You know ...

Things are not going well when you change your three year olds #2 diaper using half a pack of diaper wipes to control the explosive, highly toxic waste which was just freshly produced with one hand while the other hand is fighting off the puppy who is eagerly trying to get into that scrumptious diaper and have himself a little after-noon snack ...th

OMG (yes, I am talking "text"). It is unbelievable!!! I find myself running after this little, cute, adorable, loving, tail wagging, wild Tasmanian Devil all day pulling every toy, household item, piece of clothing or garbage that he can find out of his mouth. It goes like this ALL DAY!
After dinner I had noticed that he was absent while I gave the Ls a bath ... I found him ... ON THE KITCHEN TABLE eating Lulu's left-over dinner. Every time I turn around I see him running by with something in his mouth. Lulu's comforter (which is about 10 times his size), her pillow (she sleeps on the bunk on the bottom ... nicely accessible for little puppies). I run after him pulling one item out and while I inspect it for possible damage I see him running by with a new thing ... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

He is just a baby and doesn't know any better. Everything is a toy and when I stare in shock at him while he licks Lulu's plate clean he starts wagging his tail, sticks out his tongue and looks at me like "Want to play now? Yes, yes ... want to?".
Little Mr. Edgar already knows when it's time to pick up L from school and sits in her car seat waiting for the moment when she opens her door and he gets to lick her all over. Those two are so cute. Lillie used to wake up, come running into my arms and snuggle for a while, now she comes running out looking for Eddie, calling his name. They are best buds ... just like we had hoped.
Patrick is completely in love with him; finally somebody that doesn't bark at him when he comes home but rather wags his tail 20 mph fast because he is so happy to see him. He loves playing with him and thinks Eddie is the smartest dog ever. Something he never said about my Willie ... but I know deep-down he felt it :)

We all love him to pieces. He is so much fun and so very loving. He is an awesome addition to the family and has been the topic of many of my posts already. We couldn't have painted a better match for us but ...

I don't think I am going to survive this one. This is CRAZY!!!

Holly Smokes ... it happened!!!

the BIG moment

Lulu blew us away today! She got up from her nap and told us: 

"Mama we need to send my ba-ba and noo-noo to babay Carter." 

Noo-noo is ... well was her binkie and ba-ba was her bottle. We didn't even think twice or gave her a chance to think about what she had just said. I ripped out a box, Lillie made an address label and ... 

well here is the story in pics ... crazy!!!

 I am ready mama!!!

Bye-bye baba

 Lulu kissing noo-noo good-bye

One last hug.

Off it goes to baby Carter (our little baby cousin in Canada). Auntie Suzy; you better come up with a good explanation of where ba-ba and noo-noo are when we come up in the summer :) :) :)

For the mail-man

Big hug for a BIG girl 

Of course we had to go out and celebrate this big day. 

The Ls got dressed up and ready to go ...

Ready!!!

A stop at Target to pick up a BIG girl toy for sharing her noo-noo and ba-ba

This is the ONE!!! ... it had to be  another Barbie ... much to my "delight"

Off to grab some FANCY dinner at Fresh Choice ... always a good choice when you have two little ones 5 and under

Papa let them choose desert ... BIG mistake!!!

I think there was a some whipped cream under the mountain of sugar ...

The better choice ... a cone full of whipped up sugar

It was a fun celebration!

She had a bit of a hard time going to bed and I am sure we'll have some rough days coming up but luckily this time the "noo-noo fairy" took the binkies for good and didn't leave them as a memorabilia with Mama. 

No chance for me to break down and give it back to her ... this time it's for real. 

NOOOO ... my baby is growing up!!! 

I am not sure I am ready for it but as Patrick said "She is and will always be the baby, no matter how old she'll be."

 I  am so proud of my little girl. This time it was her idea and somehow I think she is ready. 

A weekend with Papa

Weekends are the best! 

For one thing Patrick is home and I can dump the kids and everything else on him. 

