Max and Molly

You know who you are.

The vet came to the house yesterday to check you out. He says you are a cross between an Alpine and some other kind of milk goat; he doesn’t exactly know*. You weigh between 150 - 160 lbs and are 2-3 years old. He gave you some vaccinations, clostridium (I think) and worms, and trimmed your feet which hadn’t been done in at least a year. You need about 6 pounds of food a day. We’re letting you eat whatever grows here, which he said was fine. You are not to eat alfalfa due to its high calcium content. Apparently, because you were castrated so young (like maybe even 7-10 days old; and they’re still using rubberbands—-oh man I AM sorry about that) your body developed in the absence of testosterone. As such, the diameter of your urethra remained smaller than it would have been if your balls had been left alone. Thus, kidney stones are more of a problem for you and your deballed colleagues, as they cannot pass as easily from your body. Basically, we won’t be giving you alfalfa but we have been and will continue to give you salad scraps WHICH YOU LOVE, especially the ends off of sweet peas and nubs of carrots. We are supposed to get you a flake (a flake!) of grass hay a few times a week. He talked about your body, that you’re from a milk breed; he could tell because your pelvic bones stick up through your skin. Were you a meat goat, they’d be fleshy and thick. You are a good weight and have a nice small fat pads between your shoulders and ribs. We are to check your water everyday and make sure your eyes are free of anything you might have picked up while grazing. By the end of his visit, the vet was in love with you too. You are amazingly calm and sweet, you come to us when called, and love to be brushed. You enjoy playing with Fran and are good to Max when he comes bounding right up to you… you just stand there, you don’t buck or kick or butt. You make me calm, Bernie. I see you out there and I’m drawn outside. If I stand on the deck and call your name, you call back to me. I love that I get to make your life comfortable. We’re building you a small shed in which you can escape if you choose to; we’ll store goat ration and sweet feed there too (we just learned what those were) and apparently you’ll learn to come when you hear us open the metal bin of sweet feed. This means we can let you roam around the yard eating the best of what you find and bring you back to your fenced-in home by clanging the dinner bell.

It’s gonna be good, Bernie.

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*Actually, Bernie, your previous mama wrote back to say you are a Saanens and apparently come from a show line—ooh la la. 6/15/08

Here’s another list of news.

• Molly, you turned 6 months old last week. You are almost sitting up on your own. Now that we’ve moved into the new house, you go to Cindy’s every day. I miss you during the day, and wish that you were still with our neighbor Linda. But, siblings (which is basically what all those kids at Cindy’s are) are part of the natural history of human children. And when we get there in the morning, you are mesmerized by all the children and their activity. I think you’re happy there.
• Max, you don’t sleep through the night. You wake up crying and can sometimes get hysterical. For the last three nights, we’ve given you a Tylenol and not heard a word from you all night. We (and the pediatrician and dentist) suspect this is due to teething the big ones, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea give you a Tylenol every night until you’re five years old.
• We got a goat, Bernard. We call him Bernie. He is awesome.
• Max, you went to the dentist. It was not entirely successful. And by not entirely successful, I mean it was a complete disaster.
• Max, we got you a new bike, a Skuut. You wear your Thomas the Train helmet with pride, but this is partly because your father puts his (In The Event Head Injury, Contact (805) XXX-XXXX) helmet on to work around the yard while you’re riding your bike. You do want to be a big guy.
• Speaking of, WOOSH!—right out of your mouth come sentences. In the last month, you went from pointing, whining, and single words to complete sentences. “Come sit down, Mama.” “I don’t want that, Daddy.” Combined with talking is a sense of other people. If we sneeze, “You ok, Mama?”. If we trip, “You ok, Daddy?”. If we cough, “You ok?”. Also, you can draw a circle.
• You still point and whine.
• Max, you brought a stomach virus home from Cindy’s. I spent the weekend on the bathroom floor. Thanks for that.
• My grandmother died this month. We went to Fresno for the funeral. She got what she wanted in death—lots of people saying nice things about her. I had nice things to say which I said to her directly a few years ago, so I was alright with it all. Except for the body. It has been a long time since I’ve seen an embalmed, dressed, prepared human body. I’ve seen many cadavers and have cut open, retracted, removed, experimented on, and otherwise manipulated at least 10 generous humans who have donated their bodies to science. But I’m here to tell you that her body was the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in a long time. She looked alive. Just like herself. I mean ALIVE. I thought she would sit up and start talking. Between you and me, dead people should look dead. I don’t have a problem with dead (except now open-caskets) and I hope you don’t either. Part of the reason we bought this house was because of the big yard. Your dad and I both spent a lot of time outdoors growing up. There’s a lot of nature out there. Over the course of your childhood, you’ll find dead things on the property. We’ll talk about them, maybe even dissect them. This kind of exploration of the natural world is an important skill we hope to instill in you. I hope you’ll mention that to your therapist.
• Unbeknown to us, Max, you can apparently pedal. The Skuut is moot.
• My most recent read is Our Babies, Ourselves, which has become my bible. It summarizes for me the important points about the natural history of babies. I’ll write more about this next time, but suffice it to say, I am not feeding you rice cereal.
• We love you.
• Max, you can point all you like, but for the love of god, QUIT WHINING.

