Raising WEG

Baby Bluebirds

Even though we did everything wrong -- poking a stick into the box before we realized there was a nest; checking the nest just as the mother began incubating the eggs; opening the box on what I think was the afternoon after the babies hatched -- the bluebirds never abandoned their nest.

There were five eggs in all [the one with the scratch from the stick is closest to the entrance hole]:

Five babies hatched:

One week on, all five babies are still alive:

We won't open the box again, because the babies will be getting ready to fledge by the weekend, and we don't want to scare them out of the nest before they are ready.  But we should know when they leave the nest, because the adults have decided nothing is more important than the mealworms we deliver every afternoon.

They let me take five photos from less than ten feet away.  They're sitting on top of the feeder right now, wondering when I'm going to deliver their next meal.

Bluebirds lay more than one hatch of eggs a year, and I'm wondering whether they'll choose our box again.  It was unusually cold when they began building the nest, so the backyard was mostly empty.  [We never noticed the adults building the nest -- that's how completely shut off from the outdoors we were, in the first few weeks of April.]  I think our noise and our proximity as the female finished laying the eggs caught both birds off-guard.  There's absolutely nothing about the site of that box that would appeal to bluebirds in the first place, and it's a miracle all our interference didn't cause them to abandon their eggs at the outset.

Calder thinks I'm crazy: why would the bluebirds go elsewhere, when I'm delivering up a four-course meal for them every afternoon?  I guess we'll wait and see.

Working the thrift shop

I did my first volunteer hours at the school thrift shop on Thursday night.  I've been dropping off clothing and other gear for years now, but this was the first time I'd been inside the shop.

I should have volunteered a long time ago, not only because it was more fun than I expected, but also because I wouldn't have been so doubtful of the quality of my donations.  I wouldn't have spent so much time worrying that the shop wouldn't want my clothing out-of-season.

Based on what I saw on Thursday, the clothes we donate must fly right out the door again.

[Those were the sale-quality clothes I donated last autumn -- if by autumn we agree to accept "December 30th because I didn't want to miss the tax deadline" in the definition.]

New furniture

Here are some photos of the new furniture.

Wilder's new bed and old dresser, which used to be a changing table:

My paternal grandmother's dresser, saving a space for the desk Wilder did not receive:

Elba's new desk and old dresser:

Elba's new bed:

Gemma's new bed:

Gemma's new desk and new dresser:

Answering the obvious question, the attic, where we keep most of the toys:

The kids chose their new bedroom paint colors from color cards I brought home the day we learned our furniture delivery date.  They wanted all their walls to be the darkest shade that I, the mean Mommy, painted only on the walls behind their beds.  Yes, Elba and Wilder did choose the same shade of blue.

When we moved in, every room in the house was painted with the paint you see in the attic -- a flat, right-out-of-the-can off-white paint from Big Box store.  It absorbs oils and dirt from the hands of people as they run past, whether they have contact with the walls or not.

I've painted the main-floor bathroom (see: dirty paint) and the laundry/back entry (see: exceedingly dirty paint) but that's it so far.

It sort of sucks that the kids now have the prettiest walls in the whole house.

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In case it wasn't obvious, I bought the same furniture for all three kids -- three new desks with hutches, three new bedside tables, three new beds (for the last three years, the kids have slept on box spring/mattress combos held up by metal frames with hidden wheels designed to damage a person's toes), and a single dresser for Gemma's room.

I wanted to sing hallelujah yesterday morning when the new furniture arrived and I discovered that the finish I chose matched the nursery dressers in Wilder and Elba's rooms after all.