Meet Zeus.

[boomer girl]

By what I hear you have contractions for a long time but I sure know I worried about not making it to the hospital in time. My daughter was born in the winter and I worried about having to deal with driving in a big snow storm but we were prepared with a big 4WD and a full set of four chains for it. Hopefully you will be working when she decides to pop out so you wont have to drive that far to the hospital.

How great that Zues was hanging around with you today and playing and enjoying life. I bet it is great to see him flying around the house and that has to be really good exercise for him. I am thinking that cats dont like him flying around though since he is known to attack them Bad Zues for eating your book. I have a friend with a big Amazon that gives him old phone books to shred up and he loves them.

I cant believe you have a garden up there. I should be like you and plant seeds in the house so I can get them a bit bigger before we set them out here in late May. I have some Kale in my garden that is growing from the cut stems from last years garden. I was really surprised to see they even lasted through a couple of days of being covered with snow here so I think I just may try to start a "winter" garden here and try to plant some peas, lettuce, radishes and maybe even some carrots to see if they actually grow here. Our nights are not as cold as yours up there but we do get snow storms and also below freezing nights often. Seeds are cheap so why not try. I bet Zues might even like fresh vegetables from the garden and I hear birds like chard and Kale and they are super good for them.

[boomer girl]

Oh all things I was just told by a friend that Kale isnt good for birds so dont feed it to Zues.

[Roscoe's Mom]

A goal is to get him into a real cage before Coraline is able crawl. Plan to secure clear plastic walls on the outside of the lower part of the cage to keep little fingers out while baby learns to leave bird alone and bird learns to leave baby alone . . . All in all, just over three months left till Baby. Three more months to make the best progress we are going to be able to make with Zeus in a while. I only wish his automatic response to anything unknown wasn't aggression. I daydream of getting a second bird in a few years when Baby is older and James has a good job and I don't need to work. Wouldn't that be nice?

YES to getting him into the real cage! Penelope is so jealous of baby Arden that she says she doesn't like her all the time, even though they both enjoy making cooing noises to one another and being each other's eye candy. And Ross so resents her that she slipped his beak out through a bar while I was adjusting the curtains six months ago and gave her a warning nip on the hand. I felt terrible: I thought I was holding her far enough away, but she'd just started reaching out for things! I, too, am installing plexiglass walls to keep Arden's hands safe until she understands the concept of keep-away. And I would also add that when you consider your cage options you must make sure the stand to which the cage is bolted is extra sturdy. I just had to replace Penelope's cage because Arden likes to use it to pull up to stand, and I was shocked at how wobbly it became under just 20 lbs of pressure. Good luck balancing baby and bird (future bird/s)! Our babies do take all of our attention for a while after they are born, but as long as we acknowledge our fid friends they seem to cut us slack