astute observations.

i'm still working on our chicago trip recaps (okay, you got me, i haven't actually started yet), but i wanted to make sure i got this story down before i forget. you'll probably hear a lot from me this week...hope you don't get sick of us. ;)

my sister-in-law has this sweet dog -- a cockapoo named daisy. here's a picture of her with me, molly and piper from last summer's chicago visit:


this year, while we were staying with my sister-in-law, choi boy was fascinated by daisy, and was especially enthralled by her fetching skills. you may remember that our dog, piper, is literally a retriever that does not retrieve. so this was all new to choi boy and he sat open-mouthed and watched daisy fetch again and again.

and here is the conversation that we had while we watched her...

me: wow, that's so cool, isn't it? piper doesn't do that, huh?

cb: {shakes his head}

me: what does piper do?

cb: {matter-of-factly} poo-poo.

me: {giggling} well, you're right. what else does piper do?

cb: {with, i swear, the slightest hint of disgust and exasperation} pee-pee.


so there you have it.

what can i say? my boy's observant.

don't worry, though, he still loves her like crazycakes, non-fetching ways and all.

oh, and she loves him, too, despite the stink eye that makes it seem otherwise.

;)

once upon a time...

there was a boy who said, "chay-yah!" and sat on his faithful dog.


his sweet dog remained patiently still as her boy giggled at his own cleverness.


then the boy jumped up and down on his dog, shouting, "CHAY-YAH! CHAY-YAH!" and thought it was great fun.


and his momma said, "no more!" but the boy said, "mo more?"


and the boy smiled to try and charm his momma.


his momma's heart fluttered when she saw that smile, and she briefly considered letting the boy continue. but it was to no avail, because the boy's dog ran away and decided she didn't want to be a chair after all.



the end.

scheming.

choi boy and my dog are scheming against me.

i just know it.

look what i stumbled upon yesterday:

"hey, piper, i heard umma has these things called 'cookies' up on the counter. i'm pretty sure if we work together, we can get them. huddle up. here's what we'll do. you run to the left and start barking like crazy..."


"...and then i'll move in from the other side on my toy car, stand on it and swipe the -- hold on, we've got company."


"act normal, piper. just play it cool."


"hi, umma. we're just hanging out. okay, bye."


"...she's gone. so then i'll grab the cookies. hello? piper? are you listening? are you in or what?"


"stay still if you're in."


"okay, cool."

"...and, break!"



dude.

i'm in for some trouble.

every dog needs a boy.

(source)

does anyone else remember this book? i used to love it. it's the story of petey the puppy who very much wants a little boy to play with and love. he has a hard time finding a boy and asks other dogs if he can have their boys and is, of course, denied his requests. in the end (spoiler alert!), petey finds the "home for boys" and has not one, but fifty, boys to play with and love.

okay, so now that i think about it, the story is a *little* strange, but i have such fond reading rainbow memories of it!

anyway, i've been reminded of that story as i watch our sweet piper love on her new little brother. if you've ever met our dog, you know she's a wee bit strange. she is incredibly sweet, but also a bit of a loner and in her own world. if she were a child, she'd be the kid on the baseball team picking dandelions and rolling in the grass while she was supposed to be covering left field. if she were an adult, she'd totally be a spacey lady who'd look out the window during the entire bus ride, only to realize later that she got on the wrong bus. in short, she is lovely, but a little loopy, too. :)

we weren't sure how she'd react once choi boy was home. she's always loved children and is very patient and affectionate with them, but she'd never had a child around 24-7.

well, piper's maternal instincts kicked into high gear when choi boy came home. she just adores him and loves to be near him. she insists on sleeping in front of his crib and whines and cries when a door separates her and her beloved boy. and, i'm sure the extra food she gets from cleaning up after him is quite an added bonus. :)

choi boy loves piper, too, but, as with all toddlers, loves to push his limits. there's some ear pulling, tail pulling, hitting, poking, sitting on, laying on, etc. and cb *knows* he's not supposed to do those things, but he does 'em anyway. and you can betcha that we try and stay on top of the piper-tormenting, but goodness, cb is fast! and sweet piper just looks at us with that sad edward cullen eye as if to say, "please help...," all while giving her brother gentle kisses to coax him to stop.

lately, though, choi boy's taken to really pouring out some affection on his big sister. he loves to give her hugs and do "ah-ee-peu-dah" which, in korean (literally translated) means, "oh, so pretty," but is often used as a way of telling children to touch gently instead of hitting. ;)

want to see one of those hugs?

okay!

