9 months!

Esther is 9 months old today. We can't believe how much she has grown and changed and how fast it happened! She is more like a toddler than a little baby now. She has a personality and likes to show it! She had her 9 month Dr. check-up yesterday. She weighs 19.5 lbs (70th percentile) and is a little over 27 inches (50th percentile). The Dr. gave her an A+, said she looks great and developmentally she is doing things that 12 month olds do.

Here are some of the things she is up to:

• Crawls everywhere, and she is fast. We've had to put up several baby gates to keep her out of trouble!
• Pulls up on everything! She loves to stand and has now learned how to get down from standing too.
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• Cruises around the furniture. She walks around the coffee table, goes between the table, couch, and recliner.
• Will walk if you hold her hands. We know it won't be too long before she takes off on her own.
• She has mastered the "pincher" grasp, so she can feed herself. She still loves all baby food but is eating some real food. She will feed herself pieces of avocado, banana, beans, cereal bars, green beans, puffs and more.
• She can drink out of a sippy cup.
• She babbles all the time and likes to screech and squeal.
• She loves all of our animals. She squeals every time she sees one of the dogs or cats and loves when she gets to pet them.
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• She is finally cutting her first tooth. It has just popped through her gum.
• She is so fun and we are loving every minute with her.

Esther's New Friends

We finally got all of the fences up and ready for our animals. We went down to Haletown this weekend to pick up our sheep and goats. They'd been with Josh's parents since we moved. They have been having babies the past month or so, so we were excited to see our new additions.

Esther loves our dogs and cats. She loves to pet them and squeals when she sees them. So we were curious to see what she thought of the baby goats. She wasn't so sure when they would cry/bleat really loudly, but overall she loved the baby goats too.

I wanted to share this funny picture of Esther. Josh was feeding her some baby food last night and she decided she need to talk and spit. This was the result!

Our Protector

We are getting close to getting the fences and shelters done on the new farm so that we can get our goats and sheep back. I am ready to have them back. We have five baby goats and two baby sheep that we have not even met yet. Hopefully this weekend we will be able to go get them.

Anyway, I was offered a deal on a farm animal that I could not resist this weekend. We bought a donkey. Someone at work knew of one for sale and we have always kind of wanted a donkey so we thought we would try it out. So, we went and got her today. She is like 5 years old. She is pretty tame and is supposed to be broke to lead and ride. She is still getting used to her new environment but she will let us pet her and stuff. We are going to get a halter tomorrow and try to get that on her. It is fun to have her, I hope she turns out to be a great addition to the farm.

One of the reasons we wanted a donkey is they protect goats and sheep. They have a natural hatred of dog like animals (dogs, coyotes). And actually domesticated dogs are one of the biggest killers of goats and sheep. So, the donkey will chase off all the dogs that might try to get in to the pasture and chase the goats. As an added bonus, this donkey is supposed to be bred which means we could have a baby donkey in several months.

We are having a hard time deciding on a name for her so feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments.