A Home & A Baby

 11101 San Jacinto, NE Address July 1978 to July 1982
After a couple of months at the California address we decided to find a better house in a better neighborhood. We bought our first house at 11101 San Jacinto, NE in July of 1978. It was a cute house with a Swiss chalet look to it, and wasn’t the normal look in Albuquerque which may be why it appealed to us. I took to selling Tupperware when we first bought the house to help make ends meet but it was still hard. In a sort of desperate move to keep from losing the house just months after we bought it we offered to let Dave Boggs rent one of the bedrooms from us. He agreed but wanted to bring his girlfriend, Rosalie with him. Dave and his family were from Claremore, Oklahoma and had gone back for a visit recently where he had met Rosalie and then convinced her to come to Albuquerque. A few months later they got married and moved into an apartment but they lived with us long enough for us to get over the rough spot of being first time homeowners.
The house was a nice large three bedroom, two bathroom house. A den had been added on next to the kitchen and a small concrete deck ran the length of the house and about ten feet wide. There was a huge built in fireplace/grill on one end and it was walled in about three feet up with screen wire the rest of the way up to the roof. When we were trying to buy the house the FHA people said the little greenhouse on the back wasn’t up to code and looked tacky and wanted the owners to remove it. I told them I wouldn’t buy the place if that happened. I used it lots for my houseplants in the summer and even some in the winter. Plus we used it to let the cats out without going outside all the way. There was even a doggy door for the dogs so they could get in to the greenhouse but not all the way into the house. It was on the south side of the house and collected lots of heat. In the summer it frequently got to hot but in the winter I would open the sliding glass doors to the den and let the heat in the greenhouse into the house. It was our first solar heat.
Both my sisters got married soon after we moved to this house. Janice and Jim Edmonds were married in July 14, 1978. Sarah and Mike Hogaboon were married soon after.
It was about this time that I got a job working for Tree Top Nurseries. They were at a location on the corner of Tramway and Montgomery several miles from the house but by now I finally had my driver’s license and was driving the Duster. At this job I drove a big, old white van from one office to another taking care of plants that they had. They contracted with the place I worked with for the plant watering service and I did the work. When I wasn’t doing that I worked at the small nursery learning more and more about plants. And I wished that I had gone into agriculture while I was in college. It seemed I had found my preferred line of work after trying several different things. Secretary in the Navy, museum helper, flower shops taking FTD orders and making fruit baskets and general helper, and selling Tupperware. I really liked working with plants. I liked growing them. I guess I was taking after my parents and grandparents more than I thought. Plus, Lee really liked growing plants. I preferred houseplants at this time and Lee liked gardening. We put a small garden in the back yard. The back wasn’t big enough for more along with room for the dogs and the huge, old cottonwood that was there. We had a bit of lawn in the back and a better one in the front with a picket fence around it. It took several tries but we finally got a redbud tree to service in the front yard. There was a big boxwood hedge between us and the neighbors on one side that we didn’t care for and just the drive ways on the other side.
Across the street were our best neighbors, Shirley and Jim. Their kids were in high school. Shirley was a kindergarten teacher and Jim did security work I think I remember. They loved dogs and cats the way Lee and I did and several of each. We never became great friends but they were nice.
It was not long after we moved into this house that my youngest sister, Jan, married her sweetheart from when she was in college, James Edmonds. Jim was in the Army as he felt he might make a career of the military the same as his dad had done. At this time they were stationed in Kentucky.
And my other sister, Sarah, had married Mike Hogaboon, whom she had known in college. Mike was a music teacher, too, and had a job teaching school in Grants, NM. Later Mike would go into the forest service as a fire fighter for several years until Sarah couldn’t handle him and his problems and they would get a divorce.
