JESSE IS HERE!!!

He was born July 5th, 13 days late, and my biggest baby yet at 9lbs 6 oz and 21.5 inches long. His scores were 10 10 and 10!! He is a great nurser and my milk is already in!! PTL!!

BUT MOM I didn't want to come out!!!!

We are home and doing great!!

Update :)

We are still awaiting the arrival of Baby J around here. He is now 9 days over due and I saw the doctor again yesterday. My blood pressure went up a bit last week and they ordered a bunch of tests but everything turned out fine. Yesterday they did MORE tests, just in case, and another Non Stress Test on Baby.. Which turned out wonderful. SO Baby is in great shape and so am I. We have elected NOT to be induced unless there is a medical NECESSITY to do so and so we are just waiting for Baby J to arrive on his own. My doctor is back as of yesterday and that is relieving.. the doctor I've been seeing for the last 2 weeks is really nice but my doctor knows me quite well and accepts all my quirks :) They do want me in the hospital every day for a Non Stress Test on baby, they hook my belly to a monitor and monitor his heart rate and any contrax I might be having for about 30 to 40 minutes, while I lay on my back and stare at the ceiling.. well actually I went to the library yesterday and got a few books out so I'll have something to do!

Some positive things about all this is that Baby J WILL be born in July now and will have a birth month of his own :) Papa has the next 5 days off so I won't have to call him from work :) I have a baby sitter for the weekend :) Oh and the biggest blessing of ALL is that if Baby J comes when he wants, not induced, it will be the BEST THING FOR US ALL... mentally and physically :)

THE RIDE!!!

I recently picked up my Mom, blue shirt :) and headed out to the beach for the day. While we were there my sister A and her two kids M and C got dropped off. Several hours later the wind was a bit chilly and getting worse so we packed our 6 kids and 3 adults into our 'newly renovated' travel all and went to Grandma's house to round out the day with pizza and a movie with sister in law A and her 2 kids. It was awesome!! We had 9 people in the travel all and 10 souls!! Thank goodness baby J hasn't come yet or we would have been a seat short!! Believe it or not we were all pretty comfy even in the front seat. I had room for a water bottle between me and A and both Mom and A commented they were not as squished as they would have been in a regular pickup.
As J put it.. 'there were 9 people in the travel all and 1 in the pot' (meaning Baby J who is now 6 days late!)
All the kids in the back.. left to right back to front is L, M, J, R, C and E!! And yes.. that is 3 car seats in the middle seat and 3 booster seats in the back!! With just our kids there is no car seat in the middle of the middle bench which makes for a crawl over space for the boys so they can get into the back, the boys can both do their own seat belts up, and in the back there is an empty seat between the boys booster seats as well. Keep in mind we fit the 9 people and ALL OUR BEACH STUFF including 3 lawn chairs in the travel all for the ride home.. Do you see any 'stuff' :) I love my truck!!

The New Seat!

Here is the new seat getting 'checked over' by the 'crew' :) They had to test drive it.. and found it's great fun to tip it over. Back and forth.. over and over.. they had a great time. That patch of ground behind them is where the garden was last year.. that is chickweed you see!!

Getting Ready For Baby!!

Just realized I've been out of the loop here for a while and thought I'd catch you all up.

Papa is officially done school as of last Thursday and back at work. This is a huge load off me as he's now 10 minutes away not an hour! An hour is a LONG time to wait for someone when your last labor was only 3.5 :) His score on his final 2 year test was 98! Yes the man is brilliant and I'm super proud of him. His lowest mark for the course was 96 so his over all score will be HIGH.

Papa spent the better part of a day getting the travelall 'up graded' with a new ignition system, better tires, and a new seat in the very back of the cargo area for the boys. I need to go take some pictures yet and I'll post them when I do. Needless to say it was a much needed change as we would not have been able to fit the baby car seat in the truck without a new seat. Both J and L can use a booster seat now so they have their own 'boys' seat in the very back. Papa got the seat out of a Yukon suburban and it has it's own seat belts with shoulder belts! Lack of shoulder belts has been a rather annoying problem with booster seats and so it's super nice to have them right in the seat for the boys to use. Now our travel all seats 9.

