Lucy gets added attention

As I sit here, Lucy is resting on my knee. She's a asleep, and since yesterday, she's been the focus of our energies.

Loss does that to you. Part of dealing with loss, is looking around at how the things one currently has fit into the world.

Lucy is now the pet. And since the kids got her, she has sort of gotten the shaft. She turns 5 this month. We got her when she was a tiny 8 weeks old.

She's been a wonderful companion and a loving dog. Always greeting us when we come in as if we're the greatest things on the planet. So, while thinking about our Romeo-less life, we've decided to work harder to being attentive to Lucy. More walks. More love. More photos.

About last night

I should start by saying that life is getting better. A couple of night's ago, b-Gavin, baby Gavin, aka, the captain slept from 9:00PM until almost 3:00AM. For the math challenged among us, that's 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Lets pause for a moment and consider how truly awesome that is.

Okay, now back to last night. B-Gavs was up to his normal schedule. A feeding at 10:00, at 1:00AM. But that's the not the thing.

The thing was 5:00AM.

It started, of all places, with the dog. For reasons that only she could explain, she decided to get up. Since she sleeps under the bed, and is a 50lb dog, it's a loud performance when she gets her butt out from under the bed.

And this noise created the following chain-reaction: a wail from b-Gavin, since he was in the room.


The wail woke up Autumn, who began her own wail, in the note of C.


At 5:00AM. Meaning, there's no going back to sleep. Because at this point, Lucy decided to go down stairs and bark at the moon (or most likely a dog being walked by their person at 5:00 freakin' AM).

We tried to get back to sleep. Rub Autumn's belly. Rock b-Gavin. But the effort, and the time, means there's no chance at getting back to sleep.

This is the first chain reaction wake-up in the AM. It won't be the last. Chances are good that we'll have one at 3:00AM. Me thinks the kids are just practicing.

Next time, we'll talk about his poop. It's otherworldly.

Bonus shot:

In the time of lack of sleep

Yes, it's true, we don't sleep much.

Our little Gavin is 5 weeks old today, and shows no real sign of sleeping soon. Autumn wakes up at some point in the night on a fairly regular basis and complains about something.

And Lucy.

Lucy has something going on that isn't fleas, but makes her scratch herself all the time. All friggin' night long. Scratch. Friggin' Scratch.

Oh, and to complete the list, Romeo the cat has decided to up his prolific output of pissing on everything. Perhaps this is the manner that he draws the line in the sand saying enough adding people and pets to this household that used to just be me and the woman that takes baths.

But, he's now taken to peeing on pillows on the bed.

As you can imagine, we're on edge. But, they tell me, this is normal. We don't get much sleep, pets react different to new people in their territory, we wake up on edge and sometimes get in each others grill over something as silly as how the dishwasher got unplugged.

But we're doing good. Really. We have a wonderful family. We have a nice little house in a nice little neighborhood. And, there are things like this on the Internet to give one perspective.

It's called Eat the Strawberry. What it means to me is "Hug my wife".

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Lucy is broken

That's how Autumn describes Lucy. At the dog park almost a week ago she collided with a dog, and ripped a gash in her side. it's stitched up, but she has to wear a cone. As you can imagine, she's not that happy a camper. Take a look.

the two little girls

Some close-ups, taking in our new living room, with the sun beating in. Taken Yesterday.

A weekend of puking

This weekend didn't go smoothly. Take friday night. We put Autumn to bed at her normal time. Not long after, she wakes up crying. I go into her room to find vomit in her crib, and her in mid-vomit. I take some vomit-shrapnel in the shirt, and some goes on her carpet as I grab her and rush her to the tub.

The tub seems like the best and worst place to take her. It contains the next round of vomit pretty well, but it needs to be cleaned.

As you can imagine, she was pretty upset. We stripped her, changed her diaper, put on some new clothes, and them mom and her just sort of hung out together while I went through the chore of cleaning up the vomit (Lucy, come here). Lucy didn't help.

Later, after she was much happier, we put her back to bed. The time was about 9:00PM. We had no other incidents in the night, and the next day went smoothly.

Until nighttime. We put her to bed normally. A bath, some reading, nothing to see here. But then, she began crying again. So I went in again to see how she was doing. I picker her up to hug her, and vomit.

Rush to tub, vomit shrapnel every where. Clean up, new clothes, mom and baby hug. It's a repeat of the entire night before. It's deja puke all over again.

This time though, we take her to our bed. She's not interested in laying in her crib. She wants to law with us. So we're in our bed. Relaxing. She's miserable, and we're not sure why.

I pick her up. (Are you noticing a trend). And she vomits again. Thankfully, I take the entire thing, and none of it goes on a bed. But from our room to the tub, there's a trail of vomit that thankfully Lucy follows like Hansel -- or I guess Gretel.

After another soak in the tub, more hugging, consoling, relaxing, and reading, Autumn goes down again. We're freaked out, but she's asleep. One more vomit incident and we're going to the hospital. But she has no fever, and she's otherwise fine. She has some puffy eyes, but who doesn't after two good pukes?

