A Fairy Can Die in the Sun

When Joy was almost 5 she began to realize that she was a lot younger than the rest of the family, and she regretted it. She cried about it one day, saying that it was no fun to be the youngest and the smallest. I tried to console her and tell her she was loved. I acknowledged that she was the youngest and the smallest and reminded her about how small she was when she was born and that we called her "Funky fairy chicken" and "sugar plumb fairy chicken" because we love her. She did not like the "chicken" part until I explained that it was like a cute fuzzy chick, so she has tried to get us to change it to "fairy chick". At Halloween that year she was Tinker Bell. When the Tinker Bell movies came out the next year, we bought them for her to watch and I told her they reminded me of her because she is my little fairy. A few weeks ago, when she got home from her friend's house, I asked her what they did. She said they told secrets. Well of course I wanted to know what secrets 6 year olds have to tell. She said that she told them she was really a fairy, but they did not believe her. They said that fairies are not big. She told them that when she was born, she was so little she was smaller than baby clothes.
Saturday, Joy heard that I was taking some chickens to the McBrides and asked incredulously: "you are selling chickens?" No, I assured her I was just giving them to Nadine so that the other hens would not be too crowded in the Omlet hen house, since they cannot all find places to lay at the same time, which makes it hard for her to collect the eggs. We went out to catch the hens and she found a lid for the container to carry the two hens safely next door and followed me over there. We found that Brian has 6 or 7 young roosters in his sheep shelter out back. As we were adding the hens in with his roosters, Joy began to complain of stomach and head pain. She asked to be carried back to the house. I gave her a piggy-back ride as far as the front gate. I thought maybe it was the heat -- 113 degrees F. that day till the thunderheads rolled in and it dropped to 103. (Incidentally Jared and Jarom had to haul the hay in before it rained. And Abe got his first try at driving the hay bucking truck!)
This morning, as we braved the heat for a moment to get to the car, she said, "When you were selling chickens, I learned that a fairy can die in the sun." This afternoon, she went out the door to go play with Michael but came back saying again: "a fairy can die in the sun". She stayed home.
We are going north for a few days this week.

Artist Activity Badge Scrapbook

Requirement 9 (sort of): "The dancing clones are invading the fort!"

Requirement 9: "I'm hungry. I'll eat the tortoise and the hair!"

Requirement 3: "Here's the Rock, that will come next. Dun dun dun."

Requirement 3: "Don't be surprised, I am framing a rock. That is the picture's name."

Requirement 7: "This is my fish. It is very spotty. Why aren't we choking underwater now?"

Requirement 5: "This is Union 1. It looks much cooler up close."(click to zoom)