little Pony movies and cuddled the baby. It's a good thing the girls are good at playing together without a grown up.Saturday was a big day for our cheeses: we made a 7 lb cheddar (in memory of the excellent cheddar we made last year), and we opened our first brie. The cheddar make went well, so hopefully we have more excellent cheddar in half a year or so. We also took meticulous notes, so we will be able to reproduce it hopefully.The brie was opened after only 3 weeks of aging, and was made from raw milk, so the FDA would frown upon it. It had a nice flavor, but had not liquified very much. We liked it, and will continue to eat it as it ages. Since it is so fast to make we will probably also share it fairly freely to non-pregnant people.
We did do one other thing on Saturday: took Clarabelle to the goat stud. Before she was bred, we could never tell if she was in heat, but she was very obviously in heat Friday night. So we took her over Saturday afternoon; if we're lucky, she was still in heat and will freshen in five months. Then we'll get more milk out of her and can breed LaLa so both of them aren't dry at the same time. We'll watch her closely in about three weeks to see if she goes into heat again; if she doesn't, she's pregnant. If she does, we'll have to try again. But we're hopeful we'll get this right and no longer have to have no milk for a period in order to freshen them.
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