Early morning conversation between a couple with a teething infant, up from 11:45pm - 2am

6 am.  The alarm on my side goes off.  It's G's alarm clock as we have yet to find mine after the move.  Music comes on blaring.

Me:  OMG, how do I turn the volume down on this thing?

G:  I don't know.

Me:  Dude, what do you mean, you don't know?  It's your clock. 

G:  I don't know, babe.

Me:  Well, I want to snooze but I don't want it to leave it on this loud.* 

G:  My phone is going off at 6:30, you can get up then. 

Me:  Eh, I don't know, I'd rather not sleep that long.  I'd rather just find the volume.  Or maybe I should just get up.

(sound of snoring)

Me (fumbling for the volume, my voice getting high pitched and excited):  Come on, there's got to be a volume thing somewhere. 

The dog:  getting up and moving away from the side of my bed in case I decide to throw something.

G (stumbling awake and looking over):  Well, you got it snoozing now.  Are you trying to snooze?

Me:  OMG!!  Dang it, that's what I've been telling you.  I want to snooze but need to turn down the volume. 

G:  It's the knob on the top right, along the side. 

Me:  I don't feel it.  What the heck did you think I was asking you anyway?

G (slowly, as if telling a small child):  Top.  Right.  Your right. 

Me (a good 3 minutes later):  Oh, here it is.  Which way turns it down? **

G:  I think if you roll it away from you. 

Me:  Honestly, what did you think I was asking you? ***

G:  I don't know.

Me:  So then why not just say you have no idea what I'm talking about?

One minute later.

Me:  All right, I'm up anway, I'm hopping in the shower. 

Mia still cowering in the corner in case she's in trouble.  The kid, probably hearing my voice, tossing and turning in the next room. 

*Yes, I'm sure that I was EXACTLY this coherent at 6 in the morning.  Why would you doubt me?
**Every alarm clock is different, how am I supposed to know how each one works??
***Ok I admit that I have a slight problem letting things go. 

What do i have to do to get some dog toys around here?

A few weeks ago, I was feeling bad because it seemed like every day, the UPS man would come and the package would be yet another delivery for the baby. What can I say, G likes to buy and these days, he’s been excited to have someone new to buy for. Whether it was clothing, a new toy that was highly rated on Amazon, or more gear that we kept hearing that no baby should have to live without (I mean, come on, we don’t want to be reading her memoirs one day about how deprived her childhood was without that exersaucer), it’s seemed like we were once again becoming a daily stop on the UPS route. We were, of course, already friends with our old UPS guy in Hollister but we wanted to make sure we got to know our new one also.

Anyway, I felt bad because every time we had a delivery, Mia would rush to the door to try to attack the UPS guy (waking the baby up in the chaos, of course) and then sniff around the package to make sure it wasn’t a bomb or something. I started to wonder if Mia ever felt left out because you know, I always like to imagine that our dogs notice these kinds of things. So I decided to order the dogs this treat/toy box that I saw online at Costco. Basically, it was a big bin that came with a bunch of dog toys and treats. I placed the order and then repeatedly told Mia that one day soon, it would be HER turn to get something from the UPS guy.

A few days later, I happened to be mentioning this to her in front of Gregg who asked what I had ordered.  I told him and he paused for a second before admitting that he had ordered THE EXACT SAME THING from Cost-Co a few days before I did. HA, so now we were expecting two big bins of toys for the dogs. It’s a good thing Cost-co has a liberal return policy.  If you think it's cool/sad/trippy that G and I are now buying the same things online without talking to each other, it's really not that big of a deal.  If I buy anything from Cost-co, there's a fairly good chance that my husband has already seen and ordered it.  You should see our Christmas presents to each other -- there's almost always overlap on the Cost-co items.  I shop there for him because I know how much he loves it.  He shops there for me because well, he loves it there and it's like his second home.

