To Be..

Overnight a friend had a family emergency. It's really only a jumping point for me (so read about it here if you want to) when I realized that I am happy she had so many people ready to help her. It means I have nice, kind friends who people fall over willing to help. I have friends that would do the same in an emergency as well. I don't have many that consider *me* that close. I guess I should consider it a benefit, I don't get asked to help with things that may be unsavory. I guess, in a lot of ways, this is why I like puppies. You feel like you can make them happy. You can DO something for them. You can change their bad behavior. You can DO things with dogs and puppies and they make you feel appreciated, loved, needed, wanted. There's never that question of motive with puppies. If you treat them well, they reward you with unfailing loyalty.

The good news is Rosie is making fantastic training progress for being 10 weeks. She sits, drops, comes, come in, go out, get off. We'll get her second set of shots and then be able to start her formal training in a class. 

I suspect she's stronger willed than we've given her credit for. I was going to crate train her this week. The first 2 nights she howled, yelped, barked, and cried for no less than 8 hours. Yes. 8 hours. She was in there 8 1/2 . I swear she barely paused to breath. I checked her several times. She was fine, just loud. The next night? 6. Really?? But, she really is just so cute and loving. I really do like her.

The bad news is the kids have been rancorous monsters this week. No, not the "ahhhh my kids are sooo bad, they left their shoes on a chair." I mean poop smeared on the walls, paint made into barf bombs, screws undone out of windows kind of naughty.

I keep threatening to trade the kids in for puppies. I would never do that, but somedays it would be such an easier option. In addition to the creative process gone awry, the sassy smack talk is ridiculous. To keep as straight face while an 8 year old boy sasses like a 14 year old girl is just HARD.

What a Weekend..

This weekend was wicked. Both kids have been puny. The animals have been wacky. It's the first day of Autumn.

Morely:

Monroe is *probably* in heat and we've had to separate her and her Adams which is turning out to be a very loud (ie they are barking in their sadness) endeavor. We do NOT want puppies right now - we are aiming for spring - so a necessary task.We've had to completely rearrange ALL the birds. They are currently all in the front chicken yard now, Adams is in the water fowl yard with Lambie, and Monroe is in the dog yard (since the inside dogs are both fixed). It's not ideal, but doable for the couple of weeks to make sure we don't have more babies right now.

We discovered about 5-6 ingrown pieces of rock/gravel/dirt/goo in The Boy's belly button that I had to physically remove with tweezers and actually DIG, dig out. It was NASTY. Only to find out he had *never* ever washed his belly button. Ewwwwww. Actually ingrown into the skin folds inside his belly button. I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to dig them all out. What an embarrassing thing to go to the doctor for! We had a lesson on how to bathe as well.

I got some fascinating news via Facebook that made me feel really fantastic about myself and my life choices as a person. I do enjoy watching other people's train wreck life choices to realize I am no longer required to be part of them. Ahh schadenfreude..

Both kids have been running a low grade fever for about 4 days now. I'm fairly sure it's just a long virus since my mom had the exact same darned thing and decided it was "an allergic reaction to the flu shot", but it's still no fun since they're super grouchy.

I managed to finally get some pictures taken of the kids.

I've been behind this year on pictures and they were both good sports about posing for me.