My Weim

We have a grey beast that lives in our home.  Piper is a Weimaraner and has been a part of our life for the better part of 11 years.  She’s getting pretty old now and not quite up to all the antics that a young pup puts their owners through.

One of my favorite stories about her comes from the time we lived in Maryland.  We had a townhouse that backed up to an 80-acre nature preserve.  We’d often take her for walks down to the Little Patuxent River where she’d swim and play in the water.  One of the easiest routes to this canine playground was down a repurposed railway.  The train tracks had been removed and a hiking path was put in their place.  On this occasion, we spent about half an hour throwing sticks in the river and watching her retrieve them before deciding it was time to make our way home.  We had climbed back up the steep bank and got on the old ‘rail-trail’ for our return, when a bird caught our young pup’s attention.  Quick as a flash she turned toward the river and shot off after it.  We yelled for her to stop, but in her youthful exuberance, she ignored our calls.  Coming to the end of the trail, her way onward was blocked by a small stand of bushes covered in honeysuckle.  Like a gazelle, she gracefully bounded over them…and into thin air.  You see, she had reached the riverbank, and more specifically the place that the railroad trestle used to be.  I ran back down the path that led to the river, expecting to jump in and swim out to where my dog’s broken body lay on the rocks below.  But when I got there, I saw a little grey head poking out of the water, and swimming around the bend, sneezing water out of her nose.

With a canine that’s this accident prone, it’s always important to have the number of a good Vet in your phone list.  In moving back to Arkansas, we struggled with finding a place that fit our needs.  Sure, the staff was knowledgeable, but it seemed you could never go and get something done without dropping more than $100, no matter how simple it was.  I started to get the same feeling that I did when taking our car to Jiffy Lube.  You go in for a simple procedure, like an oil change, but when you reach the other end, they’ve found all these problems that ‘need’ to be fixed.  One of the last straws came when we spent thousands of dollars on some mysterious problem that they never identified or fixed.

You can imagine our excitement when we heard about Cornerstone Veterinary Clinic going in.  We immediately made an appointment to have a lot of stuff done that we had been putting off (teeth cleaning, shots, nail clipping, etc.).  Among other things, I found that their location is extremely convenient; I was able to drop her off before work and pick her up afterwards without having to drive all the way across town.  

The entire staff was pleasant and friendly.  Dr. Coston was extremely personable and did a good job with our old dog.  He had taken before-and-after pictures to show me the extent of what they performed on her.  The best surprise is when it came time to pay.  I had expected to clear $400 on this one visit (we had a whole lot done), but it wasn’t even close to that.  We took our vet bill home and compared it, procedure-for-procedure, to another vet bill we had from a previous facility.  There was a stark difference in pricing.

Finally, we’ve found the vet we’ve been looking for!  If you live in the South Sebastian County area of Arkansas and are looking for a vet, take your beast to Cornerstone Veterinary Clinic.  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

An End

Author's Note:  As a result of a recent health screening, it's been brought to my attention that some life changes are in order.  This is a copy of a letter I sent to Dr. Pepper, in an attempt to make a clean break from a long-standing habit.  Hope you enjoy.

Dear Dr. Pepper,

I’m writing you this letter because I think its best we not meet in person anymore.  I've been doing a lot of thinking about where my life is headed and who will take this journey with me.  I want you to know that I’ve not reached this decision lightly.  I've talked to a lot of people who have helped me understand that it’s time for you and me to see others.

It tears me up inside to think of the years we’ve spent together and how it feels like I’m throwing that all away.  At 20 fluid ounces a workday, for the last five years, we’ve had more than 195 gallons of quality time together.  And that’s not even taking into account the ten years previous where we had a more casual relationship.

I need you to understand that it’s nothing wrong that you’ve done.  This is my fault.  Maybe if I had a little more self-control, we could still be close friends, but as it is, I need space and time to just settle on who I can become.

I know that without you, I’ll be less of a person.  I’m hoping by at least 10 pounds.  I’ll not easily forget the sharp, bubbly flavor of the time we spent just chillin’ at my desk.  Because of you, the number 23 will always hold a special place in my heart.  Not only is it a beautiful prime number, but it reminds me of the mysterious 23 flavors that you contain.

Please remember that I’m not doing this out of malice.  I’ll still proudly wear my Dr. Pepper hat when I work out at the gym, and throw my Dr. Pepper football with the boys.  I’m not ashamed of you in any way, and I hope you can find it in your heart one day to forgive me for ending our relationship so suddenly.

