Christmas Vacation

We didn't go anywhere, we stayed put with the mysteriously warm days mixed in with crazy ass rain.

We didn't make plans, we sorta faked it. There were no demands, we weren't willing to have them.

And it was good. Spontaneous delight appeared.

We opened a few gifts, well...whatever other people bought us. BHB's gifts were then wrapped with that same wrapping paper. The dog did the unwrapping anyway. (video evidence below).

Boy that kinda makes us sound a little. Um. Cheap? Sure. How about 'on a budget?'. Which is true, too. Cute hubs and I don't buy gifts for each other anymore. Sometimes that makes me a little sad. Mostly it's a relief.

Let's just wander through the days of our vaca, shall we?

Are you kidding me with this?

Mom, Boy and God?

Christmas Morning with Kissy Whale and Daddy

Yes we call this sleeping buddy the Kissy Whale instead of the Killer Whale that it is. I know. Damn left-coasters.

New Years Eve we took the BHB to his first Sushi. He beat me to this 'first' one by 21 years.

BFF's

BHB has a dear friend who he knows from hiking. She's appeared up here before, as you can see. This day he rolled his hand around in her hand for a really long time giggling. She was both enchanted and confused by it. They often fight over each other's cheerios as we make our way up the hill. And they talk about birds.

BHB has a great habit of repeating the word, Yea. Yea! Yea. Yeaaaaa. Yea. 

He awakes with this idea in his mind sometimes, we hear him yelling it from his crib. We call it his morning affirmations. I bring this up because his blonde girlfriend will often talk about him when they are apart by saying 'He says Yea! Yea. Yep. Yea'. 

I hope he always feels this way about life. 

I have to include the following video. Our brown dog developed a new talent this Christmas, is David Letterman still doing stupid pet tricks? "Cause comon', this qualifies.

With the warmest wishes for a Happy New Year!

PS - Shout out going out to Corrie Davidson who is one of our backers for our short film. She is a film producer, social media goddess type and a mascot. How genius is that? You can find her here or here. 

The Miracle on 34th Street

I name all of my posts after movies. This season is ripe with possibilities! Too bad I'm too damn busy to take advantage of all of them. But there was a miracle friends, and while 34th street is far from here - we did indeed have a damn miracle.

So.

Remember the incredibly challenging situation with our brown dog? The last time I talked about it, things were dire. Backstory available by clicking on Bongo at the end of this post. Or you can just click on Bongo in my new label cloud. Ohhh, I'm excited about the label cloud. It's over there to the left. Down a little. I need to do a better job categorizing my posts with their lil labels. Ohhh, label cloud.

Anyway if you didn't go anywhere and you still wanna know, in our cliffhanger episode our cute brown dog was headed for eye surgery. Which no-one wants, no one does.

Around that time a friend had introduced me to a pretty groovey dude who is a healer. This healer friend was alerted to the Bongo situation. He pretty much came right to the rescue and started doing healing sessions on the dog, and on us as well. And our little smoochydoggie would look better for oh, say, 3 or 4 days and then he would start the same squinting and goo-ing and general dismay based in the eyeball. So it was clearly helping but not fixing.

ohmygod. Are you bored? Don't click away, I'll speed this up.

Cut to the chase: We went ahead and scheduled the surgery, but the eye surgeon we used last time wasn't available for two weeks. And healer man suggested another healer gal who specializes in animals to augment the process. She just happens to be the daughter of a famous dude. And I suppose has her own fame as well but holy crap she will forever be famous in my mind. Famous and exhalted as the woman who came over here and did some major doggie voo-doo and fixed his eye. Ok, that sounds ridiculous. And it is, and it isn't.

Let me 'splain. We've known All along that the issue was clearly emotional. Clearly, truly. I mean comon', it all started 2 weeks after BHB arrived and it was so obvious that when the baby would cry, in response the dog's eye would squint and leak. But when a surgeon says to you, uh-boy, your brown dog needs surgery, you brace yourself and your wallet. And then when you have a pretty lady who smells good come over and take your dog in figure 8's around the room and do some cool oovey stuff involving lazers and sprays that smell like flowers and all around general goodness you think, ok, that's cool. Fun story. Fun stuff. But what you don't really, truly expect is for it to just get better.

