Gardening, fencing, and potty training

We had a very busy weekend!  Last weekend I knew that I wanted to tackle the boys' potty training this weekend.  I started on Thursday by giving them multiple vitamin C tablets.  That may seem like an odd way to start potty training, but I had my reasons!  We had two boys with "issues".  Jedidiah has been number 1 trained for some time now, but number 2 freaked the poor boy out.  Jonah insisted he was terrified of the potty and would scream bloody murder if we tried to get him to wear underwear or sit on the toilet.  Sigh.  So all week we talked about how their diaper days were coming to an end on the weekend. 
Well things went pretty much like I thought they would.  Jonah was fine about the underwear...for about 20 minutes!  Then he went bonkers when he realized that he couldn't have a diaper on.  He screamed, and cried, and screamed and cried.  I had to put the diapers up high, out of his reach.  Oy.  BUT that being said, he only had two accidents for the whole day.  On top of that he stayed dry both nights!  Which is weird because during the day he was running to the toilet every 5 to 10 minutes, but could hold it all night.  Jed on the other hand could hold it for hours during the day, but can't make it through the night.  Either way, both boys are going potty all day long!  Yay!! They got a ton of stickers and fun tatoos for their efforts.  Even Aubrey has taken interest in trying to go on the potty again.  He had the unfortunate incident of coming down with a bladder infection the day after he decided he wanted to be a big boy and wear undies, and the pain freaked him out and he has been scared of the potty since.  But he wasn't about to miss out on all the sticker fun!  He still has a long ways to go, but I'm just glad that he is taking interest in it again.

This past week Saoirse took to making a list of all the foods she wants to try to dehydrate.  Her first attempt was an apple and some bananas.  She set right to work, and is checking off her foods as she accomplishes dehydrating them.  Too cute.

Saoirse, cutting up the bananas.  A really good choice to begin with as it is easy to cut.

I was able to get the flexible sheets for my Nesco, this has opened up another avenue to dehydrating.  It has been very, very handy to have saved the Nesco.  I was going to get rid of it, pass it on to someone else.  But with these sheets it is now being used...a lot!

Saoirse's little set up.  She is sitting on a booster chair, set on the ground.  She is using a plastic lid to cut the banana on, which is set on the boy's plastic tool bench :-)  She put the dehydrator try behind her.  Her only problem, which was a very serious one....her siblings kept sneaking in and eating the food!!  She was not happy about that.  Dehydrated fruit doesn't stand a chance lasting more than a couple of hours in our house!

We  accomplished a lot over the weekend outside.  Jeremiah put up the fencing for the boy goats. It's not ready for them to move into quite yet, but it should be by next weekend.  I can't wait!  Our milk tastes great the first day, but by day two there is an off taste.  This has never happened with our goat's milk before.  We are suspecting that it is due to the females and males being housed together in close proximity.  They are separated by a fence, but that is all.  The boy goats will eventually be moved to the other side of our house, giving enough distance to not interfere with the taste of the milk.  For now, since we can't have raw milk anyways, I'm heating up the milk to 180* before turning it into yogurt.  I would prefer to make raw milk yogurt, but I don't want that taste in our yogurt!

Above you can see my very special veggie markers.  Um, yeah.  This is called, wait till the last minute to plant your seeds and write out the veggie names with marker and run the paper through the laminator.  I had tried to paint rocks, but that wasn't working.  Currently the rocks are holding down the above marker in place at the beginning of each row.

Flannery wanted to paint the veggie names on wood.  This was a great idea, and you can see she did a cute job. The only problem?  We only had one piece of wood! 

Flannery and Saoirse joined me to do half the planting in the warm afternoon sun.  Later on we finished the job with Moira and Aubrey joining us.  The girls decided that each seed spot needed to be marked with a stick.  So now we have all these small sticks sticking up out of the ground!

Saoirse moving the mulch out of the way.  You can see some her sticks behind her hands.

Now I have to say I was plenty impressed with how dedicated Saoirse was to getting these seeds planted. She isn't exactly known over here for following through and finishing the work she is supposed to be doing.  But she planted many rows of veggies all on her own.

I suppose we won't be winning the "Most Organized Gardener" award anytime soon :-)

Above you can see my 'shovel'.  Yup, that green stick!  Somehow small trowels go missing whenever you need one.

Speaking of sticks...some may remember that I had a stick, from the mulch above, stab me in the foot about 9 months ago.  The doctors who saw my foot insisted that nothing was left inside.  Um, yeah, tell that to my foot!  About 2 months ago I noticed that the area, which has remained raised since the accident, was now pink/red. Then it started to itch, and get a bit painful every once in the while.  Not two weeks or so ago it began to blister!  There is something in there...trying to get out!!!  I think I will head to the doctors as it still seems to be lodged, but clearly my body is trying to get rid of it. Isn't the human body amazing?!

My rock/laminated paper veggie markers layed out in the order that I planned to put them.

We all got a bit of sun today, with pink cheeks and for some, pink shoulders.  It was finally warm!  Not the warm because the sun is shining, but still cool/cold air, but really and truly warm.  Ahhhh, it felt so good to be out there soaking up the sun and digging in the dirt!

See?  Springtime bliss :-)

These are our naughty chickens.  The two younger girls and the two older boys had just spread this straw out over the herb garden.  There was one small area on the right where the straw bale sat, and so there was a bit of straw on the ground.  But these naughty girls were digging through it, looking for goodies, and you can see all the straw outside of the rock border!

Flannery suggested I take this picture...a *hands full* of dirt....a play on my blog name. 

Our new mantra...."Grow, garden, grow!"  Ha, ha!  It will be interesting to see if I find any of the girls talking to the plants or our baby trees. They thought Jeremiah was silly for telling them that talking to plants help them to grow.  But he insisted it was true.  We'll see if they believe him :-)