With the adoption of Willow, a Border Collie, Jack Russell mix, we now officially have a pack. Having three dogs is incrementally more work than just having two dogs - especially as the two are in their "senior" years at eight and ten, and Willow is 18 months - 7 in puppy years if you are asking.
Like everything about Willow, her addition to our family was unplanned and fast moving. We certainly weren't looking for another dog - but after the China debacle, from our daughters perspective, we weren't returning her!
She was quickly accepted by the other two dogs - a minor miracle that I chalk up to many years of doggy-daycare and a quick connection between Willow and Koko.
Willow quickly adopted Katrina as "her person" and adores her while adorning her with kisses whenever possible. Willow LOVES the little people!
She showed a healthy respect of John by squatting and peeing in the bedroom daily for the first few weeks, topping that trick with leaving a significant pile of poop just outside the bathroom door one morning, which he stepped in, of course. Not her most endearing move.
Willow is all play and love and cuddle and flop.
She loves her new life full of doggy-day-care days with new friends and pack nights with everyone piled together in the snug pit.
She is charmingly unaware of "personal space" and is one of the least graceful dogs I've ever seen, consistently stepping on you, walking into to walls and tripping up the stairs.
Willow is a food-stealing-people-food-licking-mooch! If there is food and she can a) smell it and b). find a way to reach it, it's all hers!
She is also a goof - causing a near riot at the vet with her reaction to having her temperature taken and the resulting escape attempt.
Willow is what we refer to as "Florida Fixed." Her recent, (and last!) heat (did you know that dogs go in to heat for 3 weeks!) was not a welcome surprise. This unexpected event resulted in doggie diapers, dry cleaning, draping of sheets all over everything and a week of border-line grumpiness and over sensitivity on her part!
So - let's review the canine beaters currently residing at Chez AmRhein...
- Kahlua (A slim and trim 92 pound Chocolate lab) - Our oldest canine child who would live in the water (and stink) year round if allowed. It is all about Kahlua and she can't think of a reason why you wouldn't love her. She is the sweetest, most gentle (except when meat is involved) dog you will ever meet.
- Koko (A slightly chubby 65ish pound Black lab / something mix) - Our second canine child and first rescue dog. She is nuts, sensitive, your best girl-friend and convinced even after all of these years that "today is the day." BTW - She loves riding in the boat and will jump off the front at a moments notice where ducks are involved, resulting in stopping the boat, John getting out of the boat, and shoving all 60 (ish) wet pounds of her back into the boat. Not pretty.
- Willow (Our lightest canine friend at 45 pounds) - Our third canine child and now second rescue dog. We're still getting to know Willow, but she either has far fewer issues with being a rescue dog than Koko did, or we are just so used to dealing with dogs in transition that we just roll with it. She is a sweet girl, but trouble. She will follow Koko into the shallow water, but so far no swimming. Her best attribute is her immediate connection with and loyalty to Katrina - which makes her more lovable by default.
So, if you are planning at trip to Chez AmRhein, be aware, we now have a pack of dingo's living here - all loving, but the whole is definitely bigger than the sum of the parts! Your best defense is to split the pack up and love the pieces and parts, which are all more than worth it!
Coming next blog - peeling a banana in your car while driving is hazardous to your health!
Yesterday morning I walked my daughter to her first grade class for the last time. When she walked out three hours and fifteen minutes later, she was officially a second grader, and darn proud of it!
Kids learn a LOT more in first grade than we did as kids. By the end of the school year she was learning fractions and probability - meaning that I'll be of no use to her in the math arena somewhere around Thanksgiving of 2nd grade. Thank goodness math is something she does in her head, skewing her face and looking upward as she works the little calculator in her brain - just like her dad. Thank goodness for that!
So, what's the first grade experience as seen through the eyes of me watching and experiencing it with her?
First grade is amazing art work now curated and hung about the house and in my "office" at work.
It is spelling tests every Friday with 12 words in each. We started with short "a" and am, at, back, bat and finished with prefixes like "un" and "re" - refill, refund, unkind.
It is 17 lists of Dolch words and lots of tears and "persevering" until we conquered each list and got to put our name on the chart of achievers.
It is Bubbles, the classroom Webkinz fish who circulates the class and has his / her adventures documented in words and pictures.
Calendar books and telling time (with hands on a clock, not a digital clock!)
Mad minute math - cranking out a target of 10 addition or subtraction problems as fast as you can!
First grade is field trips and fun Friday's and assemblies and fun.
It is 26 letters home on Friday's with mom and dad responding - all compiled into a nice little binder that I'll keep, and re-read and probably cry over every once in awhile.
