'TIS THE SEASON

For football tailgating with friends, enjoying the reprieve from Georgia's hot weather, a little bit of fall window cleaning,...

And of course who could forget that Halloween Oreo cookies now stock the shelves?

   

Waving to the cars going by (above)...
and doing a little happy dance! (below)

 

Watching Dadda spray off the summer dust on the windows

How can this kid can freak out going through a car wash, yet press her face to the window pane as Dadda shoots water directly at her?

Missed a spot... Right HERE, Dadda!

I'll just nap while Dadda does the work.

Mom? These are ORANGE?!

And they're GREAT!

More, please!

Happy Fall, y'all!!

CHOOSE YOUR SICK DAYS WISELY

As much as we dislike having a sick kiddo, it's days like last Friday that make me actually enjoy having a sick day with Evie every now and then. Evie woke up with a slight fever, and about 20 minutes after breakfast, she decided to throw up.  

 

Not good... but not necessarily bad either, since she still being her happy self and wanting to play, even though we could tell she didn't feel well.

Momma Peach took the day off of work and stayed home with the sick kiddo. We took it easy in the morning and enjoyed reading books in our pajamas, watching some Elmo, and just being bums. Evie kept fluids and snacks down, so when I asked if she wanted to go outside she really perked up. We decided to take a stroll in the backyard to get a whiff of some really great breezy autumn weather.

Yep, she dressed herself.
Our day included quite a few clothing and footwear changes.

Just moseying around...

Although she looked a bit morose every now and then...

 

She really wasn't!

Faker?!

"Momma, haven't you figured out that this was all part of my plan?
I knew it was Friday and I just wanted to stay home!"

PEEK - A - BOO!

Does this look like a sick kid to you?

BOSSY PANTS

Watch out, Tina Fey, we've got our own little bossy pants in the house.

Evie's done a good job of perfecting her tyrannical instructive attitude lately. Her teachers at school tell us that she really enjoys "playing teacher" towards the other students. (I hope this is not their polite way of hinting that our child is a domineering bully?  Hmmmmm...)

"You sit HERE. I sit HERE. Read THIS book."
So far, most of her friends at school are
receptive to our little bully.

We've known for a while that Evie is quite adept at pulling on her sassy pants whenever she wants.

Of course, the other female in the Y&P house is not to be outdone, as Momma is really filling out her own pants these days. Not necessarily in a sassy way though.

A friend recently mentioned that she wanted to see new belly pictures of little lion man - and I realized I haven't taken any in a while. Always the ham, Evie wanted to be a part of the belly picture process...

Who's having a baby?
Evie is having a baby?
Wow, Evie! I'm glad Momma is helping you with that.

How many times can a person play a game of chase in a single day?
Evie knows no limit.  Her teachers definitely get a workout.
Momma is not quite as fast as she used to be, but Evie loves a good game of chase around the house, with intermittent games of hide-and-seek.

Bona fide sassy britches skirt.

And just think, there's a second one coming soon!

FARM LIFE

If you know us, or if you have stopped by this blog before, then you probably know we have quite a few living creatures around the Yankee & Peach abode.

Last time I checked, we're currently a family of 13, and that number will be moving up to a total of 14 when the little lion man gets here.

We get the funniest reactions from people when they first learn that we have chickens at our house. Typically, their responses are a mixture of surprise (Chickens?! Really?!), a little bit of confusion ("Where do you keep them? In the basement?"), and often some piqued interest in the hens' actual purpose  ("Wow, can I get some eggs when they start laying?).

Hi, my name is Thelma. I have a twin sister named Louise.
I enjoy  corn, chicken scratch, mealworms, all sorts of plants, and pecking at your toes if you wiggle them near me.
I also like pulling Evie's flower hair clips out of her hair
and making her chase me around to get the clips back.

I know there are some bonafide city-loving folks who think we are crazy. But I also know that there are a lot of city dwellers and suburban residents who truly want (or miss having) open green space and animal life around them.   I know I do.

I also realize that the Yankee & Peach family is the very definition of wanna-be suburban farmers. (Not that our few pets really count as livestock in my opinion.)  If my grandfather was still alive -and if I had the cajones to tell him that I considered myself a "farmer"-  he'd probably just laugh and shake his head at me. That man actually was a farmer.

But, every so often someone tells me "Gee, I wish we could have chickens at our house." 

And I usually reply with a rambling answer of, "Well, you can! I mean, as long as you have just a few of them. Not a big farm or anything.... I promise it just takes a little effort and some creative planning to find a spot for them. Of course, you have to feed and water them, take care of them, and clean up after them - but they are really good garbage disposals on their own! It's not hard at all..."

I lose them about the time I say "you have to clean up after them." And then their eyes really glaze over when I start talking about building a coop and the recycling and fertilizing that we do.  

