Am I Raising a Puppy or a Baby?

The evidence is as follows:
1. He travels on all fours.
2. He drools.
3. He loves to play with our shoes, and we have to keep him from chewing on them.
4. He rolls the ball, then crawls over to it and brings it back to us.
5. He bites our fingers, toes, clothes, etc.
6. He pants when he gets excited, and he growls and flexes his muscles when he is unhappy.
7. He likes to play tug of war with the laundry, sometimes with his teeth.
8. He is always happy to see us when we come home.
9. He tries to eat off of our plates and complains if we don't share.
10. He is not potty trained.

So, puppy or baby? Either way, he is adorable and hilarious.

Peach City

BooBear at Peach City in Brigham City, my Dad's old HS stomping ground. We went there on the way back from ID a couple of weeks ago in honor of my father. Since it's Father's Day, I thought it appropriate to share these pics. Love you Dad!
His new trick - he loves drinking out of a water bottle He also thinks biting people's clothes is a great game, except that he sometimes gets skin with the clothes, so consider yourself warned.



In response to Ddonn:
It took me a while to figure out the names to use for my family members. I think I have named almost everyone, but there are LOTS of siblings. So here's a run down for reference for those who know my family:

My siblings: (in order of age)
Enrique - Sue's husband
Sue - a nickname she once gave herself when she was 11-13 years of age and didn't like her real name
FBS ("Flaming Ball of Stress") - her college nickname, which is a lot nicer than the one we gave her growing up...Med___
Zanne (me)
Softserve - his mission nickname
?? - Softserve's finacee
GLump - short for Geoffalump, his childhood nickname
Soyjoy - GLump's wife
Crayola - a derivative I came up with that reminds me of the nickname FBS used to call her, the nickname being too close to her real name to use

Werty's family: (many of these are their chars from FFXI, so I take no credit for creating their nicknames)
Ged - oldest brother
Klari - Ged's wife
Werty
Dawn - her middle name, unless she would like "SPie" instead - let me know
Dawn's husband doesn't have a nickname yet...how's about "Pickee"?
BBug
Brain - BBug's husband, not too hard to figure that one out
Zinx
Cherry - Zinx's wife
Mecedes - Rena's husband
Rena
...and I need to come up with names for the youngest three siblings

Congrats to Softserve!

My brother Softserve called today. While I was trying to get the phone, he left a message on the machine. He is so lucky I didn't hear the message. I called him right back (I really like caller ID).
"I left a message. Did you hear it?"
"No."
"Oh. It was really short." (he laughs)
My brother doesn't usually bother calling me often, let alone leaving real messages. It must be something important, I thought.
"Why? Are you engaged?"
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"Yeah, so the message I left said, 'I just wanted to tell you...uh...I'm getting married. Bye.'"
That's my brother.

I will try to not be mad that I was one of the last siblings to find out. He told me before FBS, but only because she is out of town. He told Sue yesterday. :( But I am definitely happy for him. So, he is moving here with his fiancee at the end of the month. They are going to get jobs, get settled, make wedding plans, then get hitched. No actual date yet. I assume that will come soon.

9 Month Check-up

Here are the new stats for our little guy:
21 lbs. 10 oz, 70%
30 inches long, 95%
48 cm head, 100% (:P)

He is still taller than he is heavy as compared to the averages of other babies in the country. He is the youngest of the babies born in our condo stairwell from last summer, but he is the second largest of the four.

While recovering from surgery, I spent some time on BooBear's baby book. Looking at how small he was is making me a little baby hungry, but it's been fun. I need to get refill pages because 10 pages just isn't cutting it. The book is 8x8, so it's only about 1 photo per page. The hospital photos alone take more than half of it so far.

No longer doped up...

Surgery was Monday. Everything went well. The 20-30 minutes after they woke me up and before they would give me any painkillers was h@ll. Today I am taking regular OTC doses and chugging along. My belly button is one huge bruise, but I now have inventory +1 where my gall bladder used to be.

MIlestones

I am back to eating solid food again, though I have to be really choosy and avoid fats of any kind, even "good fats." I will be going in for surgery in two weeks. I am thankful for modern medicine that can solve this problem for good. I am looking forward to experiencing pregnancy next time without gallstones.

BooBear is so close to crawling. We often put him down to play with his toys, and a few seconds later we look at him again and he isn't where we left him. He has been scooting and rocking for a while, but now he also does the side scoot, with one leg out and one knee under him. He gets up on all fours, rocks, puts his hand forward, and then lands on his tummy. Sometimes this causes him to throw up, due to his acid reflux, but he's good-natured about it. (I know Sue's babies outgrew the acid reflux by now, but he is taking longer. My neighbor's kids took 12 months to outgrow it.) He can also pull himself up to a standing position if he has something to grab. When he gets stuck on his tummy and we help him up, he has learned to lock his knees and pull up so that we will pick him up instead of putting him back to a sitting position.
His current faves are his board books, especially the snuggle puppy book, the computer mouse, the FFXI moogle, and taking everything out of the laundry basket. We put batteries in his penguin this weekend so it makes noise now, which he loves.

Yesterday morning, BooBear was sitting on my lap in the living room. He looked at the blank TV screen, over at Werty, back to the screen. Werty joked that he was trying to figure out why the TV wasn't on. Then BooBear started reaching for the TV remotes that were on the couch next to me. He was pretty determined. He really did want us to turn on the TV. He knows that mommy holds the remote and then the glowy box makes sounds and pictures. It makes me feel like a terrible parent that my baby already knows all about TV. He likes Finding Nemo. /cry




At work, we have been moving everything out of B wing into D wing all week. I have to move the whole ESL department which has a ton of books and materials, my stuff, two aides and their teacher desks, and seven bookcases (which will now have desks right up against them so you can't actually open the doors to the bottom half of the bookcases). The only bright side is that it is forcing me to clean out my office and chuck stuff that was left behind by teachers who previously had my room. My room looks much more established, filled to the brim with bookcases and books, and less generic. We only have a few more pieces of furniture to move and then we have to sort out the piles of stuff and find homes for everything in the D wing classroom. Our biggest challenge is that we are quickly running out of space. So we are trying to get rid of as much as possible along the way.

Yucky Weekend

I lost 5 pounds this weekend in the longest gallstone attack yet. Things are all sore and inflamed, making it difficult to eat, period. Usually once the stone passes, I can eat whatever and feel normal. Not this time. I know because I had to throw it up when I tried...after a day of eating bread with honey, I tried a very small serving of spaghetti noodles with sauce (no meat) tonight. I missed work on Monday, but had to go today. My after school meeting ran long, so I didn't have time to call the specialist today to set up an appointment. It took a few hours for my doctor's office to call me back yesterday, and by the time they sent over the referral, they said I should wait a day to call the specialist. I find all the back and forthing very frustrating when I am in pain. Hopefully, I will get an appointment soon and we can schedule the surgery to get this darn gall bladder removed.

I have some good news: my IB students took their first two History exams today. Not only did the textbook we used in class show up as one of the sources in the document test, the topic of the test was something we discussed at length in class and they felt prepared. Yay! Interestingly enough, all three female students answered the question about how war affected women. The male student chose the question about the importance of naval power.