So G’s order arrived early, and when I opened it, I found – rather than a big bin of toys and treats – a little bin with nothing inside it. Needless to say, Mia was not impressed. They sent us the wrong item! G emailed Cost-co who, it turned out, had the right order, but their vendor had shipped the wrong item. We thought about canceling his order altogether but decided to wait until mine came. They told him he could keep the small bin for his inconvenience.

So then MY ORDER, I saw online, was being directed to Hollister and not our new address. I also contacted Cost-co, who again, it turned out, had it right, but the company selling the product had messed that up too. Awesome. So they called the vendor who assured them that they would re-route UPS. Except that they didn’t. And I didn’t notice that until a couple of days later, the day the item was expected to arrive and I saw that it was out for delivery to our old address.  I again called Cost-co (I swear if I go over my daytime minutes because of them, I’m sending them the bill) who couldn’t re-route it anymore obviously. I asked if they could just not deliver it and take it back to their facility in Salinas, since G works near there and could just pick it up. They said fine, but that it wouldn’t be available for pick-up until the next day.

That seemed to the best we could do, so I said that’d be ok. But then I remembered after I hung up that G wasn’t going to work for 2 more weeks since he’s staying home with Diya until we start her in day care. After another half hour call to Cost-co where we accomplished nothing, we decided that the best we could hope for was that they could just deliver it to our old address after all, and I figured we could get it from our tenants. This was all on Thurs of last week and I was heading down to Hollister on Fri morning anyway to pick up some stuff and go to a doctor's appt. Of course, they had to make it all difficult though because they then said it was too late to deliver the package that day so they wouldn’t be able to come back until Fri. Meaning with my luck, I’d probably miss them because they’d show up after I went down. Awesome. I figured the most likely end to this scenario would be that we’d have to report the product lost and re-order the darn thing. And hopefully, in the meantime, G’s re-order would show up anyway. Or Fri morning, when I went down to Hollister, if it wasn’t already there, I’d just call UPS and refuse delivery (Cost-co wouldn’t let me cancel the order on the phone because they said it was too late and suggested that refusing delivery would be my easiest option for canceling). Ugh.

That evening, G stopped by our old place on his way home from work to pick up a few things (we still had a bunch of firewood and outdoor plants at the old place, hence the frequent trips), and guess what he found there. Doh. There it was, my package, the right one even!

All good now, right? You’d think so anyway. We canceled G’s order and figured that would be the end of it. Except if he was canceling, they wanted the small bin back.

And then on Mon, G emailed me at work saying, "WTF, look what just came addressed to you"

A small bin with no toys!! OMG, do they think we’re looking to start a collection or something? How hard can it be to get this right?

Anyway, if anyone is looking to acquire a small bone-shaped bin for your dog toys or treats, let me know. We seem to have a few extra, especially since Gregg – peeved about the whole thing – had already emailed Cost-co saying he couldn’t return his item as he had already donated it to a local animal shelter.

The delivery did serve its purpose though in that Mia was pretty ecstatic about it. Tucker and Bandit liked the treats but could care less about the toys. As an added bonus, guess who else liked the delivery:


Yup, that's my kid ignoring her own toys to chew on a dog toy instead. 

I think Mia realized early on that she was getting gypped of her full delivery:






  What I love about about these shots is how oblivious Diya is to Mia's begging and how gentle Mia was through out even though she desperately wanted this toy and this toy only (never mind that she had an entire bin filled with toys that were almost exactly like it). 

first day!

Yesterday was my first day back at work and to say that it was eventful would be an understatement.

