peep!

Early this morning I was awoken by giggling, whispering Gabriel and Mary as they tiptoed towards my bathtub. A moment later they were at my bedside– “Mama, we can’t reach them. Can’t you help us?”

The presence of babies in the house– any sort of babies- inspires a sweeter tone, gentler movements and all kinds of oohs and aahs.

And since the weather looked like this– our day out of school became the perfect day to play with chicks.

In a happy parade the boys traipsed to the basement and pulled out the Easter decor, because the chicks, of course, would feel more comfortable that way.

It’s unusual for my kids to say, “Mom take a picture of this!” (rather than– “put your camera away for once!”) But all day, they called for my lens as we admired our little fluffballs.

Introducing Duck– she’s a Buff Orpington and two days older than the others (which makes her look enormous).

Our tiny Mille Fleur Bantam is Rosy (after a hairy footed Hobbit), but the boys are also calling her Sasquatch and I’m afraid that name might stick.

Red-headed Florence at the Ben shrine– my preference was to name them all after cities in Northern Italy, but everyone else disagreed. Still, I have little Florence to comfort my heart. And Florence is such a friendly, chicken sounding name, isn’t it?

Sweet Daisy in her namesake dish, she’s another Bantam, as you can tell by her feathered feet. It’s impossible to convey her sweet personality, or any of the chicks, in a photo– the way they tumble over each other, huddle together and peep in a delighted chorus.

Xander moved his wooden castle down to my bathroom.

The chicks guarded the ramparts and towers and could only be coaxed out with chick feed on the drawbridge.

Bored with the castle, he proceeded to build a chickmobile for Daisy.

Worried that the boys were inflicting too much boy play on the baby chicks, Mary and Isabelle invited them to a tea party.

We’ll enjoy the chicks in the house for the next few weeks until we move them into a cantaloupe box in the garage; it’s OK to have babies in my bathtub, but teenagers are a bit much.

And since I’m trying to be more informative (vagueness is one of my faults), we researched the chicks on mypetchicken.com, then purchased them at our local IFA.

Chickens are cheep, cheep, cheep, ranging from .99 cents to $3.99 for the rarest breeds. A child can easily buy their own.

Maybe you can’t buy love– but trading a few coins for a chick comes pretty close.