Sunday, December 14, 2008

More Kyleigh-isms

So there are some more Kyleigh-isms that I thought of.

She has names that aren't quite right for lots of characters:
Winnie the Pooh = "Poop Bear"
Eeyore = "Yore"
Piglet = "Piggie"
Sleeping Beauty = "Sleepy Duty"
Cinderella = "Cindergrella"

She'll drop her little Winnie the Pooh toy, and say "Oh no! Poop! Where AAARRRRRE you, Poop? Poooo-ooooooop?"

She's precious. And she's changing day by day. It's hard to believe how big she's getting. Parenthood is so fulfilling, but when you realize how fast it goes by, it's so sad!

Monday, December 08, 2008

Kyleigh-isms

So my little Kyleigh has some pretty darned cute words and phrases, if I do say so myself. Because I know that I will forget them, I want to write them down while I'm thinking about it.

She'll walk around making an animal noise, say a "neigh" or something, and then ask herself, "Are you being a horse?"

She has a very good memory and can usually repeat things she hears on TV. She watches the little kid shows on Nickelodeon or Disney, and I'll hear her say little catch phrases from them. Sometimes she'll say, "Do you hear that? It sounds like an animal in trouble!" (from Diego) or "It's ok, Boots." (from Dora) or "I have an idea!" (Imagination Movers). It's really cute. I'm not sure that she knows 100% what she's saying, but it's still pretty cute!

She pronounces "pajamas" as "pajamanamas". I'm pretty sure that's my favorite of all!!

When she's feeling particularly sweet, she'll come up and give us a kiss and say, "Love you so much!" If that doesn't melt your heart, I don't know what would!!

When we're driving around in the car, I'll sometimes ask her what Maezie is doing so I can find out if Maezie is sleeping or not. Since Kyleigh is front-facing, I can see her in my little kid-finder rearview mirror, but Maezie is still rear-facing so I can't see her. So, I ask Kyleigh, "What's Maezie doing?" Her usual answers are, "She's sleeping." or "She's happy" (which means she's awake and smiling) or once she even said, "She's snoring" because I guess Maezie was asleep and breathing really heavily. But then today I asked her, "Kyleigh, what's Maezie doing?" And I watched in my rearview as Kyleigh looked at Maezie thoughtfully and then said, "Is she being a giraffe?" Which CRACKS ME UP!! When we taught Kyleigh what a giraffe says, we would stick our tongue out really far. Maezie has a habit of falling asleep with her tongue partially hanging out of her mouth. She "sucks" on her tongue (mimicking nursing) while she's sleeping. So when Kyleigh said that Maezie was being a giraffe, it meant that she was asleep with the tip of her tongue hanging out of her mouth. Hilarious!!

I know there's more things to add to this post, I just can't think of them right now. So I'll add them later. :)

Thursday, December 04, 2008

Do I really have the right to feel this way?

So ... we have been talking lately about re-homing our black lab. This sounds terrible, but the honest truth is that she just annoys me. I TRY to not be annoyed at her, but it's impossible. At this point, I think we'd all be happier if she was in a different home. She's a really sweet dog and she's well-trained, it's just that her personality and mine don't mesh anymore. She needs a home where she could be the center of attention and get the affection she deserves. I've put a few ads online like on craigslist and such, but I'm being very picky about who will get her. I don't want her ending up abused, in a shelter, or miserable. She gets a good life here, even if it's not great, and I won't give her to anyone unless they can provide her with a BETTER life than what she has here.

Anyhow, so I had a family respond to my ad and they wanted to come by and meet the dog. They have four kids, ages 6, 5, 3, and 19 months. They seemed really nice over the phone and sounded like they would be able to provide the kind of home we're looking for. We scheduled them to come by at 4:30pm on Wednesday.

They showed up at 4:15 and stayed until 6:15. *sigh* The parents were REALLY nice. They bonded right away with the dog. But their kids ... well, I just hope that I never let my children behave this way. (And if anyone who reads this ever catches that happening, PLEASE let me know so I can fix it.) First off, when you're trying to make a good impression on someone, you probably want to look your best, and if not your best, then at least decent. The kids (and parents for that matter) were in mis-matched, fairly dirty clothes. Not like they were poor or anything, just like they didn't really care what they looked like. Not that you need to dress up to go and visit a dog, but you'd think that when someone is wanting to find a "wonderful" new home for their dog, you'd want to make your home and everything that comes from it fairly presentable. Right?? Maybe I'm just expecting too much out of a family that has four kids ...

Anyhow, so their kids came right into the house and petted the dog. (That was good.) After about 30 seconds or so, the dog became uninteresting and the kids headed straight for my den and started playing with all my kids' toys. (Not so good.) The parents just sat down in the living room and were talking with me and getting to know the dog. (Good.) But they completely ignored their children, who were demolishing my den. (Bad.)

Now, if the kids had stayed in the living room with their parents, and then started to go toward the den and the parents had said, "Oh no kids, those are their toys, we aren't going to play with them," then I would have said, "Oh, it's no problem! Let them play!" Or if the kids had asked me, "Can we play with your toys?" then it would have been FINE!! But they didn't. They just headed straight for the toys and started playing. (Oh, and if I had already known these kids, if they were friends of ours or something, they wouldn't have needed to ask, but these people were strangers!) The 3 year old boy was putting lots of the little toys in his mouth. Then the kids found some balls and brought them back into the living room to throw for the dog. I think that between the three of us, their parents and I asked the kids to NOT throw the balls in the house (it riles up the dog) about 723 times. Not to mention, those were supposed to be KID balls, and not dog balls - but I didn't mention that to the family, so I guess that's my fault. But now all the balls that are meant only for the babies have dog slobber all over them. Fabulous.

