Addition to the family

We have a new member of the family: Nightmare.

Last month we started visiting the pound and some pet stores with the idea of getting new ideas for a pet or perhaps even adopting something on the spot. I mentioned this to a neighbor and she reluctantly offered up that she and her family were looking for a home for their 3 year-old dachshund Nightmare. She didn’t hard sell it, she just mentioned it. I knew they were planning to board the dog to go on vacation over 4th of July. I suggested they save the money and let us try the dog. They agreed.

The reason they were finding a new home for Nightmare is one I can sympathize with. Nightmare wasn’t happy and he was showing it in destructive ways, as a dachshund will typically do: chewing and peeing. He was a bit attention-starved, didn’t have another dog for company anymore, wasn’t really being walked or trained or pushed past the puppy stage. Essentially, although they provided medical care, great food, etc, they hadn’t the time nor inclination to invest in the dog’s social and developmental needs. Plus they travel a lot and their teenage daughter is now heavily involved in school and school activities. So they gave Nightmare the run of the backyard and a little caged space in the house and frequently had him boarded when they left town. These are really good people so we aren’t talking about neglect. We are just talking about people not advancing an animal from puppy to pet.

Well, we have had the dog since Thursday morning. About a week. No chewed up expensive stuff. Only a couple obvious bladder releases. Not “marking” stuff but emptying the bladder in the house. Those were both in the first couple days. One nice thing about having another dog is that the whole dog run is marked with his scent so the new dog gets the picture quick.

We started slowly, giving the dog access to all areas of the house and being absent for long periods only recently. We have been gone, though, 6 hours at a stretch by now and the dog has had the run of almost the entire house recently. No problems yet.

From an eye’s corner, the dog looks and acts eerily like Chloe. Jake and he play like crazy, last night for about 20 minutes doing what you see briefly in the video above.

Jake acts like a puppy again. It is great to see them hop around. Warren likes the dog very much and has been asking since he arrived if he is going to stay. Yesterday we finally said “yes.” Unless some terrible side of Nightmare comes out at this point, the dog is a welcome member of the family. And we promised the family down the street that if we do find we need to give him up, we will consult with them.

Nightmare

I do have to admit one thing. Nightmare bit Warren once. If Warren was still 1 year old I would have said no thank you to the dog. The dog bit Warren when it was still at the neighbor’s house and Warren was a stranger to the dog, lunging toward the dog while it was chewing a rawhide. I was amazed and so was the family. They had never seen it before and being around the dog a couple times I couldn’t have imagined it either. Truth be told I was grateful afterward. I could tell that it was mostly noise: a warning shot to Warren and Warren stopped crying pretty quickly. In the end mostly his feelings were hurt. Warren has been fearless of dogs and that often scares me. I always thought it would be a good thing for him to see the bad side of a small dog sometime soon. Same principle as chicken pox parties. A small incident now to avoid a potentially disastrous one down the road. Warren would run up to an unleashed pit bull to say hi and I have chased after him a couple times to curb his exuberance. He never really understood us when we told him that dogs bite sometimes and that you have to be careful. I also told him after the event that you DO NOT approach a dog you don’t know when it is eating.

Well, now he knows. And he has forgiven Nightmare. It was a really cute scene when Warren went to their house the next day to scold Nightmare. Warren and I agreed the night of the bite that he should tell Nightmare that the bite hurt and that he didn’t want to take his rawhide, he just wanted to pet him. So we trapsed over and Warren gave the dog a piece of his mind. The dog of course, was wagging his tail and licking him the whole time.

Well, Warren and I have tested the dog a bit. Company comes and he’s fine. We approach when he eats and he’s fine. During some excitement and playing Warren pulled his tail pretty good and the dog was still cool (though I ranted a bit at Warren about it.)

Some more pictures:

Jake and Mama

A rare sight in the afternoon

Warren in the tub

Warren and Karah

Jake and Nightmare

potty update

The kid’s a machine. He’s done with potty training. He asks to go to the bathroom, pees standing up when he can, hasn’t had an accident in almost a week. No problem with public bathrooms. Cleans himself up after number two. Still using a pullup at night because he doesn’t care and niether do we and we have a bunch left.

He got a trip to Toys R Us this weekend in celebration.

What he chose:
A spring-loaded lightsaber with lights and noise

What we chose:
A spongebob playdough toy
A spare box of playdough
A spongebob thermos

Pics

Chewing on fruit gummies

Fixing his dishwasher

Don't worry, it's water

Plans made for Japan

In September we will be heading to Japan to visit the inlaws.  This will be the second trip for Warren and the first trip for me since he was born.  We found a nice deal on Singapore Airlines.  $580 out the door per person roundtrip from LA to Tokyo.  Outstanding.  Singapore Airlines wins all kinds of awards for its service and is reknowned for safety and amenities and food, etc on its international voyages. 

Now we just need to get to LA.  We are probably going to drive.  We might spend a night in LA first.  For us to drive, spend a night, and park at the airport will still be cheaper than the $350 we would pay in the cheapest airline tickets and this way we won’t be worried about delays or being stuck at the airport.

Potty update

Jen’s comment to the post below seems reasonable to me.  I will forego the diaper over underwear experiment.  Though my curiosity is big on that.

