Pregnancy Bird Dreams

Even though David and I had lots of conversations about how we really didn't need to do Easter baskets this year (I mean, we're getting old, and the fake pink grass gets everywhere, and it's always a disappointment to find out once more that chocolate Easter bunnies are hollow and don't even really taste good), but when we woke up Easter morning I realized that Mr. Sneakity-Sneak David-Face had put together an Easter basket behind my back!

It contained:
a new hair-brush (mine is about a decade old and is missing a good portion of its bristles)
new hair bands (I manage to lose all mine, despite the lengths David takes to collect them around the house and place them on my dresser)
Cadbury mini-eggs
a jar of nuts (for David, David said)
AND
a bird feeder!

We live on a busy street, away from any trees, and we're on a second-floor apartment. So basically, not a lot of birds are going to make their way to our little balcony for seeds. But David bought some special birdseed that grackles apparently hate (which is good, because although I have come to love grackles, they are too noisy to have on our balcony), so we set up our bird feeder and sat back to watch.

We got nothing. No birds. We scattered some seed on our balcony for good measure, but Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday passed with no feathered friends.

When I was at school on Wednesday, David sent me an email that said: "There's a bird on the balcony!" The little guy apparently ate some seeds and then chirped really loudly after every bite, sending out the word.

This morning we had a good handful of little sparrows strutting around our balcony, dunking their heads into the feeder, dropping seeds all OVER the place, and then jumping down to peck like chickens at what fell. They fluff out their feathers and cock their heads and hop on both feet--they do everything that is cute. They are just your run-of-the-mill sparrows....they look like this:

and this:

They are little House Sparrows primarily, but as soon as school gets out we're going to pull out our Sibley and see if any other types of sparrows are stopping by.

But what I'm really writing this post for is to talk about the incredibly vivid dreams these birds have been giving me. Birds wake early, and they chirp like wild on our balcony in the morning. I tend to have my craziest dreams in those last couple of hours of sleep in the morning, and the past two days in a row I have dreamed of incredibly beautiful, colorful birds. I see them in detail, and I get to hold a bird in my hands in each dream.

Two mornings ago, I dreamed that our bird feeder was filled with the tiniest white swallows with beaks like avocets. One flew onto my hand through an open window, and stuck it's long, thin beak in between my knuckles. They were beautiful.

My dream bird looked like a white swallow:

With the beak of an avocet (which we see in our backyard sometimes...such funny-looking, beautiful birds...):

And it was the size of a bee hummingbird (so cute!):


This morning, I dreamed of our old Idaho friend, the Western Tanager, only instead of black wings, they were as orange as his head. He could talk, and he could make the sticks get up and move like animals.

He let me hold him, and I could see all of his separate feathers as I ran my thumb down his back.

I love these dreams, and, once again, I think I owe them to Little Spooky. We got to hear his heartbeat today.

I just hope that once I can start feeling Spooky move around inside me at nighttime, he won't make me start to have nightmares about this: