A note from Truman

Being the dog of the house isn't easy these days. When the "visitor" first arrived, he just stayed in Mom or Dad's lap. He'd make noise, then would go to sleep.

He seemed sweet enough. We would all lay on the couch - my couch - like one big happy pack. And as long as I didn't try to give him a bath, we were all cool.

Then the little guy started getting grabby. He grabs my ears. My face and tries to grab my really short hair and pull. For a little guy he has quite a grip!

Now, he's moving around. He bugs me when I'm napping on the couch. He bugs me when I'm napping on the floor. All the time! He tries to smack me with his toys. And what's worse, he even tries to steal my bone. Mom and Dad are so strict with me when it comes to his toys, but they let him grab my bone all the time! How's that fair? At least they take it away from him when I want it or when he tries to chew on it.

The video below shows how he pesters me. I just want to sleep and he's trying to smack me with one of his toys. Mom tells him to "be nice." I wonder if she thought it was nice when he got her with that toy, too?

I've even had my collar taken away. I've been naked for the past 4 months! Yesterday, Mom put it on me to go for a walk around the neighborhood. We haven't done that in a long time. Mom and Dad said something about it being too cold. I don't know what cold means, but it's been terrible outside. There are huge piles of cold, white stuff blocking all of my favorite pee spots. Plus, I shake like crazy out there. I can barely feel my paws when I come in. Anyway, yesterday on the walk, the white stuff was everywhere. Mom kept griping about having to pick up the rolling thing the little person was in and carry it over all the white stuff.

When we got home, I was tired and Mom left my collar on me... until the little person started grabbing it and pulling it. I was good. I didn't knock him over like I wanted to. I tried to pull away, but his grip is SO STRONG! So, Mom pulled my collar off and put it away. Who knows when I'll get to wear it again?

He bugs my buddy, Frankie, too. He grabs his tail, pulls pawfulls of fur and even grabbed his whiskers once! Mom and Dad are pretty quick to make him stop, but I can't believe Frankie hasn't swatted him with his sharp claws. He's the biggest grump in the whole pack and even he gives him a free pass. If I try to play with him, he smacks me. Again, I don't know why this little person gets special treatment, but he seems to be pretty cute. And, when he isn't bugging me, or stealing my stuff, he's not so bad. I guess he isn't a visitor, but the newest member of our pack. That means, I'm going to have to put up with him.

Observations on Baby Poop

Based on our own experience, as well as the inputs of several friends and family, new parents are hyper aware of everything. When Evan came home from the hospital, he came with a chart to record the number of times he peed and pooped. We diligently filled out this chart for the first few weeks, and have been keeping tabs ever since.

Perhaps one of the nicest things Mother Nature does for new parents is easing us into the messy diaper process. Newborn "stools" don't really smell and really aren't anything significant. But as you ease your baby into new foods, you start seeing first-hand the results. And, as your baby progresses into more complex foods, their diapers equally go up the hazardous waste charts.

You go from, "Oh, this isn't a bad one," to "Note-to-self-NEVER-feed-THAT-to-him-again." (See Brian's post "Prunes = YUCK!")

You also learn what to expect for the day based on what you uncover in that first morning diaper. Today, for instance, Evan had what Brian and I call "the pancake poop" in his diaper this morning when I got him up. This is a very easy diaper to clean up, but usually a warning sign of what is to come later.

Sure enough, later this morning, after E took his morning bottle, I smelled something pretty funky. I scooped him up and took him into his room and it was the dreaded "diaper-full-thank-God-in-Heaven-this-didn't-leak-out" poop. And I knew it was going to be like that when I picked him up.

Busy Busy!

It's been a busy past couple months and I'm glad Linda updated any readers we have, or may have left. This poor blog has been neglected too long. When we aren't busy, I just have no energy to post anything. Most days I'm chasing this very curious 8 month old boy around the house...seems he wants to get into everything he's not supposed to...

It's been a busy past couple months with all the running around, holidays and top that off with several doctors appointments both for Evan and for us. He got a cold right before Thanksgiving, then again right after Christmas that turned into a respiratory infection. He's still getting over that. I had taken him into see the doctor New Year's Eve and saw another doctor in our pediatrician's practice. He was concerned with his "barking" cough. He didn't exactly diagnose him with croup, but only said it sounded "croupy". He put him on prednisolone to help him kick the cough. It's sounded much better over the past couple days.

On top of Evan's sicknesses, Linda & I have both battled crap. I came down with strep throat last week...I hadn't had strep since I was in maybe middle school! Linda came down with tonsillitis then right after I got over strep. I'm hoping all this crap passes soon!