And that's what happened. Day by day. He looked better, he was more cheerful and his eye stopped gooing and squinting. Soon the surgery was upon us and we're going, um. gosh. I don't think he needs it! And so they checked it out, and remarkably they agreed. Nope, he's looking great.

God bless it. All of the times watching The Secret and What the Bleep do We Know? and I totally nod and go oh yea, totally. We are creating our own reality. Our thoughts make our lives. Abso-dam-tootly. Yet I'm still shocked when the dog shows me how that is really done.

It's a nice rack-focus reality slap of fantasy. (if that makes any sense). Perfect for the holiday season.

Please enjoy some pictures of Santa Baby and the Miracle Pooch.

The Fly

*I planned to post this last night. Blogger was down (whatthehell!) so I was unable. Please ignore the one day-off-ness of it all....

Four days ago bhb had his first bite of solid food. He enjoyed the first few bites and then grabbed the spoon and shoved it in his mouth. Gifted child.

Three days ago bhb and I wrestled with gravity.

Two days ago I told the internet about it.

One day ago brown dog started blinking and looking miserable with his left eye. We’ve seen this all before. You may remember that he recently had to have surgery on his right eye.

Today we find out that indeed he needs surgery again. I worry that when you ask people who perform eye surgery if a dog needs eye surgery that you’re going to get the answer “He needs eye surgery”. Unfortunately the last time this happened and I wanted a different answer, I went to a holistic vet who said. “Well, there is a danger that the eye can explode.” Or was it implode? “Get the surgery.”

So we did.

My logic was, our dog has really pretty eyes. And he probably likes having both of them. And I’m not interested in exploding eyeballs. And here we are again, same story, but but now we’re looking at (get it?) the other eyeball. Cute hubs said to the vet:

"Thank god he's not a pet fly!"

Comon! You gotta give it up for the hubs on that one. Funnnnny. I laughed heartily in fact. The fact that we are joke cracking and guffawing is pretty impressive for people starting down the chute at another freakin' expensive event, and of course since it is Surgery (capital S) he has to go under - gak. Also here comes another three weeks of the cone of shame, putting goo into his eye twice a day and a cooped-up-not-hiking-frustrated animal who can vibe like no-body's business.

Tonight when we arrived home from a slightly contentious (ok...maybe it did get to us) trip up the local mountain I found myself having to convince brown dog to come out of the back of the Prius. He was reluctant. I took the muzzle-to-face opportunity to plead with him to stop manifesting these crazy-ass physical expressions of his emotional despair about having a new baby-person stealing away everyone’s attention. Ironically I said this with a hoarse voice due to the brutal and breathtaking cough that I currently have. And I leaned a little funny to the right because this morning I trashed my shoulder and neck by tweaking it during a coughing fit. The fact is that I have been in nauseating pain all day.

Guess I should listen to my own speech. Let’s try it. “Hey, Jane, stop manifesting weird physical shit that’s clearly the result of your emotional angst.”

Harumph.

Unfortunately the aforementioned contentiousness leaked into the house and as we were putting bhb to bed I stomped around here annoyed with it all. And I even tried to fold laundry angrily. Have you ever attempted this? Haughtily folding sweet smelling fresh laundry and slamming it down into neat piles is not very satisfying.

The worst part? I’ve decided to stop eating sugar. Again. For anyone who knows me, I’ve done this no less than 200 times. A few times I’ve been successful, like years-at-a time-with-no-sugar successful. I made sure our wedding cake had fruit on the top so when we did the obligatory stuff cake into each other’s faces I wouldn’t have to eat sugar. Can you say freak?

But.

I always feel so much better.

I always lose weight.

And I always cry at least a few times in the first few days.

The first five to seven days will suck-ass as I’m forced to feel my feelings and notice how uncomfortable I am. Well, damn. I’m uncomfortable anyway, might as well get rid of the ‘crack’ (that’s what I call the white devil). So I’ll keep you posted on all the fun I’m having.