This is how our weekend started ... picture perfect!  

I am 150 % sure that my girls have the best father in the entire world. 

Not only does he let them do this to him but he also let's me post it ...

a little more on the chinny-chin-chin

Ringo Star watch out here comes our Papa Star

LOVE the hair!!!

After he got all beautified we went to watch him play hockey. 

Patrick usually plays in the middle of the night but this weekend we were lucky and got to see him in action (good, I was beginning to think "hockey" was a nick name for some blondie :)

Our Goalie

Bring it on!!!

THE Fans!!!

They were cheering BIG TIME!!!

Here are the L' commentaries of the game:

Lillie: What world is papa playing for? (She thinks that every team plays for a country which she calls world)

Lulu: All the other kids got the puck. Thats not nice, now Papa can't play with it.(the kids are 25 and over :)

Lillie: The boy got hit, did he loose his tooth? Is the tooth fairy going to come now?

Lillie: Uncle Clay got a time out Lulu cause he wasn't sharing the puck, he was naughty. We'll have to talk to him about that.

A good old case of Slipper-Indigestion

I should have known ... OH Eddie!!!


I am not doing so well with emergency vet visits. The Ls were worried that I wouldn't bring Eddie back home and I had flash-backs of three weeks ago ... We had the same "fill-in-vet" who did Will's biopsy (which I am convinced triggered this fast progressing stage he was in). Needles to say I am not a big fan of hers. Nor is Eddie, he growled at her ... he has never growled at anybody that I know. It must be intuition. And then this woman has the atrocity to say "Oh wow, you got a new dog, that was quick." 
I thought to myself: "well if you "Lady" wouldn't have poked my Willie and caused him unnecessary pain and irritation maybe things would have gone differently."
I know there was nothing they could have done for Willie but maybe we would have had a little more time with him, just a few more days to hang with him, pet him, smell him and just look into his wonderful, loving eyes and hear the relieved sigh when he put his head on your lap. Just a few more days would have been nice! Because we all miss him so very much! But who knows,  everything happens for a reason, right! 


What is it with people making me feel like I am a cheating widow. We had hurting hearts, red eyes, an empty dog bed and food bowls. And there was Eddie next door in an empty room, locked away with nobody to care for him. For me that looks like a match-made-in heaven (probably by Willie himself!!!). 


Yes, this is our new dog and we love him just like we did Willie. He makes us happy, and we make him feel loved. And we play with him, and we feed him (every day not every 4 days or so like before he came to us), and we bathe him, and snuggle him, and we take him to the vet when he needs care, and we take him for walks, and he goes to bed with my daughters, and he picks up L from school and jumps right onto her lap and she smiles like there is nothing better in this world.  And when I go and sit at my Willie Tree and I can feel my eyes fill up with tears I turn around and this little, cute face, carrying a stuffed goose stares at me saying "want to play mommy?" and ... and  ... and ...
So yes we got a new dog really fast and it was the best thing we could have ever done!!!


And now here we are with Mr. Edgar who is pooping rubber pieces right in front of the check-out desk at the vet's office after a howling rectal exam (I was not present for this occasion ... I got to wait in the front room).
Diagnosis .... slipper-indigestion. Apparently some dogs like to swallow everything they chew on and apparently our dog is one of those. I sure hope this poop felt good because I paid for it ... next time we'll give him prune juice instead. 


He is all snuggled up on the couch, looking like he went through hell in that back-exam-room. He'll probably have nightmares about it for a few days. Poor little man, thank god he has no clue about what they are going to do to him next week ... schnipp-schnapp "bum-balls" up!!!


Well I am off to go and see what other wonderful surprises this day will bing, it can only get better from here!!!

Off to the vet

... flash-back .... NOOOO!!! I hate having to rush your little waggy tail to the vet ... it's not been a good experience lately. Our poor Eddie is not feeling well. His tummy sounds like a tornado is racing through it and he is shaking up a storm. :(
So off we go to see out Vet. Maybe we should ask for our own room there ... we use it often enough.
I hope it's just a bug. Poor baby Eddie is looking very sad today.

