After I put the dog outside for being a little too “helpful” with the homework, I came back in to discover that Parker had gotten sweaty and had taken his shirt off.  Whatever.  I support any move that will help him get the work done.

Parker is Star Student next week, so he’s working on his poster that will hang in the classroom.  (I should’ve known better than to give him the mechanical pencil.  Of course he had to test how much lead was still in there.)

While Parker was in the kitchen, Torin was practicing for her piano lesson.

She can now play “Amazing Grace” better than I can.  Whenever I sit down at the piano, that’s my go-to song.  And now it’s her go-to song.

And finally… it appears that the dog got mad for being placed outside and proceeded to roll around in his big new water dish.  Looks like he’ll be staying outside for a little while longer.

That sums up how I have felt for the past 36 years.  But last weekend, something happened.  I had a brief moment of weakness.  The kids got the best of me.  And now look what I have in my house.  It’s a dog.  (Oh, and thank you to my neighbor for loaning me the play yard/puppy jail.  Without it, every last shred of my sanity would be completely gone.)

I’m S-L-O-W-L-Y warming up to him.  He’s a 9-week old labradoodle, and he’s actually pretty cute during the day.  (Not so cute at 3 a.m., though.)  I’m hoping that someday he will live primarily outside.  But I know there will be times that he’ll need to come in, so we’re going through the painful housebreaking process.

MacGyver likes to bite.  He likes to chew.  He likes to go #1 and #2 on my white carpet.  But the kids adore him, and I love seeing their smiles.

I was hoping that a puppy might give me new opportunities to take some cute pictures, until I realized how unbelievably impossible it is to take pictures of a puppy.  I was trying to take a picture of him with Torin, but he wanted to bite her ponytail and crawl on top of her head instead.

Dave wasn’t sure I could handle it.  I think he’s afraid he’ll come home from work one of these days and find that I’ve run away.  But I know he likes dogs as much as the kids do, so I’m doing this for him, too.

Having a puppy in the house is really hard for me, but I also think that if I can stick it out for six months or so, I will learn to really love this dog.  I see potential in him.  I think when he’s older (and housebroken), we’ll be close friends.  Until that day, I’ll put on my fake smile, spray some air freshener, and try not to go completely bonkers.

If there’s one thing we know how to do, it’s indulge in sugary candy (and give bunny ears, yeah, that’s a big thing with both of them now).

The sugar high lasted all the way through until Christmas morning.  Torin scored big with her new purple disc chair, and Parker got a new kicking/punching bag.

I attempted to take a few more wintery pictures of them in the backyard the next day.  I like the back-to-back shots so I can compare their height.  The back-to-back pose, however, usually lasts about 1.3 seconds.

This is how it usually goes.  First, there’s the death grip on the hand.  He thinks I won’t notice.  He figures I’m focused on the big smile that he’s flashing and not paying one bit of attention to the super squeeze that he has put on his sister’s delicate fingers.

But the sister soon retaliates against the death grip by trying to knock him over with her bony rear end.  It’s a classic move that results in full-on combat between their posterior portions, all while they are still holding hands and remaining back-to-back (so “technically” obeying how I asked them to stand).  At that point, their exasperated mother yells something like ”Seriously?  Stop it!  Are you ready to go inside?  FINE.”

Ahh… the memories.  :)  Think they’ll still act like this when they’re 28 and 30?