• We finally bought our house. That was over a month ago. We just moved in this weekend.
• Max, we’re having some sleeping issues. I don’t think we’ve been spending enough time with you lately. You’ve been spending the weeks with Cindy and the weekends with Zach or Grandma and Grandpa. The other night while you were going to be, I laid down with you and we talked about the day. Nothing too exciting, just that you had chicken nuggets for lunch and you opted out of taking a bath. But it was nice, and I wondered why you had to be in here all by yourself, why do we insist on putting children in their own rooms? You’ve slept with us these two nights in the new house. That doesn’t work so well for your father, because despite the fact he is 10 times your weight, apparently you “bother” him while he’s sleeping. I’m not sure what to do next.
• We all went to the kite festival with Zach and family. It was fun.
• I’m thinking about having LASIK. It will cost $4,500. This is from the same doctor that your pediatrician went to. There’s another doctor I can go to that’s cheaper by almost $1,000, but I’m leery of medical procedures that go “on sale” during the summer.
• Molly, you are almost sitting up. You love your hands. You also love drool.
• The dogs are having a rough time. They’ve been neglected so it’s not their fault.
• The new house has more kitchen space than I know what to do with.
• The public library is just 2 miles away.
• We’re thinking about getting a pair of goats. We definitely are getting chickens.
• Until now, Molly, you’ve been taken care of by our Cayucos neighbor Linda. She took very good care of you. I telecommute for me new job, so you’d be right across the street during the day. Linda would call me for a feeding. I’d get to see you and Tivo-ed Oprah several times a day. Now you’re off to Cindy’s and this is hard for me. You won’t get the individualized attention there. You won’t get baths or nursing. I’m sad. Alternatively, it is time for us to move on. There are several things about my new job that are awesome, namely the telecommuting. This allows me to moonlight on an education project at Cal Poly, which provides me a certain type of academic scholarship my new job does not. Thus, it is time to move on, to establish a routine, to relax. It’s been a tough year.
• Your dad’s twitch seemed to come back for a while. I was quite concerned that he might have to have the surgery again, but then it sort of disappeared. We need to go in for a 6 month check up.
• The new house is beautiful. Everyone helped fix it up before we moved in, but especially your Grandpa who spent many days here painting, flooring, spackling, moving appliances, etc. It was very generous of him to spend so much time helping. Other people who helped were YOUR WHOLE FAMILY, some of whom came to the house, others who watched giving us time to get things together. Max, you spent more than one weekend at Zach’s house. It was very nice of his parents to take you in.
• There are deer outside my office window.
• Your dad’s boss is very nice. Everyone at work has been very supportive. He’s taken a lot of time off, probably more than he actually has accrued. They like him there and want him to be happy at home so he’ll stay and keep making them happy.
• Molly, we’ve put a little food in your mouth, apples, pears, cereal. Mostly because it’s fun to watch your face. You don’t dislike it, which makes me thing you actually like it.
• Max, you are a talking fool. Currently, your favorite thing to say (other than no) is “Tay?”, your variant of “OK?” You say this whenever we sneeze, cough, trip, etc. as you are quite concerned for our well-being. Despite the fact that you have known their names as long as you’ve known ours, only recently have you decided to call the dogs by their names. This is usually “Tan” and “Eemo”. You’re not the best enunciator on the block, but you are ALL ABOUT WORDS, and we’re all about you being all about words. We try hard to understand what you’re saying, but don’t always get it right. Be patient with us!
• Over the next couple of days, I’ll keep posting updates on the latest happenings. You both are changing so much. I would rather get this all down for the record than to avoid writing because I don’t feel inspired.