As you all know by now, a few months back we acquired 4 rabbits; 3 does and 1 buck. We lost 1 doe to heat stress, but the others were doing fine, so we decided to begin breeding them. We took the New Zealand White doe and placed her with the NZW buck. They smelled each other a bit, and then the buck started doing his business to the doe’s head. It was the wrong end, but we figured he’d get it eventually. Soon, though, the buck was running around his cage, grunting, and trying to hide in the corner. The doe mounted him a couple times, but I had read about that, dominance games. Eventually, our buck just looked so stressed and freaked out that we took the doe and put her back in her own cage.
Two days later, we decided to try again, only this time with the Californian doe. Pretty much the same thing happened. When we took out the doe, we decided to check her gender, just to make sure. After all, these are our first rabbits, and I relied on the breeder we got them from to get me the correct genders. So, I’m checking out her equipment, and it doesn’t look quite like I thought it should. We took out the other doe and looked her over as well (and let me tell you, none of them like being picked up. Thank goodness for Jesse and his long arms, able to reach to the back of the cages) and her parts looked way different. On a whim, we decided to look over the buck, so we could compare him to the other two. Only…his equipment looked a lot like the NZW doe. Crap.
We went inside and watched a few YouTube videos, then went back out to check the Cali doe again. Yeah. It was an epic gender fail. It turns out we do have two does and one buck, we just had a couple animals incorrectly labeled. And that explains why the NZW “buck” was freaking out and running in circles; a doe does not like other animals in her den, they can get very aggressive. Typically they will attack other rabbits, especially males, and here we were putting other rabbits in her den! I guess we were lucky that she’s a fairly gentle rabbit.
We tried putting the other NZW doe in with the actual buck, but nothing happened. They kind of just hung out. Now, the Cali buck is about 2 weeks younger than the other two, so it could just be he’s a bit on the young side, or it could be the heat is making him uninterested. We’ll probably wait a couple weeks and try again.
We’ve been making ciabatta bread like it’s going out of style lately. It’s such an easy recipe to follow, though, it’s hard not to want to make it. We made some zucchini bread the other day as well. It was like cake, delicious!
A lot of the time, I like to be literally hands-on with Ezra. I like to stroke his face when I talking with him, give him kisses and cuddles, that kind of thing. Yesterday he was in his high chair and he stretched out his hand, so I leaned in to kiss his finger, and then he cupped my cheek and stroked it. It was frickin’ adorable. I practically melted on the spot. He is such a sweet boy.
At night, he’s gotten into a routine where he wants me to tickle daddy, and then tickle his (Ezra’s) belly right after. He just laughs and laughs, he loves to be tickled. But, he always wants me to tickle daddy first. I’m telling you, I wish I had a video camera set up to record it, or may a pair of those Google glasses that can record right then and there.
We have a couple types of grapes along the back fence, some are juice grapes and some are table grapes. I’m not impressed with the juice grapes so far, and I thought the table grapes were going to be these green, very tart types – not my style at all.
Keep in mind that women, young or old, can have clear vision with this advanced Lasik surgery. viagra canada no prescription If you want to purchase generic cialis from us- we have the best costs ensured! Working: Vardenafil acts in the same course as cialis. It would not be wrong to say that it pdxcommercial.com viagra on line also paved the way for the advancement of online shopping. Knitting sweaters for my 3-pound Chihuahua 50mg viagra sale puppy makes me happy. I was walking the back fence last night and saw some of the green grapes actually has a blush color to them, so I thought I would try them. Oh. My. Goodness. Those grapes are amazing! They are juicy, and sweet, and have just a *hint* of tartness. They are what all grapes should be. I totally want to rip out the other grapes and just plant this style of grape. Jesse says he is going to take clippings this fall and plant them around the yard, and maybe over the chicken coop. I am ALL for that plan.
Speaking of juice grapes, we have decided that we need to get more fruit and veggies into out diets. For the most part, we pretty much have a protein, maybe some bread, occasionally a vegetable for our meals. I mean, I like vegetables well enough, I just don’t prepare them that often. To this end, we decided to get a Vitamix! This blender is purported to be the end-all be-all to blenders. We were going to go with a cheaper brand, but watching side-by-side reviews on YouTube led us to go with the higher-end brand. I, for one, didn’t want to be drinking what could turn out to be a very chunky salsa-type drink. I want smooth and creamy. I want to be able to chug it, because I’m probably not going to be enamored of the flavor at first.
We purchased directly through Vitamix website, one of their reconditioned models. They all have a 5-year warranty on them, so I’m not too worried about it being reconditioned. The only thing that was weird is that you cannot select which model to get, they basically tell you it is going to be a model out of X line of models and you get what you get. To be fair, they are all pretty comparable when all is said and done. The delivery countdown begins! And really, who needs a credit card with any spending limit left over, right?
Our chickens are still pretty miffed that we are not allowing them out of the coop run. But, until we harvest most of the tomatoes, there they will stay. We have another one or two giving eggs now, so we get about 4 eggs a day. Two of them are typically very small, and lightly green, so they must be coming from the Ameraucana birds. Jesse wants to learn how to make quiche, and you just know we need to learn more recipes that call for eggs.
We had a very productive last couple of days with regard to reorganizing the house. I wish I would have taken before and after photos! We took the kitchen racks and pots/pans out of the soap room, organized the soap room, took the soap display shelves upstairs into the soap room, and moved the packing materials into the soap room.
We decided to overhaul the library room and we spent time organizing what books to keep and which to sell. I have a kindle now and a good portion of those books in digital format, so really it makes no sense to keep a tangible copy, it just takes up space. So now we have about two full bookshelves for books to be sold, and another couple for keepers. We have a lot of bookshelves.
By bringing the soap display racks upstairs, it opened up space in the downstairs family room. The whole point of this is to make it more childproofed so Ezra can come downstairs and play around. School is starting again, and we’d like to be able to have Jesse work on homework and keep an eye on Ez at the same time. We were able to move Jesse’s tool rack upstairs in the library room, and I moved Ezra’s changing table around. It’s amazing how empty a room can look when you take everything out of it:)
We mounted the TV to the wall, and we plan to move the printer station. We are kind of thinking of getting one of those hexagon dog fences and stretch it out to partition our computers from the area Ezra can get into. He loves clicking the mouse and keyboard buttons. I come home and my settings are changed. Not so fun. I told Jesse the layout of the room seems to be calling for a bean bag chair. My grandparents had one, and I remember we used to run and throw ourselves into it. I bet Ezra would love one. But, while I’m willing to pay good money for a Vitamix, I am not so quick to pay out for a bean bag chair. So, he’ll just have to lounge on the floor for now.
See what I mean? Productive!
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