Keoki…

Guinness…

The cat is scared of the toddler yet Li’l Foot is the one who insists on making sure we feed the cat, and the dog hates when the toddler tries to ride him but loves food dropped on the floor from the high chair!

The last few weeks Li’l Foot has taken a liking to her Cheerios.  Whether she eats them or not, that’s a completely different story. Often thy will wind up in her lap, on the floor in the car, in her high chair when we go to restaurants, on the floor in church (woops!), or in general anywhere that gravity works preferably with a crevice to hide in only to be discovered…oh, never!

Yet, at home?  They don’t gravitate.  I can’t find a single Cheerio at home anywhere in the above mentioned areas.  It’s the most amazing thing.  I mean, I give her a handful of Cheerios to keep her occupied while watching Classical Baby 1, 2 or 3, so that I can finish getting ready to leave in the morning and there’s not a scrap left.  I know she doesn’t eat them all.  Wanna know why?  Because I spy!  I’ll be brushing my teeth or putting on deodorant and hear slirp, slirp, slirp…little-baby-giggle, little-baby-giggle, little-baby-giggle!  I’ll peak around the doorway into the living room and there’s Guinness praying to the goddess of Cheerios, licking his chops!!!  I kid you not, I’m not quite sure who is more entertained, Li’l Foot by the dog licking her hand of the Cheerio she just picked up, or me watching it happen and hearing her little giggle.

A few weeks ago, Li’l Foot was in her high chair and she started making those grunting noises she makes telling me she’s gotta poop, so I took the tray off the high chair, placed it on the recliner chair, extracted Li’l Foot from the high chair and no sooner than I turned my back I heard, slirp, slirp, slirp.  When I turned back the 10 or so Cheerios left on the tray on the chair?  Poof!!!  Gone!!!  Like magic!!!

Last night at 1:30 a.m. Li’l Foot decided to wake up (damn teeth) and not go back to bed until 3 a.m.  Well that meant she slept in this morning.  meaning I had to wake her up just before I had to be out the door.  So the morning ritual was disrupted.  .No Cheerios.  No happy dog.  As I’m putting the final touches on getting ready, I peeked out into the living room (Li’l Foot still in bed at this point), and the dog is pacing back and forth, sniff sniff sniffing the floor. Looking. For. Li’l. Foot.   When he spied me spying him, he stopped in his tracks, looked me straight in the face, flopped his ears forward, cocked his head to the side, raised his eye brows and was all, “what the hell woman?  Aren’t you forgetting something? Where’s the Cheerio goddess?  I needs me some Cheerios? Must. Have. Can’t. Live. Without.

When I did finally go retrieve Li’l Foot from her crib, and came back downstairs, Guinness was waiting with bated breath at the bottom of the stairs and then proceeded to follow me…and I mean trip over my heals follow me to make sure he didn’t miss his daily Cheerio fix.  I’m sure a little piece of Guinness died this morning when I walked straight from upstairs, grabbed the bags, turned off the lights,closed the door behind me and he heard the key turn in the door.  The dog’s world was shaken this morning.

But, hey at least he loves his baby sister Cheerio Goddess!!! And we won’t have to worry about him resenting the baby, right?

I’ll answer that for you…

Some background first!!!

Dumb dog is obsessed with being EVERYWHERE we are. You get up to get a drink in the kitchen that’s literally 3 steps away from the living room he’s there. You do dishes at the sink…he parks hi 110 lb body right behind you (ask hubbie about how this happened to him…and he tripped ober dumb dog only to catch himself from falling on the kitchen floor by his hands and arms…but nearly doing a face plant, he tells me? Is no fun!!!). If you play on the floor with Li’l Foot, he’s right there, all, I want to play too mommy…nudge nudge…ass in face!!! So it should be bo surprise that when we put a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs to keep dumb dog and the cat downstairs, dumb dog was totally beside himself…in fact he would sit at the bottom of the stairs and incessantly whine “aaaaarrrrr, aaaarrrrr, aaaaarrrrr”. Well then we trained him to only be allowed up there, but no getting on the bed.

And then one day he discovered the faucet in the bathtub. He thought he’d died and gone to water world heaven. So now anytime we go in the bathroom he’s all up in our grill to get some water. And he doesn’t stop whining until we turn on the faucet. Because oh God he’s dehydrated!!!!!

So the last 2 nights we’ve had some rough ones with Li’l Foot. She’s teething and the middle of the night is not her friend…nor mine. So last night I got up when the Li’l Foot alarm sounded I got up. I moved with such precision and stealth. The dumb dog did indeed hear me get up. He did not, however, see how fast I turned on the bathroom light (door closing to only a crack behind me, which allows for just the right amount of light in the upstairs to do what I gotta do with Li’l Foot), when I then went across the hall to Li’l Foot’s room, scooped her up, and sat on the other side of her crib in the rocking chair (which you can’t see from the doorway…especially if you’re dumb dog).

Well dumb dog who was sleeping on the floor on the other side of the bed saw the light peeking thru the crack in the door jam…he thought I went in there…and thought he was going to have some midnight water. WRONG!!!! Well, by the time he pushed his nose in followed by his body and then realized I wasn’t in there, the door had already closed behind him (the door doesn’t stay open unless you push it all the way open to the floor mat in front of the sink behind it). He was trapped…short of a glue trap he was trapped.

I can’t even imagine what went thru his mind next. He must’ve thought he dreamed it or there was a ghost or something. And I thought this was going to be a bad situation turned really bad when I thought about him…locked in the bathroom…in the middle of the night…and I was so not disturbing Li’l Foot to rescue him…and imagined having to call in reinforcements of the hubbie variety to let him out. But dumb dog actually had a moment of smart or considerate or whatever you want to call it. He actually plopped his body down on the floor with a ginormous “haaaaaaarumph” of a doggie sigh and just dealt with it. He didn’t whine or cry or bark or anything. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it when I heard his elbows hit the ground only indicating he’d realized HE’D made the mistake and HE’D just wait it ou and not risk getting in trouble by whining.

Once I was done with Li’l Foot tho I did go into the bathroom and I did rehydrate the poor withering dumb dog…only because he was so good about the whole thing. Had he whined I can’t say he’d gotten even a drop of water from my hands being wet from washing them after going potty.