Slow Down, Gym Shoe!

An Exciting Weekend For Little Bear!

The last time I wrote, I mentioned that Little Bear had gotten upset over her first loose tooth. Well, last night Little Bear lost that tooth! She lost it in the dead of night, apparently. How do you lose a tooth at two in the morning? What was she doing? Having a dream about eating corn on the cob, perhaps?
Anyway, Little Bear is now happy as a clam about her lost tooth, which she is saving in a plastic baggie until she can put it under her pillow tonight. She's been showing everyone and anyone. She wanted to show you, too!

That's not all the excitement Little Bear had! Her grandma has a motor scooter that she rides all around town. Monkeyboy has ridden on the scooter, as have Megan and Sarah, but never Little Bear. Last night Little Bear got to take her first ride on the back of the motor scooter!

Pretty exciting weekend for a not-quite-six-year-old, don't you think?

In other news, the puppies have started to go to their new homes. Tigerlily's family was already committed to taking Guinness home, but at the last minute on Thursday night they decided to take Butter too. (They named him Miller. Get it? Guinness and Miller?) I'm so happy that Guinness and Butter... I mean Miller... are going to get to be buddies! They are living it up at their new home, spending hours and hours romping around outside, wrestling together, and being snuggled and played with by everyone in the family.
The next puppy to go to his new home was Shakers. Jimmy's brother and sister-in-law (Becca's parents) came and picked him up on Friday. They're going to call him Biggie (not to be confused with Big Guy, which is what we call the largest puppy!) I think Biggie is going to be the most spoiled puppy! He's already got a soft new bed, a blanket, and new toys! Plus there are no little kids in the house (Becca and her sister Patty are fifteen and twelve) so Biggie will have a much more peaceful household. Here's a picture of him all snuggled up in his new blanket, right before his new family took him home!

Luna has been going on visits with Little Bear's grandma and Sarah and Megan, and she'll eventually be going to live with them. Pepper, whose new name is Ily (for I Love You) will be staying with us, of course. And Sherbert will most likely be going with Tigerlily's dad's brother, where she'll be another spoiled little pooch! The only puppy who still needs a home is  Big Guy.
I'm gonna miss all those puppies!

Quick Updates (Including a Puppy Update!)

I don't have a whole lot new to post... Jimmy hasn't been working, so I haven't been watching the kids a whole lot lately. Its been kind of a break for me, I guess, but kinda stressfull. Plus I really miss our regular routines of getting out of the house each day. By next week I think I'll just take the kids out anyway just to give Jimmy a break during the day. Today though I came back to my mom's house to take care of some bidness! ;)
Anyways, not much new! The kids are all still enjoying the new house! We've been having a lot of family gatherings... Tigerlily and her parents have been coming over just about every weekend, sometimes spending the night! Little Bear and Tigerlily fight like sisters, but I think it is very cool for the kids to be surrounded by family members like that! I enjoy it, myself!
Here's a picture I took this morning of Little Bear and Pufferfish playing around in the back room! They're both getting so huge, aren't they?

