I’ve been pretty busy this past week and to top it off, got a bad cold that left me spending most of two days in bed.  Because my ears were affected, my balance was thrown off and I literally felt like my head was spinning – not conducive to doing much but sitting still!  It makes one appreciate the importance of healthy ears.  However, I had a deadline for an article I needed to write, and write it I did.  When I pressed ‘send’ to send it to the editor, I hoped to myself that I wasn’t embarrassing myself since I my head was swimming – that’s not just a saying – while I was sitting still, it was like inside my head everything was going around and around. And sure enough, the next day I reread it and I was disturbed to find several grammatical errors, so I fixed them and sent them back to the editor.  But she said me a message saying the article was great, which was nice; she had already edited it and approved it, and I didn’t feel the need to explain the reason for not having caught the errors myself.   🙂

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been posting as much recently.  Some updates: on Friday dd15 received her notice that she was accepted to the program she’s considering for next year, which was exciting.  (I couldn’t imagine them not accepting her but you never know until it’s official.)   Now we’re looking into yeshivos for ds16 and have tentative plans to go with him in a week and a half to Conneticut to check out one that looks particularly suitable for him.   I warned him that if dh and I can’t do it, he’s taking a train and I’ve enlisted the support of a young man we know who has been at this institution for four years to pick him up from the train and introduce him around.  I’m honestly not feeling driven to go there with him – it would be nice, but it’s a very long trip at a very busy time of year for ‘nice’, and this is post high school, after all.  Ds has a very good feeling about it and unless we learn something new that changes things, he’s already feeling that’s where he’d like to be for next year.

Last night I went to sleep feeling quite anxious about our still unhatched ducklings. They’re supposed to hatch in 28 days, and we were at day 30 with only one showing any signs of pipping.  And I was afraid that one wasn’t going to make it since he pipped on Thursday and by late Saturday night wasn’t noticeably closer to getting out.  So I searched the internet to try to find out if this was anywhere in the realm of normal (couldn’t find anyone that had a duckling that took that long) and if it was still possible for him and the rest to hatch despite the delays.  I think  that we didn’t have enough humidity in the incubator and the shells weren’t soft enough for them to get out of.  I was almost dreading waking up and finding it dead, since the kids were so excited and I knew they wouldn’t take it well to find the duckling they’d been watching struggle to get out for over two days died.  I sprinkled the eggs with warm water (including the one that was already partially hatched) and sprinkled more water in the incubator, hoping it would become humid enough for their needs.

Well, by the time dd13 was up just four hours later (I got to sleep very late and she gets up very early), not only had the one we’d been watching hatched, but so had another!  And within another half an hour of that, a third one hatched.  (Named: Peeps, Darth Vader, and… I can’t remember and the kids are sleeping so I can’t ask for a reminder, maybe Quackers.)  You don’t know how relieved I was for the sake of the ducklings and the kids!  So far one more pipped but we think it died.  The kids think that tonight more might hatch, and I hope they’re right.  We incubated 15 duck eggs and 12 were viable according to our candling, and it’s not a great feeling to have such a poor hatch rate.

This week marks one year since I was overdue by three weeks before finally having our delightfully yummy baby, and as I was noting the long delays with this hatching, I was thinking about it all comes down to the same thing – understanding the natural process and trusting it. The problem is that I don’t understand the natural process for hatching eggs well enough to trust it or myself.

Though I said we’d be limiting our contact with the ducklings for the first three days, that was hopeless.  My kids are fascinated with these adorable and fun little birds and can’t get enough of them, and all their friends who visited today also enjoyed them.  Tonight after all the littles and middles were asleep, dd15 and ds16 put the ducklings in a shallow pan of water and were having fun watching them.  It’s the kind of thing you can just sit and watch for a long time.  Then they blowdried them; I wish we could find the camera – watching the littlest one stand on dd’s palm while she blowdried him was too cute!

I’m trying to identify what breeds we have – we bought the eggs from someone who has a number of different kind of ducks and they’re a mixture.  So far I’ve figured out one of the three, I think – it’s a Rouen.  What I’d like most if we keep them for egg laying are Khaki Campbells or Indian Runners.  One might be a Campbell, but I can’t tell.  And I can’t tell which are male or female, anyway!

We’re going to try again with chicken eggs.  My wonderful dh was trying to help me put away groceries after my last shopping trip, and had no way of knowing that I had put the fertile chicken eggs we planned to hatch in a particular box.  So when he put them away, it was together with all of the other eggs.  The kids picked one box that they thought might have been from the farm where we get fertile eggs, but there was no outwardly distinguishing markings and though we put them in the incubator, I wasn’t confident at all that they were the right eggs, and there’s no visible action going on with them.  But who knows – maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow to a dozen little chicks in addition to some more ducklings!

Avivah