By this time Ginger was pretty content to mostly be a house cat but Cotton would sneak out now and then. He really liked to lay up on the roof to the house and watch the traffic and kids from there. We hadn’t realized it when we moved in but we were only a block from a grade school and each morning and each afternoon there were lots of little kids walking up and down the street on there way home. But Cotton didn’t like strangers trying to pet him when we had company. One day some guy knocked on the door and said his cat was on my roof. I went out and looked and it was Cotton. I told him it was my cat. He started getting mad and wanted to argue with me. I wasn’t in the mood. I said, “Look, there’s the ladder. You go up and get him and if he’ll let you, you can keep him. But my white cat doesn’t like strangers and if it’s Cotton he’ll scratch the hell out of you.” The man started to argue some more. “I’m not going to go up on the roof and get that cat,” I said. “And if it’s your cat, eventually he’ll come down and go home if he wants to.” After some more spuddering the man left. I guess he didn’t want to go up on the high-pitched roof and maybe try to pick up someone’s elses cat that might not want to be picked up. And I don’t think he wanted to argue over a cat with a pregnant woman in her yard. He left and I never saw him again. It wasn’t long before the cat came down and it was Cotton. I made a point of trying to keep him in for a while as I didn’t want that man or someone else trying to steal him.
I was pregnant at that time. After ten years of trying to have a baby and having six miscarriages, I was pregnant again. I had made it through the first few months when I usually had the miscarriage and had quite my job as I never felt good and couldn’t do it right any longer. Now I was showing and surprising the neighbors. Shirley and I talked one day and she said “When did that happen?” I laughed and said about eight months ago. I had lost so many babies I didn’t want to let anyone know until I couldn’t hide it any more. I didn’t even tell my parents until I was about five months along. After so many miscarriages before I was convinced that this baby wouldn’t make it either.
My GYN doctor, Dr. Dennis Ready had done lots of testing but there was never a good answer as to why I lost all the others and this one – well I don’t think I could have kicked him out.
I had one theory but there is no way to prove if it was really the answer or not. Even Dr. Ready thought I was nuts when I mentioned it to him. Due to the fact that I had to quit working we were, as usual, very short on money with only Lee working. But that fall Lee and I had gone deer hunting and Lee killed a nice size buck. With very little money for food we ate mostly deer and beans. That meant that I was eating very little food with all that un-natural junk salt, and preservatives that food that is made in a factory has. The deer had lived on good mountain grass. We had butchered the deer and frozen it with in about 48 hours after it was killed. I did fry a lot of the deer in oil but a lot of it was also boiled and added to all those pinto beans. The beans were cooked like Mother had taught me in a pressure cooker. I added some boiled deer meat, salt, pepper, and a handful of chili powder. Maybe the chili powder helped too. New Mexico chili is supposed to be good for any thing that might make a person ill accept maybe indigestion and heartburn.
Or maybe it had to do with the fact that I think that our son was conceived that fall while Lee were on an elk hunting trip to the Jemez Mountains. It was the only time Lee ever was able to get an elk permit. Elk permits are done by a drawing as there are a limited number of permits. We saw a couple of bull elk but they were always to far away to even try to shoot at. A few weeks later we went to Silver City for the deer hunt. Not only did Lee get the deer he got his turkey that year, too. At that time if you got a deer permit it included the turkey but we never seemed to see any turkey when hunting, although we did see lots when we weren’t hunting. Lee didn’t even have a shotgun with him which is usually what people use for turkey. He killed it with his deer rifle, almost gutting it with the shot. It was a young bird but, boy, was it tough. Since we were visiting with my parents Mother helped me pluck the feathers that turkey and as we thought it would be tough we boiled it first and then fried it. That is the way that Lee had been taught to fix squirrel when he was a boy by his mom.
As a boy Lee had been taught to hunt before he even started school. By the time he was five he had a .22 rifle that he would go squirrel hunting with and he said a lot of the time it was all the meat he and his family would have to eat that day.
