ilovemydogilovemydogilovemydog

(Repeat until convinced.)

So. It's been all kids around here for the past little while, and you're probably wondering (or not) what's happening with the critter of the roof.

Dudley has just been coasting along, hanging out, content to romp in the yard once or twice a day, and hang out under the high chair lest there be droppings. Oh, and there WILL be droppings!

Until yesterday.

Now this has happened before, albeit on a smaller scale.

Yesterday I came home mid afternoon, after a morning of trying to entertain a baby in a car dealership while they changed my oil and my tires, and 10 errands (literally) that involved me driving all over hell's half acre. I was exhausted. Corben was starving.

So I come home, feed all that require feeding, and sit down at the computer. And *sniff.*

I recognize the smell. It smells like dirty diaper. But I know it's not the baby, so why is the smell so overpowering? My computer sits in the hallway, just outside our bedroom, so I turned into the bedroom, where the smell seemed to be emanating from.

And found the source.

An open diaper pail. (Wait for it.) It was nearly empty. The contents had been relocated, and decimated - shredded, into tiny, shitty little pieces.

Want to know where they had been relocated to, and where the massacre had taken place? (I bet you can guess.)

Yup, my bed. My unmade bed. My sheets, blankets, comforter, all covered in tiny, shitty little pieces of that stuff that you find on the inside of diapers. Yes, shit, and also those little magic expanding polymers (or whatever the hell they are.)

Awesomesauce.

I called Steve, in tears. I figured it only fair to tell him that I was going to murder the dog, so he could say goodbye if he wanted to.

(Don't worry animal people, I didn't murder the dog.)

Do you know how many loads of laundry it takes to wash all the linens on my bed? Between the sheets, pillowcases, mattress cover, comforter, blankets, and comforter cover? Three. (It should really probably be four.) That's a freaking LOT of extra laundry.

Yesterday was going to be the day I caught up on the laundry. Fail.

(Oh, oh, oh...ask my why I was so behind on the laundry, go on, ask me! Because last week, Griffin peed in our bed, the dog puked in our bed a day later, and Griffin peed in his own bed twice, on two successive nights. THAT's why. And all those nights he was wearing pull-ups, he just leaks right through the useless pieces of crap.)

So, I decided last night that was the end, there was to be no more dog allowed in the bedroom. Being that there are two doors into our bedroom, it's harder than it sounds. I can't totally close off the bedroom, it gets ice cold in there if I do. So I've closed one door. Put up (ANOTHER) baby gate in front of the other (just because the baby gate Olympics wasn't challenging enough around here!) Since it's also where the diaper pail lives, this is killing two birds with one stone, since the dog can apparently now OPEN the diaper pail.

(Oh, he can also open the garbage in the kitchen, which was demonstrated once again the night before last when I came home to find an empty Sheppard's pie container shredded to pieces and licked clean on my bed. I decided that night that I could collect the pieces and fall asleep with the slight smell of Sheppard's pie wafting over me, I had had it with laundry.)

Fast forward to today. I come home from a few errands to discover a bunch of empty grape stems on the kitchen floor, and a bunch more in the middle of the living room. Something tweaks in my brain, and I head over to google to confirm.

Did you know that grapes are poisonous to dogs?

Yeah.

According to the vet, with his weight, and the amount he ate, he should be ok. But now I'm hanging out, watching the dog for signs of lethargy, or vomiting, or diarrhea, which would indicate acute renal failure, and a very quick drive to the vet. (Lethargy, which is not to be confused with "I'm depressed and sad-dog-face because I'm not allowed to sleep on the bed anymore.)

What with all the possibility of vomiting and diarrhea around here, it's likely a damn good thing I've barricaded the bedroom. Because dammit, there are no more clean sheets or comforters in this house!

Week 2

I'm not exactly sure where this past week got away to. It flew by, and for the most part was fairly uneventful. For me it involved a lot of sitting on the big comfy chair and staring at my baby. Corben's week pretty much amounted to hanging out with me in the chair and being cute:See what I mean?

We spent a good deal of the day on Tuesday out and about running errands, and were rewarded with our first craptacular night's sleep, due to a baby who slept in the car seat all day. Weak sauce. We made sure not to repeat that mistake again.