Anyone want to join me? Comon’! It’ll be awesome. No, really.

Tonight I leave you with some pictures of our first born when we first adopted him @ 3 months old.  He's a ridiculously cool dog...

Teeth

If you don't know about this movie, check it out.  (title of post) Hubs and I saw it at Sundance a few years ago, it's a quirky and dark film that was quite controversial. Here's the thing. I don't enjoy your basic gore n' horror films at all, not one tiny bit. Sorry. But! strangely I did like this film. The college trained feminist in me actually went for this crazy lil film about a woman who discovered she had a superpower that was, um, unnatural and set her up for a successful and apt revenge against a man who raped her. I will also say that the hubs was not having it one bit. Hated it as I suspect most men do. I'm going to make you click away to find out any more details about it because once again I've spent a paragraph justifying the title of my post and let's get honest, that's silly.

But you guessed it. Teeth are on the mind as one (singular, tooth) has just recently appeared in our life. It broke through the gums before creating too much havoc but either the process of it growing up further into the mouth and or it's lil tooth buddy next door is creating quite the stir and turning our otherwise perfect child into a neurotic manic-depressive with an oral fixation and a perma-grimace. Honestly his version of crabby is still pretty darn reasonable, but it made it very rough on my friends who babysat for us on Sunday. I don't know if y'all have been wondering....you may remember I was pretty excited about the date with the mister. Apparently our big-headed-baby cried inconsolably the majority of the time we were gone, which of course proves that I should never leave the house again.

Kidding.

Sort of.

So the march of time adds more body parts...hmm well since the tooth was hiding in the gums it's been here all along so perhaps I should say reveals more body parts. But it's also added more length to the lil dude. He turned 6 months old a few days ago and at the check-up clocked in at 95th percentile in length and only 25th percentile in weight. Damn, I wish those were my numbers. And I hate to start running down this road, but ah well, what would a mommy blog be without it?

So here goes. Everyone kept saying that nursing was going to just 'melt the weight off' and while I think it would be rude to call them all liars. Well. They are. And then of course I also heard 9 months on, 9 months off which I thought was just a charming way of saying that other women have a hard time getting the weight off, but of course it wouldn't apply to me. Because I'm special. And I have to say, it sucks not being as special as you are convinced you are.

When BHB was 8 weeks old we went back to Florida for my high school reunion. Which one you ask? Oh 10th of course. Ahem. We stayed with my grandmother who gave birth several times, the result was 7 kids and they came in pretty rapid succession. She wanted to share with me some stomach exercises that she used and still does to help me get my figure back. Great, I thought. Sure. And seriously, you gotta give it up for the 84 year old woman busting out the pilates moves on her dining room floor. The devastating part of this story was that I literally could not do the little routine of sit-ups and leg lifts she was showing me, there was absolutely no way. That is either just more awesomeness going out to her, or the opposite coming back this direction. Pretty sure it's the latter.

End of day I just hate being a cliche. New mom frustrated with baby-weight. Comon', it's way too obvious and pat. And it's really not too bad. I put on 45 during the pregnancy and 30 have come off so what's left is kinda like the freshman 15 right? And based on the amount of late nights and pizza I'm eating, it pretty much makes sense.  With this picture above I'm going back in time to 6 months on the other side of the birth, 3 months into the pregnancy. I thought I had such a belly then. Ha!

And since I was just telling a fabulous new friend and mommy blogger that I don't want to come up here and whine in y'all's general direction (which is why you haven't heard from me all week) I better stop while I"m behind. But let me leave you in a wake of pixie dust and tell you about a sweet moment that occurred this week...

