Parenthood Lite

Random ways having our dog is training for having children, in no particular order:

1)  Whatever you are doing, there must be room for sitting in your lap and perhaps napping there, no matter how awkward it may be to continue or finish whatever activity you were doing in the first place.

2)  She has socialization therapy (aka "Puppy Playtime) twice a week.  Inevitably, one of those times is Saturday afternoon when everything else happens.  Reorganize your schedule accordingly.

3)  Once she starts co-sleeping, good luck getting her to sleep alone in her own bed.

4)  When she wants to play, she asks nicely with a tap on the leg or a nose-nuzzle to the ankle.  When you ignore her, she resorts to growling, whining, groaning, and the tantrum dance.  If you are staring at the laptop, she will make annoying noises or just smack you in the face.

5)  She is very specific about the toys she wants to play with at any given time, and how the game will be played.  She manages to communicate this fairly well without words.

6)  She never picks up her toys.

7)  She enjoys destroying her toys.

8)  We now handle poop multiple times on a daily basis.

7)  On bad days, we also handle vomit.

8)  You never again leave the house without the appropriate supplies to handle a public poop.

9)  Other parents give you compliments about how beautiful she is, although neither of you had anything to do with it.

10)  Errands and outings are structured as much as possible around nap-time.

11)  There is always a load of stinky puppy pads to be laundered.

12)  "Doggie radar" is running 24/7 in the back of your mind, making it hard to focus like you used to.  When things are very quiet, it is generally a bad sign.

13)  Six times out of ten, you need to take something out of her mouth.


                                   . . . to be continued.

Life Happens

Contrary to all indications to the contrary, the blog has not died.

Christmas was so swamped with projects and commissions that we didn't even decorate, which is a first for me.  The only thing we did put out was the Advent wreath, and it's still out.

After all the chaos died down, we realized I had accidently turned up pregnant.  January crawled by in a haze of relentless morning (and noon and evening) sickness, finally resolving itself in one distinct bleeding episode and two weeks of blood tests and cryptic ultrasounds.  Eventually it was determined that I had miscarried very early but that the placenta was alive and well and determined to make me sick indefinitely.  A D&C was successfully completed yesterday afternoon.

That is basically what has been consuming our lives.  My OBGYN group wants to finally do some follow-up to try to pinpoint what the problem is, but frankly I can't be bothered to care anymore.  I really don't care.  If I could have my way, I would never be pregnant again.  I'll humor the doctors for a while, but if they want me to do months and months of charting and testing and injections and procedures, I'm going to beg off.  I'm not going to cross state lines; I'm not going to invest excessive amounts of time or money.  I refuse to let the best years of my life be consumed by wasted efforts to make my decrepit reproductive system function normally.  Life is too short for that much pointless vomit.  Hope is dead.  Hope makes us miserable.  We're done.  We've accepted it.  Now, let's adopt some kids and get on with our lives.  Finito.

Florian Casimir
January, 2014
5-6 weeks

Andy, Raw Food, and Transitional Motherhood

Sampling the goods.

I've decided to finally ditch the kibble and put Andy on a raw diet.  The recipe I found uses raw hamburger, cooked rice and boiled eggs (shells on).  She has recently discovered that she LOVES boiled eggs, so much so that we probably should have named her Joanna.

Anyhow, the first batch is done, packaged, dated and in the freezer, awaiting it's 14-day parasite quarantine.  I'll have to find a real thermometer to be sure it's at least -4F in there.

But I digress.  She costs a fortune, but having Andy around finally seems worth the trouble.  Rationally, we knew the puppy phase wouldn't last forever, and that ultimately it was about investing the time and resources necessary to have exactly the dog we wanted around for 10+ years.  

But despite the fact that we just really wanted a dog, and that she just makes us happy, it was the nearest thing to having kids we could manage at the moment.  It's almost like being a real family, not just emotionally but practically.

We tell our friends we got a dog for "practice" before having children.  Some laugh it off, but others who have infants and toddlers of various ages dismiss the idea out of hand.  "Pets are NOTHING like kids," they say.  "It's completely different."  Well, that may be so, but there are several important transitions which pet ownership has in common with parenthood, fundamental transitions which many young families may have forgotten about by now.

We planned on having kids right away.  Clearly that didn't happen, and that's a story for another post.  Now, four years later, we were actually quite comfortable in our childless existence, being able to go where we wanted to go and do what we wanted to do whenever we wanted.  Romantic evenings alone were the rule rather than the exception.  We could go see movies, take trips, and had a very flexible schedule.  Dave had his work and his books, I had my crafts and hobbies, and we managed to occupy all our time.

The master plan for most of the last four years was to look into adopting a few kids once we were settled and debt-free.  By our original schedule, we were set to begin that process in a year or so.  But despite all the financial preparation, we were in no way psychologically prepared.  That's where the dog comes in.

We committed to getting a dog, a very specific kind of dog, a small poodle or doodle suited for apartment life and the real possibility of getting kids with allergies.  Dog acquired.  Happiness shall follow, right?

Not so much.  We were first acutely aware of our lost freedom.  We couldn't go anywhere for very long and had to be back at a certain time.  We had to stick to a schedule.  Somebody besides me needed to be cleaned up and fed in the morning.  Somebody else needed her laundry done.  There was no more sleeping in.  Everything was a choking hazard.  There was much more unpredictable excrement and bodily fluid.  Parents, does this sound familiar?

Personally, I was already swamped.  I was trying to redesign the apartment and start a business, I had a long list of backorders for Christmas stockings and was working an early-morning part-time job.  Cooking and housekeeping had been forgotten long ago.  Now I was following a three-month-old puppy around the house, fishing her out from behind the furniture, designing makeshift barricades, and generally spending my entire waking life doubled over picking crap up off the floor, literal and otherwise.

Many times I considered - sometimes as long as a few seconds - getting rid of the puppy.  She was clearly a mistake, a lapse in judgment, and we would all be better off without such an expensive distraction.  But each time I realized that if I couldn't cope with a puppy now, I would stand no chance coping with toddlers later.  At least I could put the puppy in her crate when I needed some space.

Now, on the other side of puppyhood and house-breaking, we've achieved a very harmonious existence.  We still don't have our freedom back, but that isn't as big a deal as it used to be.  Sometimes she walks off her potty pad before the poo falls where it should, and she howls and cries bloody murder from the other room whenever she detects any marital romance, but we're glad to have her.

Overall, I think we're better prepared than we were before.