Oh the cuteness! (Part II)

The foster kittens are now 6 weeks old. These pictures are from they were 4 weeks old.
From top to bottom we have Blossom, female. She's the most adventurous as well as the quickest to learn. She walked first, ran first, drank from a bowl first, and used the litter box first.

Middle: Tigerlily, female. She is the most shy of the three, but super cute and sweet. She has a big freckle on her nose so it looks black. She's Spud's favorite.

Bottom: Cap'n Jack, male. So named for his "pirate patches" on his back, of which there are three.

They all love to chase each other and wrestle. One of my favorite things is watching two of them wrestle while the odd one out attacks the wrestlers' tails!

Farewell Sweet Marco

My dumbo rat boy Marco passed away today. I knew the end was imminent, as he has been quite frail the last couple of weeks. David and I had been saying our farewells the past couple of days. I am relieved that he went as quickly as he did, though, and didn't suffer much. He was able to stay in with the pack until the end, and was even still eating. I think his little body just had worn out. He was about 26 months.

Oh the cuteness!

This is Peanut and her 3 kitties, about 3 weeks old now. We just picked them up from the H.S. tonight. They are really sweet and beautiful. I'm dying over the super-striped tabby kitten!

Oh, I forgot to mention here that we've decided to adopt Minnie, our first foster cat. She and our Noni just fell in absolute love with each other and are fast friends. It seemed very wrong to break something like that up, especially when all my cat-lovin' friends tell me how rare it is. I'll post some pics later this week. The other morning I walked into the hallway to find Noni's "arm" across Minnie's shoulders, and she was licking his face. Talk about sweet!! So, now we have two black cats. A theory on why they have grown so close is that they might have both had all black family members. We know that Noni's mother and siblings were all black, and often animals have positive memories with mother/siblings so they associate those feelings with other similar looking animals. Also explains why Daisy was tickled pink to meet another bichon in PetSmart a few weeks ago.

The family

David's brother returned home from his mission to FL last week, and their sister flew in for the weekend, so we took the opportunity to have me take some family photos.

The girls

Family Bike Ride

We finally have TWO working bikes and a bike trailer, so we went on a family bike ride today. There wasn't room for Daisy in the trailer with the kids, and I don't yet have a basket for her to ride in, so I had to improvise.

Sad news

The kittens died last night. We think that Minnie might have smothered them, as that is fairly common among cats that have been sick. It's fairly hardwired into animal brains to weigh the pros and cons of raising a litter when their own health is compromised, and with all the stuff Minnie's gone through in the last couple of weeks, it's no surprise the cons won out. It is still very sad, though, and we are really going to miss watching those two little kittens grow up. You just wish you could make the animal understand that they don't have to do all this alone, because you are here to help them and to make sure they get everything they need. Perhaps they know something we don't.

Back in the saddle again...

I'm hoping to get going with my photography again this spring. In theory, I'd like to get good enough to be able to have a small business on the side, but to do that I need to get busy taking more pictures.

Here are a couple from December that I finally got around to working with.

Kittens, 1 week old

The kittens turned one week old on Tuesday. They've both lost their little umbilical stumps and are nice & chubby.
The black & white one (top photo) is a girl, I believe. She's very adventurous, especially considering her eyes aren't open yet. She has started crawling out of the kennel and into the rest of the room. The little black/gray one is a boy, and quite content to stay in the kennel with his momma.

Minnie came down with some sort of upper respiratory infection at the end of last week, so I picked up some antibiotics from the humane society, which we started her on on Sunday. Today she finally seems like she is improving, which is quite a relief. She's a really fine mother to her two kittens. It has been neat to watch her with them.

oh the cuteness!

mew! mew!

A few weeks ago I got in touch with the foster home coordinator at the Humane Society and volunteered to foster kittens. Today we got our first litter! A momma cat, Minnie, with two newborn babies! They were just born this afternoon. One is black & white patched, and the other is black with gray on its back & legs. She's a young cat, only about 9 months old herself, and her previous owners took her and the father cat into the shelter yesterday because they have a new baby and the cats were too much to deal with. (Frustrating lame excuse, but oh well.) Anyways, they may not have even known Minnie was pregnant, though they should have expected it, having unfixed pets of both genders living together... Minnie looks nearly identical to our resident cat, Noni, except instead of his sprinkling of white hairs on his black coat, she has a small white triangle on her chest.