While buckling the lil dude into his jump seat there in the back o' the prius I looked into his face and found that he was staring at me in the most amazing way. I don't know if I can give it deserved justice here, but the best way to say it was that he was just loving me. Rather than kissing his head and bustling on my way into the front seat to hurriedly go whereever the heck it was that I was going, I stopped. And sat there. And soaked it in. And he stayed there too, in that remarkably sweet space, holding my eyes and sending me love capital L. Honestly it was incredibly tough to sit still. Tears just rolled down my face as I held his gaze there in my back seat in the parking lot under a hazy blue sky. I saw his soul that day, his old soul showed through for a moment between all of the teeth growing and scream-finding and various-and-sundry confusions that must come from having a new body. It was a literal soul connection and I'll never forget it.

It used to really piss me off when people said to me "You can't understand how amazing parenthood is until you are in it." I'd be like, whatev's. I have a dog, I get it.

But now, I think I might be starting to understand what they were talking about. All respect to the brown dog too. In fact I'll leave you with a little montage of the BHB and the brown one.

Cave shadow drawing in Griffith Park.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Let's start with the Good:

1) Shoot on Monday was amazing.

Thanks to the supporters and senders of love. The result will be posted here soon, but suffice it to say - discussed profound shit with random strangers and I think it will make for some quality entertainment.

2) I only cried hysterically once that day when I was away from the big-headed-baby.

Of course it was probably my only chance as I was alone for those 10 minutes, and the water shot out of my face with much force and soaking power. Of course y'all knew that was coming. But I felt better and only called the cute sitter once to check on them. Quite an impressive achievement if I do say so my damn self.

3) Brown dog is better!

If you' don't know what the heck I'm talking about, back story here and here. What a joy to have him back and on hikes with us and generally just being his good doggie self. Huge, heaving sigh of relief.

4) We hit a milestone.

It's been threatening for months, but it finally arrived. And I'm talking about the roll, kids. We saw it go both ways this week, front to back and back to front. Proving that our child is gifted. A genius. Extraordinary. And actually I little late with this one (he's almost 6 months old) but frankly I'm probably going to trip him if he tries to walk too early so that's a-fine with-a me. Pic at right documents the first time it actually happened on recent trip, but we didn't count it due to help from a hill. So we'll call it Sunday the 20th as the actual first.


Next, the Bad:

1) BHB has a little cold that won't go away.

It's freakin' my shit out. I hope his little snotty nose stops it's snotty attitude soon. It started on the trip and then waned and then sorta jumped back in again today. Um, fellow Mommy's? What's a girl to do about such things? Since he's getting the Mama milk I thought he was immune to this kee-rap? Dawg.

2) Remember the wonder-twin producers I told y'all about? Well. Wonder-twin powers, deactivate.

This morning I got the first email of walking away from said project and then this evening I got the call from the other one. If you remember I had begged them and they said yes, and well, I kinda get that reluctant yes will likely eventually lead to 'or maybe not' but the fact that it didn't surprise me didn't stop me from full tilt panic. So there's a few other folks who might step in but what's scaring me the most is the idea that I might produce this monster myself. Ah-my-gawd, just shoot me.

and the Ugly?

1) My visage due to lack of sleep.

I posted a new profile picture that happens to be from a beautiful sunset on our trip and lets get honest, that is some damn good lighting. God bless fill light. But the reality? Hardcore. Notice that I'm not featuring a picture of the reality. Don't you hate it when you go to someone elses house and you see yourself in the mirror and you're like "What! Gasp! Seriously?!" because you've gotten used your bathroom-lighting-version of yourself. That happened this week. Full tilt sadness. The ridiculous part is that the BHB isn't stealing my sleep. Well not directly, he's just stealing my waking hours with his drools and smiles. The amazing fact is that the boy is only getting up once a night these days - godbless his giant soul. Trouble is that naps have gone microscopic, he gets it done in :30 or less or the pizza is free so daytime does not offer me any productive time 'tall. That nap issue was a gift of the trip. Hopefully, that will evolve into a better place.

So! I'm staying up til all hours typing emails to various crew and researching giant costumes and typing into this white box and then fighting with blogger to post my pictures in some reasonable way. Because if honestly is required I will tell you that Blogger sucks ass for picture posting, at least in my experience. Which is why I'm only dishing a few pics tonight so that I refrain from obsessively posting and re-posting to see what is going to make the stoopid pictures line up.

