Dogs and Babies

Running out of ideas here for blogging into the future, so I am going to go with an old standby. Awww, Bean and Jack!


Aww, Lucy and Jack!
Aww, Luke and Bean!

Marking His Territory

Is everyone sick of the whole thing where I talk about how Jack is possessed by Bean? Are you like, "We know, we know. Your baby barks. Quit beating it with a dead horse (as my friend Holly was known to say)"?

Well I have just one more story.

Today I was trying to change a diaper when I realized I did not have a diaper within arms reach. Because I was in the living room. I said, "Luke, please run and grab a diaper. Jack, don't pee."

But then Jack got a glint in his eye, and a set in his jaw, and there was a little something about his stance, so I said, "LUKE! Please hurry with that diaper! Jack, don't pee, don't pee, don't pee!"

Luke sauntered in with the diaper some time after Jack had taken 3 steps back and peed on the tiny 5x8 rug, the only area on the main floor where the wood floor is covered.

I was shaking my fist at the heavens. No! No! No!

Luke said, resignedly, "Mom, Jack only peed there because that is where Bean used to pee."

(In other news, it may be time for potty training.)

Bean

I have had a few posts about how Bean is sort of still with us, because Jack acts like Bean all the time. He rummages through peoples bags looking for crackers, hides food behind the curtain, ransacks the lazy susan, barks at squirrels, eats crumbs off the floor, etc. But lately I started thinking that since Jack was there when Bean died, that maybe something supernatural occurred. Instead of thinking that it is as if Bean is still with us, I am thinking that Bean really is still with us. I think I could re-remake the Shaggy D.A. into a movie with a baby that's really a dog. (The concept needs some work.)

I suppose most of those things listed above are normal baby activities, except for the barking at squirrels. At this age, Luke could copy every animal sound I made, and perform them on demand. Lion=roar, Cow=moo, etc. Now Jack hears a bird in the wilderness, or a train miles away, or a siren, or the dishwasher running and can imitate it perfectly. But after 3 days with his Aunt Suzy and Grandmom and kitty cat Cleo, he would still not meow. But he would chase the cat and bark at her.

But what I think really clinched it for me with this whole Bean possession thing, is that today while I was making dinner, Jack got hungry and impatient and so he crawled under his high chair and started whining.

Who Needs A Puppy?

Jack keeps getting into the lazy susan, he never met a food scrap he didn't like, he's been known to did through guests purses to sneak snacks, and well, he barks at squirrels. Or gwirls, as he calls them. So we miss Bean, but sometimes we think he may be trying to speak to us through Jack.

Yesterday at breakfast there was a lot of barking (uf, uf) and pointing at the gwirls outside, so I had to get out the camera, even though Jack was covered in food. Too cute.

Then I tried to get him to film some of his other tricks. Jack loves to pretend to talk on the phone, and he loves to imitate sounds. The other day, he was making a weird sound while we were walking into the house and I stopped to listen. I determined he was imitating a train way off in the distance. Here, Dave is dialing the phone and he imitates that, then as soon as it rings, he has to pretend to answer. If you've been pranked by a baby recently from my cell phone, it may have been Jack. In other news, my cell phone no longer works.

In Some Ways, Bean is Still With Us: Part 2

This morning I was groggily preparing breakfast for Jack after quite a night. (I went to bed late, and then was paged at 12:45, and 3:45, and Jack was up to be nursed at 5am and then up for the day at 7:30.) I was starting my work day, and cooking something for Jack and I left the cabinet open, and Jack helped himself to a tube of graham crackers. I didn't think he could open them, and he was having a great time walking around crinkling. With all the crinkling, I knew where he was without having to watch him, so it seemed like a great way to keep him occupied for 3 minutes. Then for some reason, I walked down the hallway and back. When I got back, Jack had half a graham cracker in each hand and the balance in his mouth. He was smiling and saying, "Nom! Nom nom nom!" Cracker crumbs were tumbling down his pjs and all over the floor.

Cute, funny, not all that harmful. I plopped him into his highchair and gave him the rest of his breakfast. But where were the rest of the graham crackers? Where was the bag? I walked around looking to no avail. Then Luke woke up and asked what I was doing. I said, "I think Jack hid a bag of graham crackers somewhere so he could snack whenever he wanted." In their short time together, Bean really did some serious knowledge transfer.

