I apparently have a limit to the questions I can handle in a day. Which somewhat surprises me; I usually have great patience in talking to and sharing with kids, especially mine. :) I have been a teacher and very much enjoy sharing about God's world and the way things work with an inquiring mind. But my 5-year-old really can stump me sometimes. Not that the questions are too difficult to answer, but it's hard to answer them without using the question somehow. I am getting used to things like, "Why do yellow jackets build nests in dark corners?" and "Why do bugs crawl under things?". But take a gander at the title. Why does water make mud? How do you answer that? I told her that water didn't make mud, but water and dirt did, and that's just how it works. Is that an answer? Why do I wear my shoes? Why does the grass grow better behind the house? I can't even remember most of today's questions. But by 4 pm I clock out of the answer game, I'm afraid. After 4, I just can't listen any more. Poor girl; as soon as she learns to read better I'll point her to the dictionary and encyclopedias for such things. By then, she'll probably have grown out of the incessant questioning (yes, please?).
Yesterday continued to be a trial, but I DID make it through, obviously. I was so, SO tired. Little Monkey has had some digestive issues lately, and came upstairs having tried to clean herself after having an accident. I had to stick her in the tub and hose her off, and she said she'd messed her swimsuit up, but it was in the bathroom downstairs. Perhaps I should've checked right then, but I cleaned her up and got her and her sister aimed towards bed, if barely. Hubby got home around 8, while the kids were still looking for their toothbrushes (still MIA) and toothpaste (I found the mostly-empty tube in the family room - it was brand new 2 days ago - haven't found the balance of it). Eventually I went downstairs to find the bathroom COVERED in ... stuff. The swimsuit, the floor, the toilet seat, the roll of toilet paper. Bless her heart she had really tried! But what a mess. I got my vinyl disposable gloves and my arsenal of natural disinfectants (grapefruit seed extract, diluted and Sol-U-Guard with thyme oil) and went to work. God's grace really does see us through. I was aiming for bed after getting the kids in their pajamas, but ended up taking care of things for a couple more hours, probably.
Today didn't go so well as a cleaning day, but there is 300 lbs of animal feed in the trunk of the car and 10 gallons of gas in the garage (now to keep hubby from pouring it into his motorcycles) for the lawn mowers and tractor. I must yet get a few loads of laundry off the line and put away and feed the critters. The hens like their new ground; 22 eggs yesterday and today, considerably more than this past week. Not a lot of calls for the pig. She may end up in our freezer too. :( We lost 2 broiler chicks today; Hubby didn't know I wasn't turning on the heat lamp at night any more and I think at least one of them died from heat. They're ugly critters; not at all like the hens when they were growing. These grow so fast and their pink skin shows everywhere between their sparse white feathers, which just can't keep up. And they eat more like horses, I think. I'm hoping the vegetarian-based hen feed won't kill them. It's far higher in calcium and that can be bad on their kidneys, I read. I'm giving them other grains, but the grains require them to eat grit, and the grit you can buy is laced in calcium! I need to get them on real ground, so I need to build them a pen. Whew. By God's grace!
