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Chickens: Day 1

This is happening in our household.

It’s been a dream two years in the making. Honestly, when I had made prior requests for chicken ownership, James had responded with threats of divorce.

Apparently chickens were off limits.

But then we purchased Cartwheel Farm, complete with barn and a stall already outfitted with a swanky chicken coop. And he relinquished.

Smart man.

So yesterday morning, a small cardboard box filled with 15 freshly hatched baby chicks arrived to Vermont.

The adorable meter in the house is off the charts. As is the bodily fluids meter. The chaos meter. And the chick (ha!) meter.

Just in case James wasn’t already feeling outnumbered, we paid insurance to guarantee that only pullets (female baby chicks) were sent to our doorstep. There was no way we were welcoming a rooster into our family. The Carts? We are not morning people. Nor did we want Hanna in a sparring match with a rooster.

Three of the chicks are headed to a friends home. The other 12 will remain at the farm.

The fluffy yellow chicks are Buff Orpingtons. For anyone that has eaten at The Forge, now you understand the name of their wings. These gals will lay brown eggs. The black chicks are Sunny’s favorite and they’re Plymouth Barred Rocks that will be zebra striped when they reach maturity and will also lay brown eggs. And the speckled chicks are Ameraucanas, a funny looking bird, that will lay blue and green eggs.

FOR REAL!

Each breed was chosen because of their calm, tame nature. None of them are known for their high egg production, but these 12 chicks will produce more than enough eggs for our family of four. Primarily, I want them to make sweet, productive pets for the family. I’d say that they’re off to an excellent start.

Peep peep peep! Hapeepy weekend to all!

Photos: Courtesy of Ashley Weeks Cart

Currently Reading

The second  “Currently Reading” today, because this is so so important. And something I see play out with my own children. Addison is constantly asked to give hugs and kisses to the adults in her life, but when she says no, she needs to know that it means no. Starting now:

I figure her body is actually hers, not mine.

It doesn’t belong to her parents, preschool teacher, dance teacher or soccer coach. While she must treat people with respect, she doesn’t have to offer physical affection to please them. And the earlier she learns ownership of herself and responsibility for her body, the better for her.

Thanks, Meg, for this one!

Currently Reading

So very many thoughts swirling in my head in response to this article. I hope one day to be able to more fully articulate my own experience and approach to this notion of family-work balance. In many ways this blog is an ongoing effort to do just that:

Think about what this “standard Washington excuse” implies: it is so unthinkable that an official would actually step down to spend time with his or her family that this must be a cover for something else. How could anyone voluntarily leave the circles of power for the responsibilities of parenthood? Depending on one’s vantage point, it is either ironic or maddening that this view abides in the nation’s capital, despite the ritual commitments to “family values” that are part of every political campaign. Regardless, this sentiment makes true work-life balance exceptionally difficult. But it cannot change unless top women speak out.

Sandberg thinks that “something” is an “ambition gap”—that women do not dream big enough. I am all for encouraging young women to reach for the stars. But I fear that the obstacles that keep women from reaching the top are rather more prosaic than the scope of their ambition.

These “mundane” issues—the need to travel constantly to succeed, the conflicts between school schedules and work schedules, the insistence that work be done in the office—cannot be solved by exhortations to close the ambition gap. I would hope to see commencement speeches that finger America’s social and business policies, rather than women’s level of ambition, in explaining the dearth of women at the top. But changing these policies requires much more than speeches. It means fighting the mundane battles—every day, every year—in individual workplaces, in legislatures, and in the media.

Still, the proposition that women can have high-powered careers as long as their husbands or partners are willing to share the parenting load equally (or disproportionately) assumes that most women will feel as comfortable as men do about being away from their children, as long as their partner is home with them. In my experience, that is simply not the case. Here I step onto treacherous ground, mined with stereotypes. From years of conversations and observations, however, I’ve come to believe that men and women respond quite differently when problems at home force them to recognize that their absence is hurting a child, or at least that their presence would likely help. I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job. Many factors determine this choice, of course. Men are still socialized to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the breadwinner; women, to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the caregiver. But it may be more than that. When I described the choice between my children and my job to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, she said exactly what I felt: “There’s really no choice.” She wasn’t referring to social expectations, but to a maternal imperative felt so deeply that the “choice” is reflexive.

The books I’ve read with my children, the silly movies I’ve watched, the games I’ve played, questions I’ve answered, and people I’ve met while parenting have broadened my world. Another axiom of the literature on innovation is that the more often people with different perspectives come together, the more likely creative ideas are to emerge. Giving workers the ability to integrate their non-work lives with their work—whether they spend that time mothering or marathoning—will open the door to a much wider range of influences and ideas.

Thanks for the hat tip, Geraldine. And happy happy birthday to you!