{be warned: totally going to be a proud momma showing off my two kiddos now. kthanks!}











is that not the SWEETEST?! (aside from the last shot where it looks like cb is squeezing so hard that piper's eyes are going to pop!)

love, love, LOVE.

truly, every dog needs a boy. and vice versa. :)


and clearly, every dog and every boy also have thresholds for the amount of affection they can handle, because seconds later, they went their separate ways:


they can't *always* be hugging, right?

teamwork.

lately, choi boy has taken a big interest in self-feeding. he's actually gotten pretty good at getting things on his spoon and stabbing small pieces of food with his fork. usually, whatever's on his fork or spoon will make it into his mouth, even if it might take more than one try. the hardest thing is the coordination of knowing when to open and close his little mouth! ;) sometimes, he'll drop the utencils and just start using his hands again because it's faster and our boy LOVES to eat.

of course, with self-feeding comes a big mess to clean up afterwards.


cb: c'mon, umma, it's not *that* bad!

um, choi boy, you might help with the laundry, but you don't do it all yet. and you're not the one contending with sticky rice stuck all over your clothes! (do you spy the piece of white kimchi in choi boy's hand? my mom made a whole vat of it just for him!)

we try and get as much of the didn't-make-it-into-choi-boy's-mouth food off of his clothing and booster seat before he leaves the table, but sometimes, it's tricky when you're dealing with tiny bits of food here and there.

that's when we call in the big guns.

and let me tell you, big sister piper takes her job very seriously.


very seriously.


our kiddos work very well together in their effort to clean up. i think the understanding is that cb fishes for any leftovers in his bib pocket and piper has dibs on anything else. quite a deal, if you ask me!


p.s. that AWESOME bib? courtesy of the awesome christy. love it!

the first casualties.

i knew that when choi boy came home, piper would be confused by the toys that would suddenly be strewn around our house. after all, all the toys that were in the house previous to choi boy's arrival had been hers.

over the years, the amount of toys she was allowed to have drastically decreased because she would tear everything to shreds and we were tired of wasting our money on dog toys that she would annihilate within minutes. seriously, the hubs and i would take bets on how long new toys would last. i think the average survival time was 17 minutes. stuffed animals dog toys have been strictly forbidden as the pipe got into the brutal habit of beheading and mutilating them. so sad.

so, it was only a matter of time before piper got into some of choi boy's toys (how's that for rhyming?)...

yesterday, while cleaning up, here's what i found:


would you like to see some close ups of the damage?

i knew you would.

first up, we have a board book, baby signs for mealtime.

does anyone else think it's crazy that the *one* book piper decided to tear into was a book about food?! i tell you, my dog's a genius.

next, we have a wooden puzzle piece:

sadly, this had to go into the trash after i took this because it was so badly splintered.

methinks perhaps piper was trying to learn signs and shapes by way of ingestion. you know, like martha and the alphabet soup?

well, that or piper just likes chomping on wood and ripping paper.

nah, it's gotta be the former.

and finally, the little people farm horse. look closely at the mane:

i think piper was feeling a bit jealous of/inferior to the horse.

don't worry, even after all this destruction (which is just the first of much to come, i'm sure), choi boy and piper are still best buds:

i see this at least 20 times a day. it's so sweet. it's part hug, part lean, part trying to mount and ride piper.

i'm thinking of buying a small saddle. maybe piper can make up for the destruction by becoming an actual toy for choi boy.

