Adorable versus Expected

We've slowly phased into a new era of parenting, and I can't say I'm disappointed.  Life used to be so cute.  

Adorable.

Charming.

Darling.

No more, my friends.  No more.  

These days the kids are starting to really earn their keep and it's amazing just how capable they are.  I wish more parents took some training wheels off their completely grown adult children to see what they can manage.  

Then: The kids used to enjoy riding the dozer with their dad, and still do on occasion.  
Now:  It's not uncommon for one of us to yell at them to pull it out of the way while we need to work on something else.  

Then:  I used to bring a high chair to strap a baby into while we worked calves.  I'd give them rocks and sticks to play with I checked on them constantly through the bars of the chute. 

Now: Kenyon likes to reload my syringes because he's faster than me.  I'm not complaining.  

Then:  The kids sat on Wesley's lap while he hauled or fed cattle. 

Now:  I'm glad you can drive a pickup and gooseneck.  It would be a lot handier if you knew how to drive a stick and could take the groundload. 

Then:  Please go outside the shop - I need to weld and we can't hurt your eyes!

Now:  Where is your welding helmet?!  Why am I doing this myself?!

Then:  We'd explain how we were giving this calf a shot to make him feel better. 

Now:  Child #1 questions every doctoring decision and gives his two cents on what he would rather administer if he were running the show.  I had tears of laughter while working calves that day.  Father and son had a heated discussion about what medicines were *right* for the situation.  Wesley looked at me through the chute and rolled his eyes.  Not five seconds later I made eye contact with my son who gave me a similar exasperated look and threw his hands in the air to emphasize just how ignorant his father was.  

Then:  What's that squeaking sound? 

Now:  Yeah, Mom, I'm gonna be a little late to lunch today.  Heard a little squeak earlier, loaded the grease gun and gonna do a little maintenance before I head home for dinner.  

Then:  Go work with your 4-H calves. 

Now:  John is standing on the back of his calf and trying to step over onto another one.  Knowing him, I'm sure he has a goal of walking across his pen of calves without ever touching the ground. 

Then:  Stay back from that fire!  HOT, HOT!

Now:  Kiddo, light your stick, start a line and pay some mind when you drive across this pasture.  

Then:  Mom! Slow down, I see a calf out!

Now:  Hey, Mom, I'm gonna finish up my schoolwork and go fix some fence this afternoon.  Some calves are getting out on the 40 and they are a bunch of prrrrrretty ornery cattle.  (Whew, close one kiddo.  Nice save and thanks for not cussing.)

Then:  Momma, this is broke!

Now:  Hey, Mom, I notice there was a loose board on the swing set so I took your drill, switched the batteries, stole a few bits, screws and a ladder and fixed things.  Put most of it back.  

Then:  Momma, can you come shoot this racoon I trapped?  

Now:  Hey, Mom, I know we were gone a while.  I went to check traps and turns out I didn't secure the trap well enough to the post and he ran into a tree and got caught.  We went back to the shop, got a ladder, went back to the tree, got the trap loose, drove back to the shop, used the winch and a come-a-long to pull the lever on the trap apart.  Didn't want to bother you.  

I remember two years ago my husband and I were talking about welding on a set of pens but knew we needed to hook onto the welding trailer before we could do anything else.  Thirty minutes later I saw a feed pickup and welder parked in the middle of the drive and wondered how it got there.  Turns out the 7 and 9 year olds heard us talking and wanted to be of help.  

What we're learning, slowly but surely, is that someday you might make some decent help out of your littles.  The secret is surviving..... both you and them!  

Stop, Drop and Roll

The days are getting warmer and the sun is shining longer which means there is more opportunity to work outside.  Each morning my husband and I exchange lists of our respective obligations for the day.  

Without fail, almost every single day the focus ends up shifting to accomplishing the tasks on his list.  It makes things on our side much more chaotic, but as any elementary-aged child can tell you: when the world is turning into a dumpster fire, the best thing to do is stop, drop and roll. 

Stop everything you're doing.

Drop whatever task you may have been in the middle of accomplishing.

Roll with the punches and things will (probably) work out just fine. 

