Growing

Piggies are growing - the weather has turned cold, but I think not as cold as was predicted.  The garden is covered, anyway, and some hay was brought up to the piglet nest, just in case.  Matilda's milk that was at first so abundant is waning as the calf grows.  I can hardly tell her apart from Geranium's calf, Lichen.  She has a white dot on her butt, and that is the only difference.  So strange that the 3/4 Jersey and 3/4 Devon look so much alike.

They are all growing.  Nutty is fat as butter, and we still haven't weaned him. He is huge, it looks like it hurts his neck to lean down and nurse now, but he still does.  Soon.  I haven't had time to tame Chestnut this week.  That's the only way we'll ever get milk out of her again.  We tried weaning him a few weeks ago.  They were only separated by a fence, could still see each other, smell each other.  When we got there, Chestnut was foaming at the mouth and hoarsely mooing.  She kicked the crap out of me and Ethan.  We both had bruises.  So I was trying to get her into a routine of coming down to be milked, but then we were sick and it was just too much.

Ethan is still sick this week, and the children were exhausted after the whirlwind weekend.  We didn't do anything this week.  Just rested.  No home school.  Only one outing to the park with a friend.  It was so laid-back they were bored.  On Monday I let them sit around and watch movies for the first time in a long time, just so they would rest.  Otherwise they wouldn't have - they would just fight and keep running around.  I don't do that very often, but it did seem to work.  They have bounced back fairly well - except maybe not Rose, who we forgot in the car yesterday when we stopped at the store.

(We didn't exactly forget her - the childproof lock was on for Clothilde, and we started walking to the store before she got out.  But apparently that counts as forgetting).