I wish you the best,

Michael

The Difference Game

Communication is a skill that takes a lifetime to develop.  It’s very easy to completely forget the difficulties that arise when you first start to learn it.  For children, there are communication concepts that are almost impossible to explain with words.  Two areas that have caused great difficulty in our house is understanding what “sassiness” is, and grasping the difference between joking with someone as opposed to lying to them.

On many occasions I’ve seen my kids say something with a sneer or a roll of the eyes, then immediately get busted for sassiness.  You can watch the sneer quickly morph into an expression of confusion, and it makes you think ‘they just don’t get what sassiness is’.

Griffin has also been branching out into the areas of sarcasm and joking, but in his efforts to talk more like a grown-up, he’s zoomed right passed that line of “joshing” and straight into flat out lying.  At times, I can see the confusion on his face when he gets reprimanded for what he thinks is done in good fun.

Like I said, to use only words to explain the differences is a monumentally difficult task.  I have found that it is much more effective to demonstrate the differences by playing a little game with them.  I call it the Game of Differences.

In Gage’s case, when he has said something particularly sassy to one of us and gotten in trouble for it, I take him aside and show him how he was sassy by imitating what he did.  Next, I show him a better way that he could have said it.  Then, finally, we start the game.  I make a statement, but do it two different ways:

1)      “Gage, please hand me the soap.”

2)      “HAND ME THE SOAP NOW!”

Then I ask him which was the nice way to say it and which was the sassy way to say it.  He always picks up on this one easy enough.  Then, I try a different statement with eye-rolling or sighing.  Next, maybe I’ll just change the inflection on certain words, but by this point, he’s having so much fun that he doesn’t want to stop playing the game, and he’s getting really good at picking up on the cues that get him busted for sassiness.

The same is true for Griffin and his joking/lying dilemma.  I first noticed we had a problem when I told him something so outlandish that it couldn’t possibly be believed, something like, “I ate an elephant for lunch.”  He accused me of lying…which is technically true, except for the fact that I never meant for him to believe it.  We played a similar game where he had to differentiate between a statement that was an outlandish assertion and one that was a lie.  At this point, let me caution you NOT to let your 3 year-old overhear you tell the other son that there’s a shark in the toilet.  It’ll totally de-rail any efforts you’ve put toward potty training.  Not that that happened.  I’m just sayin’…it could cause problems.

Now, I’m not a certified child psychologist, or even an uncertified one, but I’ve seen this technique work really well in our household.  Bear in mind that I’m doing this with a 5 and a 3 year old.  I wouldn’t advise using this on your tween daughter unless you’re looking to see her generate some big time snark.

Happy Parenting! 

Girls Are Just Different

When I first became a new father, I was scared to death of raising boys.  After having Griffin and Gage, and the ensuing years of practice, I’ve become pretty comfortable in my role as parent to two of these rowdy little guys.  Girls, on the other hand, are a totally different matter, and I’m struggling to come to terms with the dissimilarities.

First off, they are physically different, which comes as no surprise to anyone above the age of three.  However, there are certain rules involved in this difference that I was not immediately aware of.  Did you know I’ve been changing diapers the WRONG way for five whole years?  Apparently, there’s a correct and incorrect direction in which to wipe a dirty hiney.  And beyond that, what’s with giving daddy a hand-shower almost every time he changes the diaper?  She’s already peed on me more times than both boys ever did…combined.

Another area of disparity that I’ve noticed is clothing.  Boys are generally very easy to get dressed.  In fact, the three year old can pretty much take care of all his clothing needs now, though he does come in with the occasional backwards shirt.  When dressing Haven, I’m the one more likely to put something on backwards.  OK, buttons should be on the front of the dress, people!  For a baby who lies on her back ninety percent of the time, it makes no sense to hide the latches where it’s doubly difficult to snap or button them.  And what sick person first thought up tights for babies?!?  I spent 5 minutes trying to get hers on yesterday.  For those of you who’ve never tried, it’s an experience akin to taking a live squid, putting it in a mesh bag, and then trying to keep all the tentacles from coming out the holes.  Every time I’d get one of her legs in and start working on the other, the first leg would pop back out.  Girl clothes are not easy, by any stretch of the imagination.

And furthermore, exactly how many shades of pink are there?  Thus far, I have been able to distinguish two, and that’s only when they are lying side by side.  However, I’ve been told there are quite a few more than the couple I’ve found.  Color distinction is a genetics issue, from what I understand.  Something about the X chromosome helps in differentiation of the color red.  That would be the X chromosome that all males get only 1 of where females get 2.  Keep that in mind, ladies, next time you’re stressing over which shade of heels to wear for an evening on the town.  Chances are your date can barely tell which section of the color wheel it came from.  This could also, consequently, explain the phenomenon where we look in your closet and exclaim, “How many pairs of black shoes do you need!?”