The kids, especially Noodle, are very excited, as am I. I hope everything goes well with the mother nursing the babies these first couple of days. The adoption coordinator said that she saw Minnie nursing one of them, so hopefully the instincts have kicked in and they'll do just fine. I hope to take some pictures tomorrow and will post them when I do.

world's worst blogger

I think I'm in a blogging slump, if you hadn't noticed. I think it was sparked when we were no longer able to keep our dog Louie, which really broke my heart and sent me into a tailspin. I didn't want to go into all the details here simply because it hurts to go into everything, but we did get another dog that is a lot more compatible with the family dynamics and our goals as a family. Her name is Daisy, and she's a Bichon Frise (which is French for, essentially, fluffy little dog). We also were able to take in David's business partner's cat, Noni, when he had to move to a different apartment. The cat & the dog get along great, which is something Louie would never have been capable of doing. To make the long sad story shorter, I came to the realization that while Louie was a great dog for ME, being a mother required me to look at the needs of the whole family instead of just at what I wanted. And it turned out that Noodle & Spud were suffering because of my divided attentions. Louie wasn't the sort of dog that the whole family could do things with, as he was extremely exciteable and strong. I couldn't take him on walks with the kids, as it took all my effort and focus to keep him under control. And playing in the backyard required that the kids be primarily spectators, because when they tried to get in the game, they frequently got bowled over. It didn't seem fair for my animal loving kids, especially Noodle, to have only a spectator role with our family pets. Especially as Louie would also preclude having other pets--no other dogs or cats or rabbits or anything. He just didn't know how to handle any of those. He was great with people, but only people. And while there was likely a chance he could have been trained out of some of his reactivity, I had to be honest with myself and admit that I was not the person who was up to the challenge.

I've been grateful at how well Daisy has fit into our family, though. It has reaffirmed to me that I made the right decision for our family, even though it has certainly been an awful experience to have to learn from.

I'll try and be a bit better. Even if it's just for my own personal sense of validation. After all...

yakkety yak

Spud is hilarious lately. He's such a chatterbox, and it's just funny the stuff he comes up with to say. I think he's quite a bit chattier than Noodle was at this age, though I can't remember specifically how much she was talking. But he likes to narrate the things he does, which means he constantly wows us with the new words he's learning. Today he said to David, "Daddy, i hide in my shirt," and then pulled his shirt up over his face. He gets a real kick out of himself. And when we ask him to say words he doesn't feel confident about, he says "can't say it". It's funny, because I really think he went through a lot of his terrible two-ness at about 18 months, so he's actually quite pleasant most of the time now. He does throw the occasional tantrum still, but generally only as his "swan song" before bedtime or naptime.

I'm pleased to report that for the first time in a number of years, I'm actually DOING my New Year's resolutions. I wrote, well typed actually, all of them down and I'm keeping track of how it's going. Plus I'm "reporting" to some of my friends, which makes me feel more accountable and thus more likely to do them. Also, the resolutions are actually creating noticeable changes in my life, all positive, so I think I might actually be able to stick with them. Yippee!

And here's some pictures of the house that I finally got around to taking:






From top to bottom:
Kids' bedroom
Family Room (with my mom & Noodle's head in the picture)
Master bedroom
Office (with Noni)

pa rum pa pum pum....

Here are my drums! Aren't they beautiful?

Happy 2nd Birthday!

I sure love you, little guy!

No words

Spud came down to me resting on the sofa (I'm sick today) and handed me these silly plastic blue glasses from their doctor kit.

"Awan gasses on."
"Okay...there!"
He looks at me expectantly.
"Cute," I say.
"Nono."
"Smart," I say.
"Nono," complete with finger wagging.
"Handsome," I say.
"Nono!" he says, emphatically.
Pause.
"Nothing," I say.
He walks away happily.

A half minute later he returns, glasses in hand.
"Awan gasses on."
"Here you go."
He looks at me for a moment, then says "Nuffing."
"Nothing," I say.

He smiles and walks away.

Feathered Friends

All the cool birds are chillin' at my bird feeder this winter. Finches, sparrows and red-winged blackbirds to name a few. On Sunday we had about 60 flying between the front yard trees and the feeder.

Here Kitty Kitty

Here's Noodle and "her" cat, Noni.

The House of G

We did this a week or so before Thanksgiving and had a lot of fun.

An answer to a prayer

I've been a rotten mother lately. So I have been working really hard about not yelling at the kids, but Noodle has been going through a very yelly and sassy stage and while I've done a good job not yelling back, my feelings have not been as loving and calm as I would like them to be. Plus, I've just felt a lot of frustration lately when things go wrong and have had a hard time letting go of small irritations. I decided I'd start fasting again for Fast Sundays this month (I can't fast while I'm pregnant or nursing because my body doesn't handle it well AT ALL) and I did. And until I got to church and through a good part of Sacrament meeting, I was feeling very hungry. But the last 15 minutes of church, during a testimony meeting at the end of relief society, I got the answer I needed. A sister in the ward who speaks some English shared her testimony with us, and parts of it were hard to decipher because her word choice wasn't always exactly clear, but she talked about God's love for us and how if He could part the Red Sea for His children with Moses, he could help us too when we ask Him with faith. That point really hit me hard. If God can help Moses part the Red Sea, He can certainly help me be a good mother to my children. I had been feeling like things were so impossible and I didn't know what else to do, so this answer seemed almost too simple. But in my life, the major challenge right now is being a good mother to my kids. I believe that God loves all of His children, so my challenge of being a good mom is no less important than Moses' challenge of leading the Israelites away from the Egyptians. I am as entitled to utilizing His power as Moses was, as long as I am being faithful and obedient.

I am feeling much more hopeful about things now. Sometimes I think all we need is to see a glimmer of light/hope to keep us along the right path.