Hey, Kids! Let's Play Hide and Heads!

Remember the ducklings? They are now fully grown ducks, and six of them are drakes. And that means that today was Doomsday for the drakes. Or Decapitation Day. Or Death Day.

Whatever alliterative name you want to give it, those drakes were going down. (Hey look! There's another!)

So A. went out and sharpened his hatchet at 7:30 this morning and unceremoniously whacked the heads off of five drakes on the pile of wood awaiting splitting outside the duck pen.

The children were, of course, present for this. Cubby was mad that we didn't let him do the decapitating, actually, but we'll give him another year before he gets that job.

He did get to help, though. After the deed was done, the MiL was standing there with both hands clutching the feet of all the dead drakes and she asked, "Who's going to pick up the heads?"

Well, I know who isn't going to be picking up any drake heads. Hi!

But there were two very willing head hunters. Allow me to present Cubby and Charlie, the totally unsqueamish butcher helpers. And hunt they did, because some of the heads had fallen kind of in between the chunks of wood and weren't all that easy to see. So I told Cubby and Charlie to start searching for five heads. At which point Cubby exclaimed with glee, "It's like hide and seek, but hide and heads!"

Right. Carry on, my small country bumpkins.

School Days

This morning the whole crew is taking Cubby in to the doctor so he can get a physical before school starts next month.

If the stars align with Jack's random-these-days naptime, we'll also get Cubby's school supplies while we're in the Small City.

I called the school district on Monday about signing him up for the bus.

I bought two pairs of jeans, two turtlenecks, and two sweaters for him on Tuesday*.

It seems I have a school-age child in my house.  That sound you hear? That's my mind being blown.

* From swap.com, a site I had never heard of before, but it has a huge selection of used clothes and an easy-to-use format. Since I can never get to the thrift store anymore (or rather, do not want to go to the thrift store with three kids under six) and I am sure as hell not going to pay $20 for a pair of jeans that he will wear for six months before growing out of or destroying, I was very pleased to find this site. (No, no affiliation or sponsorship from them. As always.)