So here is our story now:

We use pull-ups at night and the rest of the day is underwear.  Atsuko is netting crazy work hours right now.  This couldn’t be timed more poorly, I suppose, but the buildup and momentum is not to be wasted.   Because we need predictable nights at the moment, we use pullups that go on 10 minutes before bedtime and come off when he wakes up. 

Sunday after my post he put his first log in the fire, which was a major victory. 

Honestly, it is going better than I had planned at this point and yes, my oddball thought seems a bit over the top based on our progress now. Ms. Cathy at the preschool heard he report this morning and was pleased with the progress.  She asked about the rewards and what she could promise him today.  Tropicana makes these little mini milk cartons of strawberry candies and he has one at home for him if I get a positive report from the preschool.

 Now I hold my breathe for Grammie.  This weekend was a typical harried one, and peppered with semi-hourly visits to the potty to try.  Good luck Grammie.  He doesn’t tell us yet when he needs to go!

Its potty time, baby

Warren used the potty for the first time yesterday around noon. He had four golden “accidents” after that–two last night and two this morning–each with progressiveley more frowning and lecturing about telling me when he needs to go.  It isn’t an accident, Warren, when you knowingly unload in your pants without telling me its coming.

He went again just now in the potty, so that’s two.  This is going to be an uphill battle!

Thought: does anyone try underwear underneath a diaper?  Underwear gives him the uncomfortable squishing feeling to encourage learning to use the potty and a diaper would protect carpets, furniture, and his shorts, right?  Just a thought.  Might try it if this lasts longer than a week.

texting

Atsuko has a text plan for her phone line.  For $5 she gets 200 incoming and outgoing messages each month.  I have no such plan so each incoming or outgoing message costs me 20 cents.  It is a good deal for her because she will use more than 25 messages in a typical month.  It is a poor deal for me because I won’t.

I discovered I could send her messages at the sprint.com site for free.  Cheapskate that I am, I started using it immediately.  Free from my end and far easier to type than on my phone input pad.

Well, I discovered this nifty sprint.com tool while she was in Baltimore and Virginia on business for a week.  So although we talked a bit on the phone, we weren’t in regular communication.  So occasionally I sent her messages from the Sprint site.  Things like:

“25% off Wolfgang Puck restaurants (Postrio, Lupo, Spago) through August for Vegas locals.”

None of the messages were digitally signed as from me, of course, but I didn’t think twice about it. 

“$579 round trip to Tokyo from LA on Singapore Airlines.  747-400, direct flight”

Atsuko, on the other hand, purely saw incoming unsigned promotional messages.

“$54 for a group of 4 to do the Venetian boat ride.”

Rather than be upset, she started to be impressed and amazed at how every single text message seemed to pinpoint her exact interests and life patterns.

We had a good laugh about it when she returned.

one of two choices

I realized that we realistically have two choices: have clean living space or have clean bedrooms.  I also realize now that our choice is unusual.

Warren’s neighborhood friends all have immaculate living spaces.  Not so ours.  Ours is cluttered, with boxes of toys in designated areas but in full view.  With an electronic drum kit.  With a treadmill.  Bluntly, our place is ordered and clean but cluttered and a bit noisy.  Concerted efforts to clean our living space and keep it clean are rewarding but rare.  Its just not our lifestyle at the moment.

But…

Our son’s bedroom, on the other hand, is really really clean.  No toys out, nothing on the floor, very tidy.

An odd choice, I am learning.

Mama’s back safe and sound

yay

Yesterday

What a day he had.

He started with preschool at 7:30am.  They had an hour with the water toy/playground thing outside.  I have been instructed that he needs “swimshoes” whatever the HELL those are.  (When I was a kid we called those “feet”.) 

Warren actually asked if he could stay at preschool when my mom picked him up at 11:30am.  Very pleasant to hear.

Grammie took him to Sunset Park to play and feed the ducks.   They then went to her place at about 2pm for a late lunch.

I picked him up at 5pm, we went home, did some exercises together and were ordering beef teriyaki, veggie tempura, soup, salad, tamago sushi and a tall frosty one for dad by 6:15pm.  We went to a nearby park after that to try to get a kite up in the air in the sporadic Vegas wind.  (No luck, but we had fun anyway and I am sure people enjoyed watching our efforts).  7:30pm we head home draw a bath and let him soak.  He brushed his teeth by himself very well. 

Afterward I asked him to pull his pants down and sit on the potty, which he obliged with a smile.  A couple minutes he sat there and we talked about the day and how he should try to go potty.  “Is that one minute?”  “Is that one minute?”  Yes bud, actually its about 3.

By 8pm he was dressed in pajamas and requesting to watch Frances. (”Frances” is a children’s program about a badger family that is inexplicably diurnal and tends to try to solve familiar social problems reasonably rather than by disemboweling someone.) 

We couldn’t find Frances on the on-demand station so we watched an episode of Berenstain Bears instead.  He wanted to watch a second one and convulsed into his best dramatically woeful poses when I said no.  Instead, we went to his bedroom, read a quick book together (”How to Catch a Star”), turned on his ladybug starry night nightlight and I sat in his room for about 4 minutes counting stars before I heard him snoring. 

It was 8:30pm when I left his starry cave and I was up myself till about 10:30pm with Xbox, drums, and a book.

The night was not interrupted by a visit from Warren.  Best I can tell he powerslept about 11 hours, waking up at 7:20 this morning.  Since he doesn’t nap, I am glad to see him get a loooong evening sleep.