October 29, 2013 Hooray! PUPPIES!!!

On Friday, we were watching a movie in the playroom when Mom called, "Puppies!" We all ran upstairs to see the puppies being born. There are in a sac when they are born. Annie had to chop off the puppies' umbilical cords with her mouth. It stunk a little, and it was really messy. She got blood all over her tail, and she licked the puppies so that they were clean. The first puppy was almost white. The first puppy tried to nurse, but there were other puppies coming out so Annie was too busy to nurse. It was kind of scary and kind of exciting to watch. This was my first puppy birth. We had to pile a lot of newspapers in the whelping box. The x-ray showed that she would have at least five puppies, but she had nine altogether. At seven puppies we thought that Annie was done giving birth. We waited an hour and gave her a shot of oxytocin. Then, Annie ran outside in the cold night air, and mom followed her. Annie ran almost to the field and suddenly she started to have another puppy! Mom caught the puppy in the sack with the placenta still attached. Mom ran back to the house, dripping blood. Blood spattered all over the deck and the hot-tub room. Mom's nurse friend opened the sack and rubbed the puppies belly to get it breathing. That is the smallest puppy. Immediately after Mom brought in the puppy, Annie jumped into the whelping box and delivered another puppy. We have nine Goldendoodle puppies. I am logging the daily weight of the smallest puppy, and plotting the data on a graph. Mom and Dad tried to mark all the puppies with marker so that we could tell them apart, but Annie licked off the markings. Then we tried to mark the puppies with colored ribbons, but they came off too. Today, we tried to mark the puppies with hairbands, but many of those already came off. Really, we just need to watch the littlest one, so Mom marked its hands, feet, ears, head and tail with black Sharpie marker. We hope that Annie doesn't lick that all off too. All the darker colored puppies are bigger. One of the darker puppies is feisty and loud. He's the first one to get milk, and the first to try to stand. He was the second puppy born. The puppies lie on top of each other because they were all smashed up in Annie's belly and that keeps them warm. We've had a lot of friends over to see the puppies. I hope the little one does well. It's hard to take care of that many puppies, but it's a lot of fun too.

October 23, 2013

It's been almost three weeks since I've blogged. We've been to the library many times. Lately, I've been getting books from the Avon library, but yesterday we went to the Geneseo library. The Geneseo library has different book selections, and it has books on Cd. I checked out a lot of war books and Goosebump books. On Cd, I checked out My Side of the Mountain. In the book, Sam runs away from home and burns out a Redwood tree to live in. I listened to the whole story within 24 hours of checking it out. It was awesome. I also got Narnia, the movie, out from the library. I go to the library about three times a week, and the librarians all know my name. Why do I go to the library so much? Because I'm homeschooled, and I have time to read. Reading is one of my favorite things to do.
Our dog, Annie, is pregnant. We have four dogs, with new puppies on the way. On Monday, we took Annie to the vet to have an x-ray. Caesar got his shots too. I wanted to stay during the x-ray, but I couldn't because there is radiation and the radiation is dangerous for kids. But I got to pick up the x-rays and the vet showed me on a light. We saw that Annie is going to have at least five puppies, but probably more. We couldn't see very well because she is pregnant and fat. The vet also showed me an x-ray of a cat that had a bb bullet in its skull. I could see that cat's lungs, heart, liver and kidneys and bones. I got to look at an x-ray of a dog who had a broken leg. The vet had to cut the dog's leg off because it was completely snapped off.
Last week we were supposed to go to the Genesee Country Village Museum for a guided nature tour and apple cider making, but the tour got canceled because of the rain. We can't go now until next spring. Our pool is closed too now.
I got new math books in the mail yesterday. The other booked skipped around too much, and we didn't like it. We did a lot of stuff. I'll write again after Annie has her puppies.

