Where you invest your love, you invest your life: Week 20 – Bailey’s 1st Birthday & Evalee’s 3rd Birthday Party

Pupcakes!

Holding tight onto her birthday toy

Today our puppy is ONE year old! I know I’m probably way too excited for this ;) Last night I looked up various pupcake recipes (yes, they really have these). After settling on a combination of a few, I made a ½ dozen to celebrate her birthday today. I’ll wait for the eye-rolling to subside, lol. I gave her one this morning and, as you can see from the pictures above, she loved it. The one with her eyes popping wide is probably a combination of waiting to be yelled at for taking food from a plate on the table & excitement over the intense peanut butter smell.

I know it’s just a dog but our lives have really changed a lot since we got Bailey last summer. We had to change how we went out for errands or enjoyment because she couldn’t be left in the crate for too long, especially in the beginning when her young puppy bladder was still getting stronger. This also includes having to plan around her 2 meal times, since she is quite scheduled and goes a bit crazy if we feed her too late. We’ve had to make sure someone aside from ourselves was being taken care of. It didn’t matter if we’re both tired or didn’t want to go outside when it was snowing/raining. She still had to be taken out to relieve herself or she was out of food and we had to go buy more or she was a bit hyper and needed to be exercised.

We both grew up with dogs and both decided we wanted one when we finally lived in a place that allowed them…heck, I would have gotten a dog if the dorms allowed them, lol. However, we really wanted to get a dog before we started a family; to see how well we worked together when it came to taking care of someone else. That’s not to say taking care of a dog is like taking care of a child but there are many essential things that overlap like:

-What are our disciplinary styles? How do we respond when we’re not being obeyed? And when one of us loses our temper, how does the other react to that?

-What are our training/teaching styles? And if they differ how would we go about working together? (When training a dog you have to be consistent, and if multiple people are contributing, they have to be on the same page.)

-How well do we listen to the other’s opinion when deciding on things like food, feeding times, when to visit the vet, and many more things that will come up?

The first month after we brought her home was pretty tough. Neither of us realized just how much work having a new puppy was and just how little sleep we were going to get because of it. However, we discovered over the past year how well we worked together. We learned to make sure the responsibilities of feeding, taking her out, exercising, teaching tricks & discipline, and cleaning up her accidents were being divvied up evenly, so that other wouldn’t feel overworked and/or underappreciated. The really great thing was to see just how much the other stepped up when one of us was tired, stressed, sick or just needed a break…and to make sure we were each getting equal “time off”. Of course this “learning” came with a few fights due to toes being stepped on or not being listened to, but we were able to recognize the offensive behavior and be wary of repeating it in the future.

Obviously taking a care of a child will be much different and we never thought the two would be the same. But the goals were:
   -to learn about ourselves, our styles, methods, & ways of
       handling things
   -to learn how well we work together, especially under stress or
   fatigue
     -to discover how we resolve issue when we're not listening to
       each other, when one's opinion is being overlooked or ignored

And so I’d say mission accomplished.

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Kind of switching gears here, today we also celebrated our oldest niece, Evalee, turning 3 years old! Her birthday is in a few days but we drove over to Travis & Sara’s to celebrate today. The weather was really nice outside, albeit super windy. It was great to see all the little ones again, especially with how quickly they change. We just saw Trevor’s family last month when we told them we were having a baby and we’re going to see them again in a month for Mother’s Day and AGAIN the first weekend in June for the next set of birthday parties. Spring is a busy time for the Kershaws! If only it wasn’t a 6 hour round trip car ride each time :)