Update on the Girls

Clara is continuing to be more aware of herself and her surroundings. I can't say that she is making a lot of progress in the being happy area or the sleeping area but she is definitely growing up. She is starting to babble more, laugh some, improving her rolling over, grabbing her feet, and more. We also recently started giving her rice cereal which she is doing really good with. Here are some recent videos of her.

Here is a video of Clara eating solid food for the first time a few days ago.


This is Clara today starting to find her voice, not sure if that is a good thing or not.


Here is a pic of Clara hanging out on a blanket outside while Esther is playing.  The cat decided to hang out with Clara.

Esther has been growing up a lot recently also.  She is getting a lot more verbal.  We can almost have little conversations with her. She is really smart and knows lots of things. She is so much fun to play with. It is not all roses though,  she has lots of tantrums and drama. Basically when she is in a good mood it is awesome but when she is in a bad mood it is not much fun.  But overall she really is great.  It is fun watching her learn new stuff everyday.
Tonight she did something that was killing us it was so funny.  First some back story,  for a long time now she talks about Clara and goes around saying "baby, baby, baby",  so Margo and I when she would do this, would sing the only Justin Bieber we know "baby, baby, baby, ohhh" to her.  We have also taught her how to call the hogs a little.  And we have been having lots of flies in the house recently that I have been killing.  So put all of this together in Esther's mind and this is what happened tonight.  She was walking around the kitchen singing "baby, baby, oh;  baby, baby, oh........(while raising her hands)woooo pig sooie, backs;  wooooo pig sooie, backs; woooo pig sooie, backs......baby, baby, oh"  after about a minute or two of that she saw a fly on the floor and (I kid you not) walked up and really fast, stomped on it and killed it.  It was amazing and totally made my day. I wish I would have got a video of all of this going down. This is the kind of stuff that I love seeing her do and makes me really happy.

Here is a pic of Esther helping me while I cut radishes that I just picked from the garden.  Every time I would drop one in the bowl she was holding, she would say thank you.

I thought this was a good pic of her also from the other day. Who needs toys when you have a basket and dad's shoes. 

4 Crazy Months

Clara is now 4 months old.  What a 4 months it has been.  Two young kids is not easy and not for the faint of heart.  I am not going to lie, Clara has not been the easiest baby.  She is definitely getting better though.  She is doing better about being put down on her play mat or in her exersaucer.  She doesn't last forever but a lot longer than she used to.  She still hates her swing and her pacifier and those are usually a parents best friends.  I think that is why she is so challenging,  the two things that usually pacify babies and put them to sleep do not work at all on her.  She is also getting a lot better about going to sleep.  We don't have to walk around and bounce her for 20-30 minutes anymore.  Usually just a few minutes and sometimes we can just rock her in our arms while sitting to get her asleep for a nap.  She is also sleeping pretty good at night.  We can just swaddle her in a blanket and rock her in the cradle and she goes to sleep.  She has slept through the night (10pm-6am) three nights in the past 2 weeks so that was awesome. She is also doing better at daycare I think.  Instead of her little sheets saying "Clara had an ok day" everyday they have been saying "Clara had a good day" sometimes.  She is smiling a lot and interacting more with us which is fun and we have got a few giggles out of her. Her smile is really cute because it is a big open mouth smile. She has also turned over from her belly to her back a few times and is close to going from back to belly.  She loves it when we sit on the floor next to her and talk to her.  She really loves her big sister although I am not sure Esther is always the biggest fan of her but she does good with her for being a toddler.  Esther loves to kiss and hug on her.

We finally got some real photographs of her done by our friend Ali (Alishia Snook Photography).  And we got some new family pics that turned out good.

Yes We Still Have a Farm

It seems like it has been forever since I wrote about our farm on the FARM of Hale blog.  I guess it only makes since that most of the blog these days is about the girls since most of our time and energy is spent on them. The main time I get to do farm stuff is on the weekend when Esther is taking a nap or lately since the time change after Esther goes to bed at 7:30, I have about 20 minutes of daylight. So here is a quick recap of the high points of farm related stuff that has happened the past several months. I have had lots of little projects also but these are the bigger, more exciting ones.

I built our shelter/barn for the animals which is attached to the chicken coop.  I planned it to be all one building and it came out pretty good.  The barn part is 12x16.  I also built a new cross fence that comes across and attaches to the barn.

Something I did last year also that I never blogged about was I built a new deck.  The old deck was in bad shape and not very useful.  I wanted a big deck to be able to host people and have parties since we don't have a good inside space to host groups of people.  Recently I finally put the finishing touches on the deck. Here are some pics.

Also the past 1-2 months our new crop of baby goats were born.  We have 8 babies so far at our house and we have 6 babies at a friends house where some of our goats are.  The crazy thing is that all the goats born at our house were boys.  I have never had that happen before.  It kind of sucks because girls are worth more and are of greater benefit if you are wanting to grow your herd.

We also got a new donkey.  We sold our donkey from last year because of the big drought we had and not wanting to buy overpriced hay for her and she wasn't broke as well as we would have liked.  Our new donkey is the daughter of my dad's donkey.  She is like 5-6 months old and her name is Sweet Pea.  She is really nice and likes to be petted.