Meanwhile, the parents are telling me about their last dog who also happened to be a black lab. They said that the dog was really big and jumped on the kids, so they had to put it on a chain in the backyard when the kids were outside playing or they were leaving to go to town. They apparently live outside of town on some acreage. The last time they had chained the dog to the stake in the yard, they had gone to town for a few hours and by the time they came back the dog had wound her chain up and twisted it in on herself and choked herself and they were very sad. (I'm thinking to myself - "even though they say that the only reason they chained the dog was so she wouldn't jump on the kids, what's to stop them from chaining my dog??")

The 6 year old boy came to me (ME!) several times to tell me that his brother wasn't sharing the toys with him. The toy he was referring to (the first time) was a set of dominoes. So I got up, went into the den, and suggested that one boy play with half the dominoes on the fireplace hearth (no fire, obviously) and one boy play with the other half of the dominoes on the table. They didn't like that idea, but I was fresh out of ideas after that so I just told them to share and walked away.

I also wanted to show the parents how the dog is well-trained to not snap or bite when you feed her treats. I had run completely out of dog treats, so I decided to grab the next best thing - a bag of pretzels. Ok, so maybe not the next best thing, but it's what I could grab quickly. So I showed them, using pretzels, how to make the dog sit, stay, shake, etc for her treat. I also showed them how gentle she was when she took treats from people's hands. So then of course all the kids wanted to try. That was fine! But then they started eating the pretzels. The parents said nothing. And the kids didn't just eat a FEW pretzels, oh no, they ate darn near the whole bag. All the while, they're also feeding the dog pretzels. Again, both the parents and I had to ask the kids several times to stop feeding the dog before they finally did. Their parents finally did tell them to stop eating the pretzels, but not because they were someone else's pretzels and they hadn't been polite and asked, but because they needed to save room for dinner. (!!!)

These folks were really nice, don't get me wrong. But they just stayed, and stayed, and stayed.

To their credit though, when it came time to leave they did make the kids pick up the toys in the totally trashed den.

After they left and my kids were in bed, I cleaned up the den. I clearly remember the 3 year old having tons of toys in his mouth. I picked all of Maezie's toys that she usually puts in her mouth and not knowing if the toys had been in the other kids' mouths, I decided I had better just wash them all. The balls that had been in the dog's mouth and the other toys of Kyleigh's that had been in the kid's mouth all got a good spray down with Lysol Disinfectant. Then just for good measure I ran the can of spray over all the toys on the floor in the den.

I'm pretty sure my house is going to smell like "Clean Breeze Lysol" for about the next year and a half because of all the spraying, but at least I feel better about it. Feel like it's cleaner in there.

So, I'm irritated. Something tells me that even though these folks were really nice, they are just not the right family for ME to pick for the dog. Not that the dog would necessarily be unhappy with them - she seemed to bond to the father right away - but because I don't think I could handle her going to live with them. And I'm irritated at their kids and at the parents for not controlling the kids. So they drove a 30 minute jaunt into town to see this dog and let me "decide" if it's the right fit for the dog or not, and I feel pretty bad about not choosing them, but I just don't think they're the right family for my dog.

Did I mention I'm irritated that I had to clean all those toys? ... Yeah.

Do I have a right to feel this way??

Random Allison Happenings

So ... Maezie has been army crawling for about two weeks or so now, and WOW! It sure makes a difference in how much I have to pay attention to what Kyleigh is doing! We usually give Kyleigh snacks in a little plastic bowl, and she carries them around the house and eats them, or leaves them in the den in her "snack corner", or she sometimes dumps them out all over the floor. But now that Maezie is crwaling, dumping Kix all over the floor is NOT ok. Maezie has radar for Kyleigh's snacks, somehow, and crawls straight for them!

Maezie is getting pretty quick with the crawling now and can go from room to room if she wants to. I can't believe she's going to be 7 months is just a few days!!! It goes by SO fast!

Kyleigh is hilarious! Lately her new thing is putting her stuffed animals in her crib. (We're moving her up to a "big girl" bed later on this month!) When I put her in her crib for naptime or bedtime, she knows she's not supposed to come out of the crib, but she does it anyway. Usually I leave one or two stuffed animals in her crib with her. When I go in to check on her, there's usually at least one or two extras in there. Just now I went to check on her and found her asleep with ALL of her stuffed animals in her crib (we're talking 15+). She climbs out and dumps them over into her crib, then climbs back in. It's pretty funny!

Christmas decorations are up now, including the tree, and it's so nice. I really love Christmas time! My cat thinks the tinsel on the tree is just about the most fun thing ever. We have floor-length curtains and the Christmas tree is in front of the window. Apparently the lights make the tinsel reflect funny things on the curtains, because the cat has been attacking the tree through the inside of the curtain for about 45 minutes now! :)

Tomorrow I'm going to make a big post about my fabulous husband and his job, but tonight I'm too tired.