Ten minutes later Luke was yelling, "I hear crinkling! Jack is feeding himself a snack!" And Jack was indeed, behind the curtains in the dining room, helping himself to a cracker.

Gingerbread House

From December

Last weekend was the Annual Gingerbread House Making Party at my over-achieving friend's house. The house plans were designed by an architect friend and I really want him to publish a book of gingerbread house plans before next Christmas so that I can purchase it.

I have arrows pointed to all the outdoor equipment that Luke built for his house. Starting on the left and going clockwise, we have an orange gumdrop snowboarder, a police car (already partially consumed by Dave), an orange gumdrop scooter, and finally a sled.

I made Dave redecorate 3 times because I hadn't taken a picture yet and he kept eating all the gumdrops. But now that the picture has been taken, the house can be eaten! In the past I have made everyone wait until after Christmas, until it's good and stale. Then I say, "I'll leave this out for one day and we can eat as much as we want and then I'll get rid of the rest." Then we forget and go somewhere and leave the gingerbread house on the counter and Bean eats the whole thing. So this year, we aren't waiting. In fact, the awning has already been consumed. Yum!

One more view of the scooter/snow jet ski and a shot of the peppermint ATV:

From December

In Some Ways, Bean is Still With Us

I was comparing present-wrapping back-ache stories with my mom on Sunday. She stands at the table to wrap and a friend asked, "Why not sit down?" She was flummoxed. Why not sit down indeed? Well, because she is too short to sit down and wrap presents. She wouldn't be able to see over the present to the scissors and tape. I sit down to wrap, but I do my wrapping on the floor, which causes it's own problems. OK, it causes the same problems which is why my back was hurting too,

I have a touch of the shortness myself, so I can't imagine sitting at the table to wrap presents either. And really, it's that time of year when every surface in my house is covered with cookies, or cookie making ingredients, or cards, stamps and address lists, or let's be honest, dinner from two nights ago that hasn't been cleaned up all the way.

So this year, as always, I sat down on the floor of my bedroom and surrounded myself with presents, wrapping paper, tape, scissors and old cards that I cut up to use as gift tags.

And I was thinking about what a hassle it used to be at this time of year with Bean. You never knew if a present would be safe under the tree, because what if it was a food item? Did I want the present unwrapped and eaten by Bean? Not really. (The Christmas Poop Story is a story for another day. 13 years is not enough time for that to be funny yet.) And he liked to help wrap presents. And by help, I mean he liked to be in the middle of whatever I was doing. If I rolled out some wrapping paper, he liked to lay down on it. If I was about to wrap a sweater, he would lay down on it. And so on. So pretty much every present I wrapped had some amount of dog hair attached to the tape, if not all over the present itself.

So, as I was wrapping presents this year, I was missing Bean, my wrapping buddy. The way I missed him was to repeatedly say to myself, wow, it is so nice that there isn't dog hair everywhere. OK, I wasn't really missing Bean, but I was thinking about him a lot. Then I ran out of the new wrapping paper and had to scrounge around for some leftover from years passed. And when I rolled out the paper, what did I see? Dog hair.

And here is Bean helping us unwrap presents last year:

From New Album 1/10/08 2:53 PM

Miss you Bean!

Bonus picture (I can't tell you how many times Jack made that exact face today):



"Oh, don't mind me. I am just resting my head in the general vicinity of the candy that is coming out of your stocking. "

From New Album 1/10/08 2:53 PM

Pre/Post Mad Men Musings

Welcome to the, "I'm Back! And I'm going to start posting again! And using a lot of extra punctuation, (mainly parenthess!) post!"

I told Dave that I sort of feel as if I have been a zombie for the last month and I am finally back to being myself again. (ie: Toast as a side dish.) This weekend I was cleaning closets and organizing rooms and crossing things off my to do list - and this is a to do list that is so old and neglected that it has stuff on it from early September. (Sorry Katie - I never bought that baptism gift!) (Dave pointed out that I stopped looking at my to do list right around the time my blog output completely dropped off to hardly anything.) I don't know if it was beginning of school stress, end of Bean's life stress, or the changing seasons, but I have shed my zombie inclinations, just in time for Halloween! (Braaaains!)