It meant meeting new friends and missing old ones. It also meant lots of friends who were boys as Katy is the perfect tomboy - into bugs and Baukegons and batman - as well as Barbie.
It was working through things with our first bully - a girl. While mom and dad wanted to arrange a visit after hours on the playground, Katrina was patient and now considers her a friend. (I still might work out the meeting on the playground.)
First grade was two more stamps in her passport - one to China and one to Turks and Caicos islands.
It was her first sleepover without mom or dad. (Note, neither mom nor dad slept that night.)
It was a lot of "MOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!" and "What the..." (which she gets from me) and "Are you KIDDING me!" (which she also gets from me.)
It was an end of year assembly with Katrina front and center and showing better dance moves than anyone in the class to their modified version of the Black Eyed Peas, "I've got a feeling..." Jazz hands, baby!
First grade was a lot of growing up - and I'm not certain that I'm ready for it, even if she is!
We celebrated her achievement with lunch at Whippi Dip and an afternoon playing with Lego's. Today we'll celebrate the start of summer when I bust her out of "summer camp" at noon along with her BFF Sam to have lunch and whittle away what little money I have left at Chuck-E-Cheese. As long as they share their tokens, there will be no issues!
I am pretty amazed by my daughter. She is a really great little person, and while I'd like to give a majority of the credit for that to John and I, I suspect that it's more her than us. We are only here to clear the path for her to greatness.
So - with 1st grade complete, we now look forward to a not-so-bummer-summer (with blogs galore) and 2nd grade, where I'm hoping to finally be able to read Captain Underpants and other cool books that I've been waiting for! I'll leave the 2nd grade math to her father. I'll bet it's calculus!
My husband and I finished putting in the dock today - the last two sections are the hardest and we jokingly refer to them as "Rubik dock." Okay, that's my reference. His isn't family-blog-friendly. Every year it vexes us in some way, and every year we beat it in some way. Probably not the same from year to year, but the dock is in, and people can stand on it without worry of it falling down around them. (Although we did manage to collapse it 2x today - but only Willow got wet.)
I bring this up because we were celebrating the beginning of the summer, and at the same time noting how quickly the month of June will go. Don't blink, 4th of July will be here before you know it!
Summer's as a kid seemed to last forever and ever. My mom would load us into the car and head for Lake Leelanau; two kids in the backseat with the dog in the middle and one kid in the back with the cat howling the entire 5 1/2 hour trip. By the end of June we were sick of each other, missing our friends and wishing for the day when we were old enough to stay home and not have to go to no-man's land - aka, "The Lake."
File that under you-don't-appreciate-what-you've-got-until-it's-gone.
Oh, the cottage is still there - kind of. My parents tore it down and rebuilt a few years ago. It's nicer now - you don't have the jiggle the toilet handle and there is hot water for everyone, but it isn't home anymore - at least not mine.
The endless summers of my youth started when it was warm enough to go barefoot. It continued through endless bike rides with no end destination in mind, swimming from dusk until dawn and only "checking in" around meal time. It was watching the news through dinner to catch the weather for the next day and having our parents wake us up in the middle of the night to catch the Milky Way in the sky above the lake. It was swimming lessons in Leeland, the library once a week to restock, a tree house in the woods to escape my siblings, the "Bee Keepers" clubhouse and Camp Run-a-Muck for a week with the cousins every year. It was sneaking in to the cherry orchard behind the house and gorging ourselves on sweet cherries, complete with pesticides and who-knows-what else. It was watching for the barn door to open at the Matson's so we knew that Sarah and Tom were awake and it was okay to go over and find new things to play with. It was 3,000 piece jigsaw puzzles or 3-day marathon Monopoly games when the weather was wet. Summer meant day trips to the Sleeping Bear dunes or Sutton's Bay. It was missing friends at home and racing dad through the field to the main road on Sunday's when he left to go back to home, and work.
So now I'm watching my 7-year old float herself and our newest dog, Willow, on one of the dock platforms as we try to figure out the best way to put the last two sections together, and I'm remembering that when we first moved in she wore floaties and we lived in constant fear of her being knocked off of the dock by one of the dogs as they barreled down the dock to jump off of the end in pure puppy happiness. It was already 4 years ago that we practiced, "stop and stand" to prepare for the inevitable hip-check off of the dock. Now she is herding dogs like a professional with no fear of a). dogs or b). falling - she swims like a fish!
Yea, summer goes fast, but think of how much we can cram into it, and will!
The nice thing about being kids at heart is that for all of the crazy things we did, we'll drag Katrina along with us to do more. Will she hate us for it? Probably a little, but we're still the coolest parents that we know, and she'll appreciate it eventually, right? She will!
Summer has started, people - get out there and get it on! Life is short, so don't blink!
Peace
