Categories
Dog

Dog In the Grass

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MDF really likes Dixie. How can I tell? Maybe it’s because that’s the one word she says consistantly. Maybe it’s because she cranes her neck to see the dog coming in the room. At least the play together well.

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The other day Dixie was lounging on the floor and MDF was standing beside her, near her head. MDF was patting Dixie on the head, rubbing her ears, pulling her fur, and for a while Dixie just sat there, enjoying the attention I guess. After a little bit, though, Dixie sat up and sent MDF tumbling to the floor.

Categories
Around the House

After the Storm

Hurricane Charlie has come and gone without doing much damage (thankfully). Dixie’s house lost some shingles, but that’s the only damage I’ve found. I did go running after the trash barrel before it blew into someone else’s yard, but damage was averted in that case.

We got a lot of rain. The back yard and ditches flooded as expected. What we didn’t expect was that the road flooded too. It looked like we had a river at the end of our driveway for a little while.

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For a while a little bird took shelter at the bank near our front ditch. It sat there and peeped for a while before disappearing. We’re not sure if it got blown away or decided the wind was calm enough to fly.

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Categories
Daughters

Questions

I’ve noticed MDF babbling more over the past week. She’ll normally just babble to herself, and not necessarily to anyone else. When she does respond to others it’s by saying “hmmm!” in a questioning tone (to get a better idea see the expression below).

When the stroller was inside, CDF was helping her push it up and down the hall. She tries to reach the handles we use, but has to settle with grabbing on to the basket at the bottom and pushing there. She’s quite good at going up and down the hallway, but she can’t turn it like she can with her other walker toy.

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Categories
Around the House

False Alarm

This morning, at around 4 AM, the fire alarms went off! I was out of bed and down the hall before I realized there was no smoke. CDF and MDF went to the front door anyway while I grabbed the fire extinguisher and checked out the house. My next thought was that one of the batteries had died. A couple of days ago I had realized it was past time to change them.

We only had one battery. I changed the apparent culprit in MDF’s room. But a few minutes later they went off again… so with no more batteries I unpluged the one in our room (which stopped the ringing and seemed to confirm my suspecion that it was a low battery problem). It was time for a trip to the store.

I headed to Food Lion hoping it was a 24 hour store… nope. Then I saw Harris Teeter with it’s sign proclaiming “Open 24 Hours.” Three 9-volt batteries coming up. By the time I got back and replaced the batteries it was already 5 o’clock in the morning. Fortunately the alarms were happy again and have kept quiet all day.

One thing to note, MDF was undisturbed by the commotion and didn’t really wake up until CDF had carried her to the living room. At her age I guess it was a good thing.

Categories
Daughters

Words

I’m not sure I have written about the words MDF can say before. For a while she’s been able to say Mama, and her enunciation hasn’t really changed any. She was saying dadada (but not necessarily Dada) for a while, but she’s mostly abandoned that. Now her new word is Dixie. It doesn’t always come out the same way, but she definitely means the dog when she says it. Also we can say “where’s Dixie” to her and she’ll look around for the dog.

We’ve also tried to introduce her to some sign language, but she hasn’t seem to pick any up. This morning I signed “more” every time she was ready for a bite of breakfast and she finally put her hands together in imitation of my movements (but she also knows how to clap, so she may not have linked the movement to the words yet).

Categories
Around the House

Missed us by a Mile

Tropical storm Alex looked like it was going to be the first big storm of the season, but all we got was a little rain and some impressive clouds:

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It did finally turn into a class 1 hurricane and flood Ocracoke Island, but other than that it was a good start to the hurricane season.

Categories
Daughters

Little Dancer

Last night I was playing the drums with a guitarist named Rick, while CDF and MDF watched. This was the first time MDF has seen or heard me play on my drums. I was worried she might be bothered by the noise, but on the contrary, she liked it. For a while she just sat, watched, and smiled. Then she stood up at CDF’s legs and danced and even tried to sing. 🙂 She even got up the courage, near the end, to crawl over and touch my drums, but then she wanted to crawl in the kick drum, so CDF came and picked her up.

Categories
Daughters

Beach Fun

We took a walk on the beach yesterday. Tropical Storm Alex is sitting off shore and we wanted to see if it was stirring up anything on the beach (other than waves, no).

MDF has not liked the beach up to now; neither the water or the sand. But yesterday I decided to put her down and let her walk on the sand, whether she liked it or not. She was uncertain at first, but once she figured out it wasn’t much different from walking anywhere else, she took off. I tried to keep her from stepping on sharp shells, but she didn’t care and just keep going ahead at full speed.

CDF was down by the water and we made our way toward her. Now MDF was also afraid of the water, especially the waves, but this time she kept on going, straight into the water and toward her Mother.

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Since everyone had a great time, we’re going back this Friday.

Categories
Travel

Home Alone

This past Saturday CDF and MDF left to go visit Stephanie who was going to be in Dumfries, Virginia for almost a week of training. I stayed home with Dixie.

They left about noon on Saturday and got there sometime around six o’clock (I think). Then, after a game of Galactic Empires, I headed to the church to do some treasurer work.

They’ve been having a fun time. MDF, from what CDF says, has taken a liking to Stephanie and loves to play with her. When she wakes up from a nap one of the first things she does is look for Aunt Stephanie.

Meanwhile, I’m sleeping alone with a dog that tends to howl during the night. 😉

Categories
Around the House

Long Weekend

I had yesterday off as part of the 4-th of July holiday. So yesterday, we spent most of the time doing stuff around the house. CDF and I cleaned up the computer room in the morning, and in the afternoon I took MDF to church with me to pay bills while CDF experimented with decorating a cake.

At the office in the church, MDF was crawling around and went out the office door. I noticed she was gone and was about to go get her and bring her back when I heard her make a noise. I looked up and she was back in the doorway looking at me as if to say, “I’m back, did you miss me?”

CDF’s cake experiment didn’t turn out well, so she’s decided to let Mrs. Joy bake MDF’s birthday cake. She’s settled on a Strawberry Shortcake theme. She’ll still make a cake, but it’ll be a simple one with one fancy candle.

We swam in the pool again in the afternoon. I had forgotten to turn off the water when I was filling it on Saturday, the water was up to the “Do Not Fill Past” line, and was too deep for MDF to sit by herself. So we held on to her and “swam” her around a lot. She appeared to try put her face in the water, but the two times she’s done that before, she get’s water up her nose. CDF did say that babies go under water all the time in certain classes for them, but I’m still worried about letting MDF try it.