this blog still lives. barely. but it lives. and after a dumpster of a day...i felt compelled to dance my fingertips around a keyboard for some therapeutic reflection... add a glass of wine and some motivation to finally catch up after what seems like 2 years (since blogging) and here ya go folks.
so here's a quick recap since january post. i didn't send out a christmas/holiday/new years or even april fools day card... life just doesn't allow these days. so here goes:
gus turned three (and by the way...oliver is 5 - five! one two three four five!)... oye! and "the bus" is 3 and it's surreal. my babies are slowly slipping from my fingers and i have little men on my hands. and while most of their conversations currently involve talking about buttcracks and farting, i hold strong that they are the brightest cutest little boys ever. in. the. world. oliver is actually wrapping up his year in preschool & will move on to kindergarten next year. gus could attend preschool next year, but i'm not allowing myself to think about that probability right now, so let's move on. and ringo (child #3)... more on him later, but i'm just hoping he doesn't gain another 20 lbs & chew up the vacuum cord again.
mike signed on with the volunteer fire department here in holstein & is loving it. i'm sure most of you reading this are shocked right now to read mike & fire in the same sentence. he has passed his firefighter I & II tests and looks forward to helping out this wonderful community with their firefighting needs. god willing it's not b/c i started dinner on fire! i'm not promising it won't happen, but at least i know i'm in well-trained hands. and when he's not fighting fires...
we bought a zoo... no, wait! we currently manage a zoo... we bought a new house! we're in transition and currently have a house for sale! feel free to put the word out (yep, that was a shameless plug). turns out, adding a rambunctious puppy dog into our small space was enough to put us over to edge. and either it was mommy is moving to the MHI or we need a bigger house. so we will soon be moving into a spacious (fixer-upper might i add) home! eat your heart out chip & joanna gaines (hgtv fans, you know). just kidding, our Fixer-Upper is more like all the outtakes that don't make tv where chip & joanna argue about who's the carpenter/who's the designer multiple times a day. get excited for before/after photos... which i'll probably end up posting about 5 years down the road so stay tuned.
next. ringo had cancer. (i use past tense, b/c we want to be positive that it won't return). our little (not so, he's like 55 lbs) rescue pup had a small bump under his fur that we noticed in random passing. looked like a wart. and then it grew. and grew. to the point where it was a giant disturbing growth protruding out of his forearm. the vet proceeded with a biopsy to find that it was an abnormal cell growth that would not heal unless removed. bad cancer in other words. the prognosis also indicated that it would/has not likely spread given it's characteristics. enter fingers crossed. he had it removed via laser last wednesday. it is sealed with staples that can be removed in about a week. he bounced back well from the surgery and once we can remove staples, bandage & cone... he'll be good to go. in the meantime, the boys have styled up his cone w/ puppy stickers. claiming they're "ringo's friends to keep him happy".
4.20.2015
1.05.2015
the first 5 days of 2015.
i'm amazed that i even remember how to use blogspot. goodness. so this post is going to recap the first 5 days of the new year. in a nutshell, they've been less than stellar. the italics will help you through my thought processes. which, by my calculations have gone off the reservation.
the ball dropped for 2015. we celebrated with friends at our house and it was low key and nice.
day one. jan 1. early aM.
i went into the boys' room to see a wet spot... who did this? what happened? where's the dog? as gus and olly both start pointing fingers in the opposite direction, i decided to conclude that the one w/out any clothes and undies on was the guilty one. oliver matthew schweitzberger. and after admittance, i really didn't know what to do. he's old enough to know better! what the hell?! why would he pee on the floor?! is this a precursor? so WE cleaned up the mess, threw clothes on his naughty butt and moved forward. i grabbed gus to get him ready for the day, changing diaper......... wait? why are you looking at me like that gus? that is not a good face?! i know that face! oh shhhiii#%.... i hoisted him up and then it came... puke. puke puke puke. all over me. all over the carpet. all over him. lot's of fresh morning puke. perfect. not even 9aM and it was already a doozy of a day. why wouldn't this be how our first day of 2015 sorted itself out?! and so continued the shuffle of clean up and laundry and change of clothes and clean up and bath and new clothes and clean up and gatorade and clean up and munching soda crackers and throw up and laundry and then... at some quiet point of the day, i randomly picked up a piece of string that i had noticed on the carpet. only it wasn't a string. ewww. it stuck to my finger and then a flashback from yesterday when oliver asked 'what's on ringo's butt'... and i looked at it & it only looked like a string but when i went to grab it, it was gone, so i shrugged it off... and now it had come full circle. i'm pretty sure our dog had an issue! with worms! ewwww. ewwww. eww. google! petmd.com! bing! help! mike contacted the rescue and gave them the details. text message diagnosis: tapeworms. great! so ringo went immediately into puppy jail and i started sanitizing everything in the house. another gus puke. and bedtime.