anyone know where i can find one?

coping mechanism.

hi, there.

thanks for all your love. i so needed/still need it. ;)

today was a better day.

fo sho.

wanna know my secret?

keeping myself busy and distracted.

with what, you ask?

take a peek:

the hubs says it looks more like ornament balls decorated with a little bit of tree. whatevs, i love my big glittery ornaments. t*rget dollar spot -- holla! oh, did you notice our ghetto "tree skirt"? uh huh, that's a blanket. ;) the hubs wants to make sure you notice the prominently displayed wisconsin W.


freshly baked cookies on a cheesy frosted christmas platter. and a vanilla candle. mmmm...love. oh, and hello, choi boy!

that empty pie tin? there used to be a boston cream pie in there. it was delish.


don't judge me on my fluff picks.



was anybody else super disappointed that they didn't do the running leap into a magical lift (à la baby and johnny)at the end?

and my favorite, favorite distraction?

this girl:
who puts up with me, even though i do mean things like that. if you look closely, you can see some drool. i know, i'm evil. but, what self control my girl has! and what mastery of the stink eye she has!

this is her favorite hangout in our house:


see?

did you notice those little pink spots in the first picture? go back and check again.

know what they are?

look:

piper found this sheet of leftover stickers from the valentines i gave out to my students last year. (i was using the sticker sheet as a bookmark.) somehow, without any opposable thumbs, or *fingers*, for that matter, she managed to peel off four stickers and stick 'em on her blanket.

i have no idea how she did it. but i do admire her decorating sense...it's a little vintage-country-living-meets-ironic, no?

my dog is a genius.

a clarification.

i'm glad piper made you laugh. :) i've long since realized that that is piper's role in our lives. some dogs were born to comfort, others to lead, still others to be heroes. well, our dog was born to be laughed at. oh, we totally love her to bits, but we spend a lot of time laughing at her. not with her. at her. she doesn't seem to mind, though.

i do have to clarify, for the sake of piper's dignity and pride, that she is not a lab. not a full labrador retriever anyway. we adopted from an awesome local rescue 3 years ago when she was about 10 weeks old. we were told that she was almost certainly part black lab, and most likely also beagle or some sort of hound. after learning more of what the beagle is like (read: crazy independent with minds of their own), we think that's probably what she's mixed with.

here are some pics of her non-black-lab traits:

if you look closely, she has two different colored eyes. her right eye is the normal brown color of black labs. her left one is the golden-y/hazel color of beagle eyes, and it also has that weird third eyelid. i call that one her edward cullen eye.

lab eye.


edward cullen eye.


she also has a white beard and a white strip on her neck:



when we were deciding what to name her, peter kept coming back this white part and wanted to name her oreo or, wait for it:

CREST.
as in CREST WHITE STRIPS.

i know, right?

whatever she is, we love her...and here's my one plug: adopt a pet! :)

okay, that's all.

i promise, no more gratuitous pics of piper.

at least not this month. ;)

"fetch"

thanks for all your input! i'm going to be optimistic, too and just hope hope hope it's good news!

okay, i need some frivolity now.

remember when i said that piper's attempts at fetch were ridiculous? that it's so ridiculous that it has to be called "fetch"?

for your enjoyment, here is proof in pictures:

at first, piper really looks like she's going to try and play a good game of fetch. she waits for you to throw,
then takes off!.
she runs at her full speed but is on the slow side because she has these long, gangly, awkward-middle-school-girl legs that she never fully grew into. she's always trailing scout, whom we happened to be watching over the weekend:
on the occasions when she actually gets to the ball, she picks it up and excitedly runs off IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM YOU. then, she settles down to enjoy quality one on one time with the ball.
what exactly does she do? she proceeds to destroy the ball, piece by piece, layer by layer:
she stops to take a breather and let others admire her handiwork:
which we do by sighing, picking up the pieces and swearing for the bazillionth time to not waste our money on non-indestructable dog toys/balls:

see?

"fetch."