The Girls Are Mommies!!! (Part I)

This is a picture of Isabel from last May:


Last spring, a bird decided that our playset was the perfect place to build a nest. Isabel watched that nest 'like a hawk' until finally the eggs began to arrive, one by one. Then, she watched closely as the eggs hatched and as those tiny, creepy-looking birds grew into larger creepy-looking birds (okay, I am biased...I don't like birds and I think they are all creepy-looking). She was as much a mama to those birds as their feathered mama. Her mothering instinct came to life; she yelled at any neighbor child that came too close to the nest (just like me, she is usually terrible with confrontation and conflict, so this was a big deal for her) and she dug worms out of the dirt and left them in a dish on the playset for the hungry mama (again, very out of character...she is not a fan of being dirty and those who knew her as a small girl know that she was TERRIFIED of bugs...and if you are wondering, no the mama never actually ate any of those worms). Not sure if it is true, but as a kid I was told that if a mama bird smelled 'human' on her nest, she wouldn't take care of her babies, so I never let her touch the nest until the birds were almost full grown (about to the point you see in the picture above). But, she would keep an eye on the nest at all times so that as soon as the mama would fly off for food, she would climb right up there to just stare for as long as I would allow. The birds grew well until the night of her dance recital (first week of June) when they all flew away. Thank goodness for the excitement of the dance recital because she was absolutely heartbroken that the birds left her. She sobbed herself to sleep that night in a way that gave me the maternal urge to dig out the baby blankets to swaddle and rock her.

Needless to say, she was really hoping that Mama Bird would come back to our playset this year. A bird started to build a nest in the wreath on our front door and I actually told Jason to leave it there just in case another nest didn't show up in our backyard this year (this took a lot of persuasion because Jason works 3rd shift and uses our front door to come home for breaks at night...we had a nest on the front door once before and he wound up with a bird flapping frantically in his face on more than one occasion...he likes birds about as much as I do) But, a nest started to form in the playset next to ours, so we were in luck! We got the nest out of our wreath before any eggs showed up and Isabel had a nest to climb up to and check on.

This year, Ashlen is excited too. They both love to check the nest (still no touching allowed) on a regular basis. Ash is not quite a climber, so she requires assistance from Isabel to get a peek:A few days ago, the first egg arrived and the girls were thrilled! After a few days, we ended up with this:We have three eggs, and hopefully in a few days we will have three baby birds! I will let you know when we have babies in Part II. But for now, you have to agree with me that these things are CREEPY!!!!