Thanks to Emily for this super cool campaign poster!
Mimi! January 14, 2009
Fun news in the Goodwin household – we have adopted a second dog! For many of you this is old news because we have put loads of photos up on Facebook already, but of course we want to chronicle it here as well.
This all started because we watched Macy over the holidays. We love having Macy stay with us – she is such a sweetie and is a ‘people dog’ who follows us around and always stays near us. Lucy is much more independent and not really what I would call a ‘people dog,’ but of course she has other great qualities like the fact that she makes us laugh several times a day! The best thing about when Macy is that Lucy is so much calmer when she is around. I guess she has an outlet for her energy and she doesn’t get too hyper with us.
So when she left I felt the usual urge to get a second dog, and somehow I managed to keep John from saying no! I LOVE 2009 – it’s magical! Believe it or not I will skip a bunch of detail here and just say that we went through Lucky Lab Rescue to find a dog. Originally John wanted a dog that looked a little different than Lucy, but then we heard about something called Black Dog Syndrome, which is that big black dogs have a low adoption rate and high euthanization rate in shelters. So that made us then lean towards rescuing a black one. She looks totally different from Lucy, right?! 🙂
We got Mimi on Saturday, after attending a Lucky Labs Rescue event at a pet apparel store. (Mimi came with the name ‘Darla,’ but we wanted to change it and she did not seem to respond to Darla anyway. John has made it clear that he wants it known that I was the one who chose the name. He likes the name but thinks it is too girly for anyone to think he came up with it!) There were 2 dogs we were torn between – Mimi and an 8 month old black puppy. Lucy seemed to get on best with the puppy but we figured it would have no trouble finding a home since it was still a puppy, plus Lucy was a pretty high-maintenance puppy so we were not desperate to go through puppyhood again soon!
She is a sweet girl, but it wasn’t a completely smooth meeting. She had had a long day at the LLR event, and by the time she came to our house afterwards for a home visit she was very tired and stressed. She had a couple of grumbles at Lucy and Abbey, and I nearly decided she was not the right fit. But we decided to give it a go because even when she was a little grumpy she seemed very manageable when I corrected her.
The first night she was definitely the dominant dog and Lucy the submissive, but the next day Lucy decided to stand up for herself and became a little more dominant over anything she was playing with – bones, toys, John, Macy… Lucy and Mimi are still figuring out each other and the dust is still settling from her fitting herself into our lives, but there seems to have been marked improvements each day.
She has been really great with Hayden. He hugs her and lays on her the way he does with Lucy, and she is very calm about it. I am always right there on the floor with them when he starts paying attention to her, telling her what a good dog she is and trying to keep her focus on me so she can get used to him but has my reassurances, plus I stroke her face while it’s happening not only as a reward but as insurance in case she suddenly decides to snap. Not that I don’t trust her- I do the same thing to Lucy! I just think you can’t be too careful with toddlers and dogs.
Mimi is a 5 to 6 year old purebred black lab. She is petite, weighing around 50 lbs. We don’t know for sure about her history, but when she was rescued by LLR she had puppies right away and it seems she has had many litters of puppies. So a logical guess is she was used for breeding. Not sure though why her owner sent her to a shelter when she was pregant. But she is very rough around the edges and we have some work to do with her. We (mostly John) have already taught her ‘sit’ and she is pretty good with that when a treat is on offer. She has also already (pretty much) learned not to get on the couch. She gets pretty hyper when she plays, so we need to temper that. She also does NOT like the stairs for some reason. I worked with her last night on it with some really delicious (according to Lucy) liver treats, and even though she was desperate for one I struggled to get her far enough up the stairs so her back legs were on the first step. She streeeeeeetched her neck as much as she could while still keeping those feet planted on the ground. Hopefully we can reprogram that, because it would be lovely to have 2 snuggly dogs asleep with us on these bitterly cold nights.
Zoo January 13, 2009
It was warm for this time of year on the last day of our time off work, about 50 degrees. Hayden seemed to have been going a little stir crazy lately with being home so much, so we were trying to think of something to do to get him out of the house for a while. We decided to take him to the zoo, and it turned out to be the best idea because we basically had the place to ourselves! It was a Sunday morning so I’m sure a lot of people were at church, plus it’s winter so people don’t typically think to go to the zoo around here, and also the zoo has a big thing all through December called Christmas at the Zoo so I bet loads of people had just been to the zoo for that.