Also, Clover and the puppies are staying at our house now! They are going to be able to go to their new homes in about a week. As you can see, they can handle solid food now, and are being weaned from Clover's milk! Clover is really relieved about that... The bigger they get, the more it hurts her to feed them. They have sharp little teeth! Now, to get her to feed them, we have to sit with her and pet her the whole time to keep her calm!
They are so funny though! They're definitely more social now, and they want to spend time with humans. Jimmy built a large box for them to hang out in most of the time, so that they're not wandering around in the house peeing and pooping on stuff and getting lost and what have ya. So they're in the box, which is plenty large enough for them all to walk around in, play in, etc. But when a person walks by, they'll all start jumping up and whimpering, like, "Take me out and pet me!" In order to take them all out, you have to have at least two people willing to help, because the puppies run amok  everywhere and constantly pee and poop! But they are a lot of fun!
Want to meet them, one by one? Start with the black one and go clockwise around the feeding circle!
1. Luna, aka Midnight. (Sarah named her Luna, but Little Bear named her Midnight, which, confusingly enough, is also the name of Tigerlily's family's cat!) Lunais the one who we thought wouldn't make it because she wasn't gaining weight, but as you can see she has caught up! She's still the tiniest. Her face is like a little teddybear! She loves to be cuddled, but she also loves to scrap with her brothers and sisters! Every time I see her, she's wrestling with one of them!
2. Buttered Toast. He's just a little roll of butter running around! He'didn't start out as social as the other ones, but he definitely loves attention and hugs!
3. Herbert, aka Big Guy. (Sarah named him Herbert originally, but Little Bear calls him Big Guy!) This puppy is the hugest one, way bigger than his brothers and sisters! He thinks he's the leader of the pack! He's very cuddly though and always wants to be the first to be taken out and petted! He's also the first one who has ran into the kitchen and started eating Clover's grown-up dog food! He says, "I'm way past that mashed up puppy chow stuff!"
4. Sherbert. She's a sweet little girl who likes to wrestle! She's also a good growler! When her brothers and sisters pick on her, she snarls and snaps at them! She loves belly rubs!
5. Ronnie, aka Guinness. (Megan originally named him Ronnie, but Tigerlily's family, who is going to take him, have named him Guinness!) He's one of the most spoiled puppies of the bunch! Whenever we take them out to play, he's the first one trying to run into the carpeted rooms where puppies are not allowed to go! Also, last night after all the puppies went to sleep, Guinness stayed up and whined and cried until I took him out and let him sleep with me. He might get to go home a little earlier than the others! 6. Doctor, aka Shakers! (Sarah and I named him Doctor, but Becca, who is taking him, has named him Shakers!) He's one of the puppies I fell in love with the earliest... definitely one of the most cuddly! I love his cute little chihuahua face!
7. Pepper, aka TBA! (She's the one we're keeping, but we haven't given her a new name yet for some reason!) (Get it? The two little chihuahua twins are Doctor and Pepper?) She's tiny and cuddly, and is really good friends with Luna! They're the two little girls who are always playing and cuddling together! Pepper is sweet and playful and not too whiny, at least not yet! She loves to be cuddled!

They are so sweet, aren't they? I love watching them chow down all their food!

Anyway, look for more updates and news later in the week! Thanks for reading!

Puppy Updates

I forgot to mention that over the weekend the puppies came to visit! Mike and Sue and LittleBit and Tigerlily were over, so the puppies were in high demand with all of the little kids! But I managed to get a few pictures to show you. They're now one month old!

Remember when the puppies were first born, and they could all fit in a shoe box together? Well, now they need to climb into a big cardboard box when they need to go places! But they still love to snuggle up together!

Remember Luna, the puppy who didn't seem to be growing? She's been getting bottle-fed, and now she's just as big and healthy as her brothers and sisters! Everyone wants this little girl! She's probably going to live with Diana's mom and sisters, since they were the ones doing all of the work for raising the puppies so they get the first pick. Oh, don't you just want to kiss that little nose?

Here's the one that Tigerlily's family is going to take home! His name is going to be Guinness. He's another one that has been in high demand! All of the other puppies are various shades of tan and white, but Luna and Guinness are very unique looking and seem to have the most chihuahua in them! Tigerlily's big sister LittleBit spent the entire time holding him, and he seemed to know he belonged to her! Every so often she would hold him up, and he would just gaze lovingly at her and blink his big puppy eyes at her!

Here is one of my favorites! She doesn't have a name yet. She's one of the most cuddly ones! I spent more time holding this puppy than any of the other puppies, and she just went right to sleep in my arms! She even slept in Tigerlily's arms! The little kids were playing with the larger puppies and being kind of rough, but when Tigerlily asked to hold this one, she sat down and stayed really still. She was so proud, saying, "I am being so calm with this puppy, aren't I!"

Here's that same little sleepy puppy, with her eyes open! Have you ever seen anything cuter than a new puppy?

The thing that I'm happiest about is that all of the puppies are going to people within our extended family. Diana's mom and sisters will probably take two or three of them, Tigerlily's family is taking one, Tigerlily's big brother is probably taking one, we're taking one. and Jimmy's brother is taking one. So they're all going to get to grow up together, and they'll get to see their parents all the time!
Pufferfish's birthday party is next weekend, and the puppies will be there too! So I'm sure I'll be posting even more pictures of the little cuties next week!
See ya then!

