Goodbye Sweet Jake

3/15/96 - 9/28/11

Ever loyal

loving

and willing to make a stranger a friend.

In the end, I hope the same can be said for me.

I will never forget you chasing my heels as a tiny white ball of scruff when we went to take you home from the pet store.  I had begged for you for a week.  You were always my dog.

You have been with me through many things : middle school, high school, college, marriage, many mornings spent sick in the bathroom through my three pregnancies,  and the birth of our two children.

You were truly a good dog.

And now the time has come for us to let you rest.

I will meet you at the rainbow bridge.

Not Going Well

Things are not going well here.  Our dog Jake, who is fifteen and a half, and who I have had since I was 13 years old, is not doing well.  He is old, I know, and he has had a good life but at the moment it's not helping much.

This is Jakey earlier this month.  I will not take his picture now.

This is just unspeakably hard.  I feel lost and so unsure of what to do.  How do you decide when enough is enough?  How do you mourn for youself when you have two babies you are responsible for: one who is watching your every move and one is completely dependant on only you?  I can't escape somewhere to cry and I can't cry without escape.  How will we explain this to Joey?  He is not quite a baby and definitely not quite yet a boy.  I am afraid of offering too much and afraid of offering too little.  I know the questions will come. I normally at least have opinons on how things should be handled for and with our kids.  I'm not always right, but I have a direction I want to go.  I have no direction now.  I hope I have enough time to find a way to explain this to him.  Or for that matter, decide if the truth should be offered at all.

We have an appointment with the vet tomorrow, it is the earliest we were able to get in. 

I'm afraid it may not be early enough, yet that's not for me to know.

I'm hoping he surprises us.  He has before.  It's becoming clear though that if the time is not now, it is coming soon. 

I Wonder Where He Gets It

Joey likes to take pictures just like Mommy.

This his "camera."

Unfortuantely for Sissy Girl, she is often his subject of choice.

Monkey see, monkey do around here.

Joey: Say cheeeeeese, Sissy! I take your picture!

Grace: Seriously!? Can somebody please save me here??

Joey really does love her sooo much and is sooo good with her.  I think she loves him back but it kind of still remains to be seen :o).  I so hope she becomes totally enamored with him soon.  It would mean everything to him.

Totally unrelated, but Joey and I have this thing where I say "Who's my favorite boy?" and he says "Joey" then I say "And who's your favorite girl?" and he would always say "Mommy."  We do it all the time.  Welllll... about two weeks ago I got the boot and now he says Grace Genevieve Wagner is his favorite girl (full name every time).  Guess if I'm second to someone there's no one better than Grace :o).

Happy Monday

From the two sweetest

 and tiniest

Buffalo Bills fans :o)

Joey said "Buffalo Bills!" when he woke up from his nap and saw them on tv today :o)

He recognizes the logo unprompted now.

IHOP & Cougars

We went up to Binghamton last Friday to take the kids to the zoo.

We were a little hesitant due to the massive flooding that hit the area from Irene and also due to the fact that Grace had shots on Thursday, but neither ended up being an issue.

Of course we had to go to IHOP.  I am seriously burnt out on IHOP.  At the last minute, I confessed to Joe that I just couldn't take another IHOP trip and he conceded and agreed to go somewhere else.  Lo and behold Joe now has a partner in his obsession and Joey could not let go of the fact thatwe said we were going to IHOP. Needless to say, Joe won out :o).

 

 September 2009                                  September 2011

I had to laugh inside as this was going on because it is just such a commentary on our life.

We don't let Joey feed himself as much as we should (though this is getting better) and we never let him handle his own drinks in restaurants.  We just don't like the mess and one time Joey squeezed his styrofoam cup a little too hard and it exploded everywhere.  No more cups for Joey.  Well, I let Joey handle his own drink and you can see the concentration in his face.  This is serious big boy stuff here folks.  Also, he kept saying, "Mom, get the camera" before every sip.  I now have about 20 pictures of Joey drinking milk.

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 We were the first people at the zoo so we had it all to ourselves for a while.

