The good:

For the first time ever, the witchling slept through the night last night. This is even better than it might otherwise have been, as we have been having Interesting Times, sleep-wise, in the last few weeks; the night before last, we got about four hours, and she was awake from 4.00 until about 6.30, with four previous wakings between 7.00 (when she went to bed; it took her about ninety minutes to get to sleep, with lots of up-and-down-stairs for us before that) and 2.00. I don’t know if it’s teething, or nappy rash, or frustration that she wants so to be able to move freely and can’t quite manage it yet (she is now able to stand quite confidently for about ten minutes, though walking – as I look around our chaotic, DIY-in-progress house – is, thankfully, some distance off, I think); whatever it is/was, it wasn’t easy, and Quercus and I had had a few nights of shiftwork, where one of us (me, in this case) sloped off to sleep in the caravan at the end of the garden for a few hours, in order to function during the day. I hate doing that, and I hate being tearful and emotional all the time due to the lack of sleep; just as I was getting to despair, she went and slept from 7.30 until 6.30. Who’d'a thunk it?

We are continuing to eat better, and to eat earlier. Our evening meal had slipped back to 8.30 or so, due largely to its being prepared after the witchling had settled for the night. Now, I am trying to get at least the legwork of cooking done during the afternoon, so that dinner is cooking while we’re in the bath with her; it makes for an easier, earlier, more relaxed feast, and means that I can contemplate going to bed at 9.30 without feeling gargantuan. I likes that.

Pyewacket has taken to sleeping on top of the fridge, curled up on our woolly-sheep tea-cosy.

The bad:

Yesterday, for the third time, Liquorice, our Barnevelder hen, managed to escape somehow. I don’t know where the hole she used is – Quercus and I have looked all around the hedges several times, down on hands and knees, and blocked up any holes we could see with wire – but still she found somewhere. I’d noticed twice before that she was disappearing somewhere in the afternoon, and it had been a while since we’d seen an egg which was definitely hers (darker than the Buff Sussex eggs, and often speckled), so I thought she’d found somewhere to go and lay in peace, following the broody Sussex saga last month.

Although I was worried about it, as she’d come back before, I assumed she couldn’t have gone too far; I hoped that I’d manage to catch her either coming in or going out, so we could block up the hole. But she didn’t appear; it got to be dusk and Quercus and I were out, be-wellied, looking for her for the fourth time, and no luck. Quercus got up at 6.30 this morning to go and search again; this time he found feathers in the lane and no further sign of her. We can only assume that a predator has got her.

I am really sad about it, far more than I’d expected; they are hens, and I am not perhaps as attached to them as I am to, say, the cats, but Liquorice was a lovely hen with a very placid nature – she exercised a calming influence on the other – entirely lunatic – hens, and was always first at the gate when I walked down the garden to feed them some leftover greens. I miss her already, and feel horrible about it all. I also know that it would be nigh-on impossible to stop them ever getting out – our garden is surrounded by a bank on one side which makes fencing very difficult, and the hedge, while thick, has holes which are clearly visible to hens even when diligent human searching misses them. Our general ambition is to be around in the garden frequently enough to alert predators to our presence, and to make the hens’ run sufficiently attractive to them as to curb their enthusiasm for escapades; generally, we do pretty well at this, I think, but I feel miserable that, on this occasion, it didn’t work well enough. It has, to say the least, rather undermined the joy at the witchling’s sleep prowess.