2) I'm sure there is plenty more ugly to share, but I think it's best to refrain...

Let's go back for one more good, shall we? The daily 20 minute meeting (Dig deep! You'll see it at the end of that post!) with the cute hubs has been one of the most extraordinary things we've ever done as a couple. I mean, other than make a damn cute human.

We both have the ability to procrastinate and seriously stall in ways that compete with 7th graders and their book reports, but with our new found commitment to this little movie - and the commitment to be together gabbing about it everyday, things are happening in amazing and astounding ways. I have to say it's giving me hope. Hope that anything is possible, even this movie.

'Cause this week we've managed to find our DP, our Editor, a friend who's hopefully going to Production Design, a Stylist, and another friend who is going to make a movie poster for us. I mean, how freakin' cool is that? So with that progress, I am feeling some Hopeful tingling Hope despite the new hunt for a producer person.

Oh Brother Where Art Thou

When will our brown dog become the brother that the big-headed-baby deserves?

When will he stop his whining and kabitzing and man up to this new role? Ok, big dog up?

When can we put the credit card back in the freezer and stop buying doggie eye procedures and surgical supplies?

Anyone?

So yep, when hubs and Bongo visited our new BFF's at Pasadena Eye Care for Animals (I capitalize and link with respect) on Thursday, they gave us some bad news. Essentially stop-gap procedure on eye #2 had not worked like it had on eye #1 and while we could try another 500 dollar option, with success rate of only 50%, the only really effective move was to bust out the 2K surgery at a 90% success rate. Since we were already 400 dollars in, we figured...ok wait. I know. It's kinda low class to talk numbers but on the OTHER hand - specificity helps storytelling, so propriety be damned, that's whats going on. And shoot, why not go all the way there? We are now 3k into this cute dog's eyeball's, and my god I hope that's all we need to do to prove we love him this week.

Now all of my pet-loving friends out there, you are all nodding and blinking along going, yep totally, that's what credit cards are for. And all of you Momma's who have bills that kick my vet bill's ass due to physical challenges with your human kids, I apologize for going on about this. My guess is that in the face of serious hardship, this is a bit whatev's. But seeing as how he is our first born, and was until very recently the only true love of our lives, I am compelled to share more. (than before)

Side note: I've been reading a ton of blogs tonight and really touched by what I'm finding out there. In that spirit I'm going to have to link it up to where I've been and why I suspect my puppy troubles are Nothin'....amazing blog here.

So here's the thing. My dog doesn't like our baby, he really doesn't.
If we kiss the baby, he harumphs. You think I'm kidding? I do not kid. It is a groaning Harumph sound.
If we laugh and coo at the baby, he whines and paces.
If I am hanging with the baby, I don't' know, feeding the child? I get the stare. Please witness.

Okay so they are both staring at the nut-job with the camera. But you can imagine.

I get that as a cooped-up Mom with a new-ish baby I'm on the list of potentially coo-coo-for-cocoa-puff's and voted 'Most Likely to Loose It Before Christmas' and since I think my dog is thinking deep dark thoughts about how to get his #1 status back, it's probably hyperbole and over-reaction. And if you think so, I would like to invite you over.

Here's a photo essay to prove my point:

Blanket time turns into squish the baby time:

How cute are their feet? Is it troubling that I'm shooting pictures instead of rescuing the child from his brown butt?


The little one is pretty good nature-d about it..















I finally realized that this rug is the brown dog's rug and that the mistake was CLEARLY mine when I thought it was okay to put the baby blanket's on his rug.

I mean.

Sheesh.

Don't you love the tail over the boy?


So what do y'all suggest?

Jealous Big Brother

He's brown. He's furry. and He's pissed.

Poor Bongo. Our 'first born' has been usurped by a writhing, cooing, crying maniac who doesn't know HALF as many tricks as he does.

