The Baby turns 17!

Our precious baby girl, Lindsay turned 17 on the 22nd of June. This has been a difficult birthday for her Mom. I have found myself emotional and quickly fighting tears everytime I think about her turning seventeen. Is it only because she is my baby, because she is now seventeen and that's what age I was when I met her Dad, or is it simply because I know this next year is going to fly by so quickly? I am sure it is a little of all of the above. This was our colicky baby! For the first four months of her life, I was tempted to see if the doctor could put her back where he got her. We tried everything with this poor baby but the only thing that would make her quit crying besides Dad firing up his 454 jet boat was her swing. Back in the "old days", these swings were wind-ups, not battery-operated so these parents were able to get a 15 minute nap in between cranking up the swing. This continued until she was slightly past her four month birthday. The colic did not suddenly cease, it was a gradual and slow process, but very noticeable for two exhausted parents. I can honestly say that every sleepless night was so worth the joy this girl has been to both of us. She is our sweet, easy-going girl who has the biggest heart I have ever seen. She is a true animal lover who will fight for every creature big or small. I have never seen someone so devoted to making sure orphans we have adopted were raised with the tenderest touch, no matter the sleepless nights created for her! When I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, this was the child who would just come put her head on my shoulder and say, "Mom, are you feeling alright? Is there anything I can do for you?" I know I would be lost without this little angel of mine. She is the happy-go-luck girl who grins when I wake her in the morning to go feed baby goats and milk the does! She is thoughtful, hard-working, honest, and the strongest defender of humanity. I am such a proud Mom and no matter if she chooses her zoology path, her photography, or something none of us have envisioned for her, I pray that we will spend this next year so thankful for this family bond, remembering not take our time together for granted, and aware of the blessings we were granted 17 years ago when our pink little bundle surprised us. Our little "Drew" was suddenly Lindsay and more than we could hope for when the doc called out, "It's a girl!" This child completed this family and spent everyday bringing her family and friends joy! Happy Birthday, Lindsay! We love you so very much!

Milk baths for all!

Well, the two new additions arrived without incident Wednesday which is a huge leap in my world of Murphy's Law! I think both of these goats are fabulous, but have to say, my new doe sure lives up the the stereotype of a noisy Nubian. I am sure her breeder can hear her crying from here to Carpenter! I feel slightly guilty when she starts bellowing. It sounds like such a heart-rendering plea to go home and for a nanosecond, I sometimes think I should oblige this poor girl, and then I begin milking her! Sorry girl, you will adjust to our little corner of the earth, I'm keeping you! I have had goat people tell me their goats are "easy milkers" but when Karen said that about Lyrical, she truly was not exaggerating. Between the two does, we are getting a gallon and a half morning and night. Our little Javar has fit right in for the time being, but he's getting his own pen with the wether so change is going to come his way right when he gets settled in to this routine. A co-worker of my husband's stopped by when we first got the goats and laughed when I said I was so impressed with how beautiful my new goats were. He didn't think there could be such a thing as a beautiful goat. I figure if I have to explain, he wouldn't understand! :)

The "other" family members! (Part 1 of 4)

Why haven't you seized the boy?? "Because I have a big head and little arms!"

