One of my favorite things about raising kids (meaning of the goat variety, of course!) is seeing how their personalities and quirks develop as they grow up. Now that this crew is roughly two or three weeks old, character traits are definitely starting to come out.
Lava, the black-and-white kid out of Mistrie and Epic, is the most independent baby I think I've ever raised. As I wrote earlier, the first day the babies came outdoors, she was the very last one to come back and check in with me. Even in the indoor pen, she is on the fringes, not tucking in and climbing into my lap. It's funny, because neither one of her parents is at all like that. I can go three generations back on her mother's side, and none of those girls was this personality, either. So maybe it comes from Epic's side of the family. Or maybe it's just Lava, being different and unique.
Her sisters are Brandy and Bourbon. Bourbon is a big, chunky kid, almost as independent as Lava, but not quite as flaky. Whereas Miss Lava ran full-tilt into a fence or two in the first couple of days (pausing to shake her head and sneeze at the interruption), Bourbon is one who kind of stays in the middle. A good, solid citizen, not rushing out in front, but not hanging back behind, either.
And Brandy—well, my girl Brandy is all sugar and sunshine. She is always happy, always sparkly, always bouncy. When I sit down, she's the first one to push into my lap. If I go in and stand in the pen, she's nearly always pressed up against one of my legs, or trying to climb one of my legs, or wedged between my feet. She's the only one who has learned that I set the bucket of bottles up on a storage tub in the utility room, and when I let her out to get her share, she leaps onto the tub just below it and yells for me to hurry up. I'm also pretty sure she already knows her name.
Mogen is a kid out of Velvet and Petra. Just as big as Bourbon, she has the friendliness and sociability that Bourbon doesn't quite come packaged with. She is also the most dominant of the kids so far. Always wants to be first out of the pen to be fed, always right there beside Brandy to get in my business. Definitely very people-oriented—just like her mom—and a born leader, not at all like her mom. She gets that side of it from her daddy, for sure.
I like them all. I like getting to know them, and as Susanna Wesley once observed about her many children, I'm honored that God has entrusted me with the care of so many souls. Even if that does mean staying up ridiculously late, getting up painfully early, and filling and rinsing enough bottles to sink an average ship.
