School Days and Budding Photographers

3YO is enjoying having time at home without her sisters and loves to play with my camera. I find some of the funniest things whenever I upload the pictures from my memory card!

On the first day of school, David took the girls outside to get pictures of them while I finished getting myself dressed. He chose a great spot to take the pictures. Unfortunately, the bees like that spot too!

13YO finally loosened up to smile. I think he must have told her that she's have to stand there until he got a picture of her smiling.

6YO jumped right into the smiles...no threats needed. That's not typical for her...she's our moody one...but we'll take it when we can get it!

3YO cannot be left out of the festivities...but doesn't her mother own an iron? (I do...I just don't like to use it! If I can't toss it in the dryer with a damp towel to make it less wrinkly...we just don't wear it!)

So far, 6YO and 13YO are loving school! 6YO has the same first grade teacher that 13YO had, so we already knew what a great teacher she is. 13YO is a big, bad 8th grader now. (Though, she's still smaller than most of the 7th graders!) She's excited to be able to call them 'Sevvie's' though...which is what the 8th graders called her last year!

So, now that 13YO and 6YO are back in school, 3YO and I have the days to ourselves. It doesn't take long for her to stop missing her sisters and get used to being an 'only child' again. She really is so easy-going when she gets her one-on-one time with us. She doesn't have anyone to compete with for attention and she really gets to shine. She goes from being a demanding, combustible preschooler to being a fun little compainion to have around. Since she was born, she's pretty much always had to share attention with SOMEBODY. I think all kids need an opportunity like this at some point.

Well, I need to hop in the shower and pick 6YO up from school soon. To my knowledge, we still have that bad bus driver on our route, so David and I will be dropping her off and picking her up from school. You can read about how our relationship with the bus driver started HERE and then about the straw that broke the camel's back HERE. If it's the same bad driver (and that is totally a matter of fact, not opinion...most people can actually park where they mean to, right?) then we will just keep her off the bus all year. It's a shame, too. 6YO loves the bus and it would make things so convenient! But, I think children should be a bit older before they should be subjected to that much whiplash! It's sad...13YO rode the bus almost every single day from the time she was in first grade and we never had a problem like this. Ever.

I think we'll be taking Aly to the school with us to pick 6YO up. She tries to be dominant most of the time, but becomes totally submissive when she's on her leash. Plus, it will be a good way to keep her socialized.

Being mauled by a bunch of children builds character, right?

Hmmm...maybe we should have named her 'Winona'

...and yes, that's a 'klepto joke' for ya! Aly has some new horrible, yet entertaining habits as of lately.

Aly is a klepto. It started out with a couple of Barbie dolls ending up in the backyard. Then one day, one of the running shoes I had kicked off next to my desk at night was gone the next morning. It was in the backyard.

Yes, shoes and toys seem like obvious temptations to a boxer puppy. Who hasn't been tempted to chew off a Barbie foot and then drag her to your secret playground, known as the backyard? I know I have. But how on earth does one explain her fascination with fruit? We have a table in the living room where we keep a fruit bowl. Sometimes, the larger bags of apples and bananas don't immediately get taken out of the bags on the table and put into the bowl. Since poor Aly currently has more leg length than she does brainpower, she can easily reach things on the table yet cannot easily be reasoned with. Yes, this is an 'awkward phase' indeed. I had seen her trying to get something off the table. I didn't see what she was after, but though I'd chased her away before she could nab it.

I guess I was wrong. While I didn't notice it right away, the next morning I found an entire bunch of bananas lying just outside of her dog door. They had bite marks in them and they were pretty bruised up...and they were bananas for crying out loud! If that had been a table where we kept lunch meat or cheese or something, I would have been worried. But fruit???

I think there's something wrong with my dog.

Just after the 'banana incident,' I saw her grab an entire 5 lb bag of Granny Smith apples and high tail it out the dog door. I was able to save those apples, but she must have done it another time too, as she now has a stash of apples hidden outside somewhere. Once or twice a day, she brings an apple in from the backyard and eats it in my living room floor.

Is it safe to say that perhaps my house has gone to the dogs?

This list of things she's taken gets longer every single day. She used to let herself into the girls' room and grab a toy as if it was her own personal toy box. Those ended up in the living room and she really only chews up the hands and feet of the Barbie dolls. So, we would usually just groan about the extra clutter and send it back to their room. Now, those things end up in the backyard. Our sprinklers go on at 10:00 at night and I can't tell you how many things have had a 'shower' in the past week or two. And, while it certainly makes ME feel better to chase her down with flames shooting out of my eyes, it doesn't seem to really matter to her. She appears to have no short term memory whatsoever and is really in a whole new state of mind from one minute to the next. Or, maybe she's just that stubborn.

The thing that seems to work the best is when we put her on a leash and just make her sit next to us, whereever we are. We call it her 'time out' and it's the only thing that seems to calm her down. It doesn't necessarily seem to sink in as to WHY she's in a time out, but at least she stops whatever obnoxious thing she's doing at the time. David told me today that getting Aly was a heck of a way of making him appreciate our other dog, Lily. As amusing as that seems, Aly was actually HIS IDEA. HAHAHA! I'm not taking the credit for this one!

She's only six months old, so I guess it stands to reason that we have another 10 or 12 years to deal with this phase. I hear that boxers never really grow up.

I really hope I heard that wrong.