Emma

I'm happy to announce the newest member of our family, Emma! She is a basset hound/cattle dog mix and we rescued her from the pound last week. I told Dan about two weeks ago that we could go "look" at the dogs in Animal Control's kennel one day after I got off work. Last Wednesday worked out the best between Dan's hours and when AC would still be open in the evening. We had looked at their website to see the dogs who were available for adoption and had one or two picked out that we would want to "meet" when we got there. Joey came with us, of course, and would be the determining factor in any dog that may or may not come home with us. Any dog we looked at, Joey had to like and it had to like Joey, plain and simple. We walked around and checked out all the dogs, some are waiting for their owners to pick them up, others were brought in as strays, some were even given up by their owners. The first dog we wanted to look at was definitely a stray and had been for some time, he was skinny and very timid. We "met" him in one of their little side rooms but Joey was afraid of him (despite the dog not doing anything remotely close to aggressive) and I was uneasy about a stray anyway. While we had been walking around, we came across Emma who was friendly and not at all barking. With little ones who take naps, no barking is very important to me. We asked about her and found out that she had been a stray but was still in her "waiting to see if the owner claims her" period. If nobody claimed her, she would be available to take home Saturday and we could put in the paperwork if we wanted so that someone else couldn't adopt her while we waited.

Checking out the hamsters.

We met with her in the room and Joey instantly loved her. He kept wanting to get on the floor and play (um, ew) and she kept licking his hands and face and didn't mind when he was not quite gentle with her tail. We were sold, this was our dog. We filled out the paperwork, paid the fees, and were told that she would have to come back Tuesday to be spayed. No problem, I do not want puppies! We liked that because it also gave us the weekend as a trial period to see how she and Joey did living in close quarters and for us to get an idea of her personality. In the couple of days before picking her up, we stopped at PetSmart to get what we would need when we brought her home, Joey likes PetSmart :)

Bringing her home on Saturday was interesting. There was just as much novelty in being in a new house with new people for her as there was for Joey having a dog in his house. To this point, he's only gone to people's houses to see dogs, there's never been one in HIS house, so this was exciting, especially because he liked this dog a lot. It was rough for me because Dan had plans with a friend that afternoon and left me for several hours with these two crazy toddlers (Emma's age is estimated to be around a year old) and keep them from hurting each other. Emma liked to play bite, a lot, and didn't discriminate against small humans either. She was a little more gentle with Joey, but not much, and she saw him as something to herd, not as a member of the pack. Dan and I had a long talk Saturday night about whether we could keep her or not. I'm not opposed to training at all, I just didn't want to lose a lot of money and bond with a dog just to give her up when I'm too pregnant and tired to deal with keeping her and Joey off each other.

Sunday Dan started working with Emma to see how she would respond to training. She still hasn't quite mastered "sit", but has responded to the spray bottle, she hates it! Play biting has significantly diminished from that first day and since she showed signs of not inheriting basset hound stubbornness, we decided to keep her! After her surgery to be spayed on Tuesday, she's also mellowed out a bit, although part of that could also be due to getting used to living with us and being in a routine. Either way, I will take a slightly more mellow dog. She's still got crazy energy and loves to take walks, but she's not running around the house like she was before. Emma is absolutely the perfect size, energy level, and personality for our family. We found out that when she was found she was wearing a collar, so at some point she lived with a person or people. It was clear from the play biting and general lack of some "doggie manners" that they didn't attempt much training with her besides housebreaking her. Even the timid stray we didn't like knew the "sit" command.

I think some of her initial wild behavior had to do with her previous "pack" not establishing who was alpha. Dogs who are not alpha personalities do much better when you establish your dominance, because then they don't have to worry about trying to be something they're not. I have a feeling that's also part of why Emma has mellowed out, she's more relaxed because she knows we're running the pack so she doesn't have to. Dan's mom suggested the possibility that maybe Emma didn't escape from her home, she was set loose. It's a possibility, she was found in an area with a lot of people, so they could have abandoned her rather than turn her over. She is such a pretty dog, and really very sweet, I think the lack of training shows inexperience but she was well fed and well groomed, she was clearly cared for by her previous owners.

And in other news...

I had my 20ish week ultrasound and checkup. The ultrasound happened at 21 weeks and checkup at 22. Baby was perfect at both! Dan didn't get to come to the ultrasound because he was watching our friend's baby that day also, but it's ok because I'm going back for another in a couple of weeks and hopefully he can come to that one. The tech got lots of great shots, this is one of my favorites, Baby is looking at us :) This baby is measuring spot on in both ultrasound and my tummy measurements, Joey was at least a week ahead pretty much the whole time. So my early prediction is that this one will come around his estimated due date. I finally got to see another midwife, through crazy events and busy days, I've seen the same one 3 times in a row now, and they want us to see everyone so nobody's a stranger. I like both of the ones I've seen now, and the new MW even knew about SPD and suggestions to help with the pain. I definitely had it last time with Joey and my doctor shrugged it off as part of the aches and pains of being pregnant. The MW recommended a chiropractor and I'll be calling them to see if they take our insurance, I really hope they do. In the meantime, a pregnancy belt should help, or anything that compresses the tops of my hips and keeps the weight of my belly up and off the front of my pelvis.

