Oh the guilt

Today, my friend took the boys in the morning. I ran some errands sans enfant.

Home, lunch, to the pool.....

By 3 or 4 in the afternoon, I was wondering what I had to do to get them out of my hair again.

These are my little blessings from God right? Oh how I longed to run away from those three little Godly gifts. My hunka works overnights and insists on sleeping during the day and leave me to fend for myself with them.

And then it sets in, the guilt. Oh, the mama guilt. These are my sweet children that I labored for. So sweet, so formative, so wanted so...so maddening.

So I packed them up in the van, which around here takes about 1/2 an hour, and headed to the YMCA. I toke them all to the childcare rooms and then sat and read for about 30 minutes before I did a workout.

So great and yet so guilty. Technically, I shouldn't need the break since my pal took them for three hours in the morning.

Oh well, the day is done. No harm done, as far as I can tell. They'll just have to send me their therapists' bill in 20 years.

Happy Fourth of July 2007

So the baby takes off his diaper, right. Remember how I said I've resorted to duct taping the little guy into those diapers. Somehow the little Houdini has figured yet another way around my tactics. The past two mornings I went into find piles in the crib. Last night I taped him into his diaper around the waist twice and then down through and around the legs a few times. This morning I woke and ran in as soon as I heard him, in hopes of catching him before he had the chance to squat.

nothing.

So I wait all day for this child to relieve himself.

nothing.

This is what has become of me.

As I taught my eldest how to shovel doogie -doo from the back yard, I thought this is what it comes down to for me. poop. poop and more poop

Then as I scooped the cat box later that day I thought, again, poop. Really when the little blessings in my life are able to dispose of their own excrement in a proper and sanitary manner, this is when my life becomes easier.

Happy 4th of July.

The boys catch their first fish

happy burfday to me

I'm officially holding up the beautiful side of 40.

My boys gave me the greatest gifts a mother could ask for today. K made me a delightful 1 liter bottle of perfume in a garden spray bottle.

I was a little afraid of spraying it on my skin, but upon further questioning I gathered it was made from water and some sort of liquid lavender soap.

Q made me a true treasure. It is a 2-qt rubbermaid container filled with water and bits of grasses and herbs from the garden.

They were besides themselves with joy to celebrate my birthday with me. Again, another 'bits of joy' experience.
Today I took them to one of those ceramic painting places so they could make some tiles for me. We painted for over three hours.
When we got into the van with all of our artistic elements spent, Q said, "Mama, I forgot it was your birthday while we were in there! My brain was so full of other stuff."

someone to herd em

the dog is great. really.

he does some things however i wonder about.



we suspect he is a Labrador retriever mixed with a border collie.



he has a sweet gentle disposition like a lab, but is really smart.



he does this thing though that is a mystery to me. it appears he tries to herd us, particularly the kids. sometimes he'll just knock his head into them and nudge them one way or the other.



sometimes if the kids are running, or flailing about he'll nip at their heals. OK by "kids" i mean Mr. Q the 4 year old.



With the baby, I've seen them standing next to each other then suddenly move him straight sideways with the trunk of his body.



if I were smarter, i'd learn how to use this herding thing to my advantage....



"Leo....get the boys! Make them go potty! put on their shoes and get into the van before I have to raise my volume"

lost diapers

"How was your day?" my friend asked me today knowing that there was a story to be had in there somewhere.

As she asked this, one brother hit the other with a guitar sending shock waves through the dry wall. And then the baby walked into the room with nothing but a smile on.

I neglected to reinforce his diaper as I've had to do lately. I use industrial strength tape to keep the diaper on the baby. It really is a necessity.

Of course the first child would never think to take off his diaper all the time, since I was on that kid's every move.

The second child had this same issue with diaper removal. I used the blue painter's tape on him too.

I start the roll at the back of the diaper and wrap it around his waist to keep him from pulling the tabs open.

The summer of survival

I want to post video on my blog, but that would require a new skill. I don't have time for new skills right now. I focus on the survival. It is summer afterall.

Tonight as I tucked the oldest into bed I said, "Good night, my sweet boy. My first-born child."
To which he replied, "Yeah, I had it good back then didn't I? I had three years all to myself, before my bossy little brother came along."
Oh yes, I'm thinking of a cliche, wait....oh yes something about the pot calling the kettle black.