Random Odds And Ends

Here's a post full of totally random odds and ends that I thought I'd slap together and refer to as a blog entry! Enjoy!

Puppy Update
Last week I posted about the new puppies in our family! The puppies are now a week old, and here are a few updates.
If you commented on my last post about the puppies, I probably replied and told you that the smallest and youngest puppy, who we called Muffin, died two days after her birth. It was so sad and we were broken-hearted about it, after working so hard to revive that little one!
Now, there seems to be another runt in the group. Luna, the entirely black puppy, hasn't seemed to gain any weight since her birth. The other puppies have doubled in size, but not Luna! Its weird, because she was always the one who nursed the most. The others would nurse for a while and then wander away, but Luna was always there, nursing! She just hasn't gotten any bigger. Now, since she's tiny, the other puppies shove her out of the way and don't let her nurse. Diana's mom, who has been keeping Clover and the puppies at her house since she has experience with newborn puppies and doesn't have any toddlers running around her house on a daily basis, has been trying to remedy this by giving Luna time alone with Clover to nurse before any of the other puppies do. This way nobody else can shove Luna out of the way, and the first part of the milk from each nursing session is supposed to have the most vitamins. But Clover doesn't have much patience for Luna and tries to walk away from her. Luna cries all the time, too, just like Muffin did! I really hope she's going to be okay!!!
The story of Luna's birth is that she was the third puppy born, but she came so shortly before the fourth puppy, that she didn't get much time with Clover. Clover gave Luna a few licks, and then right away started contractions again, so poor Luna was whisked away to my pocket until after the fourth one had been pushed out! Luna was also the most surprising one, since Diana's mom had never had a dog who'd given birth to a black puppy before!
As for the other puppies, they're doing great. buttered Toast is the biggest, but all of the others have also doubled in size and weight! They still haven't opened their eyes or anything. Another cool piece of news is that Tigerlily's family is probably going to be taking Ronnie, the spotted puppy who looks kind of like Mijo. Everyone loves Ronnie because of his spots, so we're all happy that he's going to get to stay in our family!
Here are a few recent puppy pictures!

This picture is sort of blurry, but you can see that Luna is much smaller and skinnier than her littermates!

Clover feeding the puppies. You can see Luna on the end of the row, being wedged out of the way by her brothers and sisters!

I just included this picture because its so cute!!!

Now for a picture of Pufferfish! I took a picture of her because she had a big Kool-Aid smile that made her look like the Joker! In a related story, all of the kids were drinking Kool-Aid that day, and I warned them that they should only drink Kool-Aid outside, because if they drank it indoors, Kool-Aid would bust through the wall yelling, "Oh yeah!" Of course the kids ran into the garage to try it. But the Kool-Aid man never came! Later, I found out why... they were actually drinking Mix-Aid, a generic version of Kool-Aid!
(By the way, thats Jamaya's hand holding Pufferfish's head still so the picture wouldn't turn out blury!)

Quotable moment, brought to you by Little Bear.
Usually when we go to a store, I make Pufferfish ride in the cart no matter what. Little Bear can choose in our out of the cart, but she has to stick with her choice, or they'll both be in and out of the cart the whole time!
Anyway, on a recent trip to Hobby Lobby, Little Bear was in the back of the cart. I turned away for a moment, and when I looked back, Little Bear was standing next to the cart!
Me: "Little Bear, I told you not to climb out of the cart!"
Little Bear: "i didn't climb. I clamored!"
I guess I'll have to be more specific next time!
 
Household Tip
For reasons I can no longer recall, I bought some flower wall stickers at the Dollar Store and let the kids stick them on the floor. I thought they'd peel off easily like the alphabet ones the girls have in their room, but instead, they stuck fast to the floor like regular stickers! But the good news is, I learned a fool proof and mostly chemical-free way to get stickers off of the floor (or the wall, or glass, or wherever!) Here's what you do.

