I'm a Sucker

There was a point in our life where we owned six animals. SIX. Two dogs, two cats, two guinea pigs. It was like livin' in the freaking ark in our house. Mostly it was because I had hormones raging and needed to get knocked up like NOW. So I collected pets instead. The husband was not completely on board with it but my pouty lip and teary eyes are very convincing and I generally get my way when it comes to these matters. It was fairly short lived, though, when one of our dogs ate our cat's head.

I'm not kidding.

It's almost Halloween so I felt like I could stick that detail in my blog and it would be appropriate.

Anyways, we gave both dogs back to the shelters that we adopted them from, and were left with Mikey, our fat cat who also happens to be my first adulthood pet. Oh, and those two guinea pigs that I didn't even really like and promptly got rid of shortly after I found out I was pregnant. But, I'm a dog person, and I really missed being a dog owner. My family always had a dog while I was growing up and I was almost more depressed about living life sans canine than I was about our poor beheaded cat. Six weeks after the gruesome incident, I had talked the husband (thanks again pouty lip and teary eyes) into getting a dog. Best decision we ever made:

So now we have one cat, one dog, one baby. Good numbers that don't come anywhere near the animal hoarder I almost was. Mikey and Molly are awesome with Amelia, and so my rule has become: No more dependents in our house unless they come out of me.

Until yesterday.

Two nights ago, we had a cat sneak into our garage. Jon did everything he could to try and get it out, but mostly he made it terrified, and it refused to leave. Yesterday morning, I searched the garage and thought it had wandered out during some point in the night, went to shut the garage door with a satisfied smile, and the damn thing ran back in and up the stairs to the attic. I sighed, opened the garage door again, and texted my dad about borrowing their animal trap. I felt good about being adament that we get rid of it. After all, it was probably feral anyways.

Later in the afternoon, I took the girls for a walk down the gravel lane by our house. As we were finishing our walk and nearing the end of the road, there was the kitty. I should have kept walking and been grateful that it was out of our garage. But curiosity got the best of me and I tried to approach it.

It was friendly. My story, and convictions to not keep any more animals, goes downhill from here.

Molly was obviously excited about meeting a new friend, but I thought surely this cat is not going to like her, adding to my list of reasons not to keep it. Instead, it walked up to her and rubbed against her, then meowed and rubbed against me. To top things off, it was thin. Super thin. I could see it's hips and spine sticking out.

I can't have a living creature be within five miles of my home and have it be thin. It's my southern heritage. I must feed things and get them fattened up so they know I love them.

With that, I called Jon and told him about the underfed critter, and he told me to feed it. The first cardinal rule of not increasing the number of animals on your property is DO NOT FEED THEM. To be fair, I'm sure he could hear the pouty lip in my voice.

And so, now we have a cat living on our property. It attempted to get IN our house yesterday. I texted, facebook messaged, and called everyone that I could think of, begging them to take this friendly outdoor cat. No one wants it. And you know why? Because our world is oversaturated with the darned things. Face it:

Cats are the new zombie. When the apocolypse comes, cats will outlive us all.

When I woke in the middle of the night last night, I heard it raining and worried about if it was dry and warm. After I fed Mikey and Molly this morning, I went out to the front porch to find it curled up on a blanket. I fed it, gave it water, and even gave it some of Mikey's treats. I petted it a little and could feel every vertebrae on it's spine. I sighed, knowing that we are now a three pet household unless I can find someone to take a barn cat.

I would like to say I'm going to remain firm about it remaining outside, but let's be honest, I can't make any promises. Winter is coming and I can envision a cold day coming that will make me say, Oh, come on inside...

I don't even like cats.

I'm such a sucker.

Poop and Manners Are Important

Yesterday was a little rough. I mean, granted, Amelia has had the flu and we think she has some additional teeth coming in. Unlike us, she cannot tell us specifically what is wrong when something hurts. All she can do is whine and fuss. I do my best to be patient, but honestly, it can be really frustrating at times, especially when I am by myself. When you add that I have not been able to get as much work done as I would like since I had the flu right before she did, things were challenging yesterday.

Jon and I did come up with a few options though:

1) Buy a pair of prosthetic arms so I can type with one pair and hold her with the other pair. We are thinking of looking on Craigs List.

2) Clone myself so one of us can work and the other one can play, rock, feed, nurse, and change Amelia. That sounded like a good idea until Jon suggested a third clone. I can't handle that much competition, even if it is from myself, although it also highlights how productive I generally am as a mommy-- enough that it should take three of me to get everything done.

3) Baby straightjacket, which would allow me to pin her arms down so I can hold her and she won't slam her hands down repeatedly on my keyboard. Don't wrinkle your nose at me, swaddlers do the same thing as a straightjacket. So, I guess what I need is a toddler swaddler.

I coped by taking deep breaths, eating Halloween candy, and listening to Brittany & Meredith Live podcasts. Suddenly, at 2:00 p.m. I smelled something. I looked at Amelia all the way across the room and decided that it could not possibly be her. She has never produced something so smelly that the odor wafted across large spaces.

Until yesterday.

After I cleaned her up, she was like a whole different baby, smiling, clapping, reading her books. An important life lesson taught by an 11 month old:

Everyone feels better after a good poop.

So, with that, I worked a bit longer and we headed to the gym. Afterwards, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some odds and ends, which included cat food because OMG when our cat can see the bottom of his bowl he follows us around meowing driving me frickin' crazy and then poops on the bathroom floor out of spite. Which teaches another life lesson:

Poop can also be used as revenge.

After we grabbed everything we needed, which included sushi, roses, and chocolate covered pretzel ice cream for mommy because I earned it, damn it, we got in line to check out. Then it happened.

Amelia turned towards the cashier next to us, opened and shut her hand repeatedly, and said "Hi!".

My jaw dropped as everyone around us said Awww, smiling and waving back at her. She turned to the teenage boy bagging our groceries and said it again "Hi!" with her little open and shut wave. He looked like he could care less about this little baby and her cuteness and maybe considered ignoring her efforts at friendliness until I gave him my tight lipped smile that said 'You'd better wave back and say hi or I'm going to kick your pimply adolescent ass.' He waved back.

I can't pinpoint exactly what was so thrilling about this moment. Maybe it was that mommyhood has been a little more tiring than usual lately and this was a reminder of the good parts of parenthood. Maybe it was because her 'hi' was so distinct and intentional, another step towards toddlerhood as she nears her first birthday. I don't really know for sure. All I know is that I texted all my family, as if she had just taken her first steps.

Now, if we could just get her to stop picking her nose...