Aren’t these eggs beautiful? They may remain eggs forever as their mother picked a very public spot for her nest and is forever flying away to avoid dogs and people and loud cars. I appreciate this location, however, because I can easily snap photos of these sweet robin eggs.
Now if only our neighborhood robins would quit singing loudly at 4:00am we might enjoy their presence a bit more…
Getting a puppy feels similar to adding a baby to our home. The dishes have piled up on the counter (even though my mom has washed them several times for me), the beds are unmade, toys are left all over the floor. But as with human babies, dog babies are freakishly adorable. And our pup is no exception. Shiloh’s sweet puppy face and silly puppy antics make up for the discomfort of disrupted routines and lack of housekeeping. He’s just so darn cute.
Internet, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Mucho doggies photos are in your future (which is why Jeremy added a Shiloh category for my blog posts).
Here are the five steps of The Child/Dog Meet-and-Greet.
1) Profound excitement at first glance.
2) Slight anxiety at crazy puppy antics.
3) “Whoa, there.” Mounting distress at crazy puppy antics.
4) Dog calms down.
5) Acceptance is given, love is exchanged, vows of lifelong petting and companionship are uttered.
The End.
That is, the end until tomorrow when I post more photos of Shiloh.
Liv is the kind of kid who chooses to play with pets over other kids. We’ll go to someone’s house to play and if she spies a cat or dog, forget her little buddies! It’s all about the furry creatures. Needless to say, she’s been asking to be a “pet owner” for a l-o-n-g time.
So we decided to get her a small critter for her birthday.
And after rotating through everything from Madagascar hissing cockroaches to rats, we settled on… a dog. We had two specifications in mind. 1) The dog had to be kid-friendly because s/he was going to get a lot of loving from an almost-five year old. 2) The dog needed to be as hypoallergenic as possible since several family members are allergic to pet dander.
Details of our plan fell together quickly this last week and it all culminated in a roadtrip yesterday to pick up our 10 week old Coton de Tulear named Shiloh. We told Livia that Daddy had the day off and we were planning to have a picnic and a few adventures. Halfway through our drive we handed her an early birthday gift. Here is her response:
Now taking it all in…
Sheer delight.
And finally, a Mommy-induced pose.
Livia had a wonderful surprise today in honor of her fifth birthday next week. As you can see, we’re already putting the newest Tredway to work in the yard.
When I get a chance, I’ll post more photos and blog the story of our day.
Like most four year olds, Livia is learning her alphabet and beginning to read. The other day she told Jeremy she wanted something that began with the letter G. (I think it was ginger ale.)
Yesterday Livia wasn’t satisfied with her lunch; apparently, she had other things in mind for eating. I asked her what she wanted and she told me, “Something yummy.”
“Oh yeah? What?” I asked
“Something sweet…” [drawn out pause] “…and it starts with the letter CHOCOLATE!”
By the time she explained, with such a funny little grin on her face, that she wanted chocolate ice cream I was lost in laughter. Most days, and perhaps most hours, I too want something that starts with the letter chocolate.
It is 68 amazing degrees outside right now and I am in love with spring. The warm sunshine on my bare shoulders, the clean breeze running through my hair… I get more freckles on my nose and cheeks by the minute, I think. Spring makes me happy. My whole family spends hours outside digging in the dirt, picking out weeds and coddling the baby plants that are stretching toward the sun. It’s spring, “Lallelujah!” as Livia says.
Not blog-surfing is better for me than blog surfing.
That’s what I discovered during the season of Lent. Well, that and the fact that announcing my plan for a spiritual journey might have actually stunted the journey before the first step was even taken.
I had great hopes for Lent. I wanted to pair the denial-of-self notion with forward steps in my understanding of God and my knowledge of Scriptures. Now, on the other side of 40+ days, I can’t say I increased my knowledge. I pretty much marched in one spot during that spiritual journey. Like many of my aspirations, it started out with a bang and ended with a whimper.
As to the avoidance of blogs, news, and Facebook (FB deserves a category of its own, doesn’t it?), it was an interesting undertaking. I’m a blogger and an avid student of All Things Pop Culture, so I actually did feel denied during the Lenten season. By the first Sunday—my respite day as a reminder of the future celebration of Resurrection Sunday—I was absolutely craving the Internet. In that one day I had to work hard to not completely ignore my family as I made an attempt to eat up all the blog posts I had missed in the previous four days. But something changed as the days passed. I began to miss other blogs less and less. I don’t say that flippantly, as though I’m not part of a valuable community, but it’s true that I didn’t really miss what I wasn’t aware existed. (Very similar to our experience of disconnecting from cable TV actually.)
Still, the no-blog-surfing rule wasn’t easy. There were a small number of times I missed out on important joys or heartaches of friends, and I felt a bit left out by learning of events days later. By Wednesday every week I felt highly annoyed by the whole exercise, and then by Sunday, when I could finally feast!, I didn’t really want to. Lent brought up the concept of you-always-want-what-you-can’t-have and as a result I saw myself as fairly spoiled. I’m so used to getting what I want, at least in little ways, that it was a very strange thing to deny myself of anything! In post-Lent days, I’ve realized that it’s common for me to want what I don’t have. In truth, self-denial and long-suffering are two practices I’m not well-acquainted with. It was the moments where denial was hard, where clicking on that one link would’ve been so simple, where I was reminded to turn to God for the power to push through.
In general, I live my life on my own, sometimes forgetting that I am a child of God, the Creator of the universe, Alpha and Omega, you get the picture. I seem to ignore the amazement of Christ’s sacrifical death for my sins and plug on through my days on my own strength. I don’t need to live that way. The Bible is pretty clear that God gives grace and wisdom and strength to us when we need it. Giving up blog-surfing for Lent wasn’t the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced, but it was a worthy reminder that 1) I need God a whole lot more than I think I do, and 2) I am a wuss when it comes to giving up my creature comforts.
There was one huge side benefit to this year’s Lent observance: I felt free to be more creative. By turning off the voices of other bloggers, I found my own again. I felt free to write, free to take photos, free to share those thoughts and pictures with the world. I also read A LOT more.
So, while I don’t plan on giving up blog land quite so drastically as I did during Lent, I think I may limit my time online in a big way. I cringe at making a grand announcement here (“No more Internet from 8:00am to 8:00pm!”) but I wonder if I’ll actually enact a change without an announcement. Hm. It’s something to think about.