1. Spray the sticker with Windex or another glass cleaner. Saturate the sticker and let it soak.
2. Use a butter knife to gently scrape most of the sticker off of the surface.
3. (This is where it gets kinda weird!) If there is some sticky residue left, get some peanut butter, and spread it all over the residued places. Let it sit for a while. (I've heard that butter, or margarine, will work fine also!)
4. Wipe up most of the peanut butterwith paper towels. The floor will still be oily.
4. Put some dish soap and hot water on a dish rag, and slowly and firmly rub away the rest of the peanut butter oil. you may have to rinse out your rag a few times and do it over. But when all of the peanut butter is gone, the sticker residue will be gone, too!

Thats all the words of wisdom I have, for now!

The Newest Octo Mom!

(I am posting this on the We Made It Friday Showcase because, we didn't actually make the puppies, but I sorta helped, at least!)

The media has finally seemed to calm down about this Octo Mom...

but wait until they get a hold of this one!

Over the course of almost fifteen hours of labor, Clover gave birth to her first litter of eight puppies!
She went into labor at about nine o'clock on Sunday night. But she didn't seem to want to push her first puppy out! Finally, at about one-thirty in the morning, the first puppy was born.

A second one quickly followed...

... and then a third and a fourth!
By six in the morning, a total of six puppies had been born, and we all thought that Clover was finished. But there was still a hard lump in her stomach. Just to make sure, we took her to the vet for an X-ray, to see if maybe one more puppy was stuck. Imagine our surprise when we found out that there were two more puppies who needed to be born!
We started to get a little nervous, especially after a random lady in the waiting room told us that the unborn puppies were probably dead since Clover's contractions had stopped so long ago. But the veterinarian assured us that there was no particular reason why the puppies would die. He gave Clover a shot to induce her contractions again, and sent us home.
Shortly thereafter, Clover gave birth to a cow!
Yep, a cow. Just look!

And then she gave birth to the last puppy.
The last puppy came out with feces in it's amniotic sac. This sometimes happens when it takes too long for a puppy to get born, and its dangerous because it means the feces can get into the puppy's blood stream and cause infections. Sure enough, when the eighth puppy came out, it was barely moving. It lay there, opening its tiny mouth pitifully and gasping for air.
By this time, Clover was about done with puppies. She didn't really have any interest in licking the new puppy. (The mother dog needs to lick them, especially around the mouth, to clear the fluid from their lungs and mouthes so they can breath.) I found that she would lick the new puppy more if I cupped it in my hands and held it out to her. But she always went back to her other puppies, who were already noisy and squirmy and begging for her attention.
We tried everything! The four of us... Diana's mom, Sarah, Megan and I... worked for hours trying to revive that puppy! We even put cottage cheese on it to get Clover to lick it! Nothing seemed to work.
Finally, Diana's mom tried holding the puppy in her hands and swinging her hands downward quickly, which can sometimes clear the fluid from a puppy's lungs if nothing else is working.
It worked! The newest puppy started to bleat loudly!
And then she never stopped.
She lay there and made wailing noises, while Clover mostly ignored her. Diana's mom worried that maybe we shouldn't have tried so hard to revive the puppy. Sometimes when a dog doesn't pay attention to one puppy, its because she knows that something has gone wrong with the puppy.
The weirdest thing was when Clover suddenly picked up the tiny puppy and walked a few steps away from the other puppies. Then she sat on it! Sarah and Megan worried that Clover was actually trying to smother the puppy! But after a few minutes, she seemed to be trying to nurse it.
The good news is, the tiniest puppy is now doing pretty well! She's obviously the runt of the litter, and doesn't have much interest in eating. She also likes a lot of human attention... I guess because she spent so much time in our cupped hands while we tried to get her to live! She'll start whining and yelping, and as soon as we pick her up, she'll cuddle up and quiet down. I have a special place in my heart for this little runt, whom Sarah named Muffin!

So, you want to see some more puppy pictures? I know you do!

Aren't they the sweetest things you've ever seen?
Helping them be born was one of the most awesome things I've ever done in my life.
I'll be sure to post more puppy pictures, as they get bigger and bigger!