The Small Family     

Well, my friends, we have had a major breakthrough here in the Small household! I know I’ve mentioned Little Gym many times--I take Theo on Monday mornings, and he loves to play…by himself. This is not uncommon--I find that about half the kids in the class tend to just do their own thing, while the other half join in more. So I’ve been taking Theo for six months now, and he would never, ever participate in the group activities. And although I encourage him to join us every week, I don’t force him, because I don’t like to use that method of parenting unless it’s absolutely necessary. That’s part of why I like Little Gym--their philosophy is to encourage kids, but not to force them to participate if they’re not inclined. So they ask parents to continue to participate in group activities even when the child isn’t, in the hopes that it will inspire the child to come join.

And so, I have spent six months galloping in a circle with the group, doing monkey jumps with the group, playing with scarves with the group, etc. Meanwhile, the “Lone Wolf,” as we affectionately call him, swings on the bar or stands and laughs at the silly-looking group of adults and kids running around on the mats. But not this week! Oh no, not this week… This week, the parachute came out for a group activity--and for the very first time, Mr. Lone Wolf decided to come over and join the group. He even climbed under the parachute with us when we went under there to sing songs. Hooray!! I was very excited to see that six months of patience and encouragement finally paid off! It’s not that I mind Theo preferring to do his own thing--I actually really like that he has an independent spirit. But I’d also like him to feel comfortable joining a group, since that’s something both Chris and I really struggled with as children. You never want to see your kids struggle with the same things you did, you know?

So we’ll see what next week holds. Will he join in? Will he not? Either way, he’ll have fun. He loves, loves, loves to go play on the mats and the bars.

So on to the second “P” in this week’s alliterative blog title: Professions! As I’ve mentioned, Chris and I were hit with a gruesome tax bill. So, we’ve been exploring ways to pay that off. I’ve taken on a small side job editing articles for eHow.com, which is actually kind of fun and interesting, although fitting it in around my “day job” is a bit of a challenge. Last week I learned how to European-mount a deer head. I hate hunting, and I will never have a mounted deer head in my house, but still…I can’t say it’s something you read about every day! I also learned the proper placement of kitty litter boxes. I’m allergic to cats and thus will not likely ever have one, but it was amusing to read all that goes into thinking about where to place your cat’s litter box.

I also got hired to tech edit a book on iPhone photography, which has been a lot of fun! Normally I am a copy editor and project editor and sometimes a development editor--that is, basically, I fix all the spelling and grammatical errors, I manage the project from start to finish, and sometimes I develop the content (when needed). But I have never been a tech editor--that is, a person hired specifically to test out all the technical steps in the book. But because this is a beginner book, I have an iPhone, and I do have a decent knowledge of photography, they hired me to do the technical edit on the book. Which basically means I get to download and play with a lot of fun photography apps on my iPhone…and for this, I earn $500 in addition to my normal pay. Hey, can’t beat that!!

And, I also found out that I do indeed get a writing credit on that wedding photography book I mentioned a month or two ago in a blog post. So when the book comes out in August, you can go on Amazon.com or into your bookstore and see Fearless Photographer: Weddings, by one Joseph S. Prezioso with Cathleen D. Small. I am doing the happy dance over that one--I’ve always dreamed of “authoring” a book, even if only as a coauthor!

And the professional developments don’t only deal with me this week. Chris, too, has been taking on extra work. In his case, he’s trying to earn enough cash for us to take a trip back east around Labor Day. We had planned to go, and then we got hit with the giant tax bill, forcing us to think, “Hmmm…not sure this is in the budget after all.” Which was really disappointing, because we were very much looking forward to the trip. Then Chris had a great idea: What if he took on some extra work to save enough money to pay for the trip in cash? A fine idea indeed, so he’s been doing some extra work in addition to his day job. What, you might ask? Editing a grueling 30-page biographies appendix for me, which required him to work late into the night for a full week, looking up every obscure band and musical artist name you can think of, in order to verify spellings and capitalization and such. Also, proofreading a book about the SQL programming language. (He starts that next week.)  And copy editing a 300-page book on stop-motion animation this weekend. He’s going to be one tired guy from all this, but he is looking forward to reading about something other than roads and environmental compliance for once! He likes his day job, but a change of pace is always nice.

Alas, I can’t say Theo has had any professional development this week. He’s still not earning his keep around here--ha! He is, however, getting a new little friend to play with--the fourth “P” in this week’s blog title. That’s right--we are getting a second pug! Nola is a five-year-old fawn pug who needs a new home. It’s a sad story, actually. Her owner has to give her up because her boyfriend doesn’t like dog hair. (I suggested that she get rid of the boyfriend instead, but she seems to think he’s a good guy.) The owner (Lacy) has only had the pug for three or four weeks, but she’s already very attached to her and wants her to go to a good home. We had a couple people in the pug group interested, but Lacy wasn’t comfortable with the homes. One person was going to keep Nola in a crate all day while she was at work, and then crated at night. Another couple people live in apartments, and Lacy was hoping to find her a home with at least a small yard. And yet another potential owner lives with a father-in-law who doesn’t want another dog.

So here’s the saddest part: Lacy adopted Nola from a shelter up in Redding. Nola had been found wandering in an alley, and the shelter thinks she was the pet of a woman who was killed in a car accident. Nola doesn’t appear to have a scratch on her and is supposedly perfectly healthy, so I’m not sure whether she was in the car (unlikely) or just escaped from the house after her owner passed away. Regardless, her mommy is gone, and then she got a new mommy, who she clearly loves, who can no longer keep her.