With shocking speed, the imaging department at the local hospital called me on Wednesday, and wanted to know if I was available the next day for a CT scan - the result of my GP appointment earlier in the week, just to make sure nothing was amiss in my head that is causing my sudden migraines. Since I spent the previous weekend and early part of the week hooked up to the breast pump (I had COPIOUS amounts of milk!) there was enough milk in the fridge for me to head out without either of the kids. Getting out for even an hour by myself was very nice, and very weird all at the same time. As we were walking to the scan room the technician, just doing her duty, asked me if there was any chance that I might be pregnant. I think she may have been slightly offended when I burst out laughing in her face....and then less so when I explained that I had given birth 10 days ago, and aside from a heavenly miracle that I think only works on virgins, there was no chance, absolutely none at all that I was pregnant!

Friday was my first day at home with both the boys. It started out with a phone call from the neighbour, just as I was getting out of the shower, to let me know that Dudley was in the back field, and moments ago had been surrounded by 3 coyotes. Neighbour Dave, being the neighbourly guy that he is had gone for his gun, but by the time he got back to his back porch, they had dispersed, and Dudley had gone on the defensive - he had somehow managed to evade them, and had taken up post between the house and the top of the hill, and was barking like mad at them. I quickly got dressed (figuring nobody wanted to see me running up the hill after my crazy dog in a short robe and snowmobile boots,) and managed to scare the crap out of Griffin telling him that he needed to watch Corben and stay inside, because Dudley was in trouble and Mama had to go help him. Just as I was conjuring up visions of carrying a maimed and bleeding dog through the field behind our house, Dudley arrived at the back door slightly breathless but otherwise unfazed, like near death-by-coyote was no biggie at all, and hey, what's for breakfast??

After my heart stopped pounding, I decided to start over, and re-started the day with french toast made with home made bread, because really, what can go wrong when you (re)start the day out like that? I know, it's a perfect set up for me to tell you EXACTLY what else could go wrong...but surprisingly, nothing did. We had a GREAT day that involved some crafty business, a trip to the library, a nap, for both boys....AT THE SAME TIME (stellar mother pats herself on the back and feels very smug,) finishing off our crafty business in the afternoon, and having dinner on the table when Steve arrived home from work (a lasagna from the freezer...homemade at least!) I'm more than a little bit looking forward to our Fridays from now on (minus the dog maiming by coyote part!)
(One thing that I've learned about crafting with three year olds - I have to let go of my own crafty anal tendencies, and just let Griffin do his thing. It's not going to be perfect, or anywhere near, but it will be his, and he will be awfully proud of it, perfect or not!)
Griffin has been really great with Corben again this week...he loves to snuggle with his little brother. Sadly, Griffin also came down with something this weekend that makes him sound like he smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, and trying to keep his little snotness AWAY from Corben hasn't worked out all that well...please cross your fingers that the wee one stays well! (If he does, I'm going to start feeding breastmilk to the WHOLE family.)
So that's this week in a (rather large) nutshell. We're just hanging out, getting bigger and cuter every day. Not a bad life!

A New Laundry Queen in Town

Dear Dudley,

I'm going to make YOU start doing the bloody laundry, if you don't keep your fracking filthy dirty paws off my 800 thread count WHITE sheets. GOT IT???

xoxox
Me

My Boys

Share and share alike.

You know when you have one of those moments when you realize, suddenly, that it's waaay too quiet in your home? In your home where toddlers normally scream and dogs normally bark, but suddenly...nothing. Not a sound. It can only mean ONE thing - TROUBLE!!

When I found the two of them (dog and toddler) they were very nicely sharing some food...from the dog's bowl. Dudley had his snout buried in his bowl, happily munching away, and Griffin, well, Griffin had 2 fists full of food, as well as a nice big mouthful of it! One would think I never fed the kid, when in fact he had, not 1/2 an hour before shoveled down a rather large dinner.

No harm done, I'm sure. I mean that dog food is perfectly bite sized, at Griffin's height, and totally accessible (when Mama leaves the kitchen gate open!) It's practically the perfect food! So who can blame the kid!!??

Tomorrow is another day...

Alas, I think the coherent posting will have to wait for another day. We are tired. Dog tired. Even the dog is dog tired. Staying in a hotel with a dog and a toddler is less holiday and more insanity. But we had a great day, we went for lots of walks! One just can't open the front door of one's 11th floor hotel room and let the dog out to run, so we bundled up more than thrice today, and off we went!

When we weren't walking today, we spent some time with family Hopkins Macdonnell, some time with our friends on TLC (whee, 42 channels!) and Griffin spent some time flirting with the ladies. Wherever we went today, Griffin busted out the smiles. We made friends on the elevator, friends on the sidewalk, friends on the path along the canal, and of course, friends at the pub! This wee blond is a champion charmer, and if I didn't think he'd be too busy in medical school, I think he'd make a fantastic performer. Or politician!

OK, that's it for me, I'm going to join the rest of my slumbering boys!

