Cria Love

Two new alpacas were born last Wednesday!

Believe it or not, the little guy on the left was actually premature and had a rough time in the beginning.  My other-in-law said he couldn't hold his head up on his own and was having trouble breathing.  He's now runs all over and is almost the same size as the female on the left who was born, on time, earlier the same morning.  

I think his name is, ironically, Hercules and her name is Pandora.

Pandora is now my favorite -isn't she gorgeous?

This is Pandora's mum.  Doesn't she look like a mum?  She's the matriarch of the whole herd. 

Here's Hercules having a little roll in the dust with his mum.  I'm glad he pulled through as there as already been enough tragedy on the farm this year.  Just a few days before the sheep were to be sheared, one of them fell into the stream that runs alongside the land and drowned.  Sadly, it was one my mother-in-law was particularly close to because he wouldn't feed from his mother and had to be bottle fed last spring.  And just a few weeks ago an alpaca was killed by two wild dogs.  The last time we really talked to them about it, the police were not being very cooperative even though it's suspected that these were the same dogs that attacked and killed a Jack Russell a week or so earlier.  

Thank goodness these little ones finally came along or I might not have ever had anything to blog about.  Things have been slow around here.  I've got a little bit of mindless knitting to post but the two baby sweaters I've started are either hibernating or sitting in the naughty corner due to gaping holes under the arms that I cannot tolerate.  

I've also come to the sad conclusion that I'm just not one of those women who relish and really enjoy being pregnant.  While I love feeling our little acorn kick (and so does Matt - he finally got to feel him, too, a week or so ago) and can't wait until he gets here, I'm not in love with actually being pregnant.  Not only do I feel like what a balloon must feel like (if balloons had feelings, of course), painfully expanded (with a lot more expanding to go), but I'm ridiculously emotional, crying over every little thing (like, yesterday, discovering that we were out of eggs), and the homesickness is, to put it simply, really difficult.  

But I know it'll be over here in a few months and the wait will be more than worth it.  We've started on the baby's room which is something fun and positive to focus on.  We went on a little picnic to Stourhead yesterday and bought a fantastic piece of wood to cut in half and make into shelves.  It's actually from one of the trees on the Stourhead estate and still has bark running along one edge.  It'll look great hanging above the chest of drawers (which we finally picked out last week), packed full of cute little woodland creatures.  

In other news, I think I'm going to play around with my blog layout this weekend.  I've already changed the banner - a year of flowers and a teapot is more than enough - and am happy with it but there have got to be a few other things I can do to liven things up around here....