The Dee to my Dum

I am not sure how it is with anyone else's children who are close in age but our two oldest boys seem to argue and bicker so much more than they play nicely together.  They are each a pleasure to be around when they are solo but together they give me a headache.  I keep telling myself that this is a phase and it will get better (if it won't I don't want to know).

Ian and I were both over Liam and Seamus' fighting by 8 am this morning, so after a long and (I am sure) boring lecture on what kind of behaviour we expect from him as the oldest child, my coping mechanism was to invite Liam to be my very special "right hand man" for the morning.  I figured that if he was glued to my hip then he could not be fighting with his brother and I would be able to retain the few shreds of sanity that I had left.

And so our morning of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee began.

Liam and I milked the goats.

Liam did amazing. 
I love the concentration it took him to get it right.

Holding on to his harvest for dear life.

We got over 2 L of milk today!

I am sure that one of the reasons for Martha and Mellie's great milk production is all the fall vegetable scraps that they have been getting fed.

None of our cauliflower plants produced anything this year
but the humongous plants make delicious and nutritious goat snacks.

Mamas and babies chowing down.

Even Molly got in on the cauliflower action.

Next, Liam and I scooped the poop in the donkey barn and gave Charlie some extra loving (because how can you not?  She is so cute!)

Charlie is loving Liam's attention and her rub down.

We also cleaned out the hens' nest boxes and filled them up with fresh wood chips.  We are out of eggs again (curse the sorter autumn days) so we are hoping that nice clean nests might entice the hens to lay more often.  It is interesting that the extra fresh produce does not seem to be improving egg production like it does milk production; bunch of free loaders.

Liam and I also baked bread, lemon-currant muffins, and mini oat pancakes for school lunches.

Finally, we pasteurized and filtered our goat milk and got it in the fridge.  By this point, I had finally wore Liam out sufficiently that he begged off for an afternoon nap.

On my part, I will take a peaceful chore filled morning and a quiet nap filled afternoon over a day of fighting/bickering/whining every time.  Tomorrow I promised Seamus that he can be the Dee to my Dum as we tweedle away another morning in the barn yard.