Sir Tucker Reb Tobias 1997-2010

He was dog #2 for our family (my mom, dad, brother and I). We got him 12 years ago when I was 16. It was June-ish. Buster, dog #1, was 7. We thought he might like a playmate. We saw the ad in the paper that there were springer spaniels ready for adoption just a few miles from our house. So the three of us (mom, bro, and I) begged Dad to go look at them. After hemming and hawing something about dog food being expensive and blah blah blah, he finally agreed.

I love picking out puppies. The litter surrounds your feet and every single puppy begs you to adopt them. But you connect with just one. On our 5 minute car ride home, the puppy that chose us nestled in and dozed off. We talked about what to name him. I suggested Tucker. It seemed to fit because he was "tuckered out." His AKC registered name was Sir Tucker Reb Tobias. Tucker had many nicknames. Tuck, Tucky, Tuck-Tuck, and I also called him Tucker Two Shoes or T.T.

As he grew, we found that Tucker wasn't shaped like Buster. Tucker was "round like a barrel" as my dad would say. He had short legs and his body was...just...well, it was round like a barrel. He had a big head and a big heart. Even though his legs were short, he could still run fast. Somehow.

Turns out, Buster didn't want a playmate. In fact, Buster hardly wanted anything to do with Tucker at all. He was a grump from the moment he realized that Tucker was staying. Buster was a roamer. He was always walking around the neighborhood (my parents live in the outskirts of town where dogs can roam a little more). I don't think Tucker ever left the yard. He was a homebody.

Tucker knew some tricks. "Show me your nuts!" and he'd roll over onto his back (I did not teach him that trick). He knew how to get the paper from the mailbox. When you were in a hurry to leave the house, you would find that one or both of your shoes were not at the door. Tucker took them and scattered them around the house. But if you showed him the one you wanted, he knew exactly where it was, and he would bring it to you.
Tucker sired a litter of pups a few years ago. They were the cutest puppies, and one of them looked so similar to Tuck that the "breeders" named him Tucker Jr. I'm not sure if he got adopted by someone else and if that name stuck or not.

He was always nudging you to pet him. If you didn't pet him, he'd nudge you until you did. He greeted you at the door with an invitation for you to scratch his belly. He could snore as loud as my dad. He was gentle and sweet.

He was a bit jealous of Rocket at first, but once he knew Rocket was just a visitor and he'd soon be gone, they got along just fine.
Tucker's health had been deteriorating for awhile. He had kidney failure and had been on medication for about a month. He drank water all the time and lost a lot of hair. My mom thinks he was probably diabetic. We saw him at Thanksgiving, in mid-December, and also at Christmas. Each time we saw him, he was skinnier and skinnier. He was still round like a barrel, but his hips were noticeably thinner. He had horrible cataracts. He had a hard time getting up and down stairs. At Christmas, my parents were hoping he'd make it to the spring, and then they'd put him down.

But he didn't last that long. About a week ago, he started to refuse to eat or drink anything. He had a hard time breathing. He looked sad. It was time. My parents took him to the vet and had him put to sleep. If you've ever seen Marley and Me, you know the scene I'm talking about. I can't imagine living that scene. Knowing you need to be there for your friend, but also knowing it's the end. He's being cremated and will be buried next to Buster at the family farm. I'm sure Buster is real excited about that.

My mom called me on Monday to tell me the news. Of course I was heartbroken because I wasn't expecting it. But who wants to see their pet suffering any more? There was never an angry-at-my-parents phase. I accepted it right away because I knew it had to be done. It will be sad not to see him at my parents' house any more, but we've got our Rocket Dog and my parents have their grandson to spoil now. :D

Now that you've got your spring back, go ahead and annoy Buster for a little while, Tuck. I'm sure he wouldn't mind. I know all good dogs go to Heaven. I hope to see you up there some day (not that I'm not going to Heaven, of course. I just hope we get to reunite with our pets up there).

10 years, 10 pictures

Happy New Year! And welcome to the private side of the island. Thanks for joining us in our adventures in the next decade.

I hope you had a great new years! We celebrated by...what else? Going to bed. That's a celebration in and of itself these days. Colin celebrated by sleeping almost 12 hours straight. It was the first time he's done that. He went to bed a little before 7:30, woke up hungry at 3:00, and went back to sleep until 7:10. Awesomesauce. I could get used to this. What was different this time? No background noises in his room. I forgot to turn on his heartbeat noise and the iPod playing lullabies.

For funsies, I put together a trip down memory lane. The last 10 years shown in pictures. It was tricky, but here's the result.