After much thought and many discussions we settled on a name for a boy, Dustin, but were never sure of one for a girl. The baby was due to be born June 15, so Daddy brought Mother up about then. It was to be three more weeks before he would be born. It was hot, and I was big with the ‘basketball’ as Lee frequently teased me about. And then my feet, ankles and legs started swelling. About June 30th I went in for another checkup. Dr. Ready looked at my feet and ankles and said we would like me to check into the hospital on July 2nd if I hadn’t had him by then. Of course I didn’t so off I went on July 2nd to the hospital and to have my labor induced so I would have this baby that didn’t want to be born. Another reason Dr. Ready wanted to induce my labor is that he wanted to be the one to deliver my baby after all this time and he was going on vacation on July 4th. On the morning of July 3rd he came in and broke my water and we got into having a baby in earnest. He came back about noon and said he would see me that evening as he didn’t think the baby would come until them. At about 2 pm I was suddenly fully dilated and the nurse called his office in a hurry. His office was in the building next to the hospital so he was there in just minutes with his office nurse who asked if she could go in the delivery room with me as she, too, was anxious to see me have a baby after all this time. I wish I could remember her name but it is lost to me. As Mother and Lee didn’t seem to want to go into the delivery room I was only more than glad to have her come in and hold my hand. She had held it to many times to help me through a D & C procedure after the miscarriages.
Dustin Lee was born right at 3pm on July 3rd, 1980. He weighed 7 pounds and 8 onzes. Dr. Ready held him up for me to see and told me to touch him and count his toes, but I said no, I wanted to hold his hand. For some reason it seemed important to do that. I didn’t know then that those tiny, pink important to do that. I didn’t know then that those tiny, pink baby hands would one day be big hands that would be able to stroke, and gentle scared, and upset 1000 pound horses with ease.
Dr. Ready started to put the baby on my chest but then handed him to the nurse saying she would clean him up. I was so thrilled to finally get birth to my baby boy after all those long months I didn’t think too much of it and then I started to fell really faint and dizzy. Dr. Ready got back into position and told me to push to expel the afterbirth. I don’t know if I did or not. Then I remember someone said ‘she’s bleeding heavy,’ and then someone was putting another IV into my right arm and I already had one in my left arm.
I’m not sure how long I was there while they got the bleeding stopped but finally I was in the recovery room and a nurse brought Dustin to me and said to feed him. She didn’t tell me how but turned and left in a hurry. Maybe she was busy and didn’t realize it was my first time. After a few minutes we got the hang of it and Dustin started nursing. Only later did I find out that while Dr. Ready had been taking care of me a nurse had cleaned Dustin up and introduced him to Lee and Mother.
By then it was late and I guess Lee and Mother went home to make the phone calls to let Daddy and Lee’s family know about the baby. The next day was July 4th and it was the quietest one I ever had as far as the fireworks were concerned but now the noise was the crying of babies. On the 5th Dustin and I were allowed to go home. When Lee and Mother came to pick us up they found me standing by the bed staring at my son with a pile of tiny baby clothes beside him. I had no idea how to dress him let alone how to chance a diaper. I had never done anything with a human baby in my life. I never did the baby sitting that most teenage girls do. Mother laughed and said, “Just pretend he’s a kitten that you need to put clothes on.” So I did. With her help.
I was kind of nervous about going home and it wasn’t just that I didn’t know what to do with a baby. We still had two dogs, Sandy and Kelly, and two cats, Ginger and Cotton. How were they going to adjust to a baby? Several people had suggested that I should get rid of the dogs especially Sandy or make them stay outside all the time because they would be jealous of the baby and would hurt it. But I couldn’t get rid of them or even make them stay outside. I really didn’t think there would be a problem. Neither did Lee, Mother, or my neighbor, Shirley. And we were all right.
