Friends, Chatterbooks and Duck related angst

A nice slow start to today, much needed after waking with alarms for at least the last five mornings in a row. I have all but given up fretting about the kids getting enough sleep figuring if they still have energy left at the end of each day to spend a couple of hours in their rooms quietly playing, drawing, listening to audiobooks etc even on days when we have woken them and dragged them reluctantly out of bed then they just don’t need the sleep. They are certainly not lacking in exercise, fresh air, general stimulation or anything else I can think of and never really seem to complain of feeling tired, walk miles when required, run rather than walk everywhere are just never asleep much before about 11pm no matter what we do during the day. But it’s still nice to sleep in until about 9ish when we get the chance ;).

This morning we were expecting a visit from Helen, Alex and Abbie, our friends who live on a boat. We’ve visited them a couple of times but this was their first time here. We had a bit of a tidy up and then Davies and Scarlett went out to play outside while I caught up on some emails. Our guests arrived and while I gave Helen a tour of the house before settling down with cups of tea the children went out to play with the chickens and ducks. Two of the hens (the oldest, original two actually) both had nasty injuries, one of them worse than the other with blood, bruising and swelling around their eyes and mouths. I put it down to pecking from the other hens but further investigation from Ady later has us attributing it to the ducks – more on that later.

The kids had a great time playing in the garden the whole time, watching a fledgling blackbird learning to fly, rescuing woodlice (not entirely sure what they were rescuing them from), creating a snail hotel and playing with the chickens and ducks. Helen and I had an equally lovely time chatting 🙂 .

We had lunch, the kids went back outside and finally they left and we headed into Lancing for Chatterbooks. We had another really good session – Storytelling this time. We talked about telling stories, the ways in which we can tell them, I showed a quick comic strip sketch of Little Red Riding Hood and we passed it round the group with everyone telling one picture worth of the story. Then I read Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig and Three Little Pigs and the Gingerbread Man. We split into three groups – first telling story by illustration, then by plasticine models, then by narrator and mime. As we only have 10 children I took the final part as twist in the tale and had to finish the story where the mime team left it. Cara worked with the drawing team which included our challenging, learning difficulties child, Scarlett was in the plasticine team and Davies in the mime team. We mixed them up so no sibling pairs or couples of friends were in groups together and they all worked really well. We told the story once as a group and then as some parents had arrived for collecting children we told it again for an audience. It was a good session :).

We came home and I did Davies and Scarlett’s tea. Ady arrived home and we realised the injuries to the hens were most likely duck induced where they had grabbed food from the them. The ducks are far bigger than the chickens, have been upsetting the balance and pecking order, making the cockerels more noisy and now it would seem have hurt two of the hens too. As the ducks are pretty noisy themselves and far bigger than I had hoped we have all but decided they have to go. They plan (as was always the back up plan) is for them to go to Tom’s Dad’s where there is a lovely big lake complete with islands in the middle for them to sleep, nest etc safe from predators. We would then think about incubating again this time with runner ducks eggs which are the breed I think would suit us best. Scarlett is understandably upset and we have not finished talking it all through just yet but for now have put up a divide between the ducks and chickens to ensure no further upset or injuries happen. Already the chickens seem calmer. The two injured ones should recover fairly quickly aslong as the other chickens don’t peck at their injuries or pick on them for being hurt. We gave them some time round the front on the lawn and they are both very perky and otherwise fine so we’ll see how they do over the next couple of days and hope we don’t need to seperate them from the others.

I went up to the allotment to water and while I was gone Davies and Scarlett talked Ady into a sleepover, so another late night for them. We had dinner and exciting chats about things, which it has gotten too late to share tonight but I will hopefully blog about tomorrow.