Chickies ... and ... guess what?!?!

Every year, CLAEL (Caleb and Ellie's preschool) acquires chicken eggs from a nearby farm. So last week, these eggs sat in an incubator in Ms. Joanna's office. Each egg was "adopted" and named by each class (Caleb's class got egg D and thus named it "Diamond." Ellie's class got egg B and named it ... well ... it was unnamed for quite awhile until it was finally christened "Butterball" - which was instigated by the teacher rather than the students, I do believe.) The classes came to see the eggs every day. This week, the eggs hatched! So on Monday morning, I got to watch a chickie break out of its shell while others continued pecking away at their little hole - really neat! Each day this week, each class gets to come and see "their" chickie (uh, yeah Caleb ... that's Diamond ... sure ...). The kids just love it! Caleb has been talking about Diamond the past few weeks and he was just precious as he held the chickie today. He just sat there, holding out his hands, so carefully and still, softly sing-song-ing "Hewwo Diamond. Hi chickie ... cute chickie ..." It's really cute to hear him so excited about it. And Ellie ... well ... she's just excited about what anybody else is excited about.

So tonight at church, everyone had gone home and Aaron had to finish up something. So Joanna, her son Craig, Caleb, Ellie and I got a few of the chickies out to hold. We let 2 of them run around on the bright rug with a lovely picture of Jesus teaching children, keeping careful watch so Caleb and Ellie didn't trample them in their excitement (Ellie does NOT understand the concept of "personal space" for any poor creature. That is why our cats do not materialize until night time.). So ... in the course of the few minutes of freedom, of course the inevitable happens! Yes, the chickie poops on the rug. And the kiddos are delighted. "Ewwwww!!!! Icky poop!" And I easily clean it up with a wet wipe (one benefit of small creatures - small poop!). And a few minutes later, the other chickie poops on the rug, right on Jesus' face! So it looked like Jesus had a nose. Is that sacriligious? Well, I think we'll absolve the chickie of any terrible sin as I think it was definitely before the "age of accountability". Anyways, I quickly cleaned up that poop too! And eventually Aaron finished, we put the chickies back in their home (neatly avoiding Ellie trying to pick one up by it's scrawny little neck), washed our hands and finally left (at 9:25pm - whew!).

In the car on the way home, Caleb pipes up, "How do they poop and pee? Where is their penis and bottom?" And we smothered our smiles and answered very matter-of-factly, "It's under their feathers." And that satisfied him.

So ... once again ... our blog centers around the wonderful topic of poop. Go figure! :-)

~JG