Last week John really wanted to finish his library book.  The Magic Treehouse series is pretty captivating at his age and reading is something that I don't want to discourage in our children.  I needed to make ear tags and help Wesley work calves so John had to tag along and continue to read aloud about adventures in ancient Rome while I continued my work.  We swapped his magic treehouse for a magic vet shack and he shouted the story to me over the loud hum of the hydraulic chute. 

Stop, drop and roll.

And, because this kid can relax anywhere, he took a few moments to create a rock lounge chair.

The kids love to jump haybales.  If they could do nothing else for recreation I think they'd be just fine.  We had just started to enjoy our afternoon when I got the call that everyone needed to head to a pasture and help gather a set of calves. 

Stop, drop and roll.

The kids are having fun working with all their 4-H calves this year as they are now big enough to do most everything themselves.  We thought it was going to be a productive afternoon of scratching on calves when we got the call and suddenly tracking a bull sale online was more important. 

Stop, drop and roll.

We were interested in bull #10 and bull #110 in the sale order.  The kids did a wonderful job of tracking everything in between and letting us know when they were getting close to our prospects and it allowed us to keep working.

As this busy spring season progresses I have a feeling we're going to stop, drop and roll each and every day. 

Fall Recall

I often wonder how our children will recall their childhoods.  Will they think back fondly on how they ran rather feral through pastures or will they remember chores and fixing fence?  

Will weaning calves bring back smiles or mild cussing when they think of how filthy they were and how tiresome it was to roll out and set up pens to sort cattle time and again?  Will they remember their mom cussing each time a momma cow came after them?  

Will they remember the endless pasture picnics, the days their plates nearly blew away in the fierce winds?  Will they wish they had eaten more meals around the table I built them in the house?  

It seems many days our table is almost
exclusively used for schoolwork.

Will the kiddos recall pausing for paperwork and chasing down scale tickets or are those memories pushed aside and viewed simply as extra time when they played rock-paper-scissor and argued on who would back up the next truck?  

Will they lament because their jungle gym was covered in manure? 

Only time will tell.  I'm anxiously awaiting to hear someday what they recall. 

Smoke and Dirt

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that if you see our family in the flesh it is likely you will probably gather a slight whiff of branding iron smoke and our children will be covered in dirt.  

I so enjoy these times.  Everyone knows their place and what they need to do.  There is minimal talk, save for the times I shout out ear tag numbers to John to make sure we are on the same page as he gathers ear notches for me to run BVD tests later.  

We get to spread apart from one another and no one has to breathe my air, which is heavenly having come out of a pretty intense decade of raising tiny babies that often clung to me like spider monkeys.  

The girls need reminded fairly often to quiet down.  They have so much fun playing in boxes, climbing over old oxygen tanks and having sword fights with sorting sticks that they forget there is actual work to be done. 

I can always count on John to make hilarious comments about no longer needing a bath when we both get sprayed with slobber from a rambunctious calf.  

Kenyon is a solid worker and he always keeps the tub and alley way filled with calves.  He loves to talk numbers when we finish and recount how many were bulls, steers, etc.  

The husband runs his side of the chute and I run mine.  We don't talk unless I ask him to pause so I can refill a vaccine gun.  It seems like the wind is normally out of the totally wrong direction and the smoke from his branding iron fills my nostrils for several seconds with each calf.  We never argue during this time.  Processing calves is the one thing that we can do really well together and I always look forward to it.  

We don't have time (or a desire) for things like Saturday college football games or weekends at sporting tournaments which I've seen many families on social media document.  I'm glad they've found their niche in life.  This is definitely ours.  

This is a terrible attempt to photograph smoke in bright backlight.
My apologies. 

Teeny, Tiny People

When the babies were little, they were constantly attached to me.  I was often holding them on my hip or chest so they were RIGHTINMYFACE and BREATHINGMYAIR most all day, every day.  Which is the wonderful part about having babies, don't get me wrong.  Even for their small size, they were huge in my eyes due to their proximity. 

Now the babies are getting older and.... smaller.  They no longer breathe my air.  The are rarely right in my face, unless they are showing me the latest bump, scrape, bruise, turtle, blackbird or the like to impress me.  These days I mostly see them from a distance, which is becoming increasingly alright with me.  A friend told me once that raising kiddos never gets easier, it just gets different.  Each day I am becoming more aware of just what he meant.  