All those differences aside, there’s also a certain sweetness about Haven that I didn’t quite notice with the boys.  It could be the way she smiles when you lay her down to change her diaper, or maybe the way she laughs when you pull her arms out of her clothes, or maybe the way she babbles back when you ‘coo’ at her.  I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, yet, but it does merit some further research.  It’s possible that girls are just made out of sweeter things than boys…like sugar and spice and everything nice.

Diapers are NOT magic

Tuesday morning, as Gage lay down on the bathroom rug to get his diaper changed, he uttered one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a while.  I had unfastened his nighttime pullup, and was getting some wipes to clean him.  He pulled the diaper out from underneath him and tossed it on the tile, to which I said, “Gage, don’t pull that off yet, I’m not ready.”  His response was priceless, “I like taking off diapers!  It’s magic!”

As cute as that may be, I’m here to tell you that un-potty-trained diaper removal is in no wise magical.  For proof, I only need to look back at Sunday, to an un-diapering event that will forever be burnt into my memory…

We had not gotten a lot of sleep the night before, Tamara and I.  We were completely exhausted, and the baby woke up extra early wanting to be fed.  Tamara stumbled into the nursery fighting against a migraine that would last almost the entire day, and did what she could to feed the baby.  I took over after that, giving Haven a bottle of formula.

About midway through that bottle, Griffin materializes from around the corner and announces that Gage has poo-poo’s in his diaper.  This didn’t worry me a great deal, because Gage almost always mistakes a saturated overnight diaper for one having poop in it.  “Gage,” I called, “come here.”  A few moments later, my three year old waddles around the corner sporting a bowlegged shuffle that looks like he’s been on a horse for the past two days.  I sent him on to the bathroom.

Had I known two crucial things, at this point, it would have changed the whole course of the morning.  The first thing: Gage was NOT in a nighttime diaper, he was in a daytime diaper.  For those of you not versed in the subtle differences between the two, bear in mind that a nighttime diaper is designed to hold more.  The second: Gage was not done peeing in said diaper.

Like they say, hindsight is 20/20, and without that foreknowledge, I elected to continue feeding sister her bottle.  Upon finishing, I laid her down in the crib and walked toward the bathroom.  Gage was not lying down on the rug, as I had told him to do, but what bothered me more was the puddle growing under his right foot.  I quickly got him off his feet and started pulling his pj’s off.  The bathroom rug underneath him saturated almost instantly.  There was nothing left to do but take a step back, take a deep breath, and decide on the next course of action.  So I did take a step back, right into a puddle of pee.

At this point, I’m pretty thoroughly grossed out.  I pulled a Clorox wipe out from underneath the cabinet, cleaned my foot, and wiped it off on a part of the rug that was still dry.  I told Gage that he was not to get up, and then took the wet pj bottoms to the laundry room. 

Upon my return, I finally started taking care of the heart of the matter.  In my zeal to get the whole ordeal over, I gripped the sides of the pullup and yanked the Velcro tabs away from their fasteners.  My face and arms were instantly showered with tiny specks of urine.  I had no idea that was even possible.  The second tab on the other side did the exact same thing.  It was disgusting, but this far into the process, all that was left to do was wipe my face and move on.

When I lay the pullup open, I could see the liquid washing back and forth inside of it, like waves in a bathtub.  I actually had to go get a second diaper to lay on top of the used one and soak up the excess.

The next 30 minutes was eaten up with giving Gage a bath, washing the rug, and mopping the bathroom floor.  If ever there was a morning to be in bed with a migraine, this was it.

So, you see how I can say that taking off diapers isn’t necessarily a magical thing.  In my estimation, potty-trained children are where the real magic is at.

Would You Just Pay Attention!

I am struggling a great deal with Griffin’s current efforts toward learning basketball.  Last Monday night was the single most frustrating event I’ve experienced in a long time.  We went to basketball practice around 6pm, and I knew things were going wrong before we even hit the court.

While the rest of his team was lined up, listening to the coach and doing what he said, my son was somewhere behind the back of the line, watching other teams on the court go through their drills.  He was more concerned with the stadium clock than the instructions, and even got hit in the face with the ball once because he didn’t see the pass coming to him.

I pulled him out of line, many times, to chew on him about paying attention.  Every time he went back, he listened for about two minutes and then started playing chase or wrestling with the other boys.  His approach to the whole evening seemed to be more of a social event than a learning event.