Speaking of Bean, Dave and I were at a party on Friday and I was overheard saying, "Oh, plans for tomorrow? I am taking the boys to get a flu shot and then we are picking up the dog's ashes."

Another mom said, "Um, you might want to throw in a trip to the ice cream store or something."

Good advice. We had a nice weekend, and the weather was perfect for a little backyard ceremony.

In other news: Jack is looking like he wants to start walking. Perfect timing because the memory on my camera is full and I can't find the card thingy. (When Luke was about to start walking there was a smudge on my camera (birthday cake from his party) and I freaked out and ran to the camera store. They dipped a Q tip in windex and wiped off the lens.)

Moving on... ***Mad Men Spoiler*** Who watches? And do we think Don is the father of Betty's baby? I think not. Thoughts? Just six short months until next season.

The Cookie Story

We are still missing Bean, but we've been enjoying our Bean memories. And when I got home from Costco on Saturday it was quite the novelty to be able to set the bags down on the kitchen floor instead of needing to make sure they were all out of reach on the counter while I emptied them. And I put chocolate chips on the bottom shelf of the pantry. That felt so decadent. Almost as decadent as leaving a pancake on the counter when we were rushing out the door to soccer. After the chocolate chip incident, the brown sugar incident, the whole wheat flour incident, and the corn starch (?) incident, I learned to keep nothing but canned goods on the bottom two shelves of the food cabinet. And still I have found canned goods slobbered on and hidden behind the toilet. Let's just say Bean was highly motivated by food, and keeping food out of his reach was quite a task. And now I bring you, upon request, the cookie story.

It was an icy, blah, no good day at Keystone and Dave and I just decided to call it quits and head home. Unfortunately we were delayed in making it home when he caught an edge on a catwalk and landed shoulder-first on the ice. One separated shoulder and a week later, and we were entertaining a good college friend, Brian, back at Casa de Meta. Brian was in town for some space alien conference or another, and his experience with dogs is mostly limited to the under 10 pound category. And I don't think his miniature poodles (Senior Carnitas and Mr. Excitypants) could ever prepare him for the food obsession that we faced on a daily basis with our Bean.

What does Dave's separated shoulder have to do with anything? Well, I'll tell you. My dear sister took pity on poor Dave and sent him a care package. Dave and I were at work when it arrived and Brian had not yet left for the airport. Being the wonderful and considerate house guest that he always is, he brought in the package and put it... somewhere. I can only imagine it was somewhere like on the counter? On the dining room table? On the floor? Somewhere other than on top of our locked refrigerator.

So I arrived home from work and it was eerily quiet. For years (at least 13 of the almost 15) I was greeted at the door with lots of barking and Bean jumped up and down on his hind legs begging to be fed his dinner. We kept the food in the front hall closet at our old house (with a warning on the door that to leave it open was to provide a dog food buffet) so I would usually feed Bean before I did anything else. But on this particular day, silence. I am sure I hung up my coat, and walked into the kitchen, looked around and then peaked down the hallway. And there was Bean, walking slowly, slowly towards me. Head down, tail between his legs. He could have been the poster child for puppy eyes the way he slowly looked down and raised just his sad eyes.

Knowing this look, I started to search for the reason. I found an empty tupperware under the table, and a torn cardboard box behind the arm chair. In the box was a lovely note from my caring sister about cookies. Cookies! Gone! (Shaking fist at the heavens.) When I called Beth to thank her and to tattle on Bean she mentioned there was a box of thin mints in there too. I hadn't even seen one single green piece of girl scout colored cookie box anywhere so I renewed my search and found an intact box of thin mints behind the couch.

Bean - couldn't resist the cookies, and knew to hide the evidence. But that guilty look gave him away every time.

Photo Credit: Martha Stewart

Rest In Peace Bean

Thanks to everyone for your kind words about Bean today. We are all still pretty sad, and in my case, mildly hungover from our Irish wake last night.

Here is my eulogy if you didn't get the email.

