Rugrats and Dirty Rugs

Our dog, Leigh, is a German Shepherd. With her family, she is timid, obedient, patient with the boys, and very loving. With strangers, she is altogether different. I find it fascinating watching people's reactions when they come to the door. When I hear her barking, I usually say, "Shut up, Leigh" in a disgusted voice. When strangers hear her barking, they freak out. Delivery men are usually back to their trucks before I even open the door. One day, my husband was doing exhausting, landscaping work with Leigh for company. All of a sudden, Leigh goes off like a shot, barking madly at a door-to-door salesman. My man immediately calls her off, but she still barks her head off at the poor man who had stopped dead in his tracks. My husband yells in an obviously uninterested voice, "Can I help you?" The man can't be heard over Leigh's barking, but my husband got the point when he waved a pamphlet in the air. He yelled, "No, thanks" and the man was pr...

My son, Aidan, has entered the "terrible twos" with a vengeance. He has discovered that moving one of the bar stools up to a certain place at the kitchen counter will put him in a better position for trouble. I have discovered that I cannot outsmart my two-year-old. While homeschooling his brothers, I usually put up a gate to keep him confined. Well, maybe I should do that while I watch the food network, too. Hmmmm. Aidan had decided to wake up his exhausted parents at 5am this morning, so I was conked out on the couch watching my favorite channel when Aidan proudly brings me something that I don't quite recognize. When it lands onto my hand, I take a good look at it and scream my lungs out. "It's the fish!" I yelled. Aidan starts to look a little unsure of himself as I look at him in horror. I call down Nathanael (said owner of the fish) to tell him the bad news. As he is coming down the stairs, I notice the fish's gills moving. Imagine my surprise that...

Our dog, Leigh, and I have gone through a lot together. When we got her from the German Shepherd Rescue Foundation, she was nine months old and fully grown. She is small for a German Shepherd and a pretty girl. She warmed up to us fast and was very sweet and patient with our two little boys. We brought her home and that's when I realized that even though she looked like a full-grown dog, she was definitely not one. I was pregnant with my third child when I specifically remember a time when I had been "traumatized" by the kennel training. Little dogs are sooooo much easier to train than big dogs. Little dogs have cute, little terds to pick up and flush down the toilet. Big dogs leave horse piles that sink to the bottom of the carpet. Those who believe that dogs will not do their business in their kennels have no idea what they are talking about. One day, Leigh couldn't control herself any longer and made a whopping mess in her kennel. My husband was at work,...

When our third son was born, he wasn't breathing. Our midwife had to give him mouth to mouth while I gently talked to him looking into his beautiful eyes. When he was resusitated, he was starving. I immediately started feeding him feeling extremely guilty when our midwife said there was a knot in the cord and he had been starving in the womb. He was my smallest baby weighing in at 5 pounds, 6 ounces. From the time he was a baby till now as a four year old, I realized that there is something about Justin that melts people's hearts. A friend once asked me, "Is he your favorite?" probably half-joking. A couple months after Justin was born, Isabella, his best friend, came into the world. Whenever I see the photograph by Jacques Lowe called First Love, I am reminded of Justin and Bella. When they were two years old, they fell head over heels. Now they are four and they both have their own distinct personalities. Justin is matter-of-fact while Bella is dramatic. Even thou...

My firstborn son, Nathanael, is in 4th grade now. To many people, he is very quiet and shy. It is very hard to know what is going on in that brain of his. He doesn't open up easily, but he is very sweet and loving. One day, Nathanael's principal of the classical school that he goes to asked me to stay after school to have a talk with her. I immediately broke out in hives. I was so nervous that I imagined all sorts of things she could possibly want to talk to me about. Did he get into a fight? Did he cheat on a test? Is he failing a certain class? It could have been anything and it drove me crazy all night and all the next day. Finally, the time came and I was sitting in her office. This was her story. The boys and girls in her Language Arts class were having a spelling drill. The girls had to give the boys a really hard word to spell on the board. They were taking a long time trying to find just the right word and it was making Nathanael very impatient. Finally,...