Now, we're on Sunday night. We've had a good day eating. We're happy reading books. She goes to bed, and starts crying. Instead of letting her get herself worked up, I try the tried, tested and true trick of taking a car ride. 20 minutes later, she's sound asleep and other than the occasional Mommy, Mommy, she sleeps through the night and doesn't vomit.

But holy. What a weekend.

Reno: more than a city in Nevada

The reno's day 1.

You can't say it starts well. When we decided to do the room, we sort of had a number in our heads. When we got quotes, all the people came in under. We picked a guy, then we began adding stuff.

But it was sort of off the cuff adding stuff. Lets add this. Oh, and this. All the while, we hadn't gotten a new price.

until the morning of the first day. We added enough to add about 80% to the bill. We're good at adding. Thus, something that was going to cost X (where x is a lot) now almost costs 2 * X.

We're good. Anyway, day one went smoothly after that. There's a huge hole in the ceiling, and where there was once a wall, there's a hole. Lucy and Romeo are acting clearly weird, but that's to be expected. Lucy's post is on the couch in the living room, barking at anything that moves in front of our house. She can't do that now.

We'll keep you posted on day 2. That's today.

Lucy and Autumn

I made some movies this weekend. It's been on the to do list. That's the reason for the prolific posting. Lucy parks near Autumn when Autumn is eating. Here's why. (Switched to YouTube for better quality)

How cool are these?

For the five people who read this blog, and you know who you are, how cool are these?

sorry about this next one, blogger won't let me flip it.

A great eye

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: my wife has a great eye. She takes some good shots with the camera. Our weekly alternative magazine, Artvoice, often publishes her pictures. Ones taken with a point and click. Which is why we decided to invest in a good camera. Here then are some of the first shots. Now keep in mind, she's learning to use it. But even as she learns, there's no doubt about her eye.

Autumn being cute:









And finally, our other little girl.

This post is for Lucy

Help us create an Off Leash Recreational Area (Dog Park) on Buffalo's Waterfront. We believe that dog parks:

• Improve the heath and good citizenship of canines through exercise & socialization
• Knit together an important community social fabric among dog owners
• Create venues to promote responsible dog ownership & education
• Promote ownership and pride in our public spaces
• Show case & deepen our commitment to Buffalo's greatest asset: Our Waterfront.

We envision and support a series of officially sanctioned Off Leash Areas across our region in both fenced and unfenced formats organized by citizen action groups in coordination with our local municipalities.

Our thanks to Brian Davis, Andy Sedita, Maria Whyte, and Sam Hoyt for their support of this one day trial of an OLA. The success of this trial is critical to making this a permanent addition to our city.

It is time that Buffalo join the 250 other communities around the country who have established Off Leash Areas for dogs. Contact us at BuffaloDogs@hotmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it to join the doggie revolution!

So there you go Lucy. You have an off-leash park.

In case you were wondering

Lucy and Autumn really do get a long. Lucy can, and does get crazy at times, but she's a great dog when Autumn is around. Lucy lets Autumn grab her ears, paws...basically any body part.

But these days. Lucy really is being great. Autumn has decided she really loves to try and take Lucy for a walk. And Lucy just puts up with it.

Autumn's student mom

Right now, Rhona, who also goes by my wife, Autumn's mom, and Buffalo State master's student, is doing a great job juggling all of her many titles. She's also become the chief dog walker to our strange dog.

Here's why she's strange. Lucy hates, hates, hates, thunder. Anything remotely like thunder, and she's going under the bed. Well, we live in the city. Close enough to where the Buffalo Bisons play that Lucy has learned to hate evening walks because the often coincide with fireworks (to her thunder) during and after the games. The heavy humidity also smells, to her, like rain is coming. And rain offers a chance at thunder. So times are tough right now for little Lucy -- she sleeps under our bed at night these days.

Still, Rhona and Autumn take her for a walk. And I think Autumn loves it. And I appreciate that Rhona has a lot on her plate these days, but she manages to get it all done. I just want everyone to know that she's doing a great job. Autumn, Lucy and I are all lucky people/pets.

Best Friends forever

Lucy is Autumn's first dog. And she's been awesome. Autumn can crawl over to Lucy and use her as a drum, or to climb, or simply to grab hold of. Lucy just handles it. Maybe because when it comes to dinner time, Lucy is right there, at Autumn's side, ready to grab anything. It's actually funny to watch. Autumn will place something near Lucy, and Lucy will take it (nicely) from Autumn's little hand. If Autumn didn't want it, she finds it hilarious. If she did want it, she'll start crying – until we point out that there's more. It's great to see them grow up together. We're lucky our dog is so loving.

the dogs

As much as Lucy loves Autumn, and vice versa, Lucy really loves playing with her friend Sydney French. Last Sunday (we're late getting to this), Sydney came over for a play date. Autumn found it hilarious to watch them play. And Sydney was great with Autumn. Syd licked Autumn's face, and then went back to wrestling Lucy. The two of them pooped each other out, which is never a bad thing for Lucy.