Almost 15 years ago, when Dave and I had been dating for four months he decided to get a dog. He needed to borrow a car from one of my roommates to get to the pound, but he didn't want to take a bunch of girls with him for fear we'd pressure him into getting a dog that wasn't exactly right but was sooooo cuuuuuute. We promised Dave we'd keep our opinions to ourselves so he'd let us come with him. There were two tiny puppies together in a cage, but Bean was much cuter and quieter than the other dog. And the other dog went right back inside while Bean just stared at us, silently. I remember that Dave was getting out his wallet, (to pay what? sixteen dollars, maybe?) and the animal control guy picked Bean up by the scruff of his neck and tossed him roughly into my arms. I had never held a dog before.

Bean was our first baby, and he taught us a little bit about what it would be like to be parents. In the last few months he taught us a about caring for someone at the end of their life. In the middle he was that crazy, somewhat neurotic roommate who got in trouble for things you wouldn't dream of doing, but who was always there for you, and who always had your back.

We had a lot of good times, and we already miss him.

Rest in Peace, Bean
(February 1994 - October 15, 2008)

Finally, Some Focus on My Oldest Child

Tired of all the focus on Jack eating in his highchair? So was Bean. "It's baby this and baby that. What about poor Bean? You'd think no one ever ate mashed, strained food before. Oh, now he gets cheerios, whoop de fricken doo. Ooooh. Finally. There is something in this for Me."

L'eggo My Lego

This morning, it was my turn to do the day care drop off, and before Dave left he helped me make sure everyone was dressed, sunscreened, fed and ready for school. Then as he was leaving he noticed we only cleared half the dinner dishes. From the front porch. Classy! This is important to the story because I think some baby food dripped onto the floor when he was bringing dishes in. I hope it was baby food at least.

Dave was out the door on his bike, and I was making the first trip out to the garage to load up my bike. Pump, lunch, bottles, attach trailer to bike. On my way out the door I heard, "Ewww! Yuck! Ewww! What is that?! Eww!" It looked like a tiny drip of baby food. It was brown and gooey, so let's just all agree that it was baby food. I said I would wipe it up in a second after I got back in from the garage because my hands were full.

Before I could finish attaching the trailer to the bike, Luke was at the door sobbing. "He ate it! Bean ate it!" The baby food? Sweet, problem solved. "NO! He ate my green lego! He ate it, and it's gone and now I will never, ever, ever be able to make the castle again! I want you to get it out of him!" Hmm, well, yeah I can't do that. I do suspect that the lego must have had baby food on it too, because Bean doesn't really eat plastic unless it is wrapped around cheese, chocolate, tortillas, cookies, any other type of food, or garbage. And the baby food spot on the floor had disappeared too so at least I didn't have to clean that up. But the really bad part was that I have been reading Parents magazine (aka 1001 ways your kids could die magazine) in the lactation room, so instead of saying, "That is what you get for not putting your toys away" or even "Hey, maybe leaving your legos on the floor is a bad idea!" I had to say, "Wow, I bet you are really sad that Bean ate your lego. I understand how you feel. I don't like it when Bean eats my things either." This was supposed to calm him down.

It didn't work, of course and when we were 3 blocks away he mentioned that his teeth were covered in boogers from all the sobbing. I contemplated my options but I didn't see any soft leaves around, and I didn't want to use my shirt to clean him up, so I road home to get kleenex. Which he used to wipe the boogers off his teeth. Off. His. Teeth. I just threw up a little thinking about it.

Then we rode another block and I started trying to cheer him up by mentioning that today was field trip day! Yea! Field trip day! And that is when I remembered that I forgot the car seat. So I turned around and got the car seat. And then we rode the rest of the way to school and work and I got there sometime just slightly before lunch.

Don't Quote Me On This

"Bean" was a pleasure to have. That is what it said on the note from the kennel. Dave wondered about the use of quotes around his name. I suggested that maybe the kennel thinks "Bean" is Bean's nickname. But I really shouldn't make fun of them for two reasons.

1.) I started to look up proper and improper uses of quotation marks to research this blog "article" that I am writing here. But then I got sort of lazy and decided to "give up".
2.) I should probably have put quotes around the first sentence since I am quoting a line from the note from the kennel. Is that right? I don't know - see point 1.

I should also not be making fun of the kennel because they let me take Bean without paying since I forgot my wallet. "Oh, we trust you! We'll see you soon."

Regardless, I think that a more accurate sentence would have been, Bean was a "pleasure" to have. Just "kidding" Bean!

