It happened.......

So, I come home from my parenting duties (ie. P&C meeting) this evening to discover my washing strewn across the lawn - again. I was furious, to say the least. Pretending not to notice, I called over the culprit and dragged his naughty butt to the chain and tied him up.
Forgetting about the hot chips which we bought for dinner, I then went to pick up the laundry, and all the pegs too cause that annoying dog will eat them. Laundry on, the kids are wrangling the chooks out of my garden so I decide it is time to put them to bed. Still furious, I discover the chooks have pecked the bottom off their feed dispensed and can't find the wing nut and washer to reattach it. Aaarghh.
Luckily the chooks come into the pen easily and we shut them in for the night. As they still like to sleep in the nesting box and not on the roost, I have been barricading off the nesting box at night, so I go around the pen to do this. I open the nesting box lid and the frustration from the past quarter hour washes away as I find this

 OUR FIRST EGG!!!!

It was so hard getting those two to smile for some reason, I think they just wanted to own the egg individually! I had to take it off them to make sure it did not drop on the ground!
After getting over my excitement I remembered we had 'hot' chips for dinner and ushered the kids off to eat.

Food, do we have to?

I find it hard enough some days to get the kids to eat and now I have to be cautious about the food Master 5 eats, as if life is not already busy enough!

So, to recap and bring everyone up to speed, Master 5 has suffered a sore tummy for some time now. It was noted late last year his 'burping' habit (not belching whoppers, thank goodness), which has grown into an upset tummy most days upon waking, and has turned into a frequent vomiting situation. It was not until the vomiting started I decided there was something else than a bad burping habit and off we went to the doctors to get a 'reason' for this situation.

After Master 5 bravely sat down for a blood test, and put me through some public exposure to get prepared for a tummy xray, I have had the results rechecked and our boy has a condition called GORD.

Good GORD I said to him at the doctors, and he laughed not realising what we are in for the next few months! And I could give you the proper expansion of the Gord acronym but Reflux is a much more common term for it.

Reflux does not sound that bad, and for an infant it is easily delt with (as my doctor explained), you just change their formula until you find one which is good for the baby, and medicate. Unfortunately Master 5 is no longer a baby, and does not take formula but real food! So we now have to become conscious of exactly what he is consuming. Limiting sugary, spicy, acidy, and fatty foods. Sounds easy, but practice is a little harder. He is also to avoid 'heavy' foods for a month, like oats/barley etc. What a horrible situation to put a child in come these colder days, when porridge becomes the breakfast choice.

We also have to give Master 5 medication, which has proved to work so far. The doctor asked if he would take a tablet because the powdered form is about $50 more expensive, I said yes and Daddy can deal with it! Master 5 has decided that chewing the tablet and drinking it down with water is the best way to take it. So far so good, the bucket he has had his head over the past week has disappeared and he has more life in his little body! The only tricky part of the medication is it has to be taken 1hour before food and 4hours after food. For kids whom usually eat every 3 or so hours, this I fear will become difficult. My only choice at the moment is to give it to him upon waking in the morning and try to hold off on brekky for an hour. Worked today, but day one so will see how we go.

As I am typing this, smelling the pumpkin soup preparing itself on the stove for dinner, I realise I have put 2 whole onions in it and I now will need to make something extra for Master 5's dinner, bugger.
So, if you have any 'reflux friendly' recipes, I would appreciate them, and any other advice anyone can give me to help our Little Boy would be appreciated.

Our Chooks are not Chicken!

Whenever we go out and come back in the afternoon, our chickens are sitting on and under our front steps. The other day, once the chooks had moved, I saw Rusty sitting in there with them, I am pretty sure the chooks were resting on top of him and he was sleeping cause we did not initially see him!
This afternoon, I feed the dogs (of whom our puppy is now as big as our big dog) with Little Miss 3 helping. Upon placing the dog bowls on the ground and walking away, the chooks approached the dogs peering into the dog bowls and pecking at the ground around them. Boy these chickens are game, and our dogs are awesome (except for when the puppy pulls washing off the line and eats our thongs)!