Bongo: I mean, does he roll over?
Us: Uh, Not yet. But he's close!
Bongo: Can he shake? Fetch? Sneeze on command? No, he cannot. Let me tell you what people, he's a whiner, he smells like trouble and I don't like him.
Us: Dude, it's going to get better, trust us. Can you please wait to see before you manifest another terrible malady?

Because our little baby dog is rather intense, a super genius of sorts. No, he's really special. A dog sitter we hired told us so.


And he's got our attention again for the 4th time since the boy's arrival with another vet-worthy puppy problem. It's called a Corneal Ulcer and he's got in his left eye now. Six weeks ago, it was his right eye. Now I'm about to go a little oovey-groovey on you - get ready, get used to it, but my belief system is that we create or manifest physical issues to help learn a lesson or show us what needs to be healed psychologically. And this is a little obvious here - but. He doesn't want to see this baby anymore!

I found this great explanation of what I'm saying here. Basically it's pretty simple. His new life is not NEARLY as much fun as the six years that he got with us where he was the biggest priority in our lives just below breathing and well above the occasional laundry load. I mean, that dog was the apple of our eye, the screensaver of our laptops, the opening picture of our iPhones. Truly the star of the show and I've got 14,000 photos to prove it. Daily hikes, 'spensive daycare - you name it...he was living the doggie dream.

Well I don't have to tell you what happened next but I'll do it anyway because there are a few surprise twists. Let's do it in bullet form because it more officious looking:

*Continuing to reveal the oovey side of myself I will tell you that we planned a home birth
* I will also share that we did not achieve a home birth
* After 40 hours of labor at home we moved to a hospital in a calm flurry but a shitstorm nonetheless and the poor brown dog who had just witnessed one of his favorite folks on the planet suffering and throwing up endlessly - was left behind. Sure our friend was on the phone to the boyfriend to get him over there to take care little Bongo but. You know. He was totally left behind.
*Ooops, back to the list. In the excitement of 16 more hours of labor (count 'em! 56!) and the unwelcome transfer of the new guy to the NICU, we didn't realize that our dog help wasn't actually staying at the house - the boyfriend was generously going to feed/water/walk/play but not staying at night.
*Gasp! This dog has never spent a night alone and now he's alone for two nights after these traumatic events. Once we got wind of what occurred we asked he be carted over to the 'spensive boarding spot which is where he spent his final night away.

What happens next still haunts me.

When we picked him up from the doggie spa with our new bundle of magic in the car, we couldn't wait to introduce them. But our sweet dog walked out of this favorite place of his with a limp tail. As if it was broken. Once we got home and got a closer look at him, it appeared he had some kind of back hip problem. Essentially his back-end looked frozen and his walk was a bit of a Frankenstein affair. Let's admire for a moment what his tail usually looks like:

So when I saw this dragging line of fur dangling from his butt I immediately suspected foul play. I made a call.

Me: Uh, um, hi. You've done something to my dog?
Nice Lady: How do you mean?
Me: Well, his tail is broken.
Nice Lady: Well, he was perfectly happy here.
Me: Harumph, did he get in a fight?
Nice Lady: No, not at all.
Me: (approaching hysteria) Well, why is he broken?
(cue newborn screams in background)
Nice Lady: You know we love Bongo here, please let us know if there's anything we can do..
Me: Um, okay (tears flowing, tiny voice). I'll call back if it isn't better tomorrow.

Because after a traumatic birth and two nights in the NICU what I really wanted to do is come home to find that my other family member that I love almost as much as the cute husband is suffering terribly and it's our fault. Looking at that drooping tail that was an exclamation mark of how heartbending, exhausting and overwhelming the last 6 days had been, I wanted to sink into any local handy abyss.

So it lifted after about four days, the tail I mean. And we thought, whew - he's back! But then a week later he developed the cornea ulcer in his right eye. Which took about five weeks to diagnose, until we finally went to the a doggie ophthalmologist. Sound expensive? It was. But thankfully the procedure was successful and he was back in business after wearing the cone of shame for two weeks.

And this afternoon, he started squinting at us again - this time with the other eye.

To which I say:

Seriously? Can we have a little break in the action please?

Poor brown dog.