Baby Chicks!!

Monday, 6:30 A.M. rrrring, rrrring... "Hello?"

"This is the Minooka Post Office. We have your baby chicks and you can pick them up anytime."

Ugh, that's too early for me, so Paul and the older boys run into town to get the cardboard box of 70 baby chicks. By the time they get home, Caleb, Seth and Noah are ready to unpack the chicks and dip their beaks in sugar water (they've been in shipment, without food or water, since Saturday). I, on the other hand, am still in bed grasping the last few fleeting moments of sleep for the day. I am sooooo not a morning person. Paul comes up and hovers over me until he's positive I'm awake, then he takes off for work. After making sure baby Selah is going to stay asleep and yanking on some sweats, I head down to the garage to find my boys anxiously waiting to open the box... Spring has officially arrived.

The baby chicks are so adorable. Soft and downy and oh, so very fragile looking. They don't have me fooled though. I've seen Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs about hatching chicks. I've seen how they fling the chicks around by their legs. Still, I am overly cautious when it comes to my kids picking them up and snuggling them...

This year was Nathan's real experience with the chicks. We got them last year, but he was so young, he didn't get much touching-time with them. Not long after they arrived, Ellie was letting Nathan "pet" one of the chicks. She looks at me and says, "Mom, can Nathan pet it's eyeball?" "No." I reply. "Well, he did. And he pulled it back like a sling-shot." Hmmm, he'll need a bit more supervision, I guess.

Ahhh, the first days of spring. Tulips poking out of the ground, babies of all kinds being born (or hatched)... and the familiar barn smell that's elluded us all winter...