I need another hole in my head

Seriously, I must need another hole in my head, because we have a new addition to the family.

Please welcome:

Miley Montana

She's about 4 months old and a Rottweiler/Blue Heeler mix. Not the best picture of her, I know, but I'll get a better one here soon enough. Let me explain her name. As some of you know, all of our animals have Disney names:

Squirt, 6yr old Pit mix, name of turtle in "Finding Nemo"

Tigger, 4yr old fat cat, spelled T-I-double Grr- Rrr from Winnie the Pooh

Daisy Duck, 4yr old fluffy cat, wife of Donald Duck

Goofy, 2yr old humongous lab, Mickey & Minnie's dog (or is Pluto their dog and Goofy their friend?)

Michael, 1yr old boxer mix, Wendy's little brother in "Peter Pan"

Now, on to Miley Montana. For those of you without young kids, she's named after Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana of the Disney Channel. You can't really see it in the picture, but her face is half rottweiler and half blue heeler. So, I thought it would be quite appropriate to name her after a gal who plays two characters on Disney TV. Boys have one name in our pet household and girls have two names, hence the two names of Miley Montana. We'll just call her Miley, though.

Both Mama and Papa doggies are from our neighborhood. Mama Rottie lives just down the block from us, and Papa Blue-Heeler/Lab mix is 'owned' by our Ukrainian neighbors. Apparently he made a nocturnal visit or two down the block last summer. There were three puppies from that little liaison, two girls and one boy. I don't know what happened to the other girl, but the family with the rottie is keeping the boy. They also have a female black lab. She's not fixed either, and the last time she went into heat, she terrorized Miley to the point that Miley was a shaking pile of fur when she was rescued by our Ukrainian friends and taken to their house for a few days. Papa Puppy wasn't too happy to have the intrusion on his territory, either, so they asked us if we could take her in.

So far, this puppy has been a big old lump of LAZY. I've never had a puppy that just lays on the bed/couch/floor all day. She's really lively when you go for a walk (although she walks on a leash very well - better than Michael), but inside she's a quiet little mouse. We'll give her a few days to acclimate. And, she is so totally unconcerned that we have cats. Hey, they're nice things to look at, sniff once in a while, but she really doesn't care what they're doing. Michael, on the other hand spends 60% of his day concerned with where the cats are, what they're doing, and can he get away with chasing them.

The initial meet-n-greet went okay, for the most part. Our friends' daughter, A, was so concerned about the puppy that she begged to come back with us and see her off to her new home. I hope we allayed her fears. Miley met with Squirty first. Amazing, the pit bull is the most mellow dog in the house (well, until Miley got here). He was excited to meet a new buddy and completely un-territorial. Miley was a little hesitant, but within five minutes decided she had met her new best buddy. They met outside, so I told the kids to stay on the back deck with those dogs, and I went inside the house to deal with Michael and Goofy. I put Goofy in the cage, and tied Michael up outside by the front door. It took Michael ten seconds to smell Miley in the backyard and freak out. He was so hyperactive and excited to meet her, that she wouldn't come within five feet of him. The closer we got, the more of an A-hole he became, so we decided to let her go inside and meet with Goofy next. Miley decided that the laundry room was awesome and she wanted to stay there for quite a long time. Goofy took about ten minutes to calm down, and I let him out of the cage and put a leash on him. He is the alpha dog, and I needed to insure that I could control his meeting with Miley. It went relatively well, but Goofy started to corner Miley in the laundry room, so she snapped at him. I corrected Goofy and pulled him back, then I went in and sat next to Miley and praised her for being calm in Goofy's presence. After five minutes, I took Goofy back to the living room where he and Squirt sat at our feet while we watched TV.

Miley got up after a few minutes and investigated the kitchen and breakfast room, and Goofy and Squirt stayed at our feet. Then it was time to go to bed, so Y took Miley into his room and shut the door. I took Michael, Goofy and Squirt into my room for the night. And not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

I decided the next morning that I did not want to go through the logistics of keeping Michael and Miley separate until Michael calmed down enough to accept her, so Miley was kept in Y's room when we left for school/work. I called the trainer we've used before for Miko, Squirt and Goofy (Man's Best Friend) and arranged to bring Michael in for two weeks of doggie "school" Friday afternoon. Our house feels so much calmer without all of his hyperactive energy in it. Let's put this in perspective - yesterday he got 1 hour of swimming in the lake, plus thirty minutes of chasing his butt around the neighborhood when he decided to bolt from the lake, plus 20-30 minutes of pulling Y on his skateboard, plus 30 minutes at the dog park - and he STILL had energy left to freak out when meeting Miley.

With Michael gone, Miley seems to be fitting in seamlessly with the rest of the household. Ahhh, two weeks without Michael!

Spring Break is starting out to be pretty fun!

Natalie

TX

This Ain't My First Rodeo, Ya Know!