This month marks the first full year of the sibling fighting. I remember it well....last summer was clearly the first time the two oldest brothers started to fight.... and they really haven't stopped since.

I wrote this little note.....

JUNE 2006
This is the summer it begins, I suppose. It was bound to happen, but how was I to know it would be so soon?
This morning my two oldest boys woke at their summer sleep-in time of 8am and came downstairs to the excitement of another morning. This week they are going to vacation bible school, which they just love, better than school with more crafts, songs and yummier snacks.
There comes a point of time that every mother with two children dreads. Mine came this morning. I call it the yogurt splitter reckoning. They make six packs of kids' yogurt with three flavors on one side, three different ones on the other. My boys need to have most things they same or better than they other guy. So in the case of yogurt, each kid can eat the same flavor twice, but then there comes the dreadful day when one will have to get a different kind than his brother. You think, no big deal, yogurt is yogurt. Ah yes but that would mean you do not have a child under the age of say, seven. Because one you see has an alligator guy with sunglasses and the other may have a polar bear playing an electric guitar, which if you are three-years-old makes all the difference in the world.
I can usually head off problems by saying, “you get what you get and don't have a fit.”
This morning I thought that perhaps the ebullient mood would distract the junior occupants from yogurt flavor. Oh how wrong I was.
As I'm doing some banal job in the kitchen K, the 6-year-old, says in that poke you in the eye, sing song voice, “I have strawberry banana, and you don't.” Oh no, here we go. Did the president of the United States walk into this room with THE briefcase nicknamed “the football” and push that big red nuclear bomb button by mistake? There is no turning back. The order of what happens next is a blur of tears, finger pointing and banishment to the garage to work things out, and then I had to deal with the kids. You know, I am the grown-up, and as I sit here drinking my Diet Coke in the air conditioning while they are in bible school singing “Love is patient. Love is kind.” I can tell you there are better ways to handle things. I ended it all with an empty threat to never buy yogurt again.
Who would have thought that real sibling rivalry would have begun so soon? They are after all only 6 and 3. We were in Target last week and I spotted the t-shirts that said it all, “Sister for Sale.” “It's my brother's fault.” I could have thought of that. Why not capitalize off of your struggles? My t-shirt would say, “How many times do I have to tell you?” “Please don't touch the cat's butt,” or “Please take the salami off your brother's head.” All words that have actually come out of my mouth.
My husband and I happened to come across some video clips we had saved on our computer last year. The boys were in the midst of preparing for one of their many musical shows in the family room. The shows are complete with instruments, vocals, live microphones, canned background music and are almost always performed in underwear. As two-year-old Q knelt readying his microphone, the older brother rushes up behind him, grabs his arm, peels the mike from his fingers and heads to the fireplace hearth to become the star of the show. Without complaint, Q finds another microphone; it is a broken headset microphone with no headpiece. He shoves it in his mouth and holds it between his teeth to gurgle the backup lyrics to a made-up song by his older brother, while strumming a blue electric guitar.
This year however, we are entering a new era. Three-year-old Q has developed a very vocal mind of his own and very keen sense of injustice. Though he stills spends most of the day following his older sibling around being the student to his brother's teacher, the doggy to his man, the passenger to his' bus driver/engineer, you name it. The minute Q tries, does or suggests something different is when it all begins.
At first, K does try to explain the reasons why he must be the boss and the leader calmly at first, but lately it usually just goes into the full-blown argument. It usually escalates until Q shouts, “I'm gonna trade you for a sister.”
Sadly though he doesn't know that would probably be just the beginning of his problems. Being one and having a sister of my own, I remember the rough spots with both my brother and sister. I am the youngest by about a decade. Despite the age span we still found ways to fight without a problem.
Remember this one in the days before the remote control? “Hey, go change it to channel five,” my teenage brother would order from the white pleather chair. “Why do I have to always be the one to change the channel, ” I would lip back.
“Because you are closer,” he would say. Upon which I would get up and move across the room to the distance the furthest from the TV and say in true bratty little sister form, “No I'm not. Now you are closer.” The inventor of the TV remote clearly must have been the youngest sibling.
Somehow I can talk myself into the fact that the arguing is good for them. These are the battlegrounds for later in life. Siblings are the safe zone where we learn how to get along or not get along with others and pick up the skills for conflict resolution and problem solving.
In the meantime, I wait until my boys leave the kitchen and alone at last, eat all the cotton candy and kiwi banana flavored yogurts by myself.
Anything in the name of peace.