day two.
a 2aM gus puke & then i went to the store to pick up every sanitizing/disinfecting cleaner i could find and spent the whole day cleaning the entire house to the best of my ability and washed everything we owned. like twice. the shuffle to keep ringo in his kennel was hard. he couldn't quite understand why he had to now be confined to his "sleeping space" all day long now. sad. i washed my hands like 96 times that day.
day three.
the man-flu hit. mike had gone down. which was really a rare occasion and i'll spare you the not-so similar details to gus's symptoms. we didn't see much of mikey that day. he was in bed-jail. and ringo was in dog-jail. and gus puked for the last time of his run. four days of that little guy losing his guts. he literally has lost all of his baby weight. i don't know where it all came from. we managed to keep him hydrated enough and by day three, he decided he'd eat food again. and the dog puked twice on the carpet on his short walk from the door to his kennel. wtf?!
day four.
the man-flu was gone - thank goodness for the 24-hour bug! but i had gone to sleep the night before feeling queasy. i chalked it up to witnessing and cleaning up disgusting bodily grossness of everyone else for the past three days. but i had fallen victim myself. queasy stomach and horrible body aches from head to toe. i stayed in bed all day. which i thank god that mike was able to run the shiz show for the day or else i don't know what we would have done.
day five.
i woke up to mike letting me know that oliver sounded horrible and was sick. perfect! but undeniable. i had absolutely no energy from not eating or drinking any water the day before. the body aches were gone but i was running on a like a 1 energy level (from a scale from 0-10). that commercial of the dad telling his kid he was gonna take a sick day flashed into my head. it's funny because that's what every parent wishes could happen but could never ever in a world. i peeled myself out of bed, ate a pb toast and some water and checked the clock. this was also the magic day ringo could get into the vet, his appointment was at 1:30 (the soonest we could get him in after finding out parasites were invading his insides and our happy home). 1:30 could not come soon enough today. he's back home, and will have to spend 2 more days in puppy jail after his treatment. but it's going to take me a lot longer to be comfortable integrating him back into our spaces. i'm going to constantly be checking his butt for worms, not going to lie. ugh - how awful! but here's hoping that his situation clears up and we will move on from these first 5 days of hell and have a wonderful, amazing & magical 2015!
cheers to you all!
ps...no pics for this post. you wouldn't want them.
the ball dropped for 2015. we celebrated with friends at our house and it was low key and nice.
day one. jan 1. early aM.
i went into the boys' room to see a wet spot... who did this? what happened? where's the dog? as gus and olly both start pointing fingers in the opposite direction, i decided to conclude that the one w/out any clothes and undies on was the guilty one. oliver matthew schweitzberger. and after admittance, i really didn't know what to do. he's old enough to know better! what the hell?! why would he pee on the floor?! is this a precursor? so WE cleaned up the mess, threw clothes on his naughty butt and moved forward. i grabbed gus to get him ready for the day, changing diaper......... wait? why are you looking at me like that gus? that is not a good face?! i know that face! oh shhhiii#%.... i hoisted him up and then it came... puke. puke puke puke. all over me. all over the carpet. all over him. lot's of fresh morning puke. perfect. not even 9aM and it was already a doozy of a day. why wouldn't this be how our first day of 2015 sorted itself out?! and so continued the shuffle of clean up and laundry and change of clothes and clean up and bath and new clothes and clean up and gatorade and clean up and munching soda crackers and throw up and laundry and then... at some quiet point of the day, i randomly picked up a piece of string that i had noticed on the carpet. only it wasn't a string. ewww. it stuck to my finger and then a flashback from yesterday when oliver asked 'what's on ringo's butt'... and i looked at it & it only looked like a string but when i went to grab it, it was gone, so i shrugged it off... and now it had come full circle. i'm pretty sure our dog had an issue! with worms! ewwww. ewwww. eww. google! petmd.com! bing! help! mike contacted the rescue and gave them the details. text message diagnosis: tapeworms. great! so ringo went immediately into puppy jail and i started sanitizing everything in the house. another gus puke. and bedtime.