We'll start off this look back with a picture from when I was 19 years old. I was a freshman in college. Here is my family as I defined it then. I was finding my place in the world of friends. I felt stuck between being loyal to high school friends and branching out to find new college friends.
When I was 2o, I was a sophomore in college. I definitely hit the sophomore slump. I wasn't interested in my generals classes, and my grades slipped a little. I made it through, though, and the next year I was interested in my classes again. Here are some of my college friends. We all lived on the same dorm floor. We are at one of our favorite eateries in Eau Claire, Acoustic Cafe. This place introduced me to drinking steamers.
21. That magical age. I had been long distance "dating" a loser I never saw and dumped him. I was so upset, but a few weeks after, I went camping and concert-watching at Country Fest with a group of friends, and we met a group of boys. The group (only half of which is shown here) included my husband who is wearing sunglasses and sitting to my right. He was shrouded in mystery, that boy. I was intrigued by his quietness. Good thing I dumped that loser. I looked him up on facebook, and I was not impressed.
When I was 22, I lived with 5 of the funnest girls EVAH in a house during our senior year. As you can see, we were a hoot to be around. By this time, I was comfortable with my friend niches--both the college one and the high school one. I was still dating Kevin, but long distance. We mostly saw each other on weekends, but things were good.
At 23, after 5 years plus 1 summer of school, I graduated cum laude with a B.A. in Elementary/Middle Level Education and moved to an apartment in small town Wisconsin to live with Kevin. I started subbing in various school districts and worked at the YMCA teaching sports, tumbling, and arts and crafts.When we were 24, we loved seeing each other every day of the week, and not just on the weekends like we were doing before. I was still subbing, working at the Y, and added preschool teacher to my box of hats. Then I landed a 10 week long-term sub job in first grade in the school district I currently work in. We got engaged in April.And then we got married. I was 25. Picture courtesy of the amazing Betsy Cole Photography. We also bought our house around the time we got married. I was still subbing. In the winter, I again long-term subbed in the same school district. This time in 2nd grade, and this time for an entire semester. I quit my job at the YMCA and started teaching piano lessons on the side. At age 26, shortly after getting married, we thought we'd try out parenthood on a non-human. Thus, the Rocket experiment. We think he's turned out pretty well. He's a good poochie pie. If Colin is anything like him, we'll be set.When we were 27, we splurged on a vacation to Jamaica. Read the recap here. We had an amazing time, and it was so great to be able to go on vacation one last time before starting a family. I was teaching 1st grade again, but only under a one-year contract.
When I was 28, I was teaching 4th grade and I was counting down the days until we could meet Colin. This picture is from my baby shower when I was 36 weeks pregnant, and features my closest friends.
And now, at 29 (technically I'm 28 in this picture, but it was taken just recently as you can see from the existence of a Christmas tree in the background) our little family is complete for now. It's amazing how one little life can change your own. All four of us struggle at times with lack of sleep and the resulting moodiness that comes from it, but we're here and we're family. We are so lucky to have each other.
And my extended family unit as I define it today.
The last 10 years have been a whirlwind. I wonder what the next 10 will hold. Colin will be in 4th grade. 4th grade! Oy.

Last chance, people!

It is almost 8 PM CST. If you're here and want to keep reading, please let me know now through email (you'll find my email address to the right) or by commenting. All I need is your email address and you're in! Now go out and celebrate the end of the decade. See ya on the flip side!

If you look to the right, you will see...

that I finally set up an account through gmail so that my readers can contact me. ajkevrain@gmail.com. 3 days until we build the privacy fence! Thank you to all of my lovely readers out there taking the leap with us!

And thank you, nlvaden :)

Colin's first Christmas

Boy, were we busy! On Thursday night, we headed over to Kev's parents' house for our first family get together of the season. Colin opened up some bath toys from Grandma and Grandpa F. He loooves to be squirted at bath time with the fish!
He also got a shopping cart for his future stash of felt food, a See n Say, blocks and more gifts that spoiled him silly!

On Friday morning, Colin opened up a present from Santa and a few presents from us. The lucky boy got a whole pile of new books to read! Good thing, because I think he was starting to get bored of the old rotation.

On Friday afternoon, we headed over to Kev's Grandma and Grandpa's house. Colin has 3 older boy "cousins" there. And by cousins I mean Kevin's cousins' sons. It was fun to see him interact with Lucas, who is the closest in age to Colin by about 4 months or so.

When we got home, my parents had already arrived. That night, my brother and his girlfriend came up and we had our own small family Christmas. Colin got spoiled again. He got a CAT truck from Uncle Scott. Here he is, pretending to be Grandpa J. the diesel mechanic.
and another truck from Grandma and Grandpa J. He loves to sit on it and get pushed around the house. It's quite the workout for me too!
along with other toys and clothes as well.

