Getting a puppy is like having a newborn

Family

Nickels-the-new-babyWe’re a week and a half into having the puppy and in some ways, I feel like we’ve just brought home a new baby.  Except it’s a new baby that poops in your house and destroys your favorite underwear (erm, that’ll teach Simon to leave it out on the floor??).

The first couple of days were … rough. Just like a baby, he was sleeping all day and crying all night. Potty training was going well until it rained outside and then the dog refused to step foot in the wet grass.  At one particularly memorable moment, Jude came downstairs at 2am, and put the dog right in my face. “ISN’T HE SO CUTE?!” he crowed. Imagine this face looking at you at 2am:

mustachios

Friends, nothing – I repeat, absolutely NOTHING – is cute at 2am to me, except the inside of my eyelids. Jude is now duly informed of this too.

Please don’t be misled by all these precious photos of the sleeping puppy. If only he would do this from approximately 10pm to 7am.

sleepingnickels-in-a-blanketnickels-on-a-donut

Do not be misled by the cuteness. This is clearly a wild animal that wants to destroy your piles of laundry with his teeny tiny razor sharp teeth. And he might even band together with his teeny tiny sibling who lives with my mom to wreak havoc on our lives. NO ONE IS SAFE. They lure you in with their precious little faces and cocked heads to one side.

siblings

But I digress. The night crying and barking continued, and after exhaustively searching the internet, I finally put the dog in his crate in our room (THE INTERNET WAS WRONG! DON’T DO THIS!) which was almost instantly a mistake because it pretty much instantly led to Chihuahua co-sleeping.  Yup – tiny dog in our bed. Which is actually a misnomer because he didn’t sleep on the bed;  he slept all night long on my neck. ::sobs::

What has perhaps saved the day is when my mom got super savvy and sent us the Potty Training Puppy Apartment, which really has proven to be exactly what we needed. Added bonus: Jude loved the informational DVD which repeatedly showed pooping dogs, which is apparently hilarious to 5 year olds.

puppy-apartment

We also started sleeping a whole lot better when I put an end to the cosleeping insanity with the puppy and relegated Nickels to having his very own room (HAAAA) in the powder bath in his puppy apartment, as far away from where we all sleep as possible. It’s like we’re having to do the puppy version of  cry it out.

But occasionally, my assistant Nancy still carries him around in a sling made out of an infinity scarf. Naturally.

sling-dog

Overall, things really are good. But the realization was this: it’s an adjustment period. Right now it feels like all I do is make sure that (1) Jude doesn’t either hug the puppy to death or smother him with kisses and (2) that the dog doesn’t destroy any more of Simon’s favorite underwear or poop in the dining room, which he thinks is apparently his own private bathroom. And once I cut myself some slack, I started to breathe a little bit easier and it didn’t feel so overwhelming.

This week has been a whole lot better, which I think is 99.5% due to sleeping soundly. I even took the dog to school on Monday and walked Jude into class after listening to him beg me for days. He ran ahead of me into the room and I heard him LOUDLY announce, “EVERYBODY! I got a dog for my birthday! And he’s a Chihuahua! And his name is Nickels! AAAAAND HEEEERE HEEEEE IIIIIIIIIS!”

Just like the circus ringmaster that he (possibly) is.

with love,
Rachel

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