Another thing I like about going to the midwives is right now I'm going back every 6 weeks instead of every 4. I'm not sure how long this will last, but the longer span of time between appointments is a nice break, especially since I know that I'll be there more often towards the end. I did have to schedule my glucose testing for next time though, hopefully I'll pass just fine and not need to do the 3hr test again. I don't have problems with the drink at all, and even though I took my knitting and iPod with me, sitting in the same uncomfy chair on a Saturday for almost 4 hours was not my idea of a good time. If there were some recliners and a TV (and my knitting) I'd be all set, since it requires sitting in a waiting room with strangers who give you dirty looks when you just get up and go back without being called (which you're told to do because you're on a clock but they don't know that), it's not so great. Plus the fasting really, really sucks.

It's almost midnight now, which is the latest I've been up in a while. The only reason I've managed it is because Dan and Joey let me take a nap earlier (I wasn't feeling good, the nap helped a bit), and it's the only reason I allowed myself to stay up too. Normally I'm in bed and asleep by 10ish, but I haven't made too much progress on a big knitting project and I wanted to at least do SOMETHING. I didn't make as much progress as I would have liked during the time that Joey's been in bed, but that's my own fault for bringing my laptop. I wanted to start watching Dr. Who, but my hard drive needs to be cleaned out because now everything is running slow, so I ended up distracted on Facebook and catching up on blogs and random other things. Tomorrow we're visiting friends who live 45min away, I'll get knitting done in the car going to and from ;)

Night Weaning

Joey's been sleeping consistently in his crib in his room, which is awesome considering how hardcore we were co-sleeping a couple of months ago. At first, it was only a few hours at a time and he was still sleeping in bed with me or on the couch with Dan towards the end of the night. Now, I've been better about not falling asleep nursing him where we end up spending 2-4 hours asleep in the big bed. I noticed a while ago that Joey seemed to do much better during Dan's shifts of getting him when he woke up in his crib than mine. As an experiment over a weekend, Dan was the only one who went and got him, just to see what would happen. Joey slept a whopping 5 hour then 3 hour stretches, way more than he had since he'd started teething at 5mo. That clued me in to what was probably going to happen: Night Weaning. A few more days of just Dan rocking Joey back to sleep just proved my suspicions, even though Joey was still getting milk out of his cup at night (cow's milk), he wasn't expecting to nurse anymore so he was sleeping longer periods because he wasn't constantly sucking. I was actually surprised that part of the key to getting Joey to sleep longer was night weaning, but I shouldn't be I guess. When he didn't have something to suck on from the beginning (Dan's shifts), he slept longer because he didn't suddenly realize that he was missing something. When he fell asleep nursing with me, he would wake up frequently because he would realize that something was different and he wanted it back! Not so surprising when I think about it really, I would wake up too if my pillow were suddenly gone and I'd be pretty upset.

After almost a week of only Dan getting up to rock Joey, I started going in, wearing one of Dan's shirts, and just rocking him back to sleep instead of nursing. Having Dan's shirt definitely helped, as did the near-week of no nursing at night, because he went back to sleep just fine and has been more and more consistent in his sleep habits since! We've had couple of bad nights where I've had to revert to nursing because he woke all the way up and just refused to go back down with only being rocked, but those are getting further and further apart. As I write this, probably later in the morning than I should because I need to be getting ready for work, it's just after 5:00am and Joey has been asleep since 10pm last night! He woke up once after Dan came to bed, but I don't think he even really woke up because when I went to go check on him, he was still lying in his crib (sitting up is usual), so instead of picking him up, I turned on his music giraffe and started humming and rubbing his back. He fussed a little, but didn't get up and eventually I could hear his breathing change and he was back asleep. I'm hoping this means we'll have to actually pick him up less because that's the next step in the transition, it would be great if he could move on himself and we don't have to deal with extra fussing because he wants to be rocked. *Fingers crossed*

I'm glad we started this whole transition when we did, I knew it was going to take a while because we didn't want to do "Cry It Out" at all. Pretty much patience the only other option besides CIO (or co-sleep until they decide to sleep all night, but we couldn't do that with a new baby on the way), even then, they can revert back after whatever you do because of teething/illness/routine change/etc. and you get some rough nights and just have to try and be consistent until everything goes back to normal. I'm currently 22 weeks pregnant and with 18 left to go, I think we might actually have Joey sleeping consistently through the night by the time New Baby gets here to wreck all the sleep habits we're creating for ourselves ;)