-end-

a bad haiku for summer

Busy baby runs.
If it weren't for "The Wiggles,"
I think i would die.

boys and beluga

blog

I've played a little with the look of the blog, just for fun.
The new picture is taken at the Georgia Aquarium last week.

I discovered today that they make Baked Cheetos and Baked Doritoes.

Have I mentioned the baby is in to everything? My house looks like Goodwill threw up in here.

I've figured out a new name for Starbucks...."A three dollar vacation"

 

Even though not everyone is excited about getting his picture taken....I love this picture because I got all my BOYS in the same shot!

There was a time, BC (before children) when I pictured summer break with my handsome well-behaved children.....it went something like this.....

Rising in the morning naturally by our own bio-clocks....mixing our own organic granola in the morning, crafting macrame wall hangings, swimming, catching fire flies....maybe one more trip to the craft table before bed time.......

And then my reality set in....really the only thing we do on this list is go swimming.

I really have every intention to let them catch lightning bugs, but the West Nile mosquitoes swarm at that time. Also with the coming climate apocalypse, there aren't any to be found. Perhaps because of all the chemicals we douse our lawns with .

Now I look at my summer calendar and see vast expanses of gloom and doom, I must find something for these rascals to do. Last summer was the first year the two oldest ones began to fight. It was exhausting before that, but it became even harder mentally last year.

I used to scoff at the moms who sent their kids to these summer "camps." Something, I may add, we never had growing up. We just drove our parents nuts. "I'm bored."....."Go out and play."
And we did usually. I'd be gone from morning til night....coming back occasionally to eat.

Anyway....This is the first year I'll be entering the world of the summer camps. The older two will do two Vacation Bible Schools, one science and technology camp and one soccer camp.

This is why I work....to have enough money for the extra stuff...for Q to go to a special kindergarten, for soccer camps, organic fruits....and good shoes for the baby.

Plus I get to eat my Chick fil-A salad and Diet Coke in peace.

What a blessed life I lead.

For these reasons, we are best friends

It is not uncommon to find these two getting into things. I just happened to notice they had snuck away and were very quiet. When I walked upon this scene.... in fact if I weren't around them, who knows what they could get into.

mother's day is everyday

Hello,
Happy birthday to my So.Cal sister!

To celebrate, I spent the day purging. I am overwhelmed by the clutter.
When the boy that Q carpools with asked him what he wanted for his birthday. He sighed and said, "really, we have too much stuff. The toys are just everywhere." The girl I share driving duties reported said it was as if MY voice was coming from the back of the SUV.

So this dear heart of a friend kept Q for a playdate and I tackled the toy room.

I'm ready to get real about the clothes in my closet too. It is true by the time I can fit into stuff again, I'm not going to be the same person anymore.

Here is one tidbit from the kids' traditional mother's day papers they fill out.

My mom is as pretty as....."MY DOG LEO."

Speaking of Leo, have I mentioned I've got the best dog EVER.

the asylum

It really is a wonder I'm not crazier than I already am.

Sometimes I wonder if I have unwittingly been put into one of those psychology experiments, where scientists are observing me to see if I will really lose it.

The characters walk around here in imaginary states, babbling gibber-jabber, creating strange new characters and voices. My 7-year-old greets me in the morning with no good morning or hello. It is, "you know, if you rode on the alien express backwards you would end up 750 billions years ago."
My four year-old utters strange expressions at nearly every utterance. Lately he finds the words "yell" and "fart" particularly amusing. So imagine greeting the clerk in the grocery line, she will make some sweet comment and ask the small child how he is doing. He responds, "Yelling." blink. blink. stare.
She looks at me for a translation or an explanation of his Torette's Syndrome.

Words in sweet children's songs are laced with the words, "fart" or "yell." So much so that I don't even notice anymore. In fact, I'm not even sure I know what the right words are anymore.

pictures from our spring break in Florida

My boys....growing so fast

did i do this to him?

I thought I had given the baby measles.