I am obsessed with my goats right now and they definitely occupy a lot of my time, but I cannot forget the other four-legged loves of my life. These fur-babies bring me joy everyday. There is nothing like a dog to greet me when I get home, wag their tails at me even when I am in the foulest of moods, cuddle with me while I am being lazy, and follow me everywhere while I am busy. I am one of "those kind of people" who thinks a house isn't a home until it has a dog in it. If one is good, four are better in my book! Since my wedding day, we have had a cocker spaniel, a German Shepherd, a Norweign Elkhound, an English Mastiff, two Pugs, a German Short-haired Pointer, a Draatharr (German Wirehaired), two Yorkshire Terriers, and a miniature Schnauzer. The last four are the ones that currently are residing at this home. The first Yorkie, Bowe-Man (pronounced Bo-Man) is what we lovingly refer to as Yorkie-gigantus. This is the scientific name the family came up with for this anomaly in the toy breeds! I know better than to buy a dog while on a "schedule", but because I so wanted to get a tiny puppy for my daughter for Christmas, my logical brain cried 'uncle' to my Christmas-mania brain! The breeder I called with an advertisement for "tiny toy Yorkie puppies" took my deposit, promised this puppy would be ready for pick-up the week before Christmas and sent me a picture of the tiniest puppy ever! Two days before pick-up, I got a phone call that this puppy was not going to be ready to go to his home until after Christmas. HEARTBREAKING! Images of Christmas morning flashed in my head: Bright and early, our precious 9 year old daughter looking under the Christmas tree for her gift, seeing nothing, looking back at us with those huge "Cindy-Loo-Who" eyes filled with confusion. Behind her are her irresponsible parents who were counting on a puppy to arrive before Christmas saying, "Honey, your present will be here in a couple of weeks". Unacceptable! My daughter would be scarred for life and I could see her in later life writing her memoirs that would make 'Mommy Dearest' script look like a Mother's Day Hallmark card! Thank goodness this angel of a puppy mill owner, oops, I mean, Yorkie breeder, said she had been holding a very tiny puppy back, he was nearly four months old but had been way too tiny to sell before this time. She generously chose to sell us to him for an additional $200. Can you read the sarcasm in my blog??? We go to pick up our daughter's Christmas puppy and after a five hour drive we were amazed (horrified) with the size of this "tiny" puppy! The lady, and I do use that term loosely, said his larger than imagined size was due to his age and that he was completely done growing. If one looks at the breed standard for a Yorkshire Terrier, one would discover that a Yorkie should weigh anywhere between four to seven pounds. Okay, ready to guess how much our "Tiny, Toy Yorkie puppy" weighs?? Seventeen pounds on a "light" day and only if he had spent the morning walking to the bottom of our street, throwing himself down on the sidewalk for all my neighbors to see, and then "allowing" me to pick him up and carry him back up the street! If Cesar Millan was there to witness it, I would be told in no uncertain terms that I am humanizing this animal, I need to quit believing that Bowe-Man was somehow a victim, and to be his pack leader. Obviously, no one told my pack that this transformation should happen because Dog Whisperer is on in this house nearly every morning and the volume is all the way up! Why aren't they listening?? :) We wouldn't trade Bowe-Man for anything and I suppose everything happens for a reason. If I need to be thankful for the mistakes I have made, he is my favorite! Bowe-Man is one of the very best results of a bait and switch scheme ever!

Blog award!

First, I would like to say that I did not get an award for being direct and to the point, not that anyone who knows me or has read my blog would have believed that for a moment anyway. I know, I have a tendency be a little long-winded. With that being said, my gift of gab has been a extremely useful tool throughout my life, especially with public speaking while part of the high school speech and debate team, journalism class, yearbook and newspaper. See, Mom, I did use my powers for good and not evil! :)
Today, I signed onto get updated on the blogs I follow and was so surprised by a comment left by Jennifer at Goats in the Garden http://goatsinthegarden.blogspot.com
She has awarded me with a Lovely Blog Award! I thank her not only for making my day for the award but also for her blogs that always make me smile! Jennifer asked with that award to follow a few rules for the people who had been mentioned in the award. So I too, will pass this on to the wonderful blogs I follow!

Rules:
1. Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you have newly discovered. I may have to bend the rules a little bit here, with the internet service problems we have had lately I have not been able to read very many new blogs but I will do my best.

Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.



1. Holly at Easy Living the Hard Way
http://easylivingthehardway.blogspot.com
(Holly is the one responsible for my beginning in the blogspot!)

2. Country Girl at Achorn Farm
http://achornfarm.blogspot.com

3. d/iowa at Loess Is More
http://loessismore.blogspot.com
As you can see, I did not award 15 blogs, but I feel quality vs quantity is most important!! :)

I will continue looking for more blogs. If anyone has any suggestions, please send the links to me! Have a wonderful day and THANKS AGAIN, JENNIFER!!

Goats are like potato chips!

Well, I have spent the last three days looking for a Nubian buck to breed to all the goats we have begun to accumulate over the last month. This endevour back into dairy goats truly started out innocently enough when I saw an ad at the feed store for the most gorgeous black and chocolate Nubian doeling I had ever seen. I read the ad and called out for my husband, Robert hoping he would be as excited as I was about this unbelievable find. I immediately started into my rant giving all the pros to me getting back into dairy goats after nine years as he was walking towards me. When that did not seem to phase him, I tried batting my eyes at my dear husband and saying, "But Honey, I really do have time to milk and make cheese now that I am not working". After nearly 21 years of marriage, I do believe he has become nearly immune to the use of my feminine wiles on him and he continued right out the door without even glancing at the picture posted on the board. I did a second take at the ad, as I started out the door, I turned and quickly snatched one of the number tabs off the sign, stuck it in my pocket. "Wow," I thought, "I am sure sneaky". My plan was to call the woman advertising this future milking treasure and maybe ask her to send me a picture or two. I spent the forty minute trip home thinking back to when my kids were raising Lamanchas for 4H and realizing how much I truly missed my goats. We got home, fed chickens, collected eggs and then unloaded the groceries we had gotten in Gillette. I sat down to relax for a few minutes and was surprised by my husband's next question. He asked, "When are you going to call about that goat?" I guess he really knows me well but just then, the goat situation went from debating it to all out obsession again. I did call about this doeling, found out she was still available and set up a meeting to pick her up. The family our little Nakita came from loved this baby goat and it was obvious by Nakita's personality. Instantly, it was love at first sight for me. While talking to the woman about goats, she mentioned she had a pregnant doe she was going to sell and asked if I would be interested. When she informed me that this pregnant doe was bred to Nakita's father, I had to have her. A week later, I was on my way to go pick up Natasha. Staci said she was ready to freshen any day and was hoping to get her to our place before she "popped". We did get Natasha home and within 48 hours we went from one doeling and a doe to three doelings, a doe and a buckling!