... more later

The dog ate my homework

... would be a sentence that could be very well used in our house right now and the Ls would totally get away with it because it's so 100% believable. Luckily they don't have homework yet and god help me if he still eats the entire house by the time they do have some ...
I called him the energizer bunny a little while ago; I take that back ... he is like an energizer bunny on steroids.

If you would like to know how it is to lose a pair of brand new slippers every day, have your furniture chewed apart, every piece of clothing be the object of your dogs LOVING affection and get a run-by-licking while he chases the poor cat for the 100th time through the house, be my guest ... literally.
Currently he is trying to hide his half-eaten "Chewnola" (what a clever name) between my couch pillows. Yesterday I found it under my comforter after it had been hidden in the garden for a few hours during the rain .... what a muddy surprise.  It's supposed to give your dog hours of fun and distraction ... it's more like 15 minutes for Eddie.
I wonder if there is such a thing as puppy-shake syndrome? He shakes his head so violently when he tries to tear the slippers apart, it's like a washing machine on the super-spin circle. That can't be healthy. Maybe this is the reason why he still fights with his leash every time we take him for a walk. He looks like he is fighting a huge boa constrictor every time we put that thing on.

On my shopping list for today were "No More Marking" stain and oder remover with natural repellent, "Puppy Aid" which "trains" puppies where to urinate and "Bitter Apple" a taste deterrent.  He LOVES the Bitter Apple! It must give the wood of the Ls rocking chairs a smoother taste. Here is another $10 completely wasted. But I may try the Puppy Aid on Lulu, maybe it'll help with the potty training which is not going so well so far.

Tonight was bath night. He was so stinky that when I sat in the car I could smell him all over my clothes. Half way though the bath (which was more a fight to keep him in the sink and soaked me from head to toe) I thought "hm ... this dog shampoo doesn't smell like Coconut at all, like it's supposed to? Strange!" then I realized that I used my Trader Joe's Vegetable wash instead. I am happy to say that my dog is now pesticide, wax and chemical free.

L has been such a good "puppy-buddy-helper" as she calls her new position. She feeds him (WAY too much), plays with him and walks him every day without complaining. She looks so cute when she walks him. He pulls her all the way around the block, imagine me walking a bull-mastiff  .... except for that Eddie is only10 lbs :) They are best buddies and she loves having him as HER puppy as she proclaims.

I make it sound worse than it is I guess. He is a really good, cute, little man. He has such a sweet face and nothing but love and ENERGY in him. We just had no clue what we were getting ourselves into when we said "lets keep this puppy". No clue at all!!!

It almost feels like when we added Lulu to the clan. We thought we have one child and do fine, how much more work can a second be. We realized how wrong we were about an hour after we got home from the hospital. The next 6 months were hell. Lillie was super good and besides hating me for the next two weeks after we brought Lulu home and telling us "Lucy go home" every day she was quite a trooper. I told her we had a $100 copy for the delivery so we had to keep her. Lulu was the easiest baby, except for the reflux issue, the part where she'd scream bloody hell every time we strapped her into the car seat and the nursing issue which turned into a bottle feeding issue. You had to sit a certain way, she had to be held a certain way, the bottle had to be held a certain way and she always preferred Patrick to bottle feed her which was a huge issue since he had to go to work EVEY day and I was left with a hungry, screaming, acid reflux pain stricken baby and her little sister who now hated me.

Now we are right back to this point but we have been there... done that and survived it before. This too shall pass. At the end of the day we have two happy little girls and a cute and hopefully soon tired little puppy to make us smile even though the rest of our current life and house is a complete chaos.

Lillie's comment of the day

L: Mama back in the old days did you have fur all over too?
M: No Lillie that was way before my time.
L: Oh so like had GP fur all over?
M: No, that was even before GP.
L: Yes, because GP doesn't have much fur on his head.