Introducing...

Ryder!

His full name is Ryder, Sir Snuggles of Our Silly Named St, The House Sociology, First of his Name, Protector of Small Loud Humans, Sweeper of the Crumbs and All Around Good Boy.

 

Also known as our 11 month Boston Terrier/lab mix (mutt!) from the Boston Terrier Rescue Group of NC (link below).

All of us with full vocabularies got some part of what we wanted:

Girl 1 wanted another Boston: 

Boston (mix aka mutt) ✔

Dr Soc wanted a puppy:

11 months < year = puppy ✔

And I was adamant* we rescue or adopt

 * I was also adamant I would never get another puppy yet here we are so... 

I loves him! Thanks BTRNC ✔

89% of me loves him so so much

1% will always miss the girls over the rainbow bridge  

and 10% of me can't believe I got suckered into another puppy! 

Oh well! Welcome to the family Ryder!

Jules

Jules crossed the rainbow bridge yesterday. She turned 13 in April but had started limping the beginning of the year and was starting to show her age. Last week she stopped eating and then suddenly it was time to let her go. When Bailey died she hadn’t been with us for several years, plus I wasn't the one who had to make the end of life decision. With 2 very noisy kids and their stuff everywhere you might not think our small quiet dog being gone would have such an effect, but wow, does it. I mean, we have crumbs now. Innocuous right? But no, all those seemingly innocuous things...hits hard. Without Jules now it feels...lonely. 

But what a good girl she was! Some of the best moments:

her blog debut

laser eyes

wow could these 2 mayhem!

though she did eat some of my best pregnancy snacks

She was so good with the human babies:

will snarf for foods

Jules: nothing to see here human. Jules got this 

girl 2: mommy! we have a dog!?!
Jules: drop those cheerios bald puppy

and by far the best broom we've ever had

whatever you have I want

strolling through her neighborhood

Sun on my belly, 'dis the life!

yard✔ sunshine✔ toy✔

you no dad lap...but you only lap here...so...

'dis my human! (both with more hair but less gray ones) 

beach please!

teenager Jules: ugh, go away human and leave me with my toy 

I batman bitch

Dear Jules, you are missed. Thank you for loving us silly humans and tolerating the little loud ones we brought in your house. Frolic happy spunky girl. And rest in peace sweet pup. 

Goodbye Bailey

My first dog Bailey crossed the Rainbow Bridge Thursday morning. 

She was almost 12 and had the best life a best friend could have had. She had a tumor in her nose and it spread to her brain or a clot paralyzed her back legs, so her wonderful family let her go and were kind enough to let me know.

I wrote Bailey this goodbye (even though she couldn't read or spell 😊) when she got her 2nd family in 2013, so here it is again for her forever goodbye. 

From the Muppets take Manhattan

Saying goodbye, going away

Seems like goodbye's such a hard thing to say.

Touching a hand paw, wondering why

It's time for saying goodbye

Saying goodbye, why is it sad?

Makes us remember the good times we've had

Much more to say, foolish to try

 It's time for saying goodbye

Don't want to leave, but we both know

Sometimes it's better to go

Somehow I know we'll meet again


Not sure quite where, and I don't know just when

You're in my heart, so until then

Wanna smile, 

Wanna cry

Saying goodbye

La la la, la la la la la

It's time for saying goodbye

Goodbye my dearest, dearest Bailey. Thank you for being my best friend the past 6 years. Thank you for your unconditional love, fierce loyalty and unwavering support. I'll never forget you and I will always miss you. I know you'll love and take care of your new family as much as you did me.  

I love you, forever. Goodbye my Bailey. Goodbye.

I took care of them Momma! Thank you for doubling my family! 

I love you too Momma. I love you too.

Goodbye Bailey. Giving you up made my heart heavy, but you lightened it by how happy you made all of us. Your family doubled in awesomeness and you made them so, so happy just by being you. Thank you for taking care of and fiercely loving us humans.   

Rest In Peace my sweet puppy.

My Little Pony

So girl 1 is all about My Little Pony at the moment. In the spirit of full disclosure I totally love watching it with her and we sing the whole theme song together. Plus Pinkie Pie is my spirit pony - true fact. Anyway. I was zipping her into her purple jacket and asked:

me: Honey do you want to be Twilight Sparkle for Halloween this year?
girl 1: YES!!!!!
me: Okay sweetie, mommy will make your costume.
girl 1: Oh thank you mommy! You will be Pinkie Pie. And Daddy Apple Jack!
me:  Okay darling.
--I think of the baby's wardrobe and know we have all white for her--
me: Your sister can be Rarity. 
girl 1: Okay! And Jules can be Rainbow Dash!

So it was decreed. Halloween 2018 we were My Little Ponies. I made the costumes while on leave and while the kids were at the sitter, and girl 1 was SO EXCITED she wanted to wear and show her costume off the whole week before Halloween.

