Abby had quite a few bibs when she was born, but there was one that seemed to make it into rotation more often than the others – or perhaps just elicited more comments so it seemed like it was always on her.

Although the bib itself is cute, it was particularly funny because I hate peas. With a PASSION. Always have. My mother, on the other hand, loves peas and often served them when I was growing up. But not to me. For me, she would make a separate side dish, free of the nasty peas. I fondly remember overhearing a conversation between my mother and grandmother when I was about sixteen, with my grandmother wondering why my mom was going through the hassle of making a different vegetable for me (why didn’t she just serve me the peas?) and my mother responding that she figured if I didn’t like them by the age of sixteen, there was nothing she could do to get me to like them. Smart woman.

Except, I discovered a few years ago that I don’t hate peas (sorry mom!). I hate cooked peas. Fresh peas on the other hand are tasty, tasty, tasty! And farmer’s market peas are both cheap and tasty. So for the past two weeks, our fridge has held a huge number of fresh peas. As has my stomach.

And today was market day. Abby clearly shares my taste for fresh peas, although she will have to wait until a meal at her nana’s house before we find out if she shares my dislike of cooked peas.

We actually use to grow them in our garden a few years ago but never seemed to eat many ourselves. Can’t figure out why.

Little lambs, little lambs
Abby had two little lambs
Whose fleeces were as white as snow.

The pugs do tend to follow us around the house, so perhaps these Easter outfits are even more appropriate than I originally thought? To be honest, my original thought was “75% off! Sure, I’ll buy them for 75% off!” – I wasn’t thinking too far beyond that.

*And yes, one is yellow, not white. No pugs were peed on in the making of this post. I just thought the yellow one was cute too.

When I told Charles about the Mabel’s Labels contest I entered, he was, of course, curious about what the contest entailed. When I told him that I had to write about my passions, his response, without having read my entry, was “Well, I can name three right off the bat: Abby, knitting, and pugs!”

I guess I really am that transparent!

Unbeknownst to me, he had already used those three things to build a theme for my birthday presents, which I discovered when I opened them this morning:

A yarn ball winder, a knitted toy kit, and a knitting book, which has patterns I can knit for the pugs and the cats! The book also has patterns for turtles, hamsters, rabbits, pond fish … and no, despite the picture on the cover, I’m not talking about patterns of these pets, I mean patterns for these pets! Not that we have any of these as pets right now … although I have had all, except the pond fish, as pets in the past.

I pretty much immediately had to try the ball winder. Isn’t that just a beautifully wound ball of yarn? Clearly Logan thought it was! I can’t wait to try it out with the yarn swift that my dad made for me for my birthday last year.

I decided to continue the theme this morning when I got dressed and I put on my sheep socks and my knitting shirt (which is conveniently also green to help celebrate the other important day today).

If only I could top it off by spending the whole day knitting.

Oh, and his response to my family when they asked if he had any ideas of things I wanted for my birthday: “Well, you never can go wrong with knitting things.”

Can you see why I love this man?

Do you think Abby likes Paco?

I mean, who else would steal a bag of microwave popcorn from a stocking, rip it open, and spread it out all over the living room carpet?

Umm, Paco? Why does your breath smell like butter?

Last year, we participated in a card exchange. Our card looked something like this:

Of course, it took many, many attempts to get those two pictures, but it was fun (mostly) and we got several comments on how cute it was. Which, of course, meant that I felt a little pressure for this year’s card exchange. And this year I also had to wrangle a baby.

A few outtakes:

Finally, with a little more practice and the help of Photoshop, we had a card!

It didn’t quite turn out as I had envisoned, but I’m still pretty happy with it. And I know the cats aren’t in it – this is what I get when I try to include them.

We have accidentally become co-sleepers.

It seems like it started off innocently enough – Abigail was born with low blood sugar, and the hospital recommended some skin-to-skin time to help keep it up. So the first night we took turns laying with her on our chests (you don’t really sleep in a hospital anyway, right?). And the next day, between each blood test as we waited for her blood sugar results to come back, she continued to sleep on our chests. But we had discussed this idea of co-sleeping and decided it wasn’t for us, so when we got home, we set up her bassinet in our room and put her in it, and she had a nice long nap in her bassinet. And all was good.

Except, and I’m not really sure what or how it happened, but somehow she now spends most of the night sleeping with us instead of sleeping in her bassinet.* Granted, a good portion of the night is also spent feeding her, so it’s not like she is in our bed for hours on end. But when she is not being fed, she is often sleeping away on Charles’ chest as he reclines in our bed.

During the day she sleeps in her bassinet, so clearly she is able to sleep in her bassinet. Clearly we are comfortable having her sleep in the bassinet. But in the wee hours of the morning, we seem to cave in and she ends up anywhere but in her bassinet. Last night I slept on the spare bed with her beside me (mostly so that we could actually sleep – last night was a fussy night and she is most sleepy right after being fed. Moving her even from the spare room, where I feed her at night, to our room is too far a distance for her liking).