I had the doctor split up the MMR vaccine for KC. So instead of getting all three vaccines in one stick, I'm drawing out the pain and the copays over time.

Honestly, this little baby is not really where he should be with his verbal skills. I'm only mildly worried since he does seem to understand many things, can hear, point out body parts, do a little sign language and afterall he is my THIRD.

But until we are out of the autism woods, I didn't want to take any chances.

He had the measles part of his immunization series a few weeks ago. This week he spikes a temperature for a few days and then Friday his fever went away and he had small pink dots all over his face and truck. By the evening, his dots were red and multiplying.

Last night he really just didn't want to be asleep which is WHOLE other story.

It could be roseola....measles....chicken pox....I just want it to go away

Our new dog Leo

where's my baby?

I uncovered this little essay....I wrote it 9 months ago when my baby wasn't even a toddler yet.
This was clearly a mother that had not yet discovered the joys of Zoloft

.....................................................................................................................................
I walked by the computer today and a screen saver picture caught my eye. In the endless loop of snapshots that have been saved on the computer, I saw the face of a baby I didn't know anymore.
My baby is now nine months old. He is pulling up and rolling and inchworm crawling his way around the house despite my attempts to keep him corralled.
The baby in the picture was smiling and lounging in a bouncy chair. The baby couldn't sit up on his own. He needed me to move him every which way, to hold him upright so the burps could come straight up, to lay him on his back and keep the SIDS monsters away. Now he wriggles from room to room, scoops Cheerios with ease and crams them into his mouth.
I know it is too soon to start the lament of where has my baby gone? After all he still is very much a baby. Last night I rocked him slowly in my arms and wept. I felt so sorry for this sweet baby. He has me, the tired older mother of THREE boys. Nowadays I try to plan my summer days with enough activities to keep the two older boys from fighting. I feed them, wipe them, clean their messes; I survive.
The first boy got the young, newer fresher me. I read to him for hours, bathed him daily, changed his clothes at the first evidence of a drip, planned baby play dates, and enrolled him in Gymboree. What was I thinking?
I never left my first son K except for maybe when I had a doctor's appointment. My husband kept him in the car and waited for me until I could return. God forbid I would have to take him in there with me because of the dreadful viruses and diseases that doctor's offices breed. K didn't have a babysitter until he was nearly three. And that was only because I had to attend my mother's funeral.
Child number three knows all the fine ladies in the church's nursery very well. He smiles, cooes and holds his arms up to complete strangers. He's already stayed on his own with his godmother, a neighbor lady and a 15-year old babysitter with ease.
They say you are more relaxed the more children you have. Relaxed is a nice word for exhausted. Exhausted is what I really am.
I know you are not supposed to compare your children, so here goes.... My number two son Q started walking at the age KC is right now. I was shocked to watch our little Q race across the floor at nine-months, way before I was ready. I was thrilled and panicked at the sight. No, no, no....this is too soon. Please stop what you are doing I told him. He's been moving ever since.
My sweet baby hasn't appeared to be in any hurry to get anywhere until this week. He started doing this odd yoga-like plank position, where he would do a push up with a stick straight body on his tippy toes. For a while that was all he did, just a little mini-push up and then back to his belly to play or eat the carpet fibers.
Now he has expanded this push up to a push up /propel motion that flops him forward on his belly each time but somehow manages to get him around with some speed. He inchworms himself towards me with a big open gummy smile.
He has started eating quite a bit of table food lately. What a change this is from the first baby too. When I took my oldest for his nine-month check up, the doctor told me I could start giving him yogurt, cheese, Cheerios and other table food. I practically pinned the doctor against the wall until he swore to me that he had never heard of a baby choking on a Cheerio.
Flash forward six years, this child by sheer survival of the fittest eats fists full of food. I put him in his high chair throw some cheerios or those terrific new fangled food puffs they've invented since my last child in his tray and away he goes. I prepare food for the rest of the troops while KC studies and concentrates on the process at hand. I keep fixing things and putting them in front of him and he eagerly swoops in and devours things.
He is down to nursing just twice a day now, which is such a bittersweet milestone for me. He doesn't need me for everything in his life now. The breastfeeding is one more thing the baby is taking physically and emotionally on his own and pulling away from Mama. Somehow that thrills and saddens me.