Lee went in first and made sure the dogs were outside. I carried Dustin in and laid him on the cough. In a few minutes Lee let the dogs in to see me as they were somewhat upset that I had been gone for a couple of days. But they knew things were different. They came in real easy instead of rushing in like normal to greet me. Their noses were in the air and they were smelling and looking. The sent of the baby must have been strong to them. Sandy eased up to look at me and then at the baby. I had grabbed the camera and as the big, 100 pound German Shepherd laid her head down by that tiny baby and gave a big sigh I snapped a photo. It was as if she was saying, “Well, it’s time you brought home this baby and let me see him.”
None of the dogs or cats ever tried to hurt Dustin even though they had never been around a baby. And Sandy was eight years old while Kelly was four. Ginger was six and Cotton was five. It wasn’t that they were young animals. One of the worse things the dogs did was to always be going into the bedroom and checking on him after I would put him to bed. Sandy was the perfect height to lay her nose on the bed and poke it though the bars of the crib enough to touch him with her wet, cold nose and wake him up. Kelly wasn’t tall enough but she tried.
The cats, Ginger and Cotton would simply jump lightly into the crib and sleep with him. Daddy through fits about that as he believed the old wives tale about a cat stealing a baby’s breath and killing it. Lee and I didn’t but would move the cats out when we found them sleeping with him as we didn’t figure Dustin needed to eat cat hair. It was odd that as much as both cats were prone to sleeping on mine and Lee’s legs I never caught either of them actually laying on the baby. They seemed to know that they shouldn’t. They just seemed to want to be near him the same as the dogs did.
I remember Mother stayed with us about two weeks after Dustin was born which was a really big help for me. During that time I learned how to take care of my baby son. I learned to diaper him, bath him, and dress him as well as nursing him. I was determined that my baby would not be a bottle baby. I had plenty of milk for him and he thrived and grew quickly. Of course Lee was a very devoted father and my dad was thrilled to have a grandson after having three daughters. Even most of his brothers had had all girl kids. Boys were a rarity in our family.
I don’t remember much about those first few months with Dustin except that he could be a wonderful baby one moment and screaming with colic the next. I was never able to determine what caused the colic except that it was because I was a first time mom and wasn’t sure what to do with him a lot of the time. I remember walking miles and miles with a crying baby held in every position I could think of that might relieve his tummy ache, which is what colic is. I remember using every remedy I any one suggested with little success. When Lee was home he would help, and frequently Shirley came over and walked the floor with him to help. A lot of the time the rocking chair did more good that walking with him did. I began to feel I was glued to that rocker. I bought a used stroller and that would help as long as I was pushing it back and forth. Sometimes I gave him a warm bath several times a day as it might help. If I did luck out and get him to sleep without a spell of colic and screaming I found that any noise was bound to wake him up. When he was born I thought that I would expose him to all kinds of noise hoping he would be the kind of baby that would sleep though anything. It was not to be. I was already used to putting pillows over the phone so that it wouldn’t wake Lee up, who mostly worked evenings or nights. The vacuum would wake him, also the dishwasher, the dog barking and especially the doorbell, which got disconnected. I don’t think I have ever had as many door to door salesmen as while Dustin was a baby. I even put a sign on the door that said if they were selling or soliciting to do not knock on the door, just go away. I added a Beware of Dog sign and if they did knock on the door I met them with Sandy. Sandy was very good at making salespeople leave quickly.
I still detest anyone that goes door to door for any reason or calls me on the phone trying to sell, solicit, or ask for donations.

Dustin was just the beginning of boys in our family. Jan, my youngest sister, was also pregnant with her first child. She had marred James Edmonds a few years before. Jim was in the Army at that time and their first year or so was spent in Kentucky. Now Jim was in Korea and Jan couldn’t go but Jim had plans to be able to come home in time for the birth of their child. He made it home in time to be at the birth of his son. James Marvin Jr. was born on October 6, 1980 just three months and three days after Dustin was born.