Twilight Sparkle (pre-princess w/wings mainly because I didn't feel like it), Pinkie Pie carrying Rarity, & Apple Jack walking Rainbow Dash (our Fluttershy was sick) 

And you want to know who got the most attention trick or treating? The dog!😆

Fall Game

So we upped our fall game this year.
We took the kid to a pumpkin patch:

Yeah, I leashed her. She loves the monkey backpack
and oh yeah she's my kid so your opinion is invalid

We did a group costume including the dog for Halloween:

Our Peanuts Gang from L to R: Snoopy, Peppermint Patty,
Charlie Brown, Lucy and Linus (Jules!) VanPelt trick-or-treating

And the pumpkin from the pumpkin patch was carved in the group costume theme:

Totally squelched a F-bomb when the head fell in.
Next year I'm just carving a face.
Or whatever the almost 3 year old tells me

But what really upped the fall game from last year: it was all documented on Instagram, so it really happened.
Happy Autumn!

Birthday Dog

Who has four paws and turns 9 today?  This dog! Happy birthday Jules!

#bostonterriersofinstagram

Also? This dog also had cancer. Two different kinds with two different probabilities of spreading at the same time. Yeah. That blows.

But! Neither one spread internally. We caught them early enough and have removed all of it so far. So she has a relatively clean bill of health right now. Which is the best possible news we could have gotten for this. No chemo or radiation treatment needed.  

But even if they were treatment options, we're not going to take it. It may not work, it's hella expensive, but most importantly Jules wouldn't understand what she would be going through.  We're going to do what's best for her, and that means keeping her comfortable.     

I have a feeling Jules will be with us for a few more years, if for no other reason the bounty of table scraps the baby drops. And Jules is a fighter, all heart. So even if this is what eventually takes her out, I know she won't go without a fight. 

Blow Out

So I had a baby 4 months ago and dropped off the blog world. Meh, whatever. Maybe I'll go back and tell stories from that time, maybe not (probably not-this parenting thing is busy stuff!)
Anyway, we started my tiny baby on solids last weekend with hopes to make her not-so tiny. Or at the very least tiny but still growing like she should. (Seriously, she's in the 4th and 5th percentile for height and weight. TINY) And by "solids" I mean baby oatmeal (who knew that was a thing?) mixed with breast milk. It's a runny mess and maybe 50% ends up in her tummy, but she gets excited* for it nonetheless.
Since she's having only had breast milk up to this point, introducing solids to her diet (even as liquidy as they are) was bound to mess with her little system some and there would be some adjustment. So the day after her first oatmeal we waited for that dirty diaper. And waited. And waited some more. Eventually it happened, she got more oatmeal and we all moved on.
You know what else adjusting to solids means? Blowing out her diaper. And at the most convenient time of when I'm dropping her of at daycare. Yup. The past 3 times she's gone to daycare since starting solids, she needs an outfit change as I'm about to leave. Her last blowout took some skill because it went halfway up the back of her onesie, yet didn't soak through to her pants so she could still wear them. Her caretakers think outfit changes are her way of keeping mommy around a little longer. Which, given the skills her last blowout took, plotting may be in her wheelhouse too...

*You know who else is excited about baby on solids? The dog. First time baby sat in her highchair the dog was right there under the table at her feet. We're probably never going to have crumbs again.

Bad Dog

Dr soc told me he was going for a jog this morning before my doctor's appointment while I was still in bed sleeping in a little bit (omg with the pregnancy tired). Shortly after that I heard a rustling/crinkling noise coming from downstairs, but my concept of time was so off I just assumed he hadn't left yet and was making a lot of noise in the kitchen for some reason. Turns out, it was not dr soc, it was Jules.

That little dog went into my purse, ignored the peanut butter crackers and ate about a 1/4-1/2 cup of salted almonds. I called the vet and she'll be fine, but damit dog those almonds were my best pregnancy snack! Then Mike noticed a paw print on the couch table, and he said he had thrown a different wrapper in the trash yesterday but he didn't know what it was from. Upon closer inspection of the destroyed bag and crumbs, I realized she had eaten a huge peanut butter cookie. Probably about the same time Mike was mowing the lawn and I wasn't home from work yet.  

That little bitch figured out when her free range time. Yeah, we're not leaving her unattended anymore...

Pintrest Fail

My husband and I are both birthday people. Meaning, we both enjoy celebrating them and the attention/affection that comes along with them as well. Well, dr soc's birthday is February 19 and since that was a work day, I wanted to do a little something special so his students and coworkers would know. The night before I had the great idea for him to bring treats to class, so I was going to make chocolate covered mint oreos. Melt chocolate, stick a cake pop stick in the filling, dip, done.

Except.

If the cake pop sticks weren't in the exact center of the creme filling it would pop off the cookie halves. And the melted chocolate was too thick and would trap the smushed back-together cookie. In addition to that, since I wanted 3/4ths to the whole cookie covered in chocolate, when I spooned it over the cookie, the chocolate falling from the spoon was much more of a "plopping" than a smooth waterfall-like cascade. The uneven somewhat circular blobs of chocolate with cake pop sticks at random angles were a far cry from pintrest idea I had in my head. Rather than beat myself up about it, I scrapped whole treats for the class idea and brought the tasty but ugly cookies to work. 

And besides, I had done this to his office door before coming home

Birthday Bostons!

The full view - hehehe!

So I wasn't too upset about my pintrest fail when I knew that was waiting to surprise him the next day.
Here's a closeup of the two pictures that planted the decorate his door idea in my head:

Happy birthday indeed! SNARF!!!

 And this one:

Dancing Boston is feeling it!

And then we met for dinner at one of our favorite places and I gave him a shark beenie baby to add to his office menagerie. The tiny octopus and wind-up dinosaur were getting lonely after all.