For starters, I was no where near ready.  Definitely not mentally ready but not physically either.  I hadn't really thought about the logistics of pumping milk at work, when to get up in the morning, how to get Diya up, etc.  So last night was spent with me freaking out looking for bottles to pump into, a cooler to put pumped milk into, and a system for making it all work smoothly.  This morning, I got up early to get ready first and then woke Diya to nurse her before I left.  The liners we had finally decided to use for pumping had been in the baby's room so we couldn't get them last night after she had gone to bed. So while I nursed this morning, Gregg dug them out of her closet and showed me how it all worked.  He's of course techy about this as well as everything else, so where I might have just chosen to go with straight bottles, he had to go and find these fancy liners that go directly into the freezer or something like that.  But they didn't fit into the little cooler we had pulled out and of course the whole thing just got me frustrated as I always do, so I couldn't let the moment pass without a little mini meltdown.

Then I couldn't find any non-maternity shoes.  Seeing as how I haven't worn anything but sweats, flip flops and occasional sneakers for over 6 months, I had packed away my regular shoes months ago and they had somehow gotten lost in the move.  Diya proceeded to spit up all over my dry clean only work pants.  I couldn't find a coat because we hadn't unpacked that box yet.  The whole morning was a chaotic nightmare.  Looking at it now, the whole thing probably actually made leaving a bit easier than it might have been.  I was just too frazzled to freak out over leaving my baby.

Then, as I was walking out, I remembered that we had been planning on picking up Gregg's car this morning.  On Fri, we had dropped it off at the shop for routine maintenance and hadn't had time to go pick it up on Sat. So we had planned to go this morning as the auto shop was on my way to work.  It sounded like a great plan on Sat but became just one more thing to add to the craziness of yesterday morning.  So THEN, we quickly loaded up the kid and headed over.  I hung out for a few minutes more at the mechanic talking to Diya in the backseat while G ran into get the car.  Everything seemed fine, he transferred the kid into his car, and I continued onto work.

Except that it turned out that he didn't have the house keys.  We hadn't thought to grab them on our way out since I was driving my car. And he had taken out the house keys when he gave his car key to the mechanic.  He said he realized this after he got back to the house and then frantically started texting, calling, and emailing me that he was heading back to my work to get my key.  Even that would have been ok (though sounds like he had a lot of fun driving back and forth in traffic) if I hadn't spent the first hour and a half at work walking around chatting it up with everyone.  Not really intentionally, just everyone wanted to say hi.  And even though I had already emailed our director about me coming back, they STILL hadn't really sorted out the whole office situation so I didn't know exactly where to go anyway.    I plopped my stuff down, including my phone and didn't hear it ringing like a million times because I was no where near it.  They had also disabled my computer access so I couldn't log on and see his frantic emails.  Finally, our director found me chilling in my co-worker's office catching up.  THAT was fun.  Turns out that G finally called my work after circling around for 15 minutes.  Actually he called my number at work but my desk has since been given to a new attorney they hired who apparently didn't know know what to do when he asked for me.  He then called the receptionist, somehow our director picked up the phone, then wandered the hallways looking for me.  I love it when my boss's boss has to scour the hallway looking for me because I'm not at my desk actually working.

Less than half hour later, my boss came looking for me, and I was pumping with the door shut.  So clearly I had a productive morning and both my bosses know it.

G had an even better morning than I did though because he came home to both a big poop from Diya and an even bigger poop from Bandit ALL OVER THE LIVING ROOM.  She had taken the dump and  probably fallen on it and then eventually managed to scramble up and make her way over to the office.  The signs of all her movement were pretty evident from the poop marks all over the floor.  Not only that, she had managed to drop her monster turd right in the middle of the room where the other two dogs couldn't not walk all over it.  So he spent the rest of the day alternatively watching our girl and cleaning the entire house.  Apparently the poop stuck in the little nooks and crannies of the hardwood (is that the grout?  I have no idea) were especially fun to clean up.  I'm fairly certain that I've now managed to prevent any of you from visiting me ever again, but would it help if I mentioned that the pumpkin spice candles may have managed to mask the stink nicely?