My parents were now double thrilled to have two grandsons. But Jan was living at their house and it was pretty hectic there for several months from what I understood as Jan got an infection after JJ was born. Jim spent a lot of time taking care of her and his son with Mothers help and Sarah was there, too. Of course Daddy had to make more problems by demanding that JJ be picked up and held every time he made the least bit of noise which was not good for the baby or any one else’s nerves. And of course Daddy was to go to get up and help take care of the baby.
I remember that JJ weighed over eight pounds, had black hair and would have dark brown eyes soon. Dustin had to be exactly the opposite with very light, blonde hair and blue eyes. Both boys took after their dad’s families in looks. Wee were never able to live close together do to job situations and, still, Dustin and JJ were very close. We did everything we could to make sure that our only child and his three cousins got to see each other as much as possible. JJ got a brother, Eric Joseph, three years later on October 19, 1983, during a few years that Jim worked for PD Copper Smelter in Playas, NM. After a year or so he decided to enlist in the Air Force and was stationed in Homestead, FL. Three years after Joe was born Cynthia Julia was born in Florida on October 12, 1986. I always teased Jan about being able to have all three of her kids in October which is also the month that her husband was born in.

Lee and I were still having trouble making ends meet. I did not want to have to go back to work and we figured that a babysitter would cost more than I would make with the job. There was a new neighbor, Peggy, across the street and next door to Shirley. Peggy opened a daycare in her home as she didn’t want to leave her one year old son with a sitter either. I decided to try some babysitting, too. The first and best kids that I got were two little girls in grade school that came every afternoon after school until one of their parents would come pick them up. They were usually with us for about two to three hours each afternoon. Crissy was six and the older girl was eight. I wish I could remember her name. They were wonderful girls never causing any trouble, doing their homework, watching TV, playing quiet games, and they loved Dustin, the dogs and cats. And the animals got along with them. Even Sandy adored them.
Later I took in two other kids, a boy and a girl, the same ages and it was trouble from the beginning as I suspect it had been with their previous sitters. I ended up having to tell their mom I couldn’t take care of them. There were also a couple of babies and toddlers that didn’t seem to stay long either.
When Dustin was eleven months old Lee’s mom, Goldie, sister, Linda, brother, Don, and his mom’s brother Dwight and his wife, Mammie came to visit us from West Virginia. It was the second time they had come out to see us, the first time being while we lived on Aztec. We had made a couple of trips back east to visit them, once right after Lee got out of the Navy and again the summer right before we moved to Albuquerque. I was totally stressed out as was Lee. By now Dustin was almost walking and could move with lightning speed anywhere in the house. He was not good with strangers as most babies that age aren’t and refused to have anything to do with his grandma, aunts, and uncles. I think Dustin refused to walk while they were visiting on purpose to frustrate his grandma Goldie. As soon as they left he was walking –er – running.
Lee’s family was afraid of Sandy and Kelly so the dogs were banned to the backyard which they couldn’t understand. Cotton went and hid but Ginger was a pest doing her best to upset Goldie by getting in her lap every time she sat down, especially if it was to eat. The poor women would freak out, being afraid to even push the cat off of her lap. Ginger was banned to the bedroom.
We were still very broke but wanted to make a good impression by showing them a little of the Albuquerque area. We knew it had to be in our budget and places we could also take Dustin. The first time they had come we had gone to the desert as they had never seen one, even digging a few small cholla cactus plants for them to take back. We had also gone to Old Town, the top of the Sandia Mountains and the Albuquerque Zoo. Plus they had wanted to see a ‘real Indian’. I had read there would be a small parade on Central to honor some Indian doing and we took them but all the Indians were just riding down the street in cars and trucks. They were disappointed and found it hard to except the fact that Indians or Native Americans were just like everyone else. This time I think we just went to a few stores where they could buy some souvenirs and out onto the desert some. We didn’t do much except play with Dustin and take lots of photos. They wanted to try some Mexican food but we knew we couldn’t afford to take them to a restrant and we knew how much of a brat Dustin could be in one. We used that as the main reason for not going and I cooked a big Mexican meal of pinto beans, enchilada’s, tacos, Spanish rice, and chili con carne. They weren’t thrilled with it. Goldie and Linda wouldn’t even taste anything that had chili in it. So we were glad we hadn’t taken them out for a true Mexican dinner. Thankfully I had opened a can of corn, and another of green beans.
