a whole-family update

so much has happened these past few days, not least of all:


my name is bella.

bella is a not quite 3-year-old lab we just adopted. her former family kept her outside in a nice big fenced yard, and she had a nice shed to stay in for nighttime, but the family recently had a baby and they haven't had enough time to play with her lately, so they elected to find her a new family.

enter the heids. she's a doll of a dog, and we can't wait until she gets a little more settled into her new home. our biggest obstacle right now? she's not fixed yet. we'll be fixing her very soon, but right now, she's in heat. thus:


have you ever seen such fashionable panties on a lab?

i grant you it's a temporary solution, but the heat is a temporary situation, so we'll make do! she's otherwise very sweet, albeit unused to living in a house and so needs some training. she's smart and sweet tho, so i think we'll do just fine.

in sleep news, john had been doing great, but last night was terrible. woke up at midnight and wasn't fully settled until 1 a.m. woke again at 5 a.m. and ate, then woke again at 7:00 a.m. and didn't settle until about 7:45 a.m. so mom is pretty exhausted ... oh did i mention i had a party last night for my mom's birthday, with about 25 guests? yes, the same day we adopted the dog. it was wild. but very fun. and mom had a great time, and is now en route back to maryland.

between sleep training and house training and the party, i've been chasing a puppy and listening to sobbing tears and entertaining and playing darts and somewhere in there trying to do laundry and yes visit with my husband who i feel like i've barely seen in a week ...

but i wouldn't trade a bit of it. welcome to the crazy family, miss bella.

Comments

on lullabies

i am not a singer. if you've sat behind me in church, you know this to be true. (and i'm sorry.) a musician, yes. a singer no. and yet i find myself singing to john almost nonstop. and the beauty is, he seems to actually like it! (there's no accounting for taste. he also thinks i'm the most beautiful woman in the world. i'm no ogre, but i'm certainly not winning any beauty contests outside of my son's brain!) and actually, i've written some lullabies for john that are pretty nice. and it made me think: did your parents sing to you? do you remember what they sang, and better yet, if you have kids, do you sing the same songs to them? reply in the comments!

pull up your big boy undies

"what time is it? mommy? what oclock?" john's teacher told me something amazing today. "you should bring me some big boy undies," she said, "i haven't changed john in weeks." it seems that at school, since they check in with him periodically to see if he has to potty, and since his very smart teacher has noticed his (very regular) bowel movement schedule, john is potty trained. at 9am at 2pm, she plops him on the toilet. he might sit for 20 minutes, reading a book. when she checks on him, he says, "i just poo-pooin', miss meka." and when he's done, he's good and done. we're not quite that far along at home, but tonight we go shopping for big boy undies. and i'm sure we'll have a few accidents, but that's just a part of the process ... and soon my little boo will be in big boy undies full time. and ... it's a great time for him to be out of diapers. because good lord willing and the creek ...

i'm furberizing my baby

ok, let's get this straight right off the bat: i don't know if i am literally following dr. furber's methods of sleep training. there are so many versions out there. but saying we're furberizing john is WAY more fun than saying that i'm letting him cry his little lungs out in an attempt to teach him to sleep on his own. it's night two of our efforts. he went right to sleep last night, which was great. and he slept for 5.25 hours (!!!!) before waking up at 2:30 a.m. when he woke up crying, i let him cry for 5 minutes before going in to soothe him. (the soothing barely works at all, by the way, but it's what i'm supposed to do ...) then i let him cry for 10 more minutes before going in to soothe him again. next on the agenda was a 15 minute stretch of crying - but he fell asleep after 8 minutes. so a sum total of 22 minutes of crying. not too bad for night two. i've heard night three can be the worst ... so we'll hold on to our hats tonight. mean...

john's mom works

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