When he was telling me, I couldn't help being glad that it wasn't me in his shoes.  Last week, I would have been.  AND later, when he texted me to say that our kid wasn't sleeping for longer than 45 minute stretches, I was headed out to lunch with my co-workers.  LUNCH!  With actual people.  At a real restaurant.  So guess who lucked out?  Yes, I replied, that's her typical MO these days. 
I was convinced for most of the day that I was coming out ahead for the day.  Until I came home and he told me how Diya had actually fed herself all day (held her own bottle and fed herself!!!).  She also pulled the little toy hanging off her bouncer for the first time to start the music.  By the time I came home, it was after 5:30 and she was up for only another hour and a half before bedtime.  She was cranky and tired, but didn't even really want me to rock her much to fall asleep, just crashed the moment I laid her down.  And suddenly I'm not actually sure who lucked out yesterday. 

ridiculous

So most of you have probably noticed by now that I take great pains to be at least somewhat anonymous on this blog.  What you probably don't know is that I actually slip up pretty often and start using names, so I have to go back and edit myself.  It's been especially hard these days now that I often write about the baby.  I don't even want to think about how often I've referred to her as "the kid" just to avoid using her name.

I'm embarrassed to admit that my husband and I actually do refer to her that way between ourselves at times.  But nowhere near as often as I do here.  And it's true, even in real life, I call her lots of things besides her name: pumpkin, princess, butter ball, cherry pie, pretty much whatever pops out of my mouth including lots of things that make no sense whatsoever.  But it seems silly to deliberately avoid her name altogether.  And there are lots of bloggers who come up with very creative nicknames, but apparently the best I could really do consistently is "the kid."

I don't know why I worry about it.  I guess a part of me wondered how she'd feel about her name being thrown around years from now when she's old enough to know.  Assuming, of course, I have the blog then, it seems like an invasion of her privacy.  But here's the thing, I plan on airing pretty much all the funny stories on the internet.  Isn't that one of the reasons you have kids, to make sure you always have blog fodder?  So the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it really matters.

Anyway, doesn't it all seem ridiculous when you all already know that her name is Diya?  And that she's absolutely adorable?

so many toys, so little time . . .

studiously enjoying her book

until distracted by dad taking pictures

and then finding something better to do with the book :)