I think it was just as bad for them as it was for us and all because they wanted to see our son, their grandson/nephew. That was the important part. A little baby boy that we had all be waiting for so long. Lee and I were married almost ten years when we finally had Dustin. Lee was thirty years old and I lacked one month being twenty-nine. Dustin and I were both born on the 3rd of our birth month.
To me the number 3 became a special number. I had thought so before Dustin’s birth but when he was born on the 3rd I knew it was. Both of us had been born right at 3pm on the 3rd. I was the oldest of 3 girls and my mom was the oldest of 3 girls. Lee was the middle child of 3 children in his family. My sister, Jan, had 3 children. Between us we had 3 boys. As of this writing Lee and I have owned 3 houses. For almost ten years we had 3 black and white cats that were brothers from the same litter. I have had 3 female, Siamese cats, so far. At this moment we have 3 black cats. (But the number and color of our cats seem to be always changing). Several times we have had 3 dogs at the same time. Right now I have 3 boys’ horses, if you can count one big horse and two ponies. And my mom, who was such a big influence in my life, died on the 3rd of September, 2003.
Before Dustin was born I had bet a woman who lived down the street from us and became a casual friend named Joyce. She had two daughters just starting high school, Lisa and Erin, and a son, Jake. I don’t remember how we met but I do remember that Lisa hung around a lot, and on a few days when I couldn’t take care of the kids I babysat, Joyce and Lisa would take them; like when Lee’s family came.
Lisa was as horse crazy as I had been at that age and one day she and a couple of friends asked if I could take them to a nearby riding stable to spend a couple of hours riding. After calling Joyce at her job to OK it with her I took them. At the time we had agreed on I returned to pick them up. I was early and they weren’t ready yet. I didn’t mind. I was enjoying just looking at the horses as it was the first time I had been near a horse in years. I had pushed the thought of ever having a horse to the farthest corner of mine and tried to keep it buried there, even though I still watched every old and new western TV show and movie that I could and read every book I could on horses mostly sticking to the fiction books as nonfiction would make me want one even worse. This day was to be special. I had parked near a small corral that only had one horse in it. A sorrel quarter horse mare. I got out of the car, got Dustin out of his carseat and stood holding him a few feet from the corral and the mare. She looked at me with her big dark eyes and it seemed to me that somehow we connected. Maybe it was the fact that I had recently had a baby, (at that time I think Dustin was about 8 months old) and I could tell she was expecting her baby soon. She wandered a round in a small circle and moaned a few times, then straddled her legs and two tiny hooves appeared under her tail. With another big groan she sank to the ground and the little baby horse was out. The mare stood up quickly, turned and began cleaning up the baby. In seconds the big head of the foal was up and in a couple of minutes it was trying to stand. I looked around for someone that might be concerned about the mare and her new baby and at that time a man came running out of a barn and walked up to the man. He looked at me and I said she just had it. He sighed and said something about how he had been watching her all day expecting it and as soon as he had to turn his back on her for a few seconds to take care of something she had it. He petted her and we both noticed that there were several people starting to gather around the corral including the kids I was to pick up. He stooped over, picked up the baby, and said he would take them inside where he could check them over better and they wouldn’t be bothered by gawkers. I agreed it was what I would have done, too, but I was sorry to see him walk away carrying the foal with it’s mama following him. Year later when Dustin decided he was going to become a professional horseman, I always felt that he had been “marked” by that experience that day of seeing a horse have her baby, even though he was less than a year old and had no idea what was happening. In fact I’m not even sure he really saw it happen. I had always heard of children being “marked” by something that had happened while their mom was pregnant or soon after they were born. (Children who hear lots of music while in the womb become musicians, or a child that escapes a fire while a baby becomes a firefighter, a child that follows his grandparent in the garden becomes a farmer.) I also remembered all those books I had read while I was pregnant with him. My favorites were Louis L’Amour who wrote about cowboys and western adventurers http://www.louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm
And Dick Francis who wrote about England and race horses www.dickfrancis.com
Was it possible Dustin knew what I was reading about before he was born? Had I been marked by the horses in the parades my parents took me to see while I was a baby? Of course it was also in our genes I think. Lee grew up on a farm where he worked with the neighbors when they used a big old draft horse to help cut and haul logs out of the woods. Both of my parents had grown up in a farm environment mostly where they had horses and mules. Granddad Green was a cowboy in Texas as a boy and I remember Mother and Gram saying he was raising and training mules when Mother was little. I remember the story of her wondering into the mule pen when she was just walking. Their dog, a pointer, named Don followed her and kept his self between the mules and my mom even getting kicked to keep her from being kicked.
