After the campfire circle, the kids and I went to hear Spence and his band practice for a minute. It was late and the baby stayed asleep in the car. On the way home I asked Hayes to check on her and to see if she was still asleep and he laughed and assured me that she was (he noticed the “malfunction”). When I got her into the house and into the light, this is what I found. Hayes said it had been that way the whole time.
Hayes went out about 7:00 this morning to do his chores. After a while he came running back into the house and told me he had something to tell me. He said that he found something weird and he wasn’t sure but his thought that it was good. “Well hurry up and tell me then, Hayes.” (My family has this strange need to tell you that something has happened and hurry up, come quick…but I’m not going to tell you what it is until you come and see for yourself; all the while my mind is racing over a million bad things it could be…Spence and Hayes both do it and it’s just plain cruel…I wish they would quit) So he tells me that there is a little, yellow calf up in the cows pens. “You mean the doggie calf we’ve had up there all summer?” I say. Nope, it’s a newborn calf born this morning and I don’t know which cow it came from,” he tells me. WHAT???
Let me go back a little bit and explain the cows behind our house. We always get at least one dogie every spring (a calf that has it’s mamma die). Well, this spring we had three right off the bat and they were all in Spence’s parent’s back yard. Trey and Brindi were bottle feeding them twice a day, and that is a big job…I know because we bottle fed three out here the first summer we lived here. So after searching around for a milk cow, Spence found the best place to buy one was Craigslist (I guess you can buy anything on Craigslist) and he found two and Trey picked them up in Phoenix and brought them out here to our house. They both came with promises that they would take to a dogie, but nothing about being bred. Now, we are used to beef cattle and the way they look….milk cows are totally different. They both looked skinny to us with ribs sticking out everywhere and bug eyes. The little brown one that Hayes named Mrs.. Calloway looked especially skinny, so Hayes made sure that he fed them well. Since Mrs.. Calloway was young and small, we ended up putting only one dogie with her and the other three (oh yeah, we ended up with a fourth dogie by now) with Bess. (I wanted to name her Maggie to go with Mrs.. Calloway if you’ve ever seen that movie) Well the dogies were looking great and the milk cows still looked funny with their ribs, bellies, and bug eyes, but everything seemed to be working out just fine.
Now back to the story. So Spence and I jump up and drag Chase and the baby (she’s already in the BabyBjorn) out to the cow pens to investigate. Sure enough, there is a new baby cow and it belongs to Mrs. Calloway. Somehow it has slid under the fence and is outside of the pens. So we decide to rearrange things so that the baby and mom can have a little privacy. This entails letting everything but them out into our “back yard”. The other/bigger calves were in heaven. They were running and bucking around. One was even “rolling” in the grass like dogs do…I’ll follow up with a picture.
After Trey came out, he and Spence decided it was time for the poor little dogies to grow up and get branded, so they staged an impromptu branding in our back yard in the hottest, most humid weather you could imagine. (especially for AZ) So with Allie asleep in the swing and the monitor hooked on my belt loop, Chase and I went out to enjoy the festivities. Hayes had already left with his cousins to the Catwalks. It was HOT as you will see by the pictures of Chase.
Show-nuff it’s a baby!
Chase hadn’t gotten dressed for the day yet, but we didn't have time for that.
I had to include this picture because I just now spotted the pacifier in Chase’s right hand. He is obsessed with the baby’s pacifiers. He doesn’t suck on them, he just steals them and holds or hides them. It has been a real problem. He does it with her headbands too.
Spence putting the calf back in the pen with his mama.
The boys releasing the other mama and dogies….oh happy day!
The calves were all excited and it got Chase so excited he did his signature squeal with both arms raised…"YAY!”
Lots of bucking!
Here’s the calf that was rolling in the bushes like our dogs do.
Spence and Trey are setting up to brand the dogies. They didn’t have a piggin string to tie up the calves so they had to make one.
A little itch. This calf doesn’t know that its life is about to change.
Spence and Trey take turns roping and flanking them.
Now time for a little steer riding event. At least he has pants on now.
It happened so fast; this is all I got.
Time to get Chase into the shade before he gets heatstroke.
I love you, dad!
A nod to Pioneer Woman and her Marlborough Man. I call mine Honky Tonk!
Now let’s get inside and sit in front of the cooler…besides, I can hear Ree crying in the baby monitor.
Sorry, I don’t have time for more than a quick post…the laundry is calling my name…ok…screaming my name. I snapped this pic while Allie was in the front pack (Kris, I hope you know that Maren let me borrow it…THANK YOU THANK YOU). She loves this thing. I wondered if two weeks old was too young to start putting her it, but it has been a life saver. She usually hangs out in it a while then conks into a deep sleep. This one of Kristen’s by Baby Bjorn is ten times better than the cheap one I had with Hayes (I didn’t even bother using it with Chase; it was that bad) The BB one doesn’t hurt your back and best of all, is actually easy to get your baby into and out of. Allie Ree will be two months old in a week!