Sleeping habits

It's 8:30 am. Steve and I are up. Griffin and Dudley are still asleep (both in our bed.)

As Steve said: "I think we must be the only people in the world who have a dog and a baby that sleep longer than they do."

Eating Habits of the Weird and Fussy

It has come to my attention recently that we may have a few picky eaters in this house. Ok, ok...it wasn't that recent, I've kind of known about it all along.

Steve has always been a fussy eater. Whatever, I've kind of gotten over it. I'm constantly fighting his aversions, and trying to get him to try new things - we just added Mango to the safe list - how exciting!

I was hoping Griffin would escape his fathers food aversions, but it appears he too is amongst the ranks of fussy eaters. Griffin isn't a fan of veggies, in general. Unless you mix them with bananas. I think we could likely mix diesel fuel with bananas and he'd eat that too. Squash and bananas, beef and bananas, green beans and bananas, as long as it's got bananas in it, we're good to go.

We've also recently added Cheerios into Griffin's diet. He loves to sit and pick them up with his tiny (OK, huge) fingers, and methodically shove his mouth full of them. Invariably he drops about as many as he eats. Now you would think that Dudley would be all over this like a shot, but no. Dudley has decided he's too good for Cheerios. He IS a pure bread standard poodle after all (lah dee da!) Dudley took one sniff the first time an O hit the floor, and turned his back with his nose in the air. If Dudley is going to go to the trouble of eating human food, it's going to be good. He prefers things like steak (off the counter), fresh baked short bread cookies (off the counter), or hot out of the oven scallion biscuits (off Joe and Louise's counter!)

Griffin on the other hand has no aversions to floor O's. He crawls right over to the carnage under his high chair, and proceeds to clean the floor shiny clean of any thing he may have dropped earlier in the day. I support this habit, because if the dog isn't going to eat them, I'll be dammed if I'm bending over and picking up the stupid things all day long! I just call it an afternoon snack, and forget about it.

Aside from Steve's vegetable aversions, he and I are more "discerning" than "picky." Heck, I'm not picky at all. But tonight we're tossing these bad boys on the BBQ:

Here's another shot, so you can appreciate their thickness:

These are the first of THIRTY NINE steaks that we currently own. A quarter of a cow comes with a lot of steaks! (Plus 40 lbs of burger, 4 roasts, a shitload of ribs and some soup bones.) We chose to try something middle of the road for our first meal, although the meat has received glowing reviews from The Wolf and Wife, who are the proud owners of the other quarter of our half of a cow. They've got a little Montreal Steak Spice massage this morning, and the steaks and their spices have been hanging out all day getting to know eachother. Hot damn I'm looking forward to dinner! We're likely to die young and poor, but we sure won't be hungry!

Dudley's Unauthorized Dinner

Yesterday we planned to spend an entire day of doing nothing, nada, zip, as it was Steve's first official day off in lord knows how long. By 1:00 or so we were finally finished doing all the little things, and we're able to sit down and relax and watch dancing penguins on our big screen (Happy Feet is SOOO good!)

Dudley must have got into something yesterday morning while we were busily preparing to do nothing, because he wasn't feeling great. I don't know what other dogs do when they're feeling sick, but Dudley wants to eat grass. Eating grass makes him puke, and therefore makes whatever is troubling his tummy go away.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point while we were busy doing nothing, Dudley decided that he needed to eat grass. Now. Except he was inside, with no grass in sight, so he did the next best thing. He ate all the new shoots off my spider plant in the bathroom. He ate the bottom 18" or so of the Pothos I had on top of the cabinet in the living room. And. AND. AND!!!!



He ate our trees. Our happy, healthy little trees, which I have been nurturing for the past 16 months, since we gave them to our guests at OUR WEDDING. He ate our WEDDING trees!!! Our symbolic "new life together and all that jazz" trees - he just chowed down on them like they were boring old, unsymbolic shoots of grass!!! I've been taking excellent care of them, they were amost 2 feet tall, we were planning on planting them outside this spring. I know there's only a few other of these "special" trees left in existence - I know there's one at Mom's old place, and I think there's one still thriving in Huron County somewhere...and now there's 3 stumps of symbolism left in my living room.

It was enough to warrant a serious yelling at for the dog, and some tears (which doesn't happen very often!) I gave the stumps some water, some fertilizer, and a few best wishes, and hope that they can make it past this unfortunate incident and live to see another day. I'm not hopeful.

And, I'm still mad at the dog.

Diet Changes

While Griffin enjoys teething biscuits from atop the counter...

...Dudley has quickly figured out where the best place in the house is to hang out:

Everybody wins!