tidbits

1. At the hospital last week, the staff pediatrician (who I liked on the whole) told me this about my daughter's illness:  "I'm very confident that your daughter's condition isn't serious.  In my experience, these kinds of things always end just fine.  But 99% of the time, we never find out what the source of the fever is.  However, you seem to have a lot of questions.  And if you'd like, I can refer you to an infectious disease specialist to see if he might recommend more testing.  I find that a lot of Indian people do better with more information."  Um, ok.  Really?  He was a bit more tactful I guess in his phrasing, but I didn't know whether to start laughing or be offended.  Especially on behalf of all those poor white people who didn't get the benefit of the 2nd opinion.  
2. I am going back to work next week, and I'm not ready.  She has this thing that she does now where she stares intently at me until I look at her at which point she breaks out into a huge grin.  It's the cutest thing ever.  She does it when she doesn't want to nurse or when I want her to fall asleep.  I try not to look when I don't want to encourage the distraction, but OMG, it's hard when you got that grin waiting for you.  And OMG, I'm not ready to give that up during the day.  Though I've been dying for adult conversations, so I guess I'll have that going for me at least.  
3. This morning, the princess woke up at 4:30.  I don't know what's up with her.  She used to sleep through the night and kind of sleep in too.  Then, a few months ago, she started waking up once in the middle of the night.  I read that at 4 months, babies go through a sleep regression period.  OK, fine.  She's mostly gotten past it now, but still wakes up pretty darn early.  She's usually asleep by 8pm or so, so I guess she sleeps a decent amount still, but it's not like we're falling asleep at 8 right after she does.  We're lame but not that lame.  I've been discussing with her the benefits of sleeping in a bit more, but so far, my pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
4. So I was up from about 4:30-5:30 nursing and then tried to fall back asleep.  Between G snoring, his alarm going off at 6:15, then him leaving a little before 7, it was tough going until he finally left.  Guess what time the dogs got up?  Tucker started getting antsy at 7:30, jumped on and off the bed a few times and hung out by the door.  I managed to somehow convince him to get back to bed.  Then Bandit started trying to get up about 10 minutes later.  I ignored her until I heard this loud thud in the bathroom.  Figuring it was a lost cause, we all just got up at 7:45, and the baby followed suit less than 10 minutes later. Poor Tucker had to poop, it turned out. Not sure what Bandit had to do.  
5. All dogs are now officially now free to good homes.  Take your pick, the old senile one, the not-quite-so-old snuggle bug that just won't sit still no matter how loud his feet sound against the hardwood floor, or Mia.  Mia's actually been all right lately, very friendly and protective towards the baby, very affectionate towards me, and she even drastically toned down her bark yesterday when the UPS guy rang the doorbell (managing to not wake the kid up for a change).  Mia's all right.  Oh, wait, that's her guarding the baby from Bandit and attacking her an inch away from the baby's head.  Please excuse me while I break up the dog fight and clean the blood off the floor.*  OK, yes, all 3 are up for grabs.  
6.  Speaking of dogs, my brother C was around during one particularly lovely afternoon over the holidays when the baby wouldn't stop screaming and Bandit  peed in the hallway.  I was trying to drag her outside without having to touch her and without having too many pee prints everywhere, my brother was holding the screaming kid, and basically all hell broke loose.  Once outside, he tried to keep an eye on her and hold the baby while I cleaned up.  Bandit started wandering and of course couldn't hear when he tried to call her back.  My brother said that if this were his life, he'd shoot himself.  So I rest my case, cute smiles not withstanding, it has NOT been fun around here lately.
7. We are trying to break our little pumpkin of the swaddle.  She's been a huge fan from the beginning, and during the first couple of months when I was going insane because she wouldn't nap unless I was holding her, I discovered that the swaddle made all the difference.  But she's almost 6 months old now, and it's not good for her to have her hands bundled up if she starts rolling over.  Plus, she's starting day care in a few weeks, and G says he doesn't want her to be THAT kid, the one that needs the extra step to put to sleep.  I say she's already the kid that likes being rocked, bounced, and walked to sleep and then needs utter silence to stay asleep, so what's one more thing to throw at them?  But whatever, I guess he has a point.  So we started a while back, and I caved when her naps went to shit.  Then I tried to leave just one arm out figuring we'd transition slowly.  That went all right for a while, but really started working at the hospital when they needed her IV arm out at all times.  Since I'm not really wanting another hospital stay, this whole 2nd arm thing had better take more quickly because I'm already going a little nuts.  
8. She's been reaching all sorts of milestones these days though.  Working on sleeping like a big girl, and has even been sleeping in her crib at night.  That adjustment was harder for me than her.  For the first several nights, I took a sleeping bag and slept on the floor in her room.  G wants to know what I'm scared about, but I don't know.  The world just seems so much scarier now, and I suddenly get why our parents were so protective about everything.  If nothing else, I worry that she'll be crying, and I won't hear her even though she's right next door and sound carries in this house like you wouldn't believe.  Oh, and we have a video monitor.  But still, you never know with technology.  Mostly, I think I worry that I won't be able to go to her quickly enough.  But G is right, we all sleep better now.  I don't wake up everything she breathes a little funny, and we can move about and talk a bit more without worrying about waking her.  It was getting to the point where we'd be tiptoeing into our room each night, trying to keep the dogs quiet, looking for clothes in the dark, etc. And she gets some peace and quiet too.  
9. Oh, and her first tooth just popped up!  She didn't want to sleep on NYE (unlike mom and dad who were ready for bed by 9:30) and wanted instead to just sit in her bouncer and chew on her toys.  We didn't know what was up, but then the next day, we were at a family New Year's party when she reached for my finger to chew on it.  And all of a sudden, I felt this sharp little poke, and there it was. 
10. Last night, while we were eating dinner, we kept hearing a helicopter circling our neighborhood.  And then we heard a "This is the police.  You are surrounded."  Apparently there was a manhunt going on just a few blocks away or something.  I wonder what kind of neighborhood we've moved to.  