day two.
a 2aM gus puke & then i went to the store to pick up every sanitizing/disinfecting cleaner i could find and spent the whole day cleaning the entire house to the best of my ability and washed everything we owned. like twice. the shuffle to keep ringo in his kennel was hard. he couldn't quite understand why he had to now be confined to his "sleeping space" all day long now. sad. i washed my hands like 96 times that day.
day three.
the man-flu hit. mike had gone down. which was really a rare occasion and i'll spare you the not-so similar details to gus's symptoms. we didn't see much of mikey that day. he was in bed-jail. and ringo was in dog-jail. and gus puked for the last time of his run. four days of that little guy losing his guts. he literally has lost all of his baby weight. i don't know where it all came from. we managed to keep him hydrated enough and by day three, he decided he'd eat food again. and the dog puked twice on the carpet on his short walk from the door to his kennel. wtf?!
day four.
the man-flu was gone - thank goodness for the 24-hour bug! but i had gone to sleep the night before feeling queasy. i chalked it up to witnessing and cleaning up disgusting bodily grossness of everyone else for the past three days. but i had fallen victim myself. queasy stomach and horrible body aches from head to toe. i stayed in bed all day. which i thank god that mike was able to run the shiz show for the day or else i don't know what we would have done.
day five.
i woke up to mike letting me know that oliver sounded horrible and was sick. perfect! but undeniable. i had absolutely no energy from not eating or drinking any water the day before. the body aches were gone but i was running on a like a 1 energy level (from a scale from 0-10). that commercial of the dad telling his kid he was gonna take a sick day flashed into my head. it's funny because that's what every parent wishes could happen but could never ever in a world. i peeled myself out of bed, ate a pb toast and some water and checked the clock. this was also the magic day ringo could get into the vet, his appointment was at 1:30 (the soonest we could get him in after finding out parasites were invading his insides and our happy home). 1:30 could not come soon enough today. he's back home, and will have to spend 2 more days in puppy jail after his treatment. but it's going to take me a lot longer to be comfortable integrating him back into our spaces. i'm going to constantly be checking his butt for worms, not going to lie. ugh - how awful! but here's hoping that his situation clears up and we will move on from these first 5 days of hell and have a wonderful, amazing & magical 2015!
cheers to you all!
ps...no pics for this post. you wouldn't want them.
the holidays, the ringo & the new year.
i find myself able to blog again for the year, so hello. hello to nesting at home because illness has once again settled in. it's times like the past 5 days that really start to melt my sanity down into nothing. but first, i should reflect on how grateful i was to experience such a great holiday season with all three of my boys this year + one (but more on that in a bit). this holiday was significantly different than how we spent them just one year ago. my heart was overfilled with joy! moving forward as a family has proven to be very successful, even so much that we decided to expand our little family. enter ringo.
back up the bus to thanksgiving this past november. we spent a long weekend up in sioux falls visiting mike's family. and upon our time there, we became aware of a rescue team that was going into an indian reservation to extract dogs that had (and still continue to) become overpopulated and unsafe. as the story unfolded and the photos started to appear of these dogs/puppies being rescued... we became more curious. we soon started thinking that we could provide a loving home to one of these rescue pups. and how excited to boys would be to have a 4-legged friend to call their own. so, the day we were heading back home, we made an hour detour up to minnesota, to the farm where the 9 rescue pups were being held until they were adopted/fostered. i was so pleasantly surprised upon our first impression of these dogs. with only 4 days out of the reservation, and in the loving care of the Tracy Area Animal Rescue (TAAR), one would have never thought they were fighting for their lives. they had clearly gone from "rescue mode" to gentle domestic beasts in a very short time. and to me, this was a good sign that this would be a good fit for us. we let the boys wander and meet the puppies... and our focus started to migrate to the slightly "larger" puppy, 3 months old, half german shepard/half black lab... calmy chewing on a rawhide bone on the blanket. he wasn't jumping up on us or the boys, just minding his own business (now we refer to this as his secret plot for good behavior to be "the chosen one"). he was loving and sweet and we had no other choice... he would be ours. we were able to take him home that day. so we all piled into the truck and headed home. so that was the story of our ringo. the animal rescue gave him the name and it fit too perfect due to the white ring of fur around his snout. ringo it was. and ringo it would be. and honestly, if you have never experienced adopting a rescue pup/dog, i strongly urge you to. i never imagined that this would be how we would include our first domestic beast into our family, but i couldn't imagine it any other way. you must adopt!