All in all, though, Evan had a great first Christmas! I can't wait to see what 2011 has in store for us. Happy New Year to all of you! Below is a video of Evan dancing to South Park's "Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo"...a bit late, I know, but hopefully you'll get some laughs out of it. I've been meaning to put this up for some time now, I laughed so hard I was in tears when I saw it! Maybe that is just me? I recorded it maybe a month ago... Enjoy!

Frankie vs. the Family

We have a psycho cat. His name is Frankie. Frankie is a high-maintenance diva and wants things done his way. He is the feline version of Stewie from Family Guy and tries to kill me on an almost daily basis.

We have a sweet bulldog, Truman, who isn't so great at figuring out things. He's not dumb, he just can't outsmart the evil genius cat.

Pre-Evan, the second bedroom in our condo was the guest room and, when unoccupied, was Frankie's room. Well, once we found out Evan was on his way, we reclaimed the guest room and forbid Frankie from going in there. Plus, we took away his bed. This led to a few weeks of waking up each morning with a "present" laying outside of the litter box. Frank's way of letting us know how much he appreciated being evicted from his favorite afternoon napping spot.

After a fairly rough week with Evan - he had been battling a cold and a blocked tear duct again - he was back to sleeping through the night. Saturday morning, I woke briefly at 6:00 am and went back to sleep. Remember the saying, "Sleep when the baby sleeps?" This mostly applies to opportunities to sleep in on Saturday morning.

Truman sleeps in bed with us and is always the vigilant protector of the house. Any strange noises are scared away by a fierce growling and wuffing. Truman also is a fan of sleeping in and frequent naps.

Well, Frankie does not believe in sleeping in. He believes he is entitled to our room after 7 am and does everything he can to wake us up and get us moving out of the room so he can take it over. He use to come in and just yap - loudly. But after being nailed a couple of times with a swiftly thrown slipper, he changed tactics.

Now, he sits on the outside of the bedroom door and scratches on it - even though it is never fully closed or latched. This scratching wakes up Truman who gets upset and starts barking, which wakes everyone else up - including Evan. So, we all get up and start our day.

In retaliation, I am considering shutting the door behind us on our way out so the cat can't go in there. However, this will likely lead to more "presents" on the floor, so I am conceding victory for now. Damn cat.

The Rookie and The Natural

First, apologies for not writing in FOREVER. I don't have any real good excuse. I just didn't feel like writing and didn't really have anything I thought was relevant enough to share.

Well, Evan is starting to move. He is successfully army crawling now and just a big ol' wiggle worm in general. Over the weekend, I was trying to clean up a catastrophically bad diaper. But Evan is very much in explore-and-see-and-touch-and-crawl-and-move every chance he gets mode. Every time I laid him down on the changing table he would flip over and try to dive off. I had to use the straps to restrain him, but that just kept him from rolling off the table.

He's also teething. He's waking up several times a night and Brian and I are both exhausted as we have not had to build up an immunity to nights of interrupted sleep yet. I know, Evan has spoiled us. And we both have been battling colds.

So, I'm getting very frustrated. You have to pin the shoulders down. If the shoulders turn, the whole body turns. But you can't change an EPA Superfund Site, hazardous waste zone of a diaper with one hand. I thought, maybe this is a learning opportunity. Evan needs to learn the word "no." He didn't. So we fought and wrestled all day on Saturday and all day on Sunday when it came time to change the diapers, leaving us both frustrated and irritated.

I came home from work on Monday and Brian was changing Evan. He was not fighting or wrestling with him - and Evan was laying perfectly still and happy on his back. No wiggling. No protesting. He was a perfect little angel boy.

Brian gave him a toy to play with while changing him. Distraction vs. Command and Control. So simple. But this just goes to show that while I am learning how to be a parent, Brian seems to be a natural. Good thing one of us is!

But he is also your typical Dad who is proud of his boy for things that Moms would not be proud of. For example. When I was wrestling with Evan and trying to get him cleaned up, I had him uncovered for far too long. I heard a bzzzzzzz noise and looked up from the poop. He was peeing. The pee flew through the air a good 3 feet and was bouncing off his bedroom door. When Brian returned home later that night, I told him about the fiasco and he held up Evan, impressed with his long-distance peeing capabilities and said, "Good job, Buddy!"

Boys.

While traveling for work last week, Brian sent me a picture. It's a group shot of all my favorite fellas.

Things I worry about...

Those of you who know Brian and I, you know we have a dark sense of humor as well as a pretty unsophisticated sense of humor - we laugh at fart jokes. So, if you are easily offended, I recommend you stop reading and just go browse somewhere else.

A few nights ago, we were sitting on the front porch after putting Evan to bed. Brian started browsing through The Onion and found this:




We laughed hysterically and then prayed, "Dear Lord, please don't let this be our son."