My dad's extended family came up on Saturday. Most of them, that is. My aunt had to stay home because the roads were too icy down in her neck of the woods. We missed her homemade pies! It was my first time hosting Christmas, and I think it was pretty successful. It was nice to be able to stay home and let Colin nap in his own crib and not have to worry about those kinds of logistics this year.

Today was the first day Colin and I have stayed home alone together since August. It was definitely different than August, where I was trying to entertain him all day. Now that he's mobile and interacts more, he can entertain both himself and me while he's at it. We both took a nice nap this morning, and then he fought taking 2nd nap the rest of the day. He didn't want to play, be held, eat, sleep, nothing. When Kev and Rocket came home from work, he was all smiles again.

We'll chalk up the first Christmas as a good one. And the first time our living room looks like Babies R Us threw up in it. In a good way, of course.

***ANNOYING REMINDER: THE BLOG IS GOING PRIVATE IN 4 DAYS! IF YOU WANT IN, PLEASE CONTACT ME THROUGH EMAIL, FACEBOOK, THE BLOG, BUMP, ETC. NO CONTACT = NO LOOKIE IN 2010. If you're a regular reader, I do want you to continue reading. I'm not kicking you out of the cool kids club by any means!***

Babylegs sale!

Because I have to share it with the whole world. Go here: http://www.mybatonrougemommy.com/2009/12/reader-find-6-pairs-of-leg-warmers-for.html and follow the directions to buy 6 pairs of babylegs (4 regular, 2 supersoft) for $16.40. No shipping fee! My self-control over the past 8+ months to NOT buy any and wait for a great sale has finally paid off.

Victory.

8 months old

Okay...so maybe this was a day ago. I'm a busy lady these days! Onto the letter.

Dearest Colin J,

You are now 8 months old. 2/3 of a year.
This has been a very busy month for you. You went from rolling to army crawling to crawling in about a week's time, and now you're also pulling yourself up like a pro,
and just in the last few days, you've started to cruise a few steps (walk along furniture). We're leaving the DVDs out and going on wishful thinking that moving you away from them and saying "no" will teach you to leave them alone. You'd rather spend time on the floor than in your exersaucer now. Since you like to pull yourself up on it, we almost assembled the 3rd stage of it today. Before Daddy started reading the directions, I put you in the seat to see what you'd do, and you still jumped like a wild man in it, so we'll leave it alone for now.

You are LOVING puffs and yogurt melts. You can pick them up and put them in your mouth very well, and as soon as another is on your high chair tray, you grab for it and stuff it in. We've moved up to 3rd foods now. You like the fruits a lot, but you're not so keen on the veggies or the "dinners." If you don't like the food, you push the spoon away. Since you love the idea of finger foods, we're going to try out some more of those. I've given you little bits of bread, which you like, but you didn't like the sweet potato fries or the little piece of cooked carrot I gave you last night. We'll keep trying.

Christmas is coming up. Today we went to the mall to see Santa. He's a very nice man, but you weren't too fond of him. You had your squirmy pants on and just wouldn't settle in to Santa's comfy lap.
That's okay though. You already did better than Mommy, because I didn't get my picture taken with Santa until I was in my early 20s. I took your and Rocket's picture by our Christmas tree today. Rocket sat very patiently, but you got bored very quickly and crawled away.
So I gave you a piece of paper to play with so you'd sit still.
Speaking of Rocket, he's becoming a little more tolerant of you. He even lets you pet him every now and then, as long as you don't pull his hair.
You have fallen out of your nice, stable bedtime routine. It happened when we went to Grandma and Grandpa J's over Thanksgiving. Then you got that nasty stuffy nose which kept you up. We're starting to get back on track now, but we've had to let you cry a little bit in the middle of the night. It's heart wrenching for us, but slowly you're sleeping longer stretches. Daycare reports that you are taking both of your naps in your crib now, and we put you in your crib for nap times at home without much of a fuss now too.

You weigh about 20 lbs now, so I had to wash your 12 month clothes today. I've started putting the 9 month clothes that you're busting out of away. Every 3 months, your clothes get bigger and bigger. I know it's exciting to get a new wardrobe four times a year, but I hate putting your "little" clothes away!

You LOVE to play with and chew on strings from sweatshirts, and even the string on Mommy's pajama pants (that's what that blue string is from that you're holding).
Santa's coming soon, little man. Remember to stay on his nice list and sleep a little more at night time, okay? He can't come if you're not sleeping!

Love,
Mommy

***ANNOYING REMINDER: THE BLOG IS GOING PRIVATE IN 2010. IF YOU WANT IN, PLEASE CONTACT ME THROUGH EMAIL, FACEBOOK, THE BLOG, BUMP, ETC. NO CONTACT = NO LOOKIE IN 2010. If you're a regular reader, I do want you to continue reading. I'm not kicking you out of the cool kids club by any means!***