best friends

Ruby and Evelyn love each other more than ever.  They play with toys together, snuggle together, and just generally like each other.  Evelyn has been sick, and whenever she coughs, Ruby jumps up and goes to her, even butting doors open with her head.  And when Evelyn is inconsolable because of teething pain, she calms down when I put her on the couch with Ruby.  I just have to keep an eye on them, because otherwise Evelyn starts gnawing on Ruby's tail.  It doesn't bother Rue, but I think it is a bit gross.

So here are some photos of what a typical daily playtime looks like:

And here's some cuddle-time on the couch:

eskimo kisses

Evelyn and I regularly give each other eskimo kisses.  I rub my nose on Evelyn's, and she leans in and holds still.  I realized last night that while we do this all the time, Kevin hasn't really seen it, so we showed him.  He found it adorable.  I think it is a super cute way for Evelyn and I to show our love.

We are starting to work on crawling.  This is not easy with a baby who hates being on her tummy.  I typically put her on her tummy and she rolls over within 3 seconds, then plays contentedly on her back.  I think I may have found the key though - involve Ruby.  Evelyn adores Ruby beyond measure.  So yesterday I put Evelyn on her stomach, but I put a pillow under her tummy.  Legs down and bent on one side, tummy supported, and then arms and chest on the other side of the pillow.  Evelyn started to whine, which brought Ruby into the room.  Rue lay down right by Evelyn's head, and then Evelyn was able touch and play with Ruby, forgetting she was on her stomach.  This lasted for 10-15 minutes, which is a record for this child.  Baby steps.

After crawling practice, Ruby stayed with us while we played on the floor.  Evelyn sat right next to her dog, patting her and pulling her tail and ears.  I handed Evelyn a toy, which she gnawed on for 5 seconds, and then she held it out to Ruby's face for her to lick.  We repeated this with 5 or 6 different toys.  It was so sweet.  I love that my precious baby is already learning how to share.  And I find it remarkable that she recognizes Ruby's mouth, knowing that that's where the toy should go.  I had such fun playing with my girls yesterday, and I'm so glad that they like each other.

unhappy day

In general, I think I'm going to be a pretty good mom.

But every once in a while, something happens that makes me doubt that.

Today's example:  dog barf.  Ruby is out of food and my paycheck still hasn't cleared from Friday, so I gave her a little bit of my brother's dog's food.  Just a tiny bit, like less than 20 pieces.  This led to the most epic puke experience of all time, of which I am still trying to recover.

First Ruby puked in the dining room.  It was gross and chunky, and I made my brother clean it up because we've had to clean up his stupid dog's barf and poop, so it was his turn.  We put Ruby outside while he cleaned.  I stayed in the kitchen because I was trying not to lose my spaghetti at the moment, so I didn't even watch.  In the meantime, Ruby barfed in the backyard and then ate it.  We moved her to the sunroom while we cleaned up the yard (i.e. shoveled it over the fence).  She seemed okay in the sunroom so we left her in there.

After about 20 minutes we assumed she was done, so we let her back inside.  Bad assumption.  She barfed all over the chair in the living room.  ALL OVER.  We threw her back in the sunroom while I attempted to clean up the chair.  This mostly just led to me losing my spaghetti into the toilet in the bathroom twice as Ruby continued to puke in the sunroom.  Dusty cleaned up the sunroom as a worked on the chair, but it soon became apparent to both of us that there was no way that chair would ever get clean, or smell like anything other than a sewer.  So the next logical step was to get rid of the chair.  It is now sitting on the curb, still covered in puke, with no happy ending in sight.  And Ruby is camping outside for the day.

And guess what.  Kids puke a lot more than dogs do.  And I just can't handle that stuff.  So I am now imagining Kevin coming home from work to a daughter covered in vomit.  Which her mother tried to clean up but actually only added to the mess herself.

In other happier news, I've been working on the baby registry.  We're hoping to get most of the furniture used from who-knows-where, but it's been fun to add little things to the registry online.  We've registered at Target, you can look at it if you'd like.  I think we're planning the baby shower sometime for April so that Kevin and his co-workers won't be testing or going on vacation or anything like that.

5 down, 4 to go

Kevin just called me during his lunch break and told me to have Ruby "play dead" so that I could see her tummy.  Expecting to see a big gash or scrape or something (standard fare on our thin-skinned, sensitive pit bull), I told her to play dead.  On her bare tummy skin was a skull and crossbones tattoo.  Kevin had gotten it from a student and decided that Ruby needed to be a little tougher, so she now has a fake tattoo on her tummy.

I can't wait to see what he does to our baby when I leave the house for an hour.


In other news, my due date is exactly 4 months away.  Five down, four to go!  Sometimes it seems like my pregnancy is going by so slowly.  But as I think of all the things I need to have done before the baby comes, it doesn't seem like four months is nearly long enough.

And we added the name Zion to our list of boy names.  Kevin and I both like it, and there's a little boy named Zion in his class who is absolutely adorable.  A bit of a pill, but so cute.  Anyway, we could add a little more multiculturalism to the Dahl clan by using that name: a Hebrew name meaning Israel, now traditionally given to African-American babies, and a Swedish last name.  We will turn this child into a Thomas mutt if it's the last thing I do!