That was on May 3rd and a month and 10 days later, I have a trip scheduled to pick up a wonderful buckling. It did not stop there because Karen said she would give me a good deal if I also wanted to buy a milking doe. Well, if you are going across the state to pick up one goat, I guess you might as well pick up two! On Wednesday, the Hamm family will go from 5 goats to 7 goats. I am so very excited about the two new additions but believe it will be the last purchase for a very long time. I am so fortunate to have such a easy-going husband and know he will feel just as overjoyed as I will next year when all the does start kidding! Ahhh, I am so blessed to have a herd of dairy goats! There will be an update on Wednesday or Thursday about our voyage home.

20 years ago today!

At 7:05 p.m today, it will be 20 years ago that our son, Tyler, was born by Cesarean section because even at that "newbie" stage, he was so stubborn! Poor Ol' Doc Harmston tried and tried to convince him by manipulation to turn around and conform to the "normal" way of being born. Tyler would not be pursauded by any of the not-so-gentle prodding proving from day one he would do everything his own way. Doc would get Tyler's head pushed to about mid-abdomen on me, push a little harder and Tyler would throw his head back and spring back into his preferred position of foot first, head upright. Doc Harmston dismay and my whimpers were not easily disguised during our battle of the wills with this tiny infant! We spent nearly 2 hours trying so very hard to get Tyler to just turn around, but, as the scar across my stomach proves, he refused! He was 6 weeks early, tiny, but always full of fight! Doc was impressed that this little guy was 5 lbs. 13 oz and born a month and a half prematurely. Doc Harmston informed me Tyler would have been a very large baby had he not been quite so impatient. A comment we laughed about thinking it was so cute for this itty bitty baby described as "impatient". That foreshadowing was oblivious to us until later.
This child, at three days old, quit breathing and was blue when I checked on him at 2in the morning. Thank God Robert was so quick to react. He spent what felt like an eternity pounding my tiny baby's back trying to get him to keep breathing, suctioning out his mouth, and trying to help me calm down while we waited for the ambulance to get to our house. I was so thankful to see the hard working EMTs finally appear at our front door. They were so patient and wonderful with this new hysterical Mother, a cyanotic premature baby, and a Father who was not about to trust someone else to keep his boy breathing. Robert and I happily brought our bundle of joy home three days later with a very expensive, loud apnea monitor and both of us certified in CPR. The apnea monitor was intended to be our security so we could at least attempt to fall asleep and let Tyler go to sleep. This equipment had a tendancy to have a lead fall off, usually in the middle of the night sending out blood-curdling, piercing alarms. After the first false alarm I did not sleep at all and neither did Robert. At this point in my life, I became Shirley Maclaine's character in Terms of Endearment checking our baby every two minutes, nearly sleeping in the crib with him. At his next doctor's appointment, Tyler was diagnosed as having severe jaundice. So at less than 2 weeks old, this child had changed his chameleon colors from blue to yellow and neither was a color the doctor wanted to see. It was devastating when Dr. Schmidt told us he wanted to hospitalize this baby again. Robert and I were exhausted from driving back and forth from Wright to Gillette but could not leave this baby. Thank God my parents were living in Gillette and able to visit Tyler when we could not. I was breast-feeding at this time and that did not help out this situation. This was not what we had envisioned when we decided to have a baby. We just wanted to bring this baby home and start living our visions of this new family.That picture required our baby to be home with us and thankfully the doctor took mercy upon us. Dr.Schmidt said we could take Tyler home if we would keep him under a Bilirubin light, so now we had a light rented from the home health clinic and the apnea monitor and I was still a nervous wreck. We were told Tyler must wear constant eye protection or he would go blind, words no new, nervous mother needed to hear! The doctor told us Tyler could not wear anything but a diaper, eye protection and apnea monitor. I cannot even describe the constant cries of anger and frustration Tyler screamed when the eye protection was applied.For being so tiny, Tyler had no problems pulling the eye protection off as fast as we could put it on his eyes. I knew my beautiful baby was going to have to face life without his sense of sight because of my failure to keep the eye protection constantly. The first night could not even be described as bearable, but on the second night, I went to check on Tyler at about midnight and he was lethargic, cold and refused to eat. Our tiny mobile home was 100 degrees and my baby was cold. I called my parents in a state of panic and they drove out to Wright in the middle of the night to take me and Tyler to the Emergency room. Much to his own dismay, my dear husband had to go to work to try to pay off this very expensive endevour into parenthood. The trip into Gillette was a stressful blur. Three trips back to the hospital with my baby as a mother made me think maybe I should have just gotten a puppy! We had the heater in my parents car cranked up on high, Tyler wrapped tightly and upon arrival at the ER approximately 45 minutes later, Tyler's temperature was a mere 92 degrees. Hypothermic, tiny, jaundiced, predisposed to apnea but a fighter! This tiny baby defied odds and showed all of us he was not a quitter. The traits that pulled him through all of the hardships he faced when he was born were the traits teachers failed to appreciate during his school years. If asked to describe Tyler, people would agree about of his qualities using similiar words such as stubborn, determined, not easily persuaded, and very head-strong. These are qualities that I believe are responsible for Tyler's successful fight to survive that first month of his life. After saying that, I must confess that I did lose some, sometimes ALL of the endearment I had for these traits during approximately the fourth trip to the school to sit down with the teachers or principal to discuss Tyler's "qualities". These trips to the school continued through all of his school years. This head-strong son of mine definitely kept us busy, at times frustrated, but always laughing and amazed at his obscured view of the world. We fought so hard to make sure this child had a shot at life but he fought harder to exceed all expectations placed on a premature, sickly baby. It amazes me that twenty years have passed but this "child" still is not persuaded to fall into what others consider the "normal" path. He is still head-up and feet first and someday I will convince him to look first before delving into things feet first but I am not holding my breath! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TYLER! WE LOVE YOU!

