Boo's and Cavapoo's

Long time, no blog. October is a busy month around here. Mama's getting a little obsessed with Halloween..... decorating the inside of the house.... pretty much ALL of it..... the ceilings, the stairs, every table and mantle and on and on.... and that's not all either..... the other day, I was caught hanging from the window sills upstairs to get some spider webs attached to the outside of the house. WHY???? Well.... I have no earthly idea other than to say that I LOVE Halloween. And I absolutely love the frenzy it seems to put all the kids in when I start decorating. They come ringing the door bell.... begging for candy from my kitchen countertop..... and talking 90 to nothing about all of their own creative ideas on how to decorate my house. I think little 4 year old Baylor made me feel the best yesterday...... we drove into my driveway and he said, "Wow, Ms. Amanda.... Your house rocks!"

That right there made all those hours on the ladder worth it. Soon I'll take some pictures and show you all..... you never know, you might just find yourself painting silk roses black and hanging ghosts from the ceiling, too.

Now to the other reason I've been so busy and not blogging..... My kids have been begging, and when I say begging, I guess I should say BEGGING to get a dog. We've substituted with goldfish and frogs..... not much of a substitute, I know, but a dog is not something I was ready for..... I am so, so busy every day..... I can't possibly fit everything in that I want to do each day, so I've never thought I could handle taking care of a dog, too. And as far as the kids go, I never felt that they were quite old enough to be responsible for it. It's not that I'm against dogs it's just that, one, I had a horrible experience with a Dalmation in college that warped me forever on the difficulty of raising some puppies and, two, Jonathan is highly allergic to cats and some dogs. So every time the kids begged, we said, "no..... not until you're older and more responsible." Well, guess what? I finally realized they ARE older and they ARE more responsible. No more using that as an excuse.

So there began the search for the perfect family pet...... a friend of mine has a labradoodle puppy, a mix of a lab and a poodle, and that's when I started looking into poodle mixes. They are supposed to be hypoallergenic and usually don't shed. But there are tons of different kinds of mixes...... so I did a lot of research and with most breeders in Illinois and Wisconsin and Virginia and, therefore, a plane flight away for a baby puppy, I finally got really lucky and ran into a local woman walking her dog that I thought was cute as could be. She was so helpful and said she got her dog, called a Cavapoo, a cross of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a poodle, from a breeder in Athens, GA. Driving distance!! So I got on the lady's website and then shared a few phone calls and finally decided, with the kids' help, on a little red-haired puppy that would look a lot like the dog I saw when he is grown. So here's the first picture we saw of him at 5 weeks.....

And this is the picture the breeder sent us of him at 6 weeks.....

What a cutie-pie! So I'm reading lots of books and visiting Petco a little more than ususal. This time I want to make sure I do this right. The kids are beyond excited...... ESTATIC! And best of all, they say they don't even want Christmas presents this year......... we'll see how long that lasts. We've named the puppy Miles, after finding out that Miles Standish (captain of the Mayflower) is my 9th great grandfather and the kids' 10th great grandfather. Fitting I thought because the dog has red hair just like Miles Standish did. We'll go pick him up -- the whole family -- on October 17th..... he'll be almost 8 weeks old. I really do feel like we are adopting a child or something...... a new member of the family...... I guess I'm a little excited, too.

Here's a picture of the dog I saw walking that Miles will resemble when he's older. He'll be 17-18 lbs or so with the softest coat and great disposition...... or so we hope. If anyone has any puppy advice, please help -- I'm sure I'll be needing it!

If you believe, she will come.....

My kids are getting older. That's great in a lot of ways, but it does make me sad when they start getting a little too smart and putting two and two together about all the "make-believe" stories we parents tell them. The stories we all grow up with, the ones that make childhood that much more special..... the ones of Santa, and the Easter bunny and let's not forget that sweet little Tooth Fairy..... the one that's cost me an arm and a leg here lately.

My 8 year old seems to be losing a lot of teeth these days. And like I said before, she's getting smarter and smarter, too. So for months now, she's been proclaiming.... LOUDLY.... in front of her 4 year old little brother..... "There really isn't a Tooth Fairy, you know. It's really just your parents who sneak into your room at night." She wanted to so badly to get to the bottom of this age-old mystery, that a few weeks ago when she lost her last tooth, she even told me that she almost tried to trick me. She had decided that she wasn't going to tell me she lost the tooth, and then she was going to stay up (while pretending that she was asleep) and catch me in the act! That sneaky little..... Luckily, though, she told me about her little plan and said she just couldn't do it. Whew, got out of that one.

However, the other day, that curiosity must have gotten the best of her because at 11:00 pm, my 10 year old daughter comes in my room to wake me up. I had been up since 4:00am that day, Jonathan was out of town, and I was exhausted and not so happy to be woken up. She says, "Mom! You've got to help me. Macy lost a tooth today, and she's waiting up to see if the tooth fairy is going to come." She went on to explain that she had been waiting for her little sister to fall asleep so that she could step in and "keep the dream alive." I think I thought that was the sweetest thing I'd ever heard. They usually fight like cats and dogs, but here she was, on a school night, after a long, hard softball practice and lots of homework, trying her best to stay up to step in for that little fairy.

But tired as I was, I gave her a big hug, told her how wonderful she was, and then promptly sent her to bed so I could get some sleep. I told her I'd get up early and do it, but secretly, as tired as I was, I was thinking to myself..... "Well, third grade isn't so bad to find out..... if she finds out she just finds out."

The next thing I knew, a little voice is once again waking me up.... "Mom, Mom! You've got to help. I'm trying to sign this note from the Tooth Fairy and I can't make it look like different handwriting."

You see, my smart little 8 year old decided she would set another trap for that little flying fairy and get her to SIGN the note. She's been convinced for a while now that the tags on the gifts from Santa are her daddy's handwriting, and I always tell her (truthfully, I might add) that it isn't her daddy signing those tags. It worried Madison so much that her little sister had requested a signature that she got up early and had been sitting at my desk, practicing her best "Tooth Fairy" handwriting on little scraps of paper. She had even written wonderful words of encouragement like "keep brushing" and "take care of those teeth." Now this time I KNEW she was the sweetest child in the world. So I helped her, but not before looking at the clock..... it was 5:15am! She had set her alarm early to MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE I wasn't going to mess this up..... she was taking over. (Imagine that). So I scratched out my best Tooth Fairy scrawl..... in the dark with sleep caked in my eyes and then sent her back up the stairs to sneak the note under her little sister's pillow.

So here's the note......

I think I had a permanent smile on my face all day. And it was the cutest thing when Macy came down the stairs that morning, proudly holding her $5 bill (I told you that Tooth Fairy was about to do me in!). She slyly told me about her plan and how...... well, how she must have been wrong about the Tooth Fairy. "It really is real, Mom!"

Maddie, I couldn't be more proud of you........ you DO love your sister! Thanks, big girl.