See what I mean?  I wasn't joking.  Blackbird.  In my face.  He was so proud of himself for catching it.  Still not sure how he managed that one. 

We spent a few days last week hauling hay.  Kenyon LOVES to drive the pickup and flipper trailer through the fields so I can load him with the tractor.  Once I get him loaded he dutifully slides over and lets me drive down the road to the hay yard to unload.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Load after load. 

Not only can he do the manly chores like haul hay, but he's great at walking home to make sandwiches for everyone as well!  He really wanted to keep loading hay while I went home to make sandwiches, but he definitely lost that argument. 

We had to wait nearly 10 minutes for the men to switch fields and bring us a tractor, which is approximately 10,000 eternities in young man years.  He sat on the tail end of the flipper trailer and nearly died of boredom.  

"Seriously, Mom.  I think they forgot about us.  There is no way it should be taking this long.  We should just go find them."

I love picking up these tiny hitchhikers I find alongside the road.  All the kids love to take turns riding in the swather and baler with their grandpa and dad.  After spending many long hours bouncing around in the cab I drive to the appropriate middle-of-nowhere location and find the tiny dot standing at the side of a field that is hopefully my child. 

I loved stumbling upon this scene a few days ago.  The kids found the best vantage point (the top of the ground load trailer) and watched their dad go back and forth with the tractor and baler.  I believe if you click on the individual photos you can enlarge them.

Nearly every Saturday morning while the rest of the world is watching cartoons, we have our kiddos out working a load of calves that arrive to our place the night before.  I run one side of the chute- giving shots, worming and putting in ear tags while my husband works the other side.  He runs the hydraulics of the chute to catch each calf, gives other shots and implants as well as brands each calf with a hot iron.  We both keep an eye on the kiddos as they push calves up the alleyway or simply see how much dirt they can possibly cover themselves in.  Not to brag or anything, but they could earn a gold medal in the filthy kid category.  Hands down.  

The boys have to practice their penmanship skills when they number all the ear tags and vials for BVD testing that I then run in the afternoons.  

This new, different chapter is difficult for me to process at times but I'm slowly adapting.  I never dreamed it would be this enjoyable to watch the children grow bigger physically but become teeny-tiny in my eyes as they become more independent. 

Rural Babies

Today was one of those fleeting, perfect days that you just cannot soak up enough.  Minimal wind, temperature in the high 40's, bright sunshine... absolute perfection.  Thank you, Lord.  

Today was also a constant reminder of our rural life.  

The 'baby' recently moved from a crib into a big girl bed.  She does well most of the time, but last night woke up multiple times crying and needing her mother.  Alas, this required me to be awake multiple times, rocking her and providing encouraging pep talks to her.  After waking up at 4:30 I just decided to officially start my day which really isn't all bad.  It means I get to have quiet coffee - my very favorite kind.  

Whilst attempting to enjoy my peace and quiet I heard rustling outside several times.  I attributed this to raccoons and silently cussed them while I continued to read the news on my phone, sip my heavenly goodness and relish in the quiet.  

At daylight I walked outside to find that the boys' 4-H calves had gotten out of the pen last night and traveled the 100 yards up to our house where they decided to shit on our porch.  Obviously this wasn't' the end of the world, but something that made me cuss under my breath. Oh, who are we really kidding? I cussed out loud and asked the kids to get shovels to clean up their calves' manure.  I was immensely proud; however, when I asked the kids if they needed help.  "Nope.  Dad says if we make mistakes in life we need to take care of them ourselves."  Cannot love this enough.  

We ate lunch down at the shop today, during which Kathryn decided that the dogs were hungry and also in need of a meaty lunch.  She promptly trotted down the road several yards and found a dead rabbit laying on the side of the road that she carried back to them.  

Later that afternoon as I was cleaning in the shop I looked over to see Reese carrying handfuls of food to the dogs who were more than willing to lay on their dog beds as she handfed them eat tasty morsel.  

In between all these antics the children checked their traps, rode bikes, climbed all over equipment, worked with their animals and capped off their evening by hunting racoons with our neighbor.  Days like today make our hearts full and remind us just how lucky we are to raise our babies in this environment.