And sadly, when I take a step back, it seems to be a symptom of a larger “bed-sharing” weakness.

When we got Paco, we were determined that he would sleep in his crate at night. And he did. For about four months. Then one night I went to bed early and Paco came upstairs with me and settled in, and when Charles came to bed, he didn’t put Paco in his crate (yes, I put the blame on Charles – I was asleep ) The next night when we turned off the TV to go to bed, Paco quickly ran up the stairs and settled into bed. And we promptly put him in his crate. But sleeping in our bed became a once a week “special” thing for him. And then twice a week, and then soon he was sleeping in our bed every night and we didn’t even pretend that we were going to put him in his crate.

The first night that Honey was here, she went straight upstairs at the end of the night, jumped into bed and settled down. She didn’t even pretend that she was going to sleep elsewhere.

So, yeah. We were pretty much doomed from the start with Abigail.

* We always make sure there is no chance of her being smothered by a pillow (or a pug).

There was a column in our local newspaper a few weeks back about dogs doing their business on lawns that are not their own. Essentially the columnist (who does own a dog) was of the opinion that dogs should do their business only on their own lawns because even if the owner picks up after the dog, there are still germs left behind and kids could run in said germs and be horrifically scarred for life (or at least “germed” and therefore gross).

Practical in theory … not happening in real life. Unless you are one of those people who never, ever walks their dog (and I cannot advocate that).

Dogs are dogs. They pee on things as a social calling card. They, apparently, have the intelligence of a two year old – and most toddlers don’t start potty-training until 18-36 months, so is it reasonable to expect a dog to know which lawn is okay to go on? And then there is the fact that, even if domesticated animals (let’s not forget about those roaming cats) did not do their business on any lawn other than their own, how would you stop the wild animals from using your yard as a rest stop? Do wild animals not have germs?? I’m pretty sure that with the number of wild animals in our city, the impact of their bathroom habits far outweigh those of the resident dog population.

However, the article did make me think of some of the “general rules” that we have for our pugs on walks:

• We don’t let them pee on garbage bags, yard waste bags, or recycling bins
• We don’t let them pee on flower gardens or small bushes that are likely trimmed by hand
• We encourage them to pee on the strip of lawn closest to the road rather than on the “usable” part of lawns (but they are pugs and can be stubborn)

These, of course, are just the general guidelines for potty spots. We do tailor them a little bit. For example, we try to dissuade the pugs from going on the lawn of the B&B in our neighbourhood. We encourage them to pee on election signs (particularly for parties that we don’t like).

And if you have a pet weed, everything is fair game.

Pugs are known for their sad faces. Put a cone on a pug and, well, you get this:

Poor sad pug. Paco’s eye surgery went well though, so although he is sad now, hopefully once his eye heals he will be less sad. And to help him heal, he has a new routine of eye drops and pills.

That’s a fair number of drugs for a little boy (there are actually two different forms of prednisone there – one pill, one drops). The schedule is fairly simple though – one pill twice a day, two pills once a day. One bottle of eye drops is just for the next few days, to be given as often as we see fit to keep his eye lubricated. The other two eye drops have to be given every six hours, but who needs sleep, right? Should help prepare me for when the baby comes, yes?

And then there is the cone. The cone stays on for at least two weeks, perhaps as long as six. He is good with the pills (because he gets cheese with them) and for the most part accepts the eye drops, but the cone has taken a bit of getting use to. After a few hours he has successfully figured out how to get on and off the couch, but we’re still carrying him up and down the stairs as we’re afraid he’ll get halfway down and take a tumble. He still hasn’t quite realized how big it is, and keeps bumping into walls, doors, Honey, the back of my legs ….

As someone who bruises easily, I hope that he adjusts soon.

You know those pricky weeds, the ones that bite you, even if you are wearing gardening gloves, and then your finger tingles for a while after, as if you had been stung by a bee? Well, if you look just behind Paco in this picture, you’ll see one that is almost six feet tall.

I’ve been meaning to take a picture of this weed for the last few weeks, but kept forgetting to take the camera with me on our our six a.m. walks (and I’m not really bold enough to just saunter down the street in the middle of the day to take a picture of a weed in front of a stranger’s house – that might be weird). Plus, I also needed something to use as context beside the weed so that you could grasp how large this sucker really is. Although as you can see from the picture, even Paco didn’t want to sit that close to it, despite me trying to bribe him with the promise of treats.

Actually, I was a little afraid that they would cut it down before I got the chance to take a picture of it. I know that it’s a student house and all, but a six foot tall weed is a little hard to miss, don’t you think?