-end-

clothes

There is an outfit that my mom bought K when he was a baby, red velvet vest, black and white plaid pants with matching necktie. I had his picture taken in it when he was 18 months old. (So cute. I love babies at 18 months...still babyish, yet like a little person learning words and tricks at lightening speed.)
When Q hit the year and a half mark. I marched him to the Target photo studio for his turn.
And now KC has hit the 1.5 year milestone...so it is his turn.

Today was frantic trying to get ready for the occasion. I thought since the three of them are in the same space, I'd try to get them all in a picture together.

It took me about 1.5 hours to get ready for their photo shoot at Target which included laundry....b/c the shirts were not clean....ironing....which I NEVER do. The ironing board doesn't really open since I don't use it much and I had a hard time finding the iron. Snacks....to futilely ward off the grouchies.
The photographer took about 10 minutes to take 10 shots.

decisions

Here is a question for you....
Imagine you are driving happily along with your four-year-old and new dog in the car....
Suddenly you see two small children and what looks to their baby sitter and whack....your auto gets hit by an egg.
Then somewhere else along your trip. The dog throws up all over the back seat. Twice.
You pull in the driveway and have exactly 6 minutes before you have to head out to work. You can only clean up one thing.....which do you choose....the egg or the vomit?
It is interesting to me what makes people different. You see, me, I rushed to clean up the puke. My husband...thinks the egg must immediately come off the paint job.
strange....what makes people operate.

I am still in awe of our new dog officially known as “Leo Sammy.” You can call him “Leo.”
He has started to come out of his shell a bit. Today after his morning trip outside, he started to romp around and play with a ball.
He is an extremely gentle soul.
He is about a year old. The county put him at about 1.5 years old. The branch office said he’s 10 months old.

Tomorrow the boys have soccer games, then I'll go to work the evening shift.

messy house, clean dog

I am amazed at the stuff available for dogs out there. Now I know why the pet industry is a 38.5 billion dollar business.
Since I adopted through the humane society, I was able to get the dog a free grooming. If I had to pay for it myself, it would have cost $65. Yikes. I think I'm going to get out the same clippers I use on the boys' hair.
Then again, I recently learned about anal glands and was more than grossed out. Getting someone else to squeeze those special glands is worth the 65 bucks.
As of today 30 hours into this new experience, I am convinced that God sent us the perfect dog. He is housebroken. I know someone spent a lot of time with him at some point. He sits almost automatically at attention. He is crate trained, very calm, gentle, sweet.....DOESN'T CHEW.
Tonight while the boys had soccer practice, we worked on his heel and he mastered it within minutes. Before he would just kind of wander.
I'm waiting for the ball to drop though as he gets more comfortable.
So far his encounters with Baka the cat have gone pretty well. The cat came up last night and sniffed him all over while he snored away next to me.
The cat got completely stressed out by the two foster dogs we had. They really wanted to get ahold of him.
We've got two names going right now....Leo.... and Sammy.... As you can expect two brothers can't agree on a thing. This may be the first dog I've heard of with a middle name.

We've got dog

We've got our own dog!!!!

He's a black mutt of some sort. Extremely sweet. So far so good, granted we've only had him about six hours. We got him through the humane society....if his picture is still there they call him "James" I'll post pictures when I get them.

The debate on the name goes on....

If you could

If you could put your dream into a field, what would it look like?

For one little boy with a trip to grampa's house it looks something like this....

K rounded the corner of his grandpa's house and saw this 36 year-old bus in all it's faded glory.
He and his brother got to sit in it, blow the horn, turn on all the blinkers and lights. We, as the passengers, had to get on and off at the told times.
Oh what a dream.

whew

Having two young dogs and a toddler is a bit like having triplets that are all about 18 months old.

It was great fostering Sunny and Share. They truly are great dogs, excellent with kids, but they did get into stuff, oh boy.

The deal was we would keep them until spring break, which would help save the rescue group boarding costs and get them adopted sooner with a foster report.

So I will continue to look for our perfect dog (read that singular.) But know that we have lots of time and lots of dogs to chose from.

I'll be posting pictures from our spring break adventures soon.

