It's a Sheep's Life...

Today we went to the farm, with the children's best friends and their dad. It being spring, not unnaturally there were rather a lot of lambs about. Indeed, we arrived just as one was being born. A propos of my recent posting about having babies, I think it must be tough being a sheep in a children's farm. Not only do you have to go the whole birth rigmarole, but you get to do it with an audience of five year olds. That must be really fun...

The first baby was born before we twigged what was happening, but we did get to see the magic of no 2 arriving. Having only ever delivered babies myself it was quite a revelation to see something being born. And as my friend said it was worth coming just for that alone. There was one dodgy moment when it looked as though the second baby might not be breathing, but soon both were snuggled up to their mum in an Aah, isn't nature sweet kind of way. Children all totally transfixed by this apart from no 3 who found the notion of someone putting their arm inside a sheep's butt (I do so love the americanisation of my children) rather appalling. They were also quite revolted by the bloody bag of the placenta dangling from the mum's behind (and I thought human birth was undignified), so I had a fair bit of explaining to do as no 1 is the only one who has a reasonable idea about the birds and the bees. Following on from witnessing a live birth, I'd say now all of my children seem to have got the picture.

Once that excitement was over, and the thrill of feeding goats had passed, the children then had to go into the obligatory playbarn that all these places insist on having. They spent a happy half hour rushing around screaming. We spent a happy half hour chatting in between bouts of reminding them not to leave no 4 behind as she is rather little and liable to get sat on.

The playbarn exhausted, I did a loo trip with nos 3 & 4 and arranged to meet the others outside where the trampolines were. Remind me again - was I at a farm or a playground? En route back no 4 insisted on feeding the goats, and she and no 3 had a stand up row about who held the food. This nearly resulted in no3 marching off, which would have been disastrous as the place was heaving and we had already nearly lost the big ones twice. I managed to calm her down in the end, and we went out to look for the others. We found no2 and her BF in the playground but of no1 and her BF there was no sign. They eventually turned up on a bouncy thing, nowhere near the play area they were supposed to be in. "We thought it was part of the same thing," was their excuse which didn't cut the mustard at all...

We sat in the sunshine while the sprogs took turns getting lost/playing on the bouncy thing/falling over and hurting themselves and generally having a great time. The afternoon you could say was a great success. We would probably be sitting there now if we hadn't bribed them with ice creams.

Just as we were on our way out, we discovered two more lambs had arrived. Unfortunately a third had died, which was a tad traumatic for the audience, who had all pushed off before the happy conclusion to the tale. As my friend pointed out, in America the farm would probably get sued for that...

So we left with six tired, but happy children, all of whom had experienced a little slice of the magic of nature.

Well, sort of...

The day has obviously had a big impact on no 4. Ever since we got home she has been delivering lambs, and most of them appear to be dead...