I have a photo of my Grandpa Barnett when he was seventeen with his horse which looked to be a black horse (it was a black and white photo of course, since it would have been about 1900) The horse looked to be a Morgan type horse. My second horse was a black Morgan. I still cry when I think of my BlackJack being gone.
I have another old faded, photo of Gram’s dad with a horse named Old I get the impression he is a quarter horse or as they were know then a ‘steel dust’ horse. Yes, it was in our genes, even if mine and Lee’s parents never had horses. Another story I remember from Mother is when she and her cousin, Johnny Green, were about five or six and would go out into the field to ride on one of the horses. They never wore shoes in the summer so Johnny would use his toes to climb the horse’s leg to where he could reach its mane and pull himself up on the horses back. Then Mother would climb its leg with her toes to where she could reach Johnny’s hand so he could help pull her up behind him. She said it was an older, real gentle horse named that they could ride without even a rope to guide him.
If I had thought about something ‘marking’ Dustin when he was born I would have thought it was the dogs or cats. Except for Lee’s mom and sister I think everyone on both sides of our family like if not outright loved dogs and cats. Oddly Dustin loves cats but doesn’t care for dogs now that he is grown. Maybe it had something to do with the cats sleeping with him and helping keep him warm while the dogs would wake him with their cold, wet noses. Both Sandy and Kelly would have done anything to protect him. I remember putting down food for the dogs, turning a round to do something for a minute to turn back to find Dustin eating commercial dry dog food between the two dogs while they waited patiently for him to finish so they could then eat. Dustin would have been crawling then but not walking yet. To learn to walk he would crawl over to Kelly, who would let him pull on her until he was standing and then she would very, very slowly walk with him while he held onto her. He would grab handfuls of hair and skin in his little hands and pull which I am sure didn’t feel good as he did it to me, too. He would also pull on her ears, tail and squeeze her around her neck. She never seemed to mind. He tried it with Sandy who didn’t mind either but Sandy was taller and it didn’t seem to work as well. Kelly was just the right height for a baby to walk with.
When Dustin was about a year or so my friend, Joyce, gave us a pair of zebra finches she had as she and her family were moving. Dustin adored the two little birds as they hopped here and there in their cage and called ‘cha chee, cha chee’ which prompted him to call them Gee Gee’s and then all birds became Gee Gee’s in his baby language. After reading up on the lively, active birds I bought a nest added it to the cage and soon we had baby Gee Gee’s.
Hummmm I wondered if I could make a few dollars breeding the prolific little birds. Probably not but it might be fun. So we soon had several cages of zebra finches. I then added a pair of canaries and a pair of parakeets. I had had parakeets and canaries as a girl and enjoyed watching, listening to, and caring for the birds. I found I could sell a few of the babies to some local pet stores for about $4 each. Not much but it paid for their feed.
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