I've had a burst of energy this last week and gotten quite a bit of the house cleaned, organized and other wise put away. It's truly amazing how fast a small trailer gets cluttered, and dirty with 6 people living in it!! I've been able to keep up on the laundry and dishes with the boys help but a few other things had started to slide. Thankfully a small trailer also is less to clean and doesn't take very long to clean up :) I also got a bit of bread frozen for later and a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies (6x) baked and frozen. I'm not doing as much storing up as I have for other babies as Papa is home for supper every night and will take a week off when baby does come. Besides that he loves to cook :)

Papa is doing all the outside chores except feeding the calves in the morning including watering which is SO nice. I do need to go out and cut my spinach before it bolts and thin the beets which is a ME thing as Papa doesn't know beets from radishes.. and I'm not joking. The other day I sent J out to pick me a radish, I actually wanted a bowl full but he wasn't sure where they were so I wanted him to get one to start, and he went and looked and couldn't find them. So J asked Papa to help him and they found them but 'they were all too small mom!' I was confused as my radishes are all a very nice size and I was JUST there so J and I went out to look and SURE ENOUGH they'd been pulling beets!! Papa said he thought they looked funny for radishes!! My beets were planted thick so I could freeze some beet leaves while thinning them out so they didn't harm anything. My lettuce and spinach are both at an eatable stage and we are enjoying them.

The kids and I set up the playpen with the bassinet in it some time ago and now we have clothes, blankets, sleep spot and the car seat all ready for baby! We had fun finding, washing, folding and putting it all away for him. Now all we need is a baby :)

The playpen is set up in our room and Papa and I have been using it as sort of a store all for the last little bit. I guess I'm ready for baby as I panicked just for 2 seconds the other day when I saw a heavy blanket over the sleeping area.. OH NO the baby!! Then it hit me.. Is still in your womb!!

I spent part of yesterday in the birthing room at the hospital having a non stress test done on baby.. because I'm now overdue they like to check up on them regularly. Always before when I've had one they've done them in the ER but I guess it's changed since R and now they do them in the labor room. I must say it was very strange to be in the labor room and NOT be in labor. There are only 2 rooms and a birthing room in our small hospital and I was in the smallest one.. where I gave birth to both E and R. I truly did not remember it as that small. It's tiny! But I like it anyway and have requested it for this birth as well. The non stress test was fine and if I continue to go overdue they will bring me in for another one next week. My doctor is out of town so I have another one I like quite well, hopefully she will be as good as mine when it comes to overdue babies and labor and delivery.

Several weeks ago I had a quick ultrasound in the ER just to make sure little Baby J is head down. He had been flipping up and down for a while and my doctor wanted to 'make sure' he was head down. He was, but I was amazed at how little they can see with a ultrasound at that age.. the baby is SO big that all you see is bones and blobs.. we had a super hard time finding the head but we did find it and so we are good to go.

Papa just realized the other day that this baby has a chance to be born on Papa's birthday or very close to it. Unless Baby J is born 9 or 10 days late he will be the 1st one of us to double up on a birth month. Sharing with Papa. If he is late he'll be born in July and then we'll have January, March, April, May, June, July, and October.

Comfery

Here is a picture of one side of our lagoon and the comfery Grandma G planted there several years ago. It is sure is looking nice!! There are at least 4 plants in the picture and several more that are not. The horseradish we've not seen yet this year.. but it is coming up in the yard. And no I have not seen any fish in it yet this year. The green algae is so thick you can't see into the water at all. I did once see a bubble like a fish had just bobbed to the surface once!! So they may still be in there!!

New Skills :)

Grandpa and Grandma F gave J a fishing rod for his birthday and we recently got it all figured out and Papa taught both J and L to cast on the lawn. Both boys picked it up amazingly fast.. and had a great time 'fishing' the lawn. I was just looking at the lawn in the picture and these were taken a while ago :) The lawn is now green and the cows are grazing it at the moment. Now that I'm thinking about it I believe these were taken on Mothers day!

The longest part of the 'teaching' was Papa trying to remember how to cast. If you know Papa at all you know that he DOES NOT FISH!! He hasn't caught a fish since grade school and has been known to keep an entire boat load of people from catching fish just because he went along :) Or so he says!! He's says he's jinxed and has actually proven this several times.. Once we didn't even MAKE it to the lake :)

But J, L and I love to fish. So Papa takes care of the ones on shore and we go fishing!! When we come off the boat Papa takes over and last time J and L both got to help clean and cook their own fish before eating them. Very good fish!! Grandpa F is looking forward to taking the boys fishing in his boat this summer and J and L ask regularly when they can go fishing!

Pictures of the Lease and Billy the Steer!

The lease is looking great!! This area was burnt this spring and the piles we burnt were just off to the left of the picture. Papa has been doing walk thru's every couple of days and is loving the length and amounts of grass that is coming up everywhere.. too bad we can't put the milk cows in it. It's too far away to come in to milk two times a day and there is too much stuff they could cut their bags up on!