KC with Sunny
Two dogs hiding from the kids. Who could blame them....I do the same thing

dogs and boys

Man, I thought I couldn't get things done before. I really have no time now that I have 2 foster dogs and three kids.
The dogs have been good. VERY sweet.
We are still working on the cat issue. Today I played Cesar Millan again, and held the cat for longer and longer periods around them. Finally the male dog just laid down. The other female dog who is normally the shy one just went berserk.
I would love to adopt the boy dog, but the lab nazis want them to be a package deal.
Oh and we've renamed them Sunny and Share.
They don't answer to anything. So these names seemed to be about the best.

fostering

OK here is our first venture into dog-dome.

We are fostering two yellow labs. As always, it's a long story.

more later when I get my bearings.

the flowering hello

Spring is my new favorite season. I used to love the fall for all of its reasons. But as I get older I find the newness and rebirth of the land inspiring.
This is the view from my bathroom window where a Bradford Pear tree marks the seasons for me. I am always eager to see it bloom, because it reminds me so much of my mom. There are certain flowers and trees that remind me of her, plants that she loved. All of them bloom. So when I see one in all of its glory my heart aches with pleasure, because I know she would have loved to be here to see it with me.
March is a time when my mom would love to come south to visit me. The weather in Georgia is great. March in Ohio is just a pain in the butt. You feel like winter should be ending, it just gets warm enough to tease and then whammo three more inches of snow. And there is plenty of cold rain too. I used to live on a streets lined with dogwood trees and she seemed to come around they time they were in full bloom. She even painted a picture for me of a robin (since my street's name was Robinwood) in a flowering dogwood. It hangs at my front door in honor greeting everyone with the note "Peace to all who enter here."
Although I'm not an expert I don't think the Bradford Pears are named that because they bare fruit, I think it is because of their shape. Anyway they are blooming now, everywhere. Again I get that little achey feeling, because five years ago this month, mom died. I went to stay with her for a while and then came back home. My sister called on a Wednesday to tell me she stopped eating. When we were packing for our trip back north again. I looked out my bathroom window and noticed that the tree was almost ready to bloom. She died on that Saturday. While I was gone, my bathroom tree bloomed and turned green.
Now the trees are blooming again like white heavenly tears reminding me of how much she misses us.

crazy is as crazy does

You know, I've been around a bit. I've seen the world. I knew there were crazy people out there, thought I met most of them. Thought I was related to a few of them.
Boy was I wrong. There are far more than I thought.

When I went to the coo-coo lady's house out in the country with the pack of wild animals living with her she said, "you know I meet a lot of nuts in this business." She proceeded to tell me about a woman that adopted a cat, "she was NUT and I mean that with a capital N-U-T."

hmm, I thought. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

So I find this dog on craiglist. She is a 1. 5 year old yellow lab/golden retriever. The owner never had her spayed so she had two litters of puppies. A rescuer came in and took the second litter from her and paid to have the dog spayed. The owner wants to give her away now.

I sent her an email inquiring about the dog, that again sounds way too good to be true, she calls me at 11pm last night. Something about the lady sounds really strange.

Now I feel like I have to rescue the dog from her.

I wanted to go get her today. But my hunka wants to go with me. He's worried about us endangering ourselves for the sake of the dog.

She implied that if I do not get the dog, she is going to put her down. All of this because she says she has been diagnosed with the "C word." I think "C word?" what is that.....cooties? crabs? crazy?
clearly the last one

crazy ladies

I'm addicted to petfinder.com. I thought this morning that I would NOT look for another dog on that website. But I couldn't make it past 11am.
After my Maggie dog had gone away to two people that are 40 years older than me and clearly faster, I knew I had to let go. The Maggie dog was too good to be true. She had a bump on her nose from a bite she got as a small puppy, and because of that the breeder couldn't sell her. So an elderly man took her and trained her, a lot apparently. She could sit, stay, come, sit and wait to eat on command, sit and wait to be dismissed, fix dinner, iron your shirts and take out the trash. The 84 year-old man went to the hospital, and the dog went to his daughter who turned him over to the lab nazis.
So yesterday, K had a day off of school so I drove the boys to the "country" to an animal shelter that I found out about on petfinder. Fran is the lady that runs this "shelter" from her two bedroom home. Imagine what a little cottage house would look like with 35 cats and about 18 dogs. Imagine the smell.
The tiny puppy that was pictured curled up with a cat is now nine months old and part of a pack of wild dogs. She has had little or no interaction with humans. She came in to see us and coward in the corner.
Needless to say Fran the pet lady is a little coo-coo for cocoa puffs, if you know what I mean. K whispered to me as we left, "Do you think she lives here?"
"Yes," I said. "And I think she loves every minute of it."

