Life on the Ranch

I sent up a post yesterday, late at night but, it went up as a post for today. Oh well, just so you know, my post entitled "Thankful For . . ." was done for yesterday.
     Today is the last day of the 31 for 21 Blog Challenge. Just in case some of you have forgotten, this was a challenge made by a 30-year-old mother that has a little daughter with Down syndrome (Trisomy 21). She has attempted to raise awareness about DS, one blog at a time. As a first-time participants in the blogging, I think it has gone quite well. There were 201 of us bloggers involved in this challenge. That means 201 folks writing something everyday for the past month - that's 6,231 BLOG POSTS!!!!
     If you just spend a little time clicking around on the list of people that undertook this challenge, I think you will see that all of us feel as if the person in our life with DS is a BIG blessing. Whether it is a child, a sibling or a friend, all of the folks with this extra chromosome seem to bring…

I am thankful for my little boy with down syndrome. He is such a blessing to me. I hope that over the past few weeks, you have seen that even though he is "special", he is just another one of my children. As I love them, I love him. As I teach them, I teach him. More tomorrow, Lord willing.

Several days ago we found a small caterpillar making it's way along the ground out by the bunny barns. It was brightly colored and even struck a pose for us. It was if the green little thing was standing tall just for us to check him out. He stayed frozen in that position for quite some time - 2x, he did it. One time was long enough for us to go get the camera and snap a few pics.


 After our little picture taking adventure, we carried the caterpillar over to a tree and watched as it crawled up the tree trunk.

     This is just one event that reminds me of the joys of living out here where we do. It is such a blessing to be able to enjoy the beauty of nature around us. What a blessed place the Lord is letting us live in.

Most of the things that we do with Osiyyah are just the normal types of things that we do with all of our children. The only area that O lacks in is his speech development due to poor muscle coordination. Because of this, we do some extra therapies at home with him. We also take him once a month to a speech therapist at the Tulsa Sunshine Center. O's main therapist, Lauren, has been a big blessing to us in regards to the things we do with O.
    A few days back my oldest daughter did a post on therapy at home. It was an excellent post and overview. Here is the link to that article - Therapy at Home.

As I said yesterday, here are some pics of the finished fryer rabbits we processed yesterday:
 Here are some close-ups. This first is the referred to as the skirt - this is what you would use to make Carne Asada, mmmm!
 Here are the legs and thighs which can be used in place of chicken in any recipe:
 The back strap meat, great for soup or maybe even the bbq:
 Ah, yes, the livers . . . um, anyone have a great liver recipe . . .
Here is a pic to show one thing that we do around here 2x a day -

Well, after school today we had a real life lesson on how to properly process a meat rabbit. It was very interesting to watch and learn how to do it. I'll try to post some pics tomorrow as I am not on my own computer right now and that's where the pics are.

We had a busy day loading some sheds up that we were getting from a couple that is moving out of state. So, I am ready to get to bed soon. I thought I would post a few pics of the fryer rabbits that we have been raising. I am hoping to learn how to process them tomorrow from another breeder that can do the job in 1 minute flat (per bunny)!
     About 2 weeks ago when these fryers were 7 weeks old, they weighed in at about 4.2 pounds. I plan on weighing them tomorrow and am hoping that they will be about 5.5 pounds. So, here are a few pics of the bunnies eating some fresh grass the other morning:

Well, I know that I missed a post yesterday on the 31 for 21 blog challenge. Oh well, I was busy and assumed I had done it already. So, let me show you a few pics from our day today.
     We had a few folks show up today to buy either pigs or goats. We also went on a walk to check out my son's piglets. Here are a few pics from that:

One thing we do at our place is hands on projects or activities for some of our home-school lessons. Today was another "letter c" day and so we looked at "castle" as the word of the day.    After reading about castles and looking at pictures of them, we proceeded to "make" a castle - a Cupcake castle. Little Osiyyah was busy, busy making his as were the other kidos. Here are a few pics from the day:

Oh, I should mention that the cupcakes are wheat free. One of my daughter's has a blog with a lot of wheat free recipes. You can find that here - Hanunyah's Sweet Creations .

I thought I would post my article about 
Breastfeeding A Baby With Down Syndrome:  One Mother's Experience
There is much to be said about nursing a baby with down syndrome. Probably the best way to sum it up is "lots of work". The most important thing is to not give up in trying to get the baby on the breast. Here is our story:
In February 2005 I gave birth to twins. Baby A was a boy weighing in at 5lbs 12oz. Baby B was a girl who weighed 5lbs 13oz. It was suspected after he was born that he had Down Syndrome and, it was confirmed by a chromosome test a week later. SInce I had nursed all of my previous children (9 of them), it was a no brainer that I would try to nurse the twins. Little did we realize how much work this was going to be. . .
I was unable to nurse our boy with DS the first few days because he was "out of it". I don't think he woke up or opened his eyes barely those first 2 days. When he finally did, he had all sorts of tubes going into or coming …

My oldest daughter wrote the following in response to an article she read several years ago.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Joy of Raising a Child with Down Syndrome! I read the article “What it Really Takes to Raise a Child with Down Syndrome” and something did not sit well with me about it. It is because I have a sweet little brother with Down syndrome and I have first-hand experience on what it takes to raise a child with Down syndrome. I do not know whether the author of this article does or not, but she did not give a very good picture of an individual with Down syndrome. This article did point out that there are a lot of therapies that are now available for those with Down syndrome, which is good.
There are a few things that I wish to point out:
~ “Then they are faced with the decision of whether or not they would be able to care for all of the needs of the baby by themselves. . . . Of course this article is in no way suggesting that you should not raise your own child, but instead it will highlig…