Wish Fulfillment

Hooray! Nora got her requested birthday present and everything is going well. My due date is somewhere in the third week of August, not nearly soon enough for Nora, who will randomly assault my belly to "check if the baby is big yet."

The best moment of the pregnancy to date is the following conversation:

Nora: Yay! I want it to be a girl.
Me: Yeah, we don't really get to choose that.
Nora: OK. I'm the big sister. I'll choose. It's a girl.
Me: You don't get to choose either.
Nora: Who chooses then?
Me: God chooses.

And then, Nora said something to make me realize that I had not done the leg work to support that statement.

"Why? Does God get to be the big sister?"

Three, going on thirty

Nora's got the chickens in the bag. She knows that they are happening and is confident that we have invested enough time and energy into this pursuit that she can stop nagging us about it. That's all I can figure, because she has a new obsession.

Don't get me wrong. She still loves her theoretical chickens and is counting the days until they arrive in her life. (Well, she would be if she could count that high. ) But there is something that she keeps coming back to....

For example, here is the picture she brought home from school today. (Sorry it's sideways. Blogger apparently can't recognize fine art enough to hang it on the wall the right way up. She's the next Jackson Pollock, I know it.)

In her words, the tall one with short hair is Daddy. The short one with black hair is Mommy. The short one with the heart shaped face is Nora Lee. Oh, and is that our dog next to you, Nora? No, no. That's my baby sister. You can tell because her feet are off to the side. Babies can't stand up, you know.

She has also informed me that I will have a baby in my tummy by her birthday and that we will name her Ellie. It's okay if there is more than one Ellie at her school, because only one will be hers. Apparently, daddies shine their flashlights into mommies to light the way for babies (I don't even want to know where that one came from.) And if I'm having trouble making a baby for her, Daddy will be happy to help.

After her nap the other day, the conversation went like this:

Nora: Mommy, I dreamed I had a baby sister.

Me: Oh, really. Was it a good dream?

Nora: Yeah. How about this- I'm going to go watch my movie and you work on that.

Seriously. "You work on that." Direct quote.

The many moods of Nora Lee

Here's Nora Lee's weekend in photo form.

She Trick or Treated as a lovely fairy.

Wait for it.....






Aaaaaaaand she cut insulation for her chicken house.

I love my kid.

Coop Mahal

The time has come for the unveiling of the coop that will make all the other chickens (and kinda me, too) jealous. Imagine Vanna White standing in front of it in gold lame and a deep, manly voice-over taking over for me from here on out.

Here we see the swankiest chicken coop in Duluth proper. The front is old slate roofing tiles that were picked up and expertly installed by Andrew Knutson of Knutson Custom Construction (these guys fixed our kitchen and kept the roof from falling in on us- hooray!). Some of the windows were salvaged from that kitchen project and others were ripped out of Carl's house when he remodeled.

The ridiculously nice cedar siding was also removed from Carl's house in favor of log siding.

The front door was handmade out of cedar by Andrew Knutson.

In case this isn't quite nice enough for you yet, Eric elected to spend an evening stamping a metal sheet for the front of the nest boxes.

Holy moly! Between the time and materials that many people have put into this project, I owe a lot of folks eggs! Thanks to everyone who got involved!

So far so good...

Yeah, this is exciting stuff. We have house wrap and lath and a roof and some windows!



I snuck this picture of Grandpa Dan hard at work on the chicken house during his vacation. Pretty generous, considering he strongly dislikes chickens. I suspect he likes Nora, though. And she likes chickens. I also suspect he likes eggs.
Thanks, Grandpa Dan!

Chicken Coop (Part Deux)

I have officially lost track of what project day we are on. However, I can show you our progress! As Nora said last night, "My chicken house is really cool."

Here we are this past Saturday, putting up the walls. We have walls! That's Cindy and Carl Haensel with Eric in the background. We owe them dozens of eggs. Dozens.

And also, a big shout out to Nora Lee for taking a seven hour nap, thereby allowing us to frame a chicken house. Hooray for what's going around!


Nest boxes framed in:

And now we're up to this morning. It's starting to look like a building, eh?

Well, what do you do when you see a seagull?