I can’t help but wonder if I’m expecting too much of him.  Is five years old too early to learn a team sport like basketball?  Most of the other kids seem to be able to listen and perform what the coach expects.

Their first game, on Saturday, went much like the practice did.  I could tell there was a great deal of confusion on Griffin’s face as he loitered near center court.  Their team had a rough time remembering which goal they were supposed to shoot at (especially after half-time), they didn’t quite understand that they needed to get back behind the red line when on defense, and of course the mechanics of dribbling and shooting just aren’t quite there for the little Kindergarteners.

I’m trying to keep in mind that I didn’t play competitive basketball until I was in 5^th grade, and by then had played many a pick-up game with neighborhood kids.  I’m thinking that Griffin just hasn’t been exposed to it enough to know the basics of the game.  I feel that once he realizes how to play the game, he’ll have more fun at it.

Until then, the practices are going to be awful…and the games not much different.

On the bright side, Gage really enjoys going to the practices and the games.  I think it has more to do with the cheerleaders who are also practicing at that time.  He pretty much crushes on any girl wearing a cheerleader uniform…which is terrifying.  So, yeah, there’s that.

Year In Review Awards

The results are in!  After a full week of work, recounting the year and tallying the votes, we are ready to announce the End of Year Awards for the Thomas Household.  Without further ado, here are the winners:

Selective Hearing Impairment Award

This was the most heavily contested category in 2010.  Brothers, Griffin and Gage, did their best to lay claim to this title, but with a little extra effort toward the end of the year, Gage Thomas edged out his older sibling for the upset.  His proud father was quoted as saying, “That boy is about to drive me crazy!  He acts like he can’t even hear me calling him, when I know full well that he did!”

Foot-in-Mouth Award

We go from the most heavily contested category to the least contested.  With a score that was an order of magnitude larger than the next closest competitor, Michael Thomas has clinched the Foot-in-Mouth Award.  “I have to thank my wife for her help and support in winning this award,” he said.  “I couldn’t have done it without her constant reminder of ‘Keep digging, Buddy’, and the shoveling motions that go along with it.”  He went on to warn those seeking a win in this category with one of his favorite quotes:  A closed mouth gathers no foot.

Bermuda Triangle Award

We have our first female winner of the season.  Tamara Thomas struggled early in the year with her efforts, but ultimately settled into her comfort zone when she focused on the computer desk.  Her continued manipulation and stacking of various papers, forms, coupons, and pictures ultimately turned our workstation into a place where documents went to disappear.  Sadly, we were unable to interview her before the posting of this award, but have it on good authority that her comment would have been, “Keep digging, Buddy.”

The Loch Ness Award

Mother and son fought tenaciously for the Loch Ness Award.  Tamara alternated between not being able to find her keys and not being able to find ‘that coupon’ she was looking for.  Gage was able to pull off a win by concentrating his efforts on his green and white polka dotted blanket (the one with a really good tag).  Night after night, as we got ready to tuck them into bed, this blanket would come up missing.  For being the owner of this hard to locate item, Gage pulls down his second year-end award.

Energizer Bunny Award

The second least contested award of the year goes to Griffin Thomas.  He approached last year as if he had a plan in mind.  He pulled off this nearly uncontested win by lobbying Mommy and Daddy really hard, with statements like, “Where are we going today” and “Can I go to Mammy and Pa’s.”  His uncontested win was only in jeopardy once over the summer until Mommy put a stiff hour and thirty minute TV-time law into effect.  Congratulations, Griffin!

Motel Six Award

She might be small, and she might be new, but that didn’t stop Haven Thomas from making the most of her few months in 2010.  She easily pulled down the Motel Six award for her work at being active during the Late Night hours.  This may very well be a one-time win for the little girl, as her sleeping patterns have already changed to 12 hours a night.  And let me tell you, that’s a fact her parents are extremely happy about.

Running of the Bulls Award

One need only look at his body, full of bumps, bruises, and scratches to see why Gage Thomas has won the Running of the Bulls Award.  His lack of regard for personal safety coupled with his reckless behavior is what made this win a reality.  The award committee would like to point out that even though he won this award hands down, he is the only member of the Thomas family to NOT spend time in the hospital during 2010.  After all, the winner of this category is not based on the amount of injury a person sustains, but how often they put themselves in harm’s way.

Old Yeller Award

We round out the award ceremony with a fan favorite, the Old Yeller Award.  There are no surprises here as Piper wins for her 10^th consecutive year.  No family member has shown the same devotion and faithfulness as Piper Dog Thomas.

Please join me in congratulating the winners of the 2010 Family Awards.  We wish them well in their efforts in the coming season.