Bare Bones of a Routine

This is apparently my 500th post on this blog :-))

Ever so slowly, a routine is beginning to emerge which will mean we can get back to some education, having got used to having Lulu around the house.

Yesterday, we took Lulu downstairs to fly free in the big dining room where Emily does most of her work. She'd been down there before, but only in her travel cage, so we were a bit nervous about yesterday as there are so many shelves and cupboard tops for her to get into mischief on. Sure enough, she immediately flew onto a large picture and wouldn't come down, lol.

Once she had settled, though, she did wonderfully well on her playstand and on the easel my Dad made ages ago for our whiteboard. Late yesterday, my clever Dad made a hanging swing perch for Lulu right up at the ceiling level in the dining room, to satisfy her instinct to be high up. So today, she's spent nearly all day downstairs with us and has been a very happy birdie indeed.

Which has meant that Emily and I have....drumroll....done some work! This morning, Emily did some maths puzzles and this afternoon we read a lot about birds and examined a tiny nest Jon found in a hedge the other day.

In theory, so long as we can keep the five cats away from the dining room while Lulu is loose, we should now be all set for some kind of return to normality. Says she with fingers crossed. Juliet, Romeo and Cassie-cat aren't bothered about Lulu, but the baby kibbies Voldemort and Severus are still unhealthily fascinated and not particularly impressed at being shut out of various rooms at various times. We're trying to make it up to them with lots of cuddles.

Lulu has started to fly to Emily's arm now too. Onto her ceiling swing (Lulu's, not Emily's, although she did express a desire to have one too....) we fixed a cardboard cone which we can fill with assorted bits and bobs and titbits of food for extra play value while she's up there. She's developed a particular love of blank beer mats which we had in stock years ago for craft purposes - it's a good thing for her to shred and chew safe cardboard, so it's just as well we've got lots of them!




We also tried persuading Lulu to have a bath today, as she needs to get wet on a regular basis to help with her preening and feather condition. We have a spray bottle we can use for her but she's not that keen. She took better to a washing up bowl with shallow warm water and some cabbage leaves floating in it, although she still didn't really get the idea and had to be splashed a fair bit. It did help with her preening though and she had a good old clean up afterwards up on her swing :-))





Keeping Lulu occupied and happy is incredibly time consuming, but we're getting the hang of it (and we knew it would be). She's enjoying several hours of out of cage time every day and she likes her cage too, so fingers crossed we're doing OK for first time bird owners! It's good fun foraging around the house to find things to make toys for her too. She needs to exercise her brain as well as her body and we have a lot of puzzle type toys she could enjoy too, but she doesn't like standing on a flat surface (floor, table, playstand base, whatever) which is where she needs to be to enjoy an abacus and that kind of thing. We'll have to have a think about that.