She's back and doing fine!

(Crittervisitors have to scroll down for the critterpictures that are relevant to the story, but I can imagine you don't want to read all that, since you have to visit so many other Camera Critters.) HELLO YOU LOVELY, SWEET AND CARING BLOGGERFRIENDS. I'm so sorry for the disappearance act I've done for the last three weeks. Honestly, today is the first time in three weeks that I've opened my laptop (59 emails waiting for me, lots of virusscanning and -downloading going on). You see, the thing is...I just did not have the energy to try and write something in English for the first week of my disappearance because of huge busyness during the days and then feeling quite drained in the evenings. And thén....monday two weeks ago one of our young cats, Lapje, got hit by a car and died and that made me too sad to blog (I've cried all of that night and the following day). And after those two weeks had passed I needed a week to pluck up my courage to 'face' you all, feeling so so soooooo guilty that I did not even let you know that I'm still alive and kicking. But I am! And I hope you are all doing fine too and I'm looking forward to reading all of your posts and THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR LOVE AND CONCERN. (Really, if you are feeling a bit low, stop blogging and all your sweet blogfriends will let you know that they care about you. Makes you feel so much better!) Would you like to know why I've been busy? Probably not, but I'm going to tell you anyway. First of all, we have a newborn baby called Evie (or Eavie). You knew that of course, but did you know that having a foal and being all on your own during the day gives you lots of unforeseen problems? I did not know that. I know now! Compare it with having a human baby. Your first. I cannot speak out of personal experience here, but I can imagine (ánd I have lots of friends with babies, who tell me that I'm not wrong) that when you hold your child in your arms for the first time, you are over the moon. And then reality kicks in. What do you dó with a baby. And hów do you do that? But then help arrives in the form of a 'kraamhulp'. That is the Dutch word for the person that is send to you by the medical services to assist you in you first week with your newborn. I don't know if other countries do the same for you, but in the Netherlands every new mom gets a 'kraamhulp' or maternity help and she (or occasionally: he) helps you take care of your baby, does some light cleaning work in the house and gives tea and coffee to your friends and family who visit you. I believe they even cook for you. Anyhow. You don't get that when you have a newborn foal. Well, you don't get one maternity help, you get ten! And everyone of them has different advice. 'You have to do this so and so!', the first helpful expert tells you. 'Who told you to do that so and so?', the second one cries out in despair. 'Never do that! Do it like this!' Then the third one arrives (and since I'm all alone during the days I myself have to provide everyone with the desired beverages and the traditional 'beschuit met muisjes', so you can imagine me running up and down from stables or the meadow to the house and back again with trays full of goodies) and this third expert tells you all sorts of things that can go wrong with foal and mare (as if I had not thought of all those things and MORE myself) and I have to keep smiling and saying thank you, because everyone means well and I am truly gratefull but at the same time it drives me MAD! For instance. I thought that when you bring mare and foal to the meadow for the first time (the day after the birth I kept them in the stable because the vet came to visit to say 'Ooohh, lovely foal, best foal I've seen in years' or something like that, and give her her first shot of antibiotics and vitamins and minerals (and then an expert came and said it must have been a wrong shot, because it wasn't yellow or at least I did not know if it was yellow or not and now the foal was sure to die, or that is how I remember it, so that made me panic and call the vet who assured me it was the right shot)) the foal would follow the mother, no problem. But NO, two of the experts told me (separately from each other, so I was quite confident that they were right, and it turns out they were) that the foal would not leave the stable to follow mom and then mom would panic and that could get quite dangerous. Someone should help the foal over the threshold of the stable into the great big scary outside world. Oh, and I should never do that on my own. NEVER! And the foal would have to wear a head-collar and I should lead it on a rope. Well. If I could not bring them outside on my own, they would never go outside. I just had to do it on my own. And since Evie would have to get used to a head-collar and walking on a leadrope anyway, best start with that as soon as possible. So you have to picture this: me trying to put a head-collar on a foal that has never seen such a thing before and doesn't want to have it on her head, with a concerned mommy turning around us to see what the HELL I am doing to her precious baby and me trying to keep calm and have lots of patience and still being firm because the foal should learn that I AM THE BOSS! So, I have finally mastered to put the head-collar on the foal, mommy is wearing one, I have them both on a leadrope and now we have to leave the stables. I let Naloma go out first, holding on to her rope whilst keeping the foal in a warm embrace, one arm around her breast and one arm around her backside, gently persuading it to step over the threshold and Naloma in two minds about going to the meadow (yippee!) but not wanting to leave Evie, so she's pacing up and down in front of the stable calling Evie, me still holding on to her rope and Willem in the stable next door getting all worked up about the strange things going on. With Evie finally out of the stables and hesitantly following her mother into the great unknown we went on our way to the meadow. The first couple of days this went reasonably well. Because Naloma kept both eyes on Evie and did not leave her side. But after a day or two or three, Naloma's attention moved to the other important thing in her life. Food. So.....she only keeps one eye on Evie now and the other is firmly focused on the green green grass of the meadow. But Evie wants to see every little leaf and ant and butterfly that crosses her path, so I'm sort of hanging between two ropes now. Both arms stretched and on the end of one rope a sort of Hummer-like mare, pulling because we are not going fast enough to her food, and on the end of the other rope a happily dancing Evie with her eyes on everything that is happening around her, pulling because we are going far to fast. (I'm sorry for switching tenses all the time, please forgive me, I'm not in English-mode yet and I'm trying very hard to knit a coherent story *big smile*) AND we have been very busy making a piece of land, kindly offered to us by our neighbours, habitable for our horses. Land that for the largest part had not been touched for 10 years or more. So it had to be mowed, we have collected about 30 golfballs (our other neighbour is a very chic golfcourse), we had to put up a fence to keep our horses from that golfcourse (I keep having images in my mind of our horses galloping from hole to hole with mad golfers and greenkeepers in pursuit, I so hope that image stays in my mind only) and we had to make a path from our land to theirs which involved felling some trees and hacking my way through brambles and so on. Busybusybusy. Enough for today, the internetconnection is having hiccups, probably stressed about so much action after a three-week-holiday, I will leave you with some fotos of Evie and Naloma, taken yesterday in the new meadow. Lots of love and I will blog more frequently from now on. A very BIG virtual HUG from me to you all!

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