Chickens and bunnies and baby goats, oh my!

Today Rachel and I went to a local farm to buy some fresh eggs. It was such a terrific little trip. The highlight for me was when we got to hold 2 day old baby goats!!! I held Bobby, a little boy, and Rachel held Daisy, a little girl. One of them tried to suckle on Rachel's finger (I guess they don't have any teeth yet because I jumped and pulled her hand back, but it hadn’t hurt her, she was all smiles). They were so tiny and adorable! Honestly, it's a good thing I don't have land or I would probably now own a baby goat. They keep all the girls, for milking, but they give the boys away to good homes. Bobby would have fit in real nicely here, I mean, what’s one more suckling creature in my life. That is, of course, until he grew up into a stubborn, adult man goat. We don’t need any more of those! Really, though, in 38 years of life I have never held a brand new baby goat, and it was pretty cool.

And we met Buttons the bunny, who was super friendly, but in a hutch, so we couldn’t hold her. And Scout the "mama" dog of the farm (she was part Great Pyrenees and part something else also big and white). We also met the chickens that made our eggs. They too came running over to greet us (seriously friendly farm animals!) and talked to Rachel for a while.
Honestly, I can never get enough of chickens talking. It's one of the funniest sounds God ever created, other than guinea pigs and finches.

And lastly, the horses, about 8 of them, though we didn't meet them since they were out in their pasture, but they were the first animals we saw driving in. Rachel announced as we parked in front of their fence that they were stuck and we needed to open the gate. She marched the fence line looking for it since she was determined that she was going to ride them. That's my girl!! But Mom steered her to the tiny farm store and wooed her with a little bag of peanuts, which she joyfully ate as we met all the animals. Even Scout got some peanuts (and a little of Scout's saliva made it's way into Rachel's little bag - it was a stretching day for Mom to let her keep eating them!).

At the end, as we were leaving, an older, burly gentleman arrived and was unloading something on the porch of the tiny store. He had white hair and a white beard and mustache, and a big, round belly. Rachel, standing beside me munching her peanuts while I paid for the eggs, stood staring at him like a deer in headlights. Then she said to me very softly, “Mama, look, it’s Santa”. How sweet! As we were trying to walk out of the store, we came face to face with him on the threshold and Rachel just stopped. She wouldn’t walk out but just stood there staring. The man, waiting for us to come out so that he could walk in said, “Well come on little girl, it’s okay, I AM Santa Claus after all”. We all laughed, obviously this isn’t the first child to make the observation. All the way to the car she kept looking back at him, “Mommy, what’s Santa doing? Is he getting in that truck? Where’s Santa going?”. And all the way home the conversation was, “What did Santa say to Rachel?”. No talk about the goats or chickens or bunny or dog, just, “What did Santa say to Rachel?”. And I had to keep repeating, “Well come on little girl, it’s okay, I AM Santa Claus”. So I learned two things today. 1) In the eyes of a toddler, Santa trumps farm animals, and 2) as a mother, seeing the world through the eyes of your toddler is about as great as it gets. And baby goats don’t hurt either.