The fishy puzzle

Eirinn loves puzzles.  I’ve said it before because it’s true.  She loves puzzles. 

Puzzles have replaced television as her all-time favourite past time.  She doesn’t do those puzzles where the little wooden pieces have the same shape as the little holes on the board.  Oh, no.  She doesn’t even own one of those.  She does the big kid puzzles with the puzzle-shaped pieces that fit together like a puzzle.  Can you tell I’m not a puzzle person?  I have no idea how to describe them.

I know!  Pictures!  Pictures always help the verbally disabled.  Like myself.

She don’t do this kind:

She do this kind:

With great speed and accuracy.  She has a few of them.  They have either 20 or 24 pieces and, oddly enough, they are all scenes of under the sea.  Maybe that’s the universal toddler puzzle picture du jour.  I wouldn’t know, being a non-puzzler and all.

I think this is great.  The puzzles as a whole allow her to practice her hand/eye coordination and the topics of the puzzles (numbers, opposites, and the one in the picture, colours) are very educational.  She has improved her knowledge of colours exponentially.  Improved, not mastered, but it has taught her more than we could any other way.  And we’ve tried.  We started to think she was either colour blind or had a whole in her brain where her colour recognition should have been.  Turns out she’s just stubborn and wanted a puzzle to teach her, not Mommy and Daddy.

She does them non-stop.  First thing in the morning I have to dodge pieces to get her cereal to her mouth (yes, I still feed her her breakfast – geniuses shouldn’t have to feed themselves).  After work she runs to her puzzles and does them over and over again.  “Do puthle ‘gain?”  I think it’s safe to say that she lawbs her puzzles.

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In other news, my sister got a puppy for Christmas.  Well, it started out a puppy.  A cute, little, black and white, Shih-Tese (say that in your head and I dare you not to laugh).  Sophie is a Shih-Tzu, Maltese cross which, even though we paid for a pure bred Shih Tzu, we’ve always suspected Bosco to be.

I say she “started out” a puppy because in her short three month life, she has morphed into a wee little devil-dog.  If you’re furry and small, she will eat you.  If you even remotely resemble a shoe, slipper, or sock, she will eat you.  If you are my daughter’s pants, she will eat you.  Or at least try, seeing as her teeth are still little pin pricks. 

She absolutely tortures poor Bossy.  She pulls his tail, bites his arse, hangs off his ears.  All this makes him bark, which makes Murphy bark at Bossy, which means Bossy then has an evil midget devil-dog hanging off his butt and a big ol’ meat-head yelling at him to shut up.  Poor guy can’t win for losing.  Whatever that means.

Lucky for Bosco, we got to puppy-sit Sophie this weekend.  We brought the devil into his sanctuary.  Dude was not impressed.

And all Blue Bear had to say was “HALP!”

p.s. Notice Bosco’s incredibly long hippie bangs?  He’s getting his hair did tomorrow.

Dog-lick, in pictures

As promised, here is a brief history of Bosco kissing Eirinn:

The displays of uber-affection began as soon as I started giving Eirinn “tummy time.”  Any time she was his height, he took advantage and struck.  And this boy can strike from afar.  He does have a three foot tongue, no exaggeration.  Proven by science that he has The Worlds Longest Tongue.  Also, he’s been runner up in The Worlds Fastest Tongue Competition for three consecutive years.  Plus?  He’s OCD about the licking.  He can not stop.  He gets in the licking zone and there’s no breaking free.  You literally have to push him off of you before he will stop kissing you right in the face. 

So, let’s do the math:

OCD + record breaking tongue length and speed + vulnerable, immobile baby + camera addicted mother who’d rather ”capture the moment” than save her baby from dog-lick = good times for Bossy AND/OR hilarious photographic future-boyfriend repellent.

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Case #1 – June 22, 2006

“Why, hello!  What do we have here?  A yet-to-be-licked face?  We must rectify this situation.”

“Hey-yo!  What are you, you fuzzy little person? You look so innocent and…”

“WTF!?!  In the eye?  Did you have to get me right in the eyeball?  Duuuuuude.  Not. Cool.  When I get full range of motion out of these here fingers, your fur is mine.”

 

Case #2 – September 28, 2006

“Again?  In the ear this time?  Gah…man, you’re good.”

“The eye, too?  Touchè, old friend.  Touchè.”

 

Case #3 – September 8, 2007

“It’s been a long time, com-padre.”

The boy’s still got it. 

***

Some things will never change.  As long as Bosco has a tongue and is able to stick it out, someone, somewhere, maybe even you, is getting it in one of their facial orifices.  And if you complain?  Well, he’s less than a foot tall.  What were you doing with your face so close to his mouth to begin with?  I think at some level you wanted him to lick your molars…

And until Eirinn stops finding it funny or they discover that dog saliva up the nose cavity causes cancer, I’ll be there to laugh and document and share with the world.

The love of a good dog

Eirinn loves Bosco.  Like, loves him.  At home, he is her best friend.  I can’t really blame her because he is a) The World’s Most Loving Dog, b) The World’s Most Lovable Dog, and c) The World’s Most Lickingist Dog, in the Longest Tongue category; he’s a triple threat. 

She’s recently discovered a fascination with him, and I’m kind of relieved.  She wants him to be everywhere that she is.  If she’s climbing the stairs, she’ll remember part way up that he isn’t with her and she’ll stop and call him – “Bossy!  ‘M’ere!”  Or if she wants on our bed to pretend sleep, Bosco has to come up too.  Or if she climbs up for a good bounce, she wants Bosco to come up with her.  As a side note, Dog + Bouncing Toddler = Disaster, almost every single time.

She also finds all things Bosco-related hilarious.  Giggle-fit-worthy.  Especially when we wrastle (that’s ‘wrestle’ for those of you not born north of 42).  A growling, jumping, out of control 12 pound dog is the funniest thing since doot-doot’s (see post below for the definition of a doot-doot).  Other funny Bosco-isms: when he gets trouble for licking too much, any time he barks, when he licks her right in the face, when he plays fetch.

I don’t know if Bosco is enjoying his new popularity, but he’s tolerating it like a little trooper.  Even when she pokes him and gets in the way of his fetch path and “pets” him, which is a much more violent version of our petting; more like smacking him with a smile on her face.  He is rewarded for his good behavior by having the monopoly on Eirinn’s rejected food.

And if he didn’t want her attention, he shouldn’t have kissed her so much in the first place.  He has a history of sneaking up on her and licking her right in the mouth/nose/eyeball, so no wonder she likes him so much now.  The History of Bosco Kissing Eirinn will be a story told in pictures in the future.