*I'm exaggerating.  It's not THAT bad, so please don't call Child Protective Services on me.  

fed up

After raving last time about how much I love my pets, is it totally inconsistent to now tell you how fed up I am with them?  Especially Bandit?

I'm not sure I've blogged much about this, but a few months ago, Bandit started having what we thought were seizures.  It was a Fri night, some friends were over for dinner and all of a sudden she started falling to the floor, wetting herself, and shaking a little.  I think the first time might have been earlier in the afternoon, but I didn't realize that there had been anything wrong until hours later when she did it again.  That first time, i just heard a clattering as I was getting out of the shower and came running out to find the water bowl knocked over and Bandit on the floor.  I assumed she had walked into it as she's getting clumsy in her old age and just helped her up and threw a large towel over the carpet.

The second time that it happened, G just found a large wet spot after he came home and we couldn't figure out who had done it.  It was while we were dogsitting my brother's dog and all 4 had been rushing him when he came home from work.  About an hour later, our friend saw Bandit having some sort of weird convulsion in the kitchen.  She fell and wet herself.  It was then that we started wondering about the previous episodes.  G mentioned that actually, when he had picked up the wet towel from the water bowl incident, he thought he had smelled pee but hadn't been sure.  And then, a final time while we were eating dinner, Bandit did it again.  We freaked out, left our guests to fend for themselves, loaded up the baby, Bandit, and Porter (because he had been barking at the guests a lot and we figured he'd be happier with us in the car) and headed over to the emergency vet in Capitola.  It happens to be where Bandit's specialist is for her Cushing's.  By this point, it was about 10 pm on Fri night, so you can see how exciting our weekends can be.

They wanted us to leave Bandit overnight for observation and start her on anti-convulsant medication. I expressed some concern about the effects of these medications on such an old dog (because the vet mentioned how powerful they were and how some dogs had difficulty adjusting).  To be honest, I was less than thrilled with the vet overall, I'm pretty sure he spent his downtime surfing and doing dope (this is Santa Cruz after all).  But whatever, Google told us how serious 4 seizures in a 24-hour period can be, so we were ready to do whatever needed to be done.

Early next morning, the vet called us as he was finishing his shift.  He apparently had had 2nd thoughts about the anti-seizure medication and had decided to leave Bandit be and just observe her.  He said that he had been prepared to give her the meds if she had another seizure, but he had been thinking more about our concerns and thought waiting might be more appropriate.  Later that morning, our regular specialist happened to be in and had also examined Bandit.  The rest of the day passed without incident, so we came back to take Bandit home and scheduled a follow up visit with her vet a few days later.

Our vet wasn't convinced that Bandit had had seizures at all.  Rather, she suspected (and still does) a heart issue.  She thinks that Bandit has mitral valve regurgitation which causes her heart to work extremely hard.  Or something like that.  Anyway, she thinks that Bandit had lost consciousness for brief periods, and those were the moments when she fell over and peed herself.  Further testing revealed that she was probably right, so we started her on heart medication.

Except that the next week or so ended up being the worst time ever.  Bandit stopped eating and became so weak that she couldn't move.  We were picking her up and taking her out to pee.  Based on the vet's suggestion, I went out and bought her a bunch of baby food and we'd spend forever trying to coax bites into her with little success.  We were supposed to go to Oregon for a weekend, and we were so scared of leaving her that G stayed behind while I took the baby up on my own (her first flight!).  We were prepared to call our local vet to see if he'd come over to our house when the moment came.

