Oh deer!

Saturday morning Matt got up early to work in the yard as he usually does. The phone rang a few hours later and it was him. "Abby, I'm down here in front of the tool shed next to a baby deer, it's sitting next to me and I can pet it. Ask Ella if she wants to come see it?" Well, she was still sound asleep, but knowing her love for animals (of any kind) I thought it would be worth waking her up. So soft and sweetly I whispered, "Ella, daddy's outside with a baby deer, Do you want to go see it?" With absolutely NO hesitation she sat straight up with eyes WIDE open and shook her head yes. So, I quickly put on her shoes and my mom, Ella and I headed down to see what was one of the most precious things that any of us had ever seen, it was truly amazing...

You'll have to please excuse our bed head and mismatched jammies. Like I said, she had literally just rolled out of bed. And our compromise is that she can pick out her own jammies every night if I can pick out what she wears during the day, reasonable enough.





Once we got off the phone with the wildlife people and they had informed us that after several hours the mother would come back and as long as it wasn't crying or walking around making "calling" noises it was fine, we all felt better. They also said to leave it alone and touch it as little as possible...Well, we didn't offer up the fact the our almost 2 year old that smelled of cookies and freshness had all but cuddled with it for at least 20 minutes. We all began to walk back toward the house, this is what happened...
The sweet deer, which we named Cleet, would walk not too far away from Matt. We all got a big kick out of the fact that it probably thought he was its "mother". Cleet clearly didn't sense that Matt loves to hunt and after this incident I'm not so sure he'll continue loving it so much. Besides, we could probably get some good money for his gun and bow! The picture below isn't very good, but it is of Matt sitting with Cleet (to his right) so the rest of us could go back inside.
I think they really bonded, it was precious. And, Ella was ecstatic. She loved every minute of it!! Just so you're not worried, the "real" mother came walking down the hill about an hour later. I'd like to say that we all watched as they shared a long anticipated embrace and walked off into the distance together, but I can't. They were a little more sneaky than that, I guess that's how nature works.