The Busy Month of June!

When I think of the month of June, I envision newborn animals, warm weather, and blossoming flowers. It is a pleasurable month and somehow became one of the busiest for this family. Although I feign surprise in how the numerous events came to be in this month, I do have some responsibility as I have contributed to some of them.

I, along with my baby sister, was born within 10 days of Christmas and thus began my intense desire to NEVER, EVER inflict upon my children the curse of being born anywhere near this holiday. My children would never hear the words, "This is both your birthday and Christmas gift." Now, this yearly ritual from my childhood may never have left such a strong impact on me, but I do have my middle sister who was born on July 30th. Not only would this sister get fishing gear, swimming pools, and summer toys, she also made a killing in the presents department! Not once did I ever hear the dreaded words murmured to her about it being a dual gift encompassing two holidays. With this in mind, when Robert and I decided to start our family, great planning became an obsession for me. The infamous line about the best laid plans comes to mind when I think of our children and their birthdays. Our firstborn, Tyler, was to be born July 30th, but as his personality has always proven, he was impatient, came 6 weeks early and our tiny bundle of joy was born June 12th. At this point, I thought that was a wonderful time to be born with it being the month of Father's Day and my Dad's birthday on June 29th, not too busy for us. When we decided to have another child, the planning came back into play and our daughter Lindsay had a due date of July 12. I was so impressed with how well Robert and I timed this. Both of my children would be summer babies, not have to live with the curse of a Christmas/Birthday party, yet still be far enough apart to allow for separation of birthday celebrations. Again, best laid plans ended up with Lindsay being born 3 weeks early and 10 days after Tyler's birthday, one week before my Dad's and so close to Father's Day! Needless to say, June has been a month of parties, gifts, and careful planning in the financial department.

A few years ago, my son, being ever inquisitive and at times slightly judgmental asked why his Dad and I had his and his sister's birthdays 10 days apart. At that moment, I realized that no matter what a parent does, children can feel victimized by these people's best laid plans. When reflecting on the difficulties my parents must have had planning for Christmas and two birthday's in the same month, I finally understood what a great job Mom and Dad did. I realized in that moment how fortunate I was to have been "cursed" with parents who, despite overhearing the numerous complaints every holiday about their family planning skills, still made sure we had our birthday parties and gifts, but most importantly, knew without a doubt we all were loved everyday! Speaking of, I think I will end this blog and call my Mom and Dad to thank them for "cursing" us with their hard work, ethics, devotion, and love! I am so fortunate!