In other Bean news:

Today I brushed Bean's hair and got such a big pile of hair that I was thinking of taking it to someone I know who spins fiber into yarn and then weaves things out of the yarn and asking her to make Bean a dog hair sweater. I wish I could take credit for this fabulous "idea" but Dave and I have been joking about the "dog hair sweater" ever since I overheard that same person accepting a zip lock bag of dog hair and saying, "I can't wait to work with this and see what kind of yarn I can make."

Lastly, I thought a "funny" blog sidebar to have would be something along the lines of "Bean has gone N days without an accident in the house." Where N=number of days. But then I realized that it would just be so depressing to keep resetting that number back to zero. On the other hand, I guess the number would go up more often than it would go down. And today we could be celebrating "1" day without an accident. Yea "Bean"!

Update: While I was dropping Luke off at daycare this morning, Bean ate a granola bar and a mocha clif shot (contains 50mg of caffeine). Dave is out of town, so if history tells me anything, I should be rolling up the rug and covering the floors and walls with plastic. (If I had been blogging at the time, I could now link to the "eating everything out of the refrigerator incident", the "eating the care package from Beth incident", the "eating a bag of chocolate chips and jumping out of the window and running away incident", the "eating a bag of whole wheat flour incident", the "eating a bag of brown sugar incident" and everyone's favorite, the "eating a box of Malley's Chocolate and you don't even want to know the rest of the story incident".)

Appeasing Everyone

After dinner, Dave was paged and had to work. Luke went to the bathroom, I put Bean out, and put Jack on the jiminy and started the dinner dishes. I heard a thud and then a yell so I ran to the bathroom with a tiny ice pack in one hand. Luke had hit his head on the bathroom sink and he was crying. I gave him the ice pack and a kiss and a hug, but he seemed determined to see how loud his cries could echo off the bathroom walls. Since I thought he was being overly dramatic, I told him to lie down in my bed for a minute and I would be back to check on him because now Jack was also crying. I picked Jack up and went to check on Luke, who was laying in my bed, still crying and holding the ice pack to his head. He said,

"I think I have a bump."

So I immediately went into panic mode and ran, with Jack over my shoulder, to get a better ice pack. I came back with a bag of frozen peas. An open bag of frozen peas. I handed it to Luke, who looked skeptical. I said,

"Just try it and see how it feels. I'll be back with something better, because now Bean is barking to be let in."

So I ran, with Jack over my shoulder, to get a better ice pack and to let Bean in. On the way back to check on Luke I heard,

"Mommy?"

And I said,

"The peas."



Bean was a big help with cleanup, but I am still finding peas after 2 days.

To prevent future injuries we came up with the following solution:

Poor Bean

Poor Bean. Since his 14th birthday he seems to be falling a lot more often. We have had so many incidents with him over the past 4 years and every time something happens we think, "Is this the end?" And I sob and sob and start planning his memorial service. And then he miraculously pulls through and we are so happy. And then he eats a bag of whole wheat flour out of the lazy susan and poops all over the dining room and we think, "huh." And the cycle continues.

Last night Jack was laying on the jiminy and we were all sitting around staring at him with bated breath, waiting for him to roll over. This is a nightly occurrence now, and I think we'll keep up this vigil until he does in fact roll over, or worse, we pick him up from daycare and find out that it happened there.

Bean thinks if we are all sitting around staring at, and loving something on the floor, it should be him, poor guy. So he keeps walking past, muttering under his breath. He can't get too close because of the arches over the jiminy, but he managed to get close enough so that when he fell last night he landed almost on top of, but actually right next to Jack. Poor, poor bean. Because after the indignity of the fall he ended up with a handful of his fur in Jack's iron grasp. I was about 24 inches away but I had to dive forward in slow motion with a "Noooooooooooooooooo" because I have had my hair in that grasp, and Dave has even had chest hair in the grasp and it hurts, hurts, hurts.

The Bean of yesteryear would have let out a scary growl. The Bean of 1994 might have even bitten someone. But Poor Bean made a noise that sounded like this, "You have got to be kidding me with this. Can someone get him away from me?"


Poor Bean.

(I have a great video of Jack not rolling over, but I am having technical difficulties uploading it. I hope to post it soon.)