So, my love for pugs got the best of me, and I talked to Chris about considering taking her in. Really, she’s perfect for us--five years old (so no puppy madness to deal with), housebroken, will be spayed next week, up to date on shots, microchipped, good with small children, good with other dogs. The question was, did we want to take in another dog right now? We’re happy with our family of four…but I’ve always thought that at some point, I wanted to get a second dog. I liked having two dogs, and Luna liked having a little buddy in Bits. And Theo is wild about “dog-dogs,” so I know he’d love it. I didn’t want to search out another dog after Bits died, though. I figured that when the right dog fell into our path, we’d know it. So I wondered whether Nola was that right dog.

Chris wasn’t totally closed off to the idea of a second dog, so he agreed that we could at least meet her on Friday night. And we were sunk. Chris took the weekend to think it over and made his decision Sunday morning, but I think Nola had him wrapped around her soft little paw pretty much the minute he met her. I put a picture of her in this week’s album, but it doesn’t do her justice at all. She is really just the sweetest, most adorable little thing you can imagine! She’s perhaps slightly smaller than Luna, but basically comparable in size. And her personality just won both of us over right away (as well as my Mom, who met us at the dog park when we went to see Nola--she can’t resist a chance to meet a pug!). Luna warmed right up to Nola--tried to kiss her and wanted to play with her. Nola had never been to a dog park as far as Lacy knows, so she was a little shy, but very sweet. She showed no signs of aggression at all. She stuck close to Lacy, but she let us all pet her, and she let me pick her up without even squirming. She let Theo pet her and didn’t seem at all stressed by him (though admittedly, he spent more time collecting rocks than really paying attention to her).

I thought it was quite telling that Theo trotted up to Nola at one point and said, “Nola!” As those of you who know Theo well are aware, he’s not the biggest talker in the world yet. He tends to mull over new words for a long time before he’ll utter them out loud. But without any prompting, he walked up to Nola and said her name. I think it was a sign. :-)

Anyway, our sweet girl will be coming to join our family on May 1st, after she’s healed from her spaying. I can’t wait! Luna seemed so interested in her at the dog park that I think the two will be fast friends, once Luna gets used to the idea of sharing her space.

So, I went out of order with my P’s in the title…let’s now talk about prairies! After a slightly disastrous morning/early afternoon of Chris and I trying to take Theo to the annual Picnic Day at UC Davis, which he did not enjoy in the least, we gave up and came home, and my Mom and I went to see the musical production of Little House on the Prairie later that night. What fun!! A little background info here, for those who don’t know the story. I was obsessed with LHOTP as a child. Maybe obsessed isn’t even a strong enough word. My best friend, Lisa, and I read the series of books in first grade (my Dad’s parents sent them to me, and I devoured them--I think I read several of them as many as seven times!), and from that point on, we played Little House all the time. We even wore sunbonnets to school, so deep was our love of Laura and Mary Ingalls. (Ha ha, Lisa is ready to kill me right now for revealing that detail, I bet!) Lisa was Laura, and I was Mary, and we imagined and acted out all sorts of scenes from the books and the TV show. This went on until the end of third grade, when Lisa moved to Los Angeles. We now say this move was a good thing, because if she hadn’t left, we’d probably still be prancing around in our bonnets! (Is it any wonder that we didn’t have many friends in school?!)

Anyway, Lisa was supposed to fly down from Seattle to go see LHOTP with me, but she got really sick at the end of the week with some sort of evil stomach bug. So Chris said, “Oh, that’s too bad…but I don’t have to go, do I?” Ha! A musical about a spunky prairie girl isn't quite his speed, I'm afraid. But he was in luck--my Mom was more than willing to fill in, so she took Lisa’s ticket, and we had a lovely evening. Chris stayed home with Theo, and my Mom and I had a delicious dinner at a restaurant in downtown Sac (Spataro) and then went to the show. Fans of the LHOTP television series will be rather excited to hear that Melissa Gilbert played the role of Ma! I actually thought Nellie Oleson stole the show, and my Mom was partial to Laura. But all the characters were good, and we both really enjoyed the show. (Besides, the woman sitting on my other side was so obsessed with LHOTP that she made me feel really quite normal in comparison. I swear, she knew every obscure detail of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life…and she was sharing them all with her companion. And there was a grown woman a few rows behind us wearing a sunbonnet to the show. At least I didn’t do that!!)

Sunday morning, Theo and I went over to visit my Mom in an effort to vacate the house so Chris could work on his side project in silence. We played at her house for a bit, then picked up some lunch and went to a park for a picnic. What fun--I wish I’d had my camera with me! I got a couple iPhone shots, but I could’ve gotten a lot of good pictures with my camera. Theo had great fun exploring the playground and trotting back and forth for bites of ham, bread, or applesauce whenever he got hungry. And he discovered the beauty of something wonderful called a Turtle Bar. (It was some manner of caramel goodness that we bought from some girls trying to raise money for their prom. Yum! Theo was a big fan.)

In other news, I’m pleased to report that Operation No-More-Einstein has been a success.  Well, I'm sort of pleased. I admit that I really miss that half-hour a morning of work time, and I’m not thrilled by having to tack it onto the end of my night. However, the results have been good. Theo very politely asks for his show once or twice a day (so politely that I feel a little bad about saying no!), but when I tell him no, he doesn’t seem at all bothered, and he moves on to something else. And since I’m no longer subjected to major whining and screaming over it, I’m much more relaxed. So all in all it’s been a good thing…but I sure do miss that 30 minutes I used to get from it!

Anyway, time to wrap up this post. I can’t wait until our new little Nola comes to live with us--I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures when she does!