Grace's first trip to a zoo.  We were laughing because we thought she just looked so tiny up there.

Joe was laughing so hard at me because I literally screamed twice over this crazy cougar. I think they forgot to feed it or something because it keep leaping from wherever it was and running at us.  They seriously move SO fast!

 Joey was thrilled to see the cougar.  He knows what they are from a book my mom reads with him and I think he was just amazed to see one in real life.

 Look at the eyes on this thing.  He would stand like this locked on us and then pounce and run.  It didn't help that we were maybe 3 feet from the cage.  I also don't think he liked the noise my camera makes.  Either that or he just wanted to eat us ;o).

This picture cracks me up because it totally captures how Joe feels about me encouraging Joey's new smile.

I have to admit, I do try to get him to smile every chance I get now. Plus, he is so proud of his smile that I can finally get him to look at the camera so I can take his picture! Joe thinks I should be encouraging a more .. hmm ... normal .. smile :o).

It totally reminds me of Mr Squishy face from back when he was 9 months old :o)

I was so sad when this ended :o)

Joey has a special thing going with the meerkats at every zoo we take him to.

They love him.

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Stroller O' Babies <3 

Make your day happy :o)

Hi Debbie :o) Happy Monday

I thought you'd like to start your week with these pics of your adorable grandkids :o)

Lina has the prettiest eyes.

 

These next three pics kill me.

And I love how Joey is touching Lina in every picture I have of the them together.

Too sweet.



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Please ignore Joey's crazed smile and note Grace's birthday party themed cupcake attire :o).

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Lina loves holding Grace.

Have a great day. :o)

2 Month Well Visit -- A+ for Graciekins

Grace had her two month well visit today even though she was 10 weeks old yesterday.

All her visits are off by about a week.  It kind of bothers me but life will go on.

Waiting in the waiting room.

I was happy Joe was able to come.  He is replacing our back porch right now and it is turning into a monster of a project.  It's one of those "everything that can go wrong .. is going wrong" kind of deals.  It's raining now too and we wanted to take the kids to the zoo tomorrow so Joe wanted to get everything finished today. He's never missed one of the kids' visits :o).

Gracie Pie is doing fantastically well.  To my surprise, she is blowing all the milestones out of the water.  Of course, in the three days since we decided we needed to try to help her along a little she started doing a million new things.  Isn't that how it goes?  I guess she'll teach me to think twice before opening my mouth :o).

Omigosh, this ridiculous" smile"! I kind of love it but is this what our Christmas pictures will look like this year?

We got the okay to give her cereal at 3 months.  We won't, I don't think, we like to delay the solids a little.  We introduced solids for Joey at 5 months on Christmas morning.  We liked that his "first meal" was something special we'd always remember.  We plan to let Grace eat for the first time at Thanksgiving dinner :o).  She will be 5 months as well.  It works out perfectly.

Grace now has very good head control, is tracking perfectly, smiles constantly, interacts with and bats at toys, holds her head in line when pulled up to a sitting position, and can hold her body in a seated position if you hold her hands.

 She is growing well.  She is on the small side but she is consistently maintaining her "small side" :o).  Her length is 22in ( she just surpassed her brother's length at birth) which is in the twenty-something percentile and her weight is 11 lbs 2 oz which is in the forty-something percentile.

 Just what do you think you're doing?

 Mommy, I can't believe you're letting this happen!

Disgruntled but rocking her super cool band-aids :o)

Grace got two shots and an oral vaccine.  She dealt with the shots much better than she did at her two week appointment.  That time I couldn't put her back in her seat until we got to the car.  Our poor little baby just couldn't calm down.  She put up a very dramatic scene as we left the doctor's office.  This time she was over it in thirty seconds and all it took was some Mommy snuggles. 

We'll spend the rest of our day at home; Joe has to tackle the porch monster and I'll be trying to snuggle away and side-effects our little girl may feel from her shots :o(.  My mom offered to make dinner for us tonight.  So nice to not have to think about it :o).

Have a happy day.