Dog and baby= trouble

If you are wondering if it is a good idea to get a new dog and also acquire a newborn baby at roughly the same time, let me spare you the trouble of wondering and let you know that it is in fact not a good idea. At all.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

These used to be the contents of a diaper bag

Exhibit C

This used to be a roll of toilet paper on a shelf

Exhibit D

Look carefully at what is in her mouth...

More often than not she is doing something I would not like her to be doing...like sneaking onto our kitchen table to eat food, jumping into the baby's seats to steal pacifiers and bibs (she once took the pacifier while the baby was still in the seat), finding wet baby washclothes in the bathroom and bringing them onto the dry carpet, romping around like a crazy dog while chewing on a baby sock...things of that general nature. I think somebody needs more attention.

Our baby fox

On over the weekend we met a friendly, curious, and very happy little dog at the pound. She really likes to jump into your lap and be pet.  She also loves to wag her tail and give kisses. We don't know anything about her other than that she was a stray and she is probably a chihuahua mix (with corgi or terrier we're thinking).

When we visited her on Monday she was not the playful little girl we first met. She's very lethargic and clearly not feeling well. They think she has pneumonia and they are taking her in tomorrow. The picture below illustrates her sad little demeanor. She just wanted to lay in our lap and not move.

But on the bright side, we might be able to bring her home for her recovery depending on how long the vet thinks it will take. I hope we get to bring her home soon.

We're still deciding on a name. Right now the people at the pound call her Petal. Vote for your favorite (or least favorite):
Twinkie
Eggroll (we picked this as one of our favorite dog names before we met her, and then she happened to be tan and long)
Feneca (she looks like a fennec fox, and it rhymes with where we live)
Skippy
Waffles
Sprinkle
Tootsie

Home Sweet Home - Stairs

I've been pretty neglectful of the work needing to be done on the stairs. They still aren't done, but now they are on my almost done list instead of my to do list. They've come a long way from their original condition. We were going to carpet them with the rest of the upstairs but did not like the price tag so we opted to stain and paint them once we saw that the wood underneath was in good condition. It's been fun to take on home improvement projects and see the final results. Well, really it's just more fun to look at the after pictures and just tiring during the process.

Mmm looks real clean right? Cat hair central.

Our stairs were furry like a muppet monster, but not in a cute way

Goodbye carpet. Hello cat hair in the air!

Justin makes ripping out this carpet look easy. But it was not. The little sticks attached to my body couldn't even come close to helping. Thank goodness for my awesome husband!

3 months later...
Pull out staples, sand, vacuum, wipe, stain, finish, sand, wipe, finish, prime, spackle, sand, vacuum, wipe, paint! Just 15 easy steps!

Nadine started the handiwork

Almost there

Maybe someday I will finish...

Still on the to do list is to finish the railing then paint the tops and bottoms of the spindles. Another project is tackling the upstairs railing that you see in the first picture. I'm really looking forward to having that done, but not so much doing it!

Home Sweet Home - The End (Almost)

Last week we spackled, sanded and primed. This week we finished painting. What a relief! Observe the finished results. Of course we still have a bit left to do like finish the railings and stairs, but I'd say our house is now ready for a home study!

Before...obviously

After!

This room just keeps changing

Home Sweet Home Days 3-9

 Progress on the house goes slow on the weekdays, but we were able to get a lot done over the weekend. After many long hours/days we've finished all the wallpaper paste scraping at last! The living and dining rooms are also finished except for a few final touches. We're now trying to tackle some upstairs projects like carpet removal before we get our new carpet in on Thursday. We were waiting for it to cool off before moving anything in, but it looks like that just will not happen. Luckily we had a cool day (87) today and moved a few things in.

Carpet

Carpet-Be-Gone

Before

After!