We had a unique experience at nearly every animal exhibit we went to. When we saw the walruses, they seemed to be playing with us through the glass. One was hovering in the water near us and almost looked like she was playing peek-a-boo, and this great big one kept coming up to the glass, doing a little flip through the water, pushing off the glass and swimming off. Then when we saw the tiger she was laying there looking at us for a while then got up and let off some spray in our direction! I don’t think I’ve seen that before! She started spraying a couple of other things in her area, too. Not sure what that was about but I guess I’ll take it as a compliment. We had the aquarium area to ourselves including the shark pool where you can touch these small sharks. We were in there for ages petting them, just because it was so cool having the place to ourselves. I remember when we were there in the summer you couldn’t even get close to that pool. Also the brown bear had sadly died last summer, but we see they have brought in 2 brown bears now. They were playing just like Lucy and Macy play so they were also fun to watch.
We only stayed for about 1 1/2 hours or so because we got around so fast, but it was perfect timing because the temperature started noticeably dropping as we were leaving.
Get a reader!
I just thought I would put this out there in case anyone is interested…. I have been using a ‘reader’ for a little while so I can get direct updates when a friend’s blog has been updated. I use Google Reader, and they have a made a video and getting started guide you can reference if you are interested in setting one up. If you want to use Google Reader then I recommend making iGoogle your homepage and adding the Reader application to your iGoogle. Then, as soon as you start up your internet session you will see if there has been an update to any websites you have subscribed to (such as Hayden’s Place!). If you are interested in this and have any trouble, let me know and I will help.
Picking His Food…. January 4, 2009
Hayden is anything but a picky eater, In fact he is one of the least pickyiest eaters ever. He just eats everything he can all the time….Recently he’s had Mexican food, prime rib, green bean casserole, chips and salsa (and the salsa had a little kick to it – he wasn’t overly impressed about that!
However saying that one thing that he is starting to do is when there is a choice of what to eat he likes to be specific. So for example if it’s a buffet he will point to what he wants, and if you give him anything else he will shake his head, blow a raspberry and go “No No No”. It’s impressive how he recognises so many foods but also funny how lots of food types he would normally eat he refuses because he can see more attractive alternatives!
Warmest day ever? Well for December anyway..
December was cold. Very very cold. Almost every day had lows below freezing, and post had highs below freezing. Then out of nowhere we had a day after Christmas that was balmy. I think it reached the mid to high 60Fs. It was a great day and reminded us how much fun it is when you can get Hayden outside!
Hayden got to play twice for 30 minutes outside. He was so much more advanced than the last time we played. He can get on and off his trucks/tractors himself. He is starting to learning to push when he’s sitting on it (although he is better at going backwards than forwards right now!!) He can push in a straight line and then when he hits something he knows to pull it back and redirect it before he starts pushing again. All simple stuff for us – but more progress for Munchkin.
It also reminded us that we need to book a vacation somewhere warm sometime soon!!!
Big boy toys
Hayden likes big boy toys. I think everyone of his toys has a recommended age of 3 or 4. He loves his monster trucks, all his cars, and his new Black and Decker work bench!! I think Hayden wants to grow up quicker than we want him to!!
In fact last night we joked with a friend that his workbench was actually mine, and she believed it! She couldn’t believe that a 17 month old has a toy like that!!!
Sleeping Beauty
Hayden is a good sleeper, he is on a schedule and normally goes to sleep at a regular hour (about 6.45pm) and wakes up at roughly the same time (anytime between 6.20 and 6.50). That means no lies in for us. Over Christmas, when you don’t have to work getting up at 6.30 sucks! Well I guess Christmas took it’s toll on him. Christmas Day he didn’t wake until 7.45 and on the day after he slept until 8.30!! What a hero! Christmas rocks 😀 Nice one Hayden.
Dancing January 2, 2009
Hayden dances now. We will put on music or he will make one of his toys with music go off and he will sway from side to side. We have to get a video of this because it is so cute!
He also finally started waving bye-bye a couple of weeks ago (can’t remember if I already wrote about that). That is something most kids pick up before they are 1, but although he would randomly wave sometimes he just did not seem to want to wave bye-bye consistently. Now he can do it on demand, and of course we ask him to do it a few times a day for our amusement. 🙂
Upside down
Last night John told me that my laptop was laying upside down, and when Hayden heard that he turned the book he was looking at upside down. So we said ‘upside down’ again and he turned it 180 degrees again! He’s a sponge, I tell ya! We haven’t spent any time trying to teach that to him, he has just picked it up.
Hayden and Layla's Place 
