Wallace calls himself Mama now. He
can say me and mine but he points at himself and says, "Mama." He
does the sign for "self" all the time when he is asking for things.
He will say in sign, "more food self." I read that toddlers have a
hard time understanding that they are a separate being from their primary care
taker. Since I say things to Wallace like, "this is Mama's," and he
wants whatever it is I have, he points at himself and says, "Mama."
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| Tom |
Wallace speaks in sign very well. He
puts three words together regularly. I was sharing a grapefruit with him a few
weeks ago and he was asking for more. I said, "more what?" Wallace
said, "more grape orange eat." He put the signs grape and orange together
all by himself to say grapefruit. I was so proud.
In the car Wallace cries for Dylan.
Wallace cries, "Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Dad, Dad, Dad,"
on and on. He cries for his snack cup, his drinking cup, to have his shoes
taken off, for the toys he dropped, for clean pants. "Daddy, Dad,
Dad...." But for me, grunts, only grunts and wining. I can't twist around
to check on him anymore so when I'm driving I only hear a low grumble of
grunting and wining. I tell him he has to wait and he hushes up until I pull over
to tend to him. We are working on patience. I tell him to flex his patience muscles.
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| Mushroom Head |
I was worried about one of our hens
so I had Dylan catch her so I could look at her neck. I thought she had a goiter
or something like that but when I checked her out it was just puffy beard
feathers. We held her and petted her for a few minuets and then sat down so
that Wallace could pet her. The next day Wallace was sitting on the porch
eating a sandwich for lunch. The same hen, we call her "mushroom
head" ran right up to Wallace and snatched some sandwich out of his hand wall
he was taking a bite. Wallace kicked her and she only moved out of his reach.
She came back just a second later and took his pickle. Dylan took the sandwich
away from him and gave it to the dog. Then he gave Wallace the rest of his sandwich
and kept mushroom head away from the boy until he was done with lunch.
Mushroom head has quickly become our
most friendly or bold bird. She runs to me for treats and lets me pet her. She
acts very dominant with the other birds around me as if to say, "back off
she's mine"!
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| Impressive stack |
Our turkey is laying big beautiful
eggs and we have enough silky eggs for a hen to hatch out. All our birds are
using the same nest to lay, a hole they dug in the corner of the hen house under
the roost that Dylan made them. All the nesting boxes we made and bought the
birds and they want to lay eggs on the ground and sleep in the boxes, not in
the roosts. We take the non-silky eggs for eating and the turkey eggs out of
the nest.
We just placed an order of baby hens
(pullets) and turkeys at the Tractor Supply Store. The chicks and the turkeys
will be here in May; delivered straight to our post box. When we were in line
to pay Wallace was looking longingly at the orange soda in the drink case. He
looked at me and signed "orange" then said, "juice" and
touched the glass. I tried to explain that was not orange juice even though it
was orange in color. He turned up his hands and shrugged (that's how he asks
why.) I said orange is a food and a color like red or green. He said,
"oh" and pouted until the soda was out of sight. He purses out his
lips, crosses his arms and huffs. I guess that is a natural behavior because he
doesn't see anyone acting like that.
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| Almost all of our baby wipes. Thank you everyone! |
Dylan and I moved our king size mattress
into out trailer. It took some serious bending and shimming to get it in. It is
so nice to sleep on our nice mattress again! There was nothing wrong with our
other bed, we just weren’t sure if we could get a solid mattress into the
trailer and onto our bed frame.
We are getting ready for Helena.
Dylan opened part of the bed up in the new trailer and cut the foam from our
old bed to fit it. It is about a full size bed now. The couch still has one arm
of the "U" shape open and their is still a decent amount of floor
space for Wallace to play in the living room. Once Helena comes I plan on
laying in for six weeks and a second bed for napping and feeding in our living
space is very welcome.
Wallace took a tumble a few days ago
and he scratched up his face on the right side. This picture is the best I have
of the owie.
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This is the Sultan, one of my favorite birds. just after we took this photo we put her on her own nest of 13 eggs. She is sitting quite well.
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Dylan and I bought a 7,500-watt
generator. It is very loud but we can power everything at once! We have it
pretty far away from us and Dylan is going to build it a little house to help
angle the noise away from us even more. We can run the well, the washer, the
trailers so we can charge things and watch T.V., even run the vacuum all at
once! The generator is not going to be on all the time of coarse, but it will
get plenty of use.
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| Dylan got a quad for the farm |
Wallace can now say meow for cat and
he can crow for rooster. He only has four-baby teeth left to come in and he is rocking
a new hair doo. He is 21 months old now. He has dozens of words now and
lots of half words like "shhh" for shoe.
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| New hair doo- center part |
He has been saying "eash" for over a month and
we didn't know what he meant. We thought maybe eat but then he started saying
eat, he can say cheese but he would say, "eash" and point at the cheese.
In the grocery store he leans out of the cart and yells, "eash" and
grabs at the fruit. "Eash," point at the door, "eash" point
at his shoes, he even brings the shoes to me and says, "eash shhh." I
finally figured it out, I think he is saying "please."
