All My Children

Yeah, so please forgive my blatant absence over the last week. I've been here, chugging away, as always, but somehow my children are getting in the way of my blogging. Here, I present to you my List of Excuses:

1. Piglet, 11 months yesterday, decided about a month ago that morning naps are for babies. He, apparently, does not consider himself to be a baby. He now naps for a grand total of an hour on a good day in the afternoon. This is when I sit down, though not at the computer of late.

2. Piglet has also learned some new things that have kept me very busy:

a) Sometimes? If you push really hard? Air will come out of your caboose and it makes noise. That noise is hilarious and if you look at mom, she'll laugh too.

b) If you don't feel like eating what's on your tray, just slip a little over the side and Gus will eat it for you.

c) If you pile your belongings in your crib corner, you can stand on them and allllllllllmost climb out!

3. Piglet has also decided that he is soooooo over the acts of getting dressed and getting his diaper changed. He believes that these are torturous, unnecessary acts of meanness inflicted upon him out of pure spite and malicious intentions. To counter this, he spends an entire dressing session hurling himself onto his stomach and trying to crawl off the changing table. This action may or may not involve poop. This poop may or may not involve the funk that is digested meat. This event may or may not cause me to audibly gag, depending on how much poop winds up on me/the wall/Piglet's new outfit that I will now have to take off and start over.

4. Gus has been active lately. Very, very active. Let's start with his snake. Not last year's snakes, the new one. The 2007 snake. The one that snuck up on him while he was sunning on the patio. That would be snake sneaking up on Gus, not the other way around. Gus decided to attack it, leaving me to run outside and pull The Idiot Dog off of The Angry Snake, complete with little flappy sniggly tongue and hissy sounds. Gah.

5. The next day, Gus caught himself a Prize. I heard the usual incessant rhythmic barking that is always indicative of a successful capture of the animal variety. Usually is a mouse or a toad, which Gus will "play" with until it dies, then he barks at it because it ceases to play. This time, I trekked out to check the goods and it was a baby squirrel that I assume had fallen from a tree. I'm going to be the first to tell you that baby squirrels are not cute. This detail did not stop Gus from prancing with pride as he carried his prize all over the yard, angry mama squirrel chattering and hissing at him as she leaped from tree to tree, giving Gus the what-for.

6. Finally, this morning I decided to attempt going to church alone with the Piglet, as Mr. Pigs had to work all day and the church provides a nursery to allow me to commune with people my age. I went for it. After the ten minute battle of the clothing with Piglet, I emerged from his room sweaty, hair askew, but almost on time, and grabbed up his provisions: Cheerios, sippy cup, froggy, diapers. Check. Racing out the door in my heels and dress, I heard it: Gus's "I've got something" run. It has a sound unique to an In-House Capture. I sighed, put Piglet on the floor and dashed to Gus. The dog was crouched, legs splayed in a defensive stance, as he clenched his jaws tightly to a large ziploc bag filled with the leftover buns from last night's cookout. We're talking about 10 hamburger buns here and Gus was not giving up the goods. Piglet crawled into the den and laughed and clapped as he watched me dart around the dining room table, skirt flapping, heels clacking, in my effort to win back tonight's dinner. Gus hesitated, I lunged, grabbed, and tackled. Prying the bag from Gus's clenched, growling piehole, I returned them to the counter and left, now ten minutes late.

So, as you can see, I have a very good series of excuses as to my recent lack of posting. I'm hoping to do better this week. School is starting around here, my tutoring gig has ended, and life should slow down a bit. Barring more snakes or Piglet learning to walk/run, I should be around this week. Good day.