pate please

from what i've gathered via baby books and baby websites, once your little one begins to eat solids, you should encourage and offer different types of food; and so naturally, jon and i have been doing just that, and to our amusement conrad will eat just about anything not spinach. which makes me wonder if i should be offering escargot and pate in between his exotic cheese and wine flight...

so far the list of preferred foods reads:

avocados
pears
cherrios
peaches, bananas, and rice combo
soy hot dogs
nature's best teething biscuits
baby yogurt
spaghetti...bring on the garlic!
pasta salad (artichoke hearts and all)
cheeses: cheddar, mozzarella, feta, and gorgonzola.
my smoothies (including one with a good dose of carrot juice in it).
risotto cakes on a bed of marinara, basil, and cheese

the concept of permanence

i was in high school when my childhood dog passed away. her name was peggy sue, she was a full blood boxer, with the pointed ears and a chopped tail, who, as a child, i would paint her nails barbie pink and, when sad, wrap my arms around her and cry into her neck. i remember the day my parents took us to the breeders home, michelle and i sat there on the ground in the midst of puppies, laughing with unsurpasable joy as the they bombarded us with licks and tiny chews; peggy was so calm compared to the others, she was content to sit in my lap, and i was sure she was the one.

when lou came into my life he was already a Dog, passed his puppies days but his puppy behavior. jon and i were dating, and i had gone over to the "ponde rosa" to pick him up before we went out. his other roommates/band mates were there with the usual entourage, drinking bad beer, smoking good pot on the couch while watching Oprah. being a new person to their scene everyone felt it mandatory to show me just how wild and crazy the house dog was; then jon pointed out the five broken windows...broken that week from lou trying to get to the mailman, and, after being jumped on and knocked to the ground where the word "kisses" was chimed by everyone, i was left with a sloppy face and a love for such a wild dog.

little did it occur to me that a few years later that same wild dog i witnessed terrorize a living room would be a roommate of mine. our differences ( and by differences i mean, me thinking trash was trash and therefore meant to stay in the trash can while lou believing trash was food and therefore needed to be saved from the trash can, or, me insisting my panties weren't a chew toy and lou insisting otherwise) were vast in terms of agreeable living conditions, and after conrad was born, they were really,really vast; but lou was my dog, my great big, 115 lb, full of personality, singing rottweiler Dawg. seeing him the past week with all his verve gone, his back legs so swollen he could hardly pull himself up, his appetite non-existent (not even a steak could persuade him!), and his big brown eyes heavy with discomfort, practically broke my heart right in half.

last night i thought for sure his time had come. i sat in the kitchen with him, gently running my fingers down his shiny black coat, letting the tile floor catch the river of tears that poured down my face, telling him all about heaven and how lovely it would be, how there was a mansion there for jon and i and how he needed to guard it for us till we could be there with him, and how, Peggy would be there too, and, believe or not, but a select few cats get into heaven too, so as to not maul to death precious or clover, whenever he arrives.

then around 5:30am this morning i woke up to a yelp and realized lou was trying to stand up-he was still with us and still in great pain. jon and i had discussed helping him along his way if lou still showed no signs of improvement by this morning, and there it was: no signs of improvement- the cancer had taken hold of his body and lou was slowly and painfully dying.

so this morning, jon did what no loving master ever thinks or wants of having to do; him and his brother helped lift him onto his legs and into his kennel, then off to the vet to aid him in meeting his other master.

a few months back i read about how conrad was learning the concept of permanence, and that was why games like peek-a-boo are just so much for him. then a few hours later, i was doing the dishes, the back door was open, and i looked over without thinking, expecting to see lou at the screen door staring in at me like he always did.

there is a buzz around the house lately, of constant chores being done, and ideas being hatched, and conrad crawling and climbing into and onto everything, and of dealing with an impending great loss.

last week, jon and i both noticed something awry with lou dog; foremost, he wasn't him old self-no chasing cars as the drove down the alley, no howling with the downtown sirens, no crashing into the back door when we would call for him to come in-just this lethargic dog we had never seen before with a swollen neck.

after calling the vet and describing the symptoms, they suggested we give him two benedryls, as it sounded like he might have gotten bite my a black widow. which seemed like a perfectly normal scenario, afterall, lou often will take his ball into the garage/shed and get it stuck in the darkness of all those boxes and miscellany items, where black widows like to live.

but after a week the only changes we noticed we're slight, marginal at best; his condition was still worrisome, and so, on monday evening jon and his brother brought lou to get looked at.

a hour or so after they left jon called me to tell me lou had lymphoma and would only be with us for, maybe, three months.



since that call we've been waiting on lou hand and foot...this is harder to write about than i imagined and i'm having great difficulty in going any further, as further...i just can't. i'm asll tears. i'm wanting to believe in God for a canine miracle: for lou and for my husband. the good news is that the doggy doc gave him some presidone and so he is in much better shape.

this weekend we'll be taking him up to squall lakes with us, and i'll be sure to take lots of pictures of it.

Conrad, 10 months 1 week.
weight 21 lbs
height 30 inches
perfect, angelic, silly, fast, uber inquistive


conrad sleeping...

as you can see his crib has become home to a plithre of stuffed animals, aka wrestling foes/snuggle buddies.

conrad playing...and mesmerized, as usual, by the dangling camera strap.

t'shirt reads, "My Heart Belongs To Daddy". it's a lie, we both know it belongs to Me...Mommy.

conrad discovering...

...learning about how his index finger, when applied to the spout from whence the water came out, could control the water shooting out (he also discovered that day that he could push down the side and all the water would pour out onto the yard and from there, mud.)

conrad rock climbing...

no exaggeration. that little man really rock climbed, i simply kept my hands under his tushie in case he should loose footing.

last night i had this wonderful idea of dumping a bag of flour on the floor and then placing some measuring cups and bowls with water in them down there too, and to top it all off, add conrad in just his diaper to the mixture ( i was hoping for tasty baby pie and ended up with a sticky,doughy baby ready to have newspaper machete all over him and made into a vbs craft time balloon). so of course, that is exactly what i did, and what i did was not think through this great idea; no, i did not take into consideration that flour plus water equals glue, and that, glue on a tile floor means there can only be one way to clean it up, and that is on all fours with a knife, chiseling away like a mad women. nor did i really think through just how conrad and i would get clean taking a shower together, or that all that dough being washed off conrad would end up getting stuck in my muff. that's right, i wrote it: flour glue in my muff! but lordy, was it just too much fun watching him make dough and realizing dough don't taste like pears, not a damn bit.