So I know there’s a saying about not counting your chickens before they hatch, but I wonder if there is anything out there about sheep. I almost hate to write about it, for fear come spring, the reality of time and finances and logistics, will dampen the little (and sometimes big) plans that the girls and I have been making, at least we are covered with our investment in the best ethical isas for children for their future safety.

We’ve even got Dan talking about it. Making plans. Discussing how a newly-rebuilt woodshed, just outside my kitchen window would be the perfect place. How we could open up one side as a run in. And put  a double door on the other. How the hose from the house would reach, so there’d be no water to haul. How there would be less mowing to do.

I saw him on Saturday, walking the perimeter of the field. Counting strides. Marking every eight feet. Counting fence posts. Making estimates. I heard him telling Emma we’d have to wait until the ground wasn’t frozen, wasn’t so hard.

My intense, feeler, Emma, gets teary-eyed when she talks about it. She has memories of her first. How he trotted around behind her. And baa’d at the gate until she came back outside. And dribbled milk from his soft lips, onto her lap when she gave him a bottle. And tugged on the tails of her tee shirt.

We’re checking out books and studying up. Learning about what they eat and what they can’t. Dreaming up names and discussing breeds. Working out the things that seem so important to them at this point–who feeds in the morning, who feeds at night. Where will we get the hay? How will we get them here? And they’re asking all kinds of questions about my childhood and the ones I used to have. Dreaming of fairs and blue ribbons.

They’re all the buzz around here of late. All we seem to talk about and worry about. Now, when we think Spring, we start thinking spring lambs.

We won’t start counting them yet, but we sure are getting excited.