Well, yeah... anything you want to keep ALIVE and HEALTHY is going to take a little bit of effort, people!

Nope, they don't live in the basement. Just a well-drained patch of soil that is relatively sheltered from the elements and they have their very own coop.

During a recent web surfing expedition, I found a neat posting that confirmed my suspicions that there really are city people who are capable of "blooming where they are planted." 

There's a young couple in Belgium who took over the fifth floor and roof of a former factory. 

They literally have a mini-farm..... On a roof..... Of a building in the city of Antwerp...

Yup, those are live sheep. On a factory rooftop.

I would expect to see this out in the countryside...
not on a rooftop in Antwerp!

Hmm... not sure about the smell coming into the house.
But I guess that would provide incentive to keep the barn exceptionally clean!

The engineer side of me wants to know every detail about the preparation process. How much reinforcement did they have to put underneath the barn and grass areas? What are the logistics involved with hauling sheep up to a roof, or making sure that the chickens don't fly over to the neighboring buildings?

Any way around it, it seems to work for them!

Sadly, I seriously doubt this rooftop farm would ever be accepted in downtown Atlanta. I'm sure a neighbor would complain or the building authorities would step in and freak out over every single detail.

But I think this also shows that you if have the energy, the inspiration, and the ability to think creatively, then you can pretty much have the life you want anywhere you want it.

We don't like paparazzi, lady.
Put the camera down.

Every time I think we are just posers who don't even come close to qualifying as real farmers, I'm reminded of how happy the pets make us and it doesn't bother me as much.  

Yes, we realize our hens haven't laid a single egg yet, but already the girls have provided hours of entertainment to Miss Evie and her parents.

And when our hens finally do lay an egg, we'll be sure to shout it from our own rooftop! 

(They are only four months old, we're hoping for early Spring 2012!)

They'll be none of that, thank you very much.

POSITIVE INTEGERS

There are three kinds of people: those who can count and those who can't.

Ha.

We're doing a lot of counting in our house these days. Counting the days until we become a family of four, counting the stairs as we climb them every morning and night, counting the animals in our storybooks, counting the numbers on the scale as it groans under Momma's increasing weight...

Below are some recent videos of Miss Priss showing off her numerical skills.
Yes, you heard her correctly: she does leave out the number six.

Every.   Single.   Time.

She just refuses to say it.  It might be a pronunciation thing, or it may be that she just doesn't like the number. But "six" is never in her calculations. 

If we read a book that has a picture of seven chickens, all of a sudden there are eight chickens because she skips six and goes straight to the number "seh-BUN."

Forget ten monkeys, there are always eleven - simply because six doesn't exist in her world.

Why is six afraid of seven?
Because seven eight nine!!
( Seven ate nine. Get it? Durrrhhh.)

And last, but not least, below is a recent video of the bouncing baby boy in Momma's tummy. Luckily, his activity level isn't to the point of being very painful yet. 

However, he's pretty much this active every evening. (Which is why you should NEVER ask a pregnant lady if she's able to get any restful sleep. The response will always be "No!")

I can only imagine the increasing force that will be behind these punches and kicks in the next few weeks. At one point, while pregnant with Evie, I put an empty dinner plate on my stomach and she was able to kick it off. 

Oh, the things pregnant gals do to amuse themselves.



Yes, I realize the camera angle makes my stomach look incredibly large compared to my chicken legs.  Oh, well. Everything about me is disproportional right now.

By the way, do you know the first derivative of a cow?
Prime Rib!

  

What happens when a triangle gets into an accident?
It becomes a "WRECK TANGLE!"

 

How can you tell that a mathematician is extroverted?
When talking to you, he looks at your shoes instead of at his!
 

Evie and Baby Boy are doomed. 

Both of their parents went to an engineering school.

(Which means I now have to throw a science joke in just for good measure!)

Platinum and Silver are sitting in a bar. 

Gold walks in and Platinum says, "AU, get out of here!"

.
.
.
.
.

Do I hear crickets chirping?

BOTTOMLESS FUN

The record to beat is four.   Four times in one day.

That's the total number of times Evie has gone potty consistently in a single day.  Considering she goes through only about 5 diapers per day, that's pretty good! We're getting there.

In the meantime, there's a lot of pants-less partying going on in our house. 

Especially on weekends.  Just warning you... ya know, in case you drop by our house and are surprised by the nekkid dance party that is usually commencing in our kitchen:

Showing some serious white-girl overbite during her dance marathon.
She gets that from her dad, I swear.

And who could forget the pants-less horse grooming?

She's conscientious enough to keep potty paper on hand at all times.

"Evie, do you need to go potty?"
"Lemme check..."
Classic. She'll just love me for posting this pic... one day.

No, we aren't teaching our child to be the next pants-less Hollywood celebrity.
She (usually) knows she needs to be wearing clothes to leave the house.

Sassy britches.
22 months going on 22 years!