so moving forward through the season. our new pup has proven to be very smart and it required very little time (in my mind) to get him house-trained and integrated into our home and lifestyle. christmas was spent here in holstein and it was a very relaxing and wondrous time. we hosted my family christmas eve and spent christmas day at my parents'. the next day, we drove up to sioux falls to celebrate with the schweitzbergers. other than losing my wallet in the parking lot (so i believe) of target, it was an amazing short trip and we loved seeing everyone again. yes... my entire wallet! for those of you that thought i wasn't going to dwell on that little detail a little bit more, you were wrong. losing your wallet is like a small part of your body being lopped off. ugh! made me sick, still makes me sick. what do you do?! i took care of the necessary steps to cancel/replace everything and now i'm just moving on. blah! please check out my next post on the first 5 days of 2015. it's a lot less cookie cutter and rainbows and sunshines. of course =)
PS - visit TAAR's website or FB page!
http://www.tracyareaanimalrescue.com/home.html
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tracy-Area-Animal-Rescue
back up the bus to thanksgiving this past november. we spent a long weekend up in sioux falls visiting mike's family. and upon our time there, we became aware of a rescue team that was going into an indian reservation to extract dogs that had (and still continue to) become overpopulated and unsafe. as the story unfolded and the photos started to appear of these dogs/puppies being rescued... we became more curious. we soon started thinking that we could provide a loving home to one of these rescue pups. and how excited to boys would be to have a 4-legged friend to call their own. so, the day we were heading back home, we made an hour detour up to minnesota, to the farm where the 9 rescue pups were being held until they were adopted/fostered. i was so pleasantly surprised upon our first impression of these dogs. with only 4 days out of the reservation, and in the loving care of the Tracy Area Animal Rescue (TAAR), one would have never thought they were fighting for their lives. they had clearly gone from "rescue mode" to gentle domestic beasts in a very short time. and to me, this was a good sign that this would be a good fit for us. we let the boys wander and meet the puppies... and our focus started to migrate to the slightly "larger" puppy, 3 months old, half german shepard/half black lab... calmy chewing on a rawhide bone on the blanket. he wasn't jumping up on us or the boys, just minding his own business (now we refer to this as his secret plot for good behavior to be "the chosen one"). he was loving and sweet and we had no other choice... he would be ours. we were able to take him home that day. so we all piled into the truck and headed home. so that was the story of our ringo. the animal rescue gave him the name and it fit too perfect due to the white ring of fur around his snout. ringo it was. and ringo it would be. and honestly, if you have never experienced adopting a rescue pup/dog, i strongly urge you to. i never imagined that this would be how we would include our first domestic beast into our family, but i couldn't imagine it any other way. you must adopt!
so moving forward through the season. our new pup has proven to be very smart and it required very little time (in my mind) to get him house-trained and integrated into our home and lifestyle. christmas was spent here in holstein and it was a very relaxing and wondrous time. we hosted my family christmas eve and spent christmas day at my parents'. the next day, we drove up to sioux falls to celebrate with the schweitzbergers. other than losing my wallet in the parking lot (so i believe) of target, it was an amazing short trip and we loved seeing everyone again. yes... my entire wallet! for those of you that thought i wasn't going to dwell on that little detail a little bit more, you were wrong. losing your wallet is like a small part of your body being lopped off. ugh! made me sick, still makes me sick. what do you do?! i took care of the necessary steps to cancel/replace everything and now i'm just moving on. blah! please check out my next post on the first 5 days of 2015. it's a lot less cookie cutter and rainbows and sunshines. of course =)
PS - visit TAAR's website or FB page!
http://www.tracyareaanimalrescue.com/home.html
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tracy-Area-Animal-Rescue
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)