did you come knocking on my door, or did i come to yours

oh baby kahree. we're dealing with a lot of clingyness lately. more than just a desire to be held constantly, which we've had before and it really isn't all bad. this is more of a "you just stood up or moved a little so i'm going to have a complete melt down and grab at you frantically or attach myself to your leg so you can't move because i think you're going to suddenly disappear and never come back." it doesn't make sense to me that she would have that kind of anxiety now of all times because she's currently so mobile, she can get anywhere i am any time without me lugging her around every step of the way every time. she's fast too, and a lot of the time she's so adventurous and independent. but then, suddenly, she acts like her world is ending if i do anything at all. it worries me. and beyond that, it makes things hard. it makes normal functioning difficult on a day to day basis. it makes eating, cleaning, going to the bathroom, taking care of the puppy and pretty much everything else almost impossible without baby tears and those break my heart and wear at my sanity. between the frantic clinging of the baby and the misbehaving of the high energy puppy i sometimes randomly realize my teeth hurt from clenching my jaw. that's new.

kahree is beautiful and lovely and i love being close to her but after being clawed and grabbed at with accompany cries and scream all day, sometimes after her only thinking i was standing up when i was really staying right next to her, i've had moments where i just didn't want to be touched anymore. these are not my greatest mom moments. i feel like i spend all my patience constantly and that it never gets filled up again all the way. i'm the kind of person who thrives on fixing one thing or completing one task and then moving on to the next one but i don't think this is something i can just fix or finish up and get on with it. i'm not sure what this requires but i worry it requires something better than me. i get weary. i wish i was a supermom and that kahree never had to worry or cry. she's my favorite thing about life. maybe someday she'll be so grown up and independent that i'll wish so hard to trade in all the clean dishes and folded laundry in the world just to have her want me to hold her again. i hear parenting can be so rude like that.

8 months

the morning kahree turned 8 months old she slept in and woke up without crying. the day just got better from there. she was so delightful and happy and she made me laugh over and over. she was silly and giddy and had a thousand snuggles and kisses to share with me and her daddy. the next three days were consistently wonderful and so far 8 months has been just the best.

she has a new laugh that she shares freely, over and over, all day. she's been mimicking us and using all kinds of new sounds. she's eating lots of foods with her two new teeth and finally giving craig the cuddles he's been craving. she loves her puppy intensely and gets excited every time she sees her. she crawls all over quickly and oh so cutely and climbs up on things and tries to walk, but mostly on her tippy toes. when she wants to be held she demands it and won't settle for anything else but the times that she goes off on her own and plays with her books [she just learned how to turn pages] and her puppy are too good.

she seems so much like a little kid right now instead of a baby. i still miss when she was teeny tiny but i'm loving this new stage more than any before. she's our little buddy right now, just so content to hang out with us or go on adventures. she's our daughter and i adore her, now and forever.

pepper

this is the story of how i met pepper, the tiny boxer puppy.

a couple days before i had to leave my amazing vacation with my family my mother came home from picking my brothers up from the bus and said that the neighbor's puppies were outside, getting lost. their mom liked to go out on doggy adventures and her new brood were getting big enough to follow her but not quite big enough to keep up so a bunch of them were losing their way up and down the mountain. the neighbors were't going to be home for a while and my mom told me they were boxers. TINY LITTLE BOXER PUPPIES. so i insisted we go and save them! and the course of my life was forever altered.

we found the momma dog and a few puppies and i walked all around and my mom drove all around. we called for them and popped them in a crate in the back of the car once we found them. after a while the mom started following our car a little too closely [she likes to chew on moving tires only. wha?] so instead of using her as bait for the one remaining puppy that we couldn't find we decided to put her in the trunk and get them home even though i was so worried about the remaining lost puppy. i didn't want any of them to get eating by wolves! but then as i hoisted her up i heard a quiet russling behind me and when i went to invstigate a saw a little white puppy with pouting eyes stuck behind what turned out to be an electric fence. she wasn't barking at all, just wishing to be saved, for her cute little puppy face to be rescued. how could i not, i ask you, how could i not?

after climbing past the fence, getting shocked a couple times, rescuing her from a field filled with mules, and looking into her droopy eyes i knew my heart had been stolen. i had to have her. i knew i'd always wonder what happened to her if she didn't come home with me. no matter how many pro/con lists craig and i made and how much my parents warned me i just couldn't be swayed. and overall, i'm glad because i love her and she makes my daughter SO HAPPY every single day which is totally priceless. but dude, having a puppy is ROUGH. it's like i have two babies and one wants to chew on everything and i can't put a diaper on her. sometimes i wonder if she loves me. sometimes i wonder if i love her as much as i thought i did. sometimes she just makes me cry. but mostly she makes us laugh, she snuggles with us, she plays with kahree all the time and tolerates a baby crawling all over her so patiently, and someday she won't have the impossible energy of a puppy and she'll be an old, sweet lady and we'll be so glad i found her. someday. if i don't release her into tragic first. i'm kidding! mostly. but if you've ever had a puppy [i don't recommend it, especially if you have a baby and an apartment too] you know what i mean. they are born that cute so that they can survive into adulthood. kinda like babies....

you're my picnic in the park

as much as i loved spending so much time with my family in washington i so very much missed my husband by the end of it. after kahree and i came home from the best vacation our lives were in quite a whirl for a few weeks. well who am i kidding, they're still in a whirl. we spent a lot of days playing house and taking care of kids and homes for friends and then right after that settled down our dear new puppy, pepper, arrived. that took a lot of adjusting. a lot. plus countless i-just-got-back-in-town errands and homework and just too many busy things. but we finally got out of the house, just the two of us, for a little date night. we left a tiny daughter in her pj's at some dear friends house and we picked up some sammiches from the new jimmy johns in town and ate them at a park. then we went to the shooting range and finished up with cold treats from sonic. i can tell what you're thinking, and you are right, it was the perfect date night. i can't wait for the next one. we enjoy being together and at home above all other things but i do love those precious hours without babes or pups in our arms where we can just look each other in the eye without any multitasking while we talk about things that are slightly more grown up. just kidding, we mostly just talk about our daughter, and by the time we get back to her i've missed her terribly, but that's the magic of going out on dates and getting time away from the little ones, we love them so much more when we get back to them. date nights are probably what keeps us from eating our young. just saying.

don't eat babies, eat sammiches.