oh woe

My dogs are gone. oh woe
The two dogs that I had picked are gone.....adopted by someone other than me.
I've just boo-hooed to my husband about it. I'm so disappointed.
The lab rescue folks (aka the labrador nazis) said if I wanted to see a specific dog I could make an appointment. If I wanted to meet several of them, I had to wait until the dog adoption day (March 17th). So apparently "two" means "several" nowadays.
I suppose I should have just jumped on one of them, but I would have always wondered what the other one was like.
They were trained, so much of the work had been done on them. One was three years old and more settled.
If I get a puppy it is so much more work, oye.

I'm off to bed. I'm too emotional about this. I've been up since 4am. I had the opposite happen to me with the time change....I actually woke up way earlier than I should have.

dog obsession

OK so I haven't posted lately because I've been feeding my dog obsession. I spend every free moment reading about dogs and looking for dogs on petfinder.com.
My hunka has been amazed how much time I'm online looking for dogs. He concedes perhaps it is better this way that at least I'm not meeting in chat rooms with other men.
There are two promising dogs. I'm going to meet them on Saturday the 17th.
I have been approved for adoption, which was a real nail biter. I've heard horror stories from friends that were turned down after the home visit. One person had a leather couch and the foster mom thought that would pose a problem. Another person got the "nay" because she didn't have a fence. Small point that she wanted a chihuahua.
My friends indulge me as I talk over every facet of dog ownership.
My biggest concern right now, other than whether or not the dog will be a good match for us, is that my hunka wants to go to Florida for spring break. Doesn't sound like a good time to get a dog right? If I wait until after the break, I'm worried that someone will get that magical dog I have my eye on.

bye bye binky

I just spent the past four hours or so in my kitchen preparing food that my children would not eat. I did get them to help clean the kitchen though so all is not a loss.

I'm trying to fatten up the oldest boy who is just skin and bones since he's been sick. Not that he was exactly a porker to begin with, but one flu spell and you'd thing he'd been sitting in a refugee camps with an empty bowl and flies on his eyes.

I also went to the doctor's today for a bone scan and blood tests. It sounds worse than it is...it is just part two of a physical that I started last month.

Somehow, I got my cholesterol down to 134 which is what I wish I weighed, but never mind.

I can say this with confidence now.....drumroll please....we have broken the baby of his pacifier habit. I thought it would be harder and more painful than it has been. We had to wait until he was completely healthy. He was using it mostly to sleep but it started to get silly. He'd wake up crying in the night 3 or 4 times because he couldn't find his binky. I'd go it fumble around slapping the mattress looking for the holy grail. I even used baby links to attach it to the crib rail, but he never caught on to my ingenuity. It was just easier to hollar for me.

I am sitting here waiting for a website to email me and tell my what my user name and password are.....
The boys are sick, again.
I'm hoping to call in the reserves tomorrow.

How long should an email like this take? ugh. I have no patience.

How many junk drawers in a house is acceptable? It seems that I have more than my allotted number.

Yesterday Q and I went to visit some dogs a lab rescue had at the pet store. I knew some of the dogs already, so when I sighted them it was as if I had spotted a celebrity-- oh wow there's Lacey, Max and Doc!!! I felt like I knew them already. I still am not quite ready for a dog yet. They baby is still small. And I haven't pored through every available book or DVD yet. I've got about 5 or 6 books and DVD's on hold for me at the library. I started Cesar Millan's book and tried some of his techniques on our friends dogs when I took care of them yesterday. I was pretty amazed that just a few things seemed to work .

My long time friend back home thinks I have lost my mind. She said to me "What a DOG! You with the germ thing? Do you know how dirty they are? Think about the poop! HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?! I don't know you anymore."

The dog thing is just another way to invite chaos into my life...for me when I am searching for more chaos, I start work, have another baby.....or in this case get a dog.

Driving the Jeep in the cluttered garage

Taking time to stop and smell the pansies