And then suddenly, after 3 days of not eating, Bandit expressed some interest in my mac n' cheese one afternoon, so I gave her a bunch.  G came home and fed her a bunch of peanut butter filled pretzels and she wolfed them down, along with a ton of water.  That afternoon seemed to be the turn around.  The vet had already taken her off the heart medication and also suggested that we could try giving her steroids if we wanted.  She warned us though that putting her on steroids was unlikely to help in the long run.  It was just that she was concerned that Bandit's issues might also involve swelling in her brain due to her Cushing's which the steroids could help temporarily.  Bandit seemed to regain her appetite before we started the steroids, but she's been on them since, so it's hard to say if she improved because of them or not.

All of this happened about 3 months ago.  Since then, she's continued to receive a low dose of steroids every day.  Before we moved, she was mostly getting up by herself and letting herself out the dog door.  She's been a bit of a medical mystery in that she doesn't really respond to her Cushing's medication and she didn't really respond to the heart medication either.  But as far as we can tell, she hasn't had any more "seizure-like" incidents.  She's been completely off her Cushing's meds now for months and her appetite has been ridiculous (i.e. she's eating her own poop again).  Her vet wondered about brain issues stemming from her Cushing's but back then, her neurological exams were pretty normal.

These days, I'm a little less sure.  Since we've moved to the new house, she's been struggling to get up on the hardwood floors.  If we leave her for even a few hours, we come home to find a puddle of pee or poop on the floor.  What's especially awesome is that since she can't get up, we've found her sitting in her own pee on several occasions.  She seems constantly thirsty.  And finally, nowadays, I wonder how aware she is of her surroundings.  I mean, she knows us and all that.  But I see her staggering at times.  I've caught her running into the patio door when it was closed.  She seems more disoriented.

Now that I'm writing all this, I feel sad.  But this is where the being fed up part comes in too.  I know, you were starting to wonder where all this was going, weren't you?  I hate to say it, but more and more, I'm a little over it.  The constant cleaning up -- the other night, G stepped on a puddle without realizing it and got pee all over his socks and jeans.  We had guests over and he had been in the process of changing the baby's diaper when it happened  So that was fun.  He and the kid were essentially stuck in one spot until I could clean up and get him a change of clothes.

This morning, she got me up at 8 when I heard her struggling to get up on the hardwood.  When I let her out, the other two dogs decided to head out too.  Except that it takes her 3x as long as it does the others, so while I was helping her down the hallway, Tucker pitter-pattered up and down it multiple times, and what do you know, I see on the baby monitor that the kid is getting up too with all the ruckus.  We finally got outside and it turned out that Bandit didn't need to go out at all!  She just stood there staring blankly at nothing.  And  I know what you're thinking, dude, it's 8 already, what are you complaining about.  Yeah, but I had already been up at 5 with my early-to-bed-early-to-rise kid and G had let everyone out when he got up to get ready for work at around 6:15.  I was still half awake when he took off for work, so yeah, being up at 8 wasn't exactly my plan for the morning.

When Bandit leaves messes, the other two sometimes step on it and leave little pee prints all over the floor, so the clean up involved can get extensive.  If we leave her outside too long, she wanders the yard and starts eating poop.  We've thought about leaving her in the garage, but it's still pretty messy from the move, and one thing we discovered while moving is that if there's a way to get stuck in a pile of crap, Bandit finds it.  She's been constantly knocking stuff over and getting stuck between boxes and furniture.

We can't walk with her because she can't keep up for even a block.  But it's hard to leave her because she looks so sad.

So I'm sorry to say it, but I'm fed up.  Three months ago, I was preparing myself for the worst.  And now I hate myself, but I'm not sure how much longer I can take this.  I find myself getting impatient with her, and it makes me feel terrible.  I kind of feel like I'm watching a movie that used to be awesome but now just won't end no matter no painful and repetitive it's getting.  What does this say about me?  How would I deal if my child or husband ever got really sick if  I can barely handle a few months of doggie old age.