Well, actually it was. The first one I ever attended and the first for Y, too. Can't believe I've been in Houston over 11 years and never once went to the Rodeo. Of course, I got the standard, "Mama, I no go, I stay home and play on computer," for the week leading up to our "rodeo day." So I enlisted the help of E, she called Y just before noon on Sunday and they had a little conversation. When they hung up (er, when she hung up on him), Y said, "Okay, I go shower now," with a smarmy little grin on his face. It turns out E chewed him out for wanting to stay home: "What is more important, your computer or your friends!!!" - click! Y insists he went becuase I told him he could stay up late a few nights to "make up" the time lost from playing on his computer, but I know he went because he's terrified of E being mad at him. She even punched his arm, hard, when we finally got down to the rodeo and found our friends.

There's a huge carnival outside, and the kids had a good time riding till they ran out of tickets while the adults sat down and chatted. It was tough finding something relatively healthy to eat, but I ended up with a grilled shrimp sandwich, and Y ate most of my french fries. I even talked Y into getting his picture taken at the rodeo, and he talked M into getting into the picture, too. They decided to dress up as Frank and Jesse James, and their sepia toned photo looks awesome. I'm scared just looking at their scowls. Five minutes and $50 later we had a copy of the photo for each of them. Y said the guns were real, but they weren't loaded and wouldn't shoot anyway. If I can get the photo scanned in, I'll post it at a later date.

The actual rodeo takes place at Reliant Stadium. Being a Texans season ticket holder, I have a relatively good knowledge of the place. It makes a pretty good rodeo, too. We saw bronc busting, bull riding, barrel racing, chuckwagon racing, steer rasslin, calf roping and my favorite, the mutton races. That's where 5-6 year old kids put on helmets, grab the coat of a sheep and hold on for dear life for about 75 feet or so. I'm sure in 10-15 years some of those kids will be the ones riding the bulls. Then they drug the stage out, turned out the lights and we got to hear some music from a gal named Debbie Lovato and then some little group of boys called The Jonas Brothers? Anybody heard of them before?

Those girls were going nuts down low when the lead singer ran over to the edge of the stadium, climbed up on the rails and sang half the song to them. I bet a few of them fainted, too. The Jonas Brothers are not really Y's cup of tea, so we left after about three songs. As we were walking out, all Y could think about was asking me to buy him an "Icee." I reminded him that they were not Icees that he saw at the football game, they were Margaritas, and Hell had not yet frozen over. He kept at it, and I told him I did not want to get arrested for buying him alcohol. Y insisted that it was okay, "In America, you my mother, you can buy me - is okay - I tell you!" Well, there were two cops standing up ahead, so I walked right up to them and asked them to tell my son that I would get in trouble if I bought him alcohol. Imagine my surprise, when the first question the cop asked me, "Are you his mother?" I replied, "Yes," and the cop said, "Well, then legally you could buy it and give it to him and there's nothing I could do as long as he isn't driving home."

Well, you could've bowled me over with a feather! Hello! Legal to give a child alcohol as long as you're their parent! I knew Texas was stupid about stuff, but I didn't realize how stupid. I said to the cop, "Well, you could've lied to me with my 15yr old standing right next to me! Thanks for making my drive home so unbearable now." And then began the litany of, "Okay, you buy me Margarita now. Policeman say is okay, Mama! Why you no buy me?" RRRRRRRRR.....

Y was so relentless with his questioning on the way back to the car, that I said something that should've been left unsaid, or at least approached in a different manner at a different time. "Y, your parents are alcoholics, so I worry that you have that same thing in your brain that makes you want more and more alcohol as soon as you've had your first drink." Well, then came the very emphatic reply, "My father no alcoholic! Why you say he alcoholic? I no say bad things about you family!" I reminded him that he told me there was always money for vodka, but not always money for food. Anyone who buys alcohol first and food for their child second is an alcoholic. Y was so angry at me, that I told him maybe I was wrong when I thought he was talking about his birth father, maybe he meant his stepdad when he said that. He barely spoke to me for the rest of the trip home. However, about 20 minutes after we got home, he wanted help with something on his computer, so he broke his silence and all has been well, since.

Y did stay up two hours later than normal last night. He was tired, too, but there was no way in heck that he was going to sleep away any extra computer time he was granted. He gave me no problems getting up this morning, and was very chipper after school. He took his ticket in for a little show and tell, and came home with the news that one of the 14 year old girls at the school was pregnant. Specifically, he said, "Because she do something and now she have baby in her belly." I said, "You mean she had sex and now she's pregnant." Y - "Yes."

Oy. 'That' something. Guess we're going to have 'that talk' pretty soon. I'm not 100% sure that he makes the connection between sex and babies yet. I'm pretty sure he knows what sex is, but not necessarily the science of it all. I did tell him, though, that having a baby at 14 wasn't necessarily a good thing. I told him he needed to do some more work on how to be a good son before he starts thinking about being a good father.

Natalie
TX