Friday, December 11, 2009

Puppies and Babies

A recent conversation with a friend who got a dog a few weeks after Oliver was born prompted this memory...

2 Years ago, we bought a 6 week old little boy dog named Chester. The baby Australian Shepherd was so rambunctious yet cuddly, and made our old dog, Shadow, find her puppiness again as she tried her best at 12 years old, to keep up with him -- it took all WE had to keep up with him! Although it only took about 2 1/2 weeks to have him completely housebroken, it was a long 2 1/2 weeks, what with keeping an eye on him at all times, waiting for that tell-tale sign of needing to pee, day and night...watching even closer after every meal or sip of water. Being sleep-deprived by letting him sleep on our too-high-to-jump-off-of-bed so he would wake me up to go out. Even after the potty training, buying special puppy food and trying to stop Shadow from eating it all - she was convinced the tasty, high protein puppy chow was better than the old-lady-high-fiber-chow; yet for all my watching and scolding, she still gained a good 5 pounds that first month... We couldn't be gone for more than 2 hours at a time because SOMEONE'S bladder wasn't strong enough to last much longer than that, Chester. ;) Finding the time to walk him several times a day and trying to teach a shepherd to catch and retreive a frisbee instead of corralling it, was quite a challenge. All the training, or bribing rather, for simple commands like "sit," "shake," "down," "drop," "stop chewing on that," "STOP CHEWING ON THAT," and "use your inside voice." (Yeah, anyone who knows Chester knows that command is an utter failure), to help mold our dog into the now goofball family member he has become.

At the time I was 3 months pregnant and thought, wow, this is a lot like what having a baby will be like!

I am wiser now.
One day my friend will be too :)

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Wow! It's been so long since I've updated the blog!! My sweet little velcro baby doesn't really let me do much, but he now is ok watching me check email for about 5 minutes at a time, I'll take it!! So, I think Oliver may be teething...WHAT?!? Yes, he's 3 1/2 months old now, and it's freaking me out. In a bad way. When he has teeth, he's officially not a baby anymore! :( He's already not an infant, and now he won't even be a baby! (to me anyway, his age tells another story)

I had a dream the other night that I woke up and Oliver had a little tooth that had come out about half way. I just started bawling. I woke up in real life, and was so scared to look in his mouth! Thankfully, no teeth yet. Just lots and lots of drool. and Tylenol. and teething rings. So, they make teething rings to freeze, cool, microwave, vibrate, textured, smooth, anything you can think of, it's out there! Oliver LOVES the frozen one (but it makes him drool like crazy) and likes to just sit with his gums on the vibrating one until he screams in what I assume is pain from the vibrating that originally felt good but got to be too much? I don't know, but it's a little sad and exciting to see my little man growing up so fast.

I haven't been able to take as many pictures as I want in the past few weeks, so here are a few I took today. I can't get enough pictures of him - he's just growing like a weed! I'm really excited for my family to see him over Christmas. They haven't seen him since he was born, and then he was in the NICU so they couldn't really hold him or anything. So the holiday season should be a lot of fun, his first Christmas! Ok ok, I'll post the pictures already :)






He's so adorable! I love his different expressions - he's quickly showing me his amazing personality, I love it!