Billy is Bindy's 2 year old steer. He has been out at my Aunt and Uncle's house with their cows for the last year or so but we brought him home last Friday and put him in the lease. We want to get him a bit fatter and then butcher him when he's ready, probably mid to late summer. He is 1/4 Holstein, 1/4 Jersey and 1/2 black Angus. The red tinge to his hair is just like his mothers! And that mulish look he gets from her too!! I guess he was some fun to load but calmed right down in the trailer and is doing well by himself in the lease.

SURPRISE!!!

Maggie turned out to be a great 'mother'- ing cow and unfortunately let Bindy's calf nurse this morning! EEK. So little Mr. Calf is no longer in with the milk cows but has his own buddy in a smaller pen. In the picture he is nursing Maggie (who's bag is much easier to get at) while Bindy licks him. Maggie would NOT leave him alone.

Papa got out of bed before me this morning and then came right back and told me I had to come see something. His voice was almost dull and so I got up right away and went and looked. He went to the kitchen window and I saw Chip in the sandbox and noted it.. nothing new there.. then he goes to the living room window.. and there is Bindy and Maggie.. and SURPRISE a little black calf. Maggie was licking him but I knew it was Bindys!! To back track a little bit Papa was not impressed for the same reason I was not. Bindy has a low bag, as you can see, and last week she stepped on her front left teat.. skinning the tip right off it. NASTY!! We've been quite worried that it would not heal in time for her calf.. and with her calf 3 weeks early (possibly our dates are off) it will really not be healed. In fact this morning it split open on the bottom and looks even worse! But it might be a better thing all in all as it can drain now.

Amazingly enough we think her teat will be fine for next year as the middle part where the milk ducts seems to be fine! But for now we will have a 3 teated cow to milk. Poor Papa has to milk her as I can NOT get that low.. he told me this morning that it made his belly sore to lean over that far to milk.. so there IS NO WAY I CAN!! Which means Papa will be getting up at 5ish to milk both cows until we get our milking buckets. They were suppose to be here 10 days ago but they sent the wrong ones so we are still waiting and still milking by hand. Papa says once we get them and he gets a mechanical milking system going I should be able to 'milk' mornings again which will be a great help to him.

SO now we are bucket feeding 2 calves, one we are babysitting for a neighbor who is going away for a month and our own little bull calf who as of yet has no name. He needs a B name and Bindy, Billy and Bobby are all taken.. any ideas??

Stubs Piglets!

Stub in her nest with her piglets and the kids and Papa looking on!

Well I wrote that last post in the morning and that early afternoon Stub started making a nest. She worked on it for hours and when Papa got home she had a large area sprinkled with straw and twigs so Papa brought her a load of straw and she made an even better nest. That night before bed I headed out to see if anything was happening yet and found her in labor with 2 piglets already born. I watched for a bit but nothing was happening so I went inside for 20 minutes and sure enough when I got back out there she'd had 2 more! So I found a semi comfortable place to sit and watched her give birth to the last 4!! Very cool. I'm totally amazed at how vigorous piglets are at birth! She would push one out and it would get up and start looking for a teat... and find it and drink and crawl all over her in the process. She didn't get up once the whole time. After watching for over an hour I realized there was something wrong with one of the piglets. He couldn't get up, wouldn't drink (I tried to get him too) and kept making a funny GAK GAK noise. The other piglets all had mini pig noises; grunts and squeals. I had not brought a flashlight or anything so I headed to the house and woke up Papa and he came out, with a flashlight, to take a look. Well we still don't know what was wrong with him but the flashlight showed a raw spot on his forehead that took up about half of it and was raw and bleeding. I think he got that after he was born from Stubs back feet.. Anyway Papa and I decided he was 'not quite right in the head' for whatever reason and so Papa took him away and took 'care' of him. It was really too bad as he was a nice sized piglet and it seemed a shame after all Stubs hard work. I found it very interesting that the other two Momma pigs came to 'talk' to Stub several times each while I was there. They didn't come close but came and grunted at her for a bit and then went back to their own babies. Sort of an encouragement party. The other 7 piglets are doing wonderful and she hasn't even noticed that the 8th is gone. She is VERY happy now and no longer lonely. Yesterday she left her nest only once and that was for a quick drink of water.

So to sum up. We bred 3 Berkshire gilts to a Berkshire boar, got 7, 8, and 8 piglets born. One piglet was born dead 24 hours after the rest which gave 6 pigger her 6, she had them early in the am (before 5:30). 8 pigger had 8 and they all lived and she had them at noon 5 days after 6 pigger. Stub had 8, lost 1, and had them between 9:30 and 10:30 pm 5 days after 8 pigger!! So we got 21 piglets total, 11 are females and 10 are males. If that last one would have lived we would have had even numbers males to females. I find it fascinating to see the patterns..