October 10, 2013 Dairy Farm, Worm Farm and the Museum

Last week we went to a dairy farm, a worm farm, and the Rochester Museum and Science Center. At the dairy farm on Saturday, we pretended to hop over a jump with a fake horse. We went to a petting zoo, and there were two brown bunnies. I felt that I could stay there all day. We saw thousands of cows getting milked. There were tubes that carried the milk to big tanks. The workers washed the cows’ udders before and after milking. On the cows, there were yellow or green bracelets that made sure the cow is healthy. The bracelets could tell if the cow had a sickness by taking measurements and readings on a computer. The computer could tell how the milk was doing. The computer could tell how long the cow had been laying down that day. If the cow wasn’t giving enough milk, one gallon in 30 seconds, then it meant the cow was tired or maybe sick.  It was interesting to watch, but it smelled in the barn. A worker said they play Mexican music in the barn because Mexican people work there at night. If the cows don't hear the Mexican music playing, then they won't go in the barn. Cows like schedules and the same thing to happen every day. We took a hay ride from the dairy barn to the worm farm. The farmer takes the cow manure, squeezes the water out, and then mixes it with compost. Then the worms eat the compost, and leave worm poop, that is great for gardens. They use big cutters to cut the bottom part of the worm poop off, and the worms stay on the top of the compost and don’t get hurt.  

On Tuesday, we went to the Rochester Museum and Science Center again.  We’ve been there at least ten times this year. I heard there would be a new exhibit called Aliens and Andriods there. I asked my mom if we could go. It opened the end of September. I remember the one time we went to the museum and the exhibit wasn’t there yet. We finally got to see it. We saw an ugly creature at the entrance to the exhibit. Ironman was also there. They talked about how scientists can now replace body parts, like in the movie Ironman. Doctors can now replace hearts. There are now metal bone replacements. We saw C3PO and learned about Robotics. Scientists are trying to replace humans with robots to go into space because space travel is dangerous. Then we saw a movie about creatures that leave in the deep, deep ocean, near hot springs. Before, Scientists thought any life needed light. They look like dinosaur plants. They had roots and stem, but they looked like old fossils of crinoids.  We saw the solar system and how planets move around the sun. My favorite part was the movie about the Rover “Curiosity” that landed on Mars last year. There was only seven minutes to slow the thing that held the Curiosity down from thousands of miles an hour to zero, so that it could land without crashing. First, the Scientists launched the ship. When it entered Mars atmosphere, they released the heat shield. It is 65,000, or maybe 165,000, degrees. We can’t remember exactly. Then a parachute went up. It was the largest and strongest and lightest parachute ever made. That slowed the ship to 200 miles an hour. Still too fast to land. Then there were jet propulsion to slow down the ship. After the ship was hovering above Mars, a crane gently lowered Curiosity down onto the planet Mars. They didn’t want to land using jet propulsion because it would cause a big dust storm and run Curiosity. All this happens in seven minutes, but the Scientists don’t know about what happened until fourteen minutes after it already happened. They had a lot of tests on Earth. They didn’t want to fail because they would lose millions of dollars. Curiosity has solar panels so that it can get the energy from the sun. Curiosity gathers information about Mars. There are canyons on Mars and Scientists think there was water there. But what if there is a dust storm? Will Curiosity get caught in one of those? The wheels are specially made to go over high rocks. The wheels are smaller than I thought. Smaller than car wheels.

October 2, 2013- The Zoo

Yesterday, we went to the zoo. We saw big, grey Rhinos. My mom saw the Rhinos fighting, but I missed it because I was in the bathroom. We went to see the otters next, but they were not there for some reason. We decided to go inside the eco-center. We saw two Burmese Pythons. One was small, but the other one was huge. We saw grey sturgeon fish. We saw many different animals that live in Madagascar, the island off the coast of Africa. One of the animals was the Hissing Cockroach. It looked gross. We saw raccoons too. My mom said that raccoons open garbage cans to get food. Next, we crawled in a tunnel, and stuck our heads out into the pen of a lynx. The viewing tunnel was glass, so the lynx walked all around our heads! He paced around us for five minutes. That was exciting. We saw the lion cubs playing. One of the lion cubs had a toy. We saw the polar bear. It was sleeping. The seals were also sleeping, but the baby seal was flopping around on the rocks. We went in a building that had vet equipment set up. We learned how the vets take care of the zoo animals. We talked about he animals' diets. We saw baboons and talked about how some scientists think that humans came from apes. I liked to watch the Golden Tamarins swing from the trees. We saw lots of other animals too. Usually, the building that has the Tamarins stinks, but I have a stuffy nose and I couldn't smell the yucky smell. The last thing we did was look at the baby orangutan. The mom was holding the baby. I had a awesome day.