Saturday Funday at the Park!

Cool as a cucumber

There is something about this picture that screams "cool" to me as in "he's just one cool little dude."

Sonny's pack and play

I was looking at old photos of Sonny to send to a friend and came across the one below. It's one of my favorites from his early days with us.

The pen shown in the picture (sans cardboard bottom) became an important part of his first year of life and was invaluable to us. It gave him a lot more freedom in a confined space in the house and gave us piece of mind as wasn't able to get into places he shouldn't. We took it everywhere with us (like many parents would a pack and play). And then, as he grew, it became a permanent outside pen only larger as we purchased a second one, giving him more play area. It was a very diverse piece of equipment too. Sometimes we attached them together and sometimes we set it up in two different outside locations.

The whole thing eventually became a fence around an area we laid grass seed and has now been put away altogether.

Sonny's little play pen

Don't Make Eye Contact

Every night it's the same. Sonny gets put in his kennel for the night. And every night when I glance in his direction I think, "don't make eye contact." Sometimes it becomes almost like a mantra because, as he's looking out with his stern looking little face questioning why he can't sleep the night in our bed, it's all I can do NOT to let him out. We're not quite ready to open that can of worms. Once opened, it'll be hard to close and go back to his nightly kennel up time. We used to think that when he turns two he'll be mature and trustworthy enough, but now we're thinking one and a half; so just a few short months.

Sonny has two in-door kennels (and a small car/traveling kennel) which are comfortable and spacious enough to give him room to stand, turn around and do almost anything else he needs to do in them. The kennel is our bedroom is placed in such a way that allows him to see only a portion of our bed. He has to angle head just so to get some kind of a line of sight.

Several months ago a ritual was started wherein he gets to come to bed first thing in the morning. This practice started one morning after I "made the mistake" of falling for his little cry. In his mind making that noise got him what he wanted and so he proceeded to cry, scratch and shake his collar every morning after that one and at an hour that was long before the alarm clock was set to go off.
We continued this pattern for several days before I decided to try something new. I was annoyed and frustrated by being woken up way too early and losing sleep because of it. This, I decided, wasn't going to fly. I wasn't going to allow him to dictate our wake up time.

I'll show him, right... My idea was to make him wait for the alarm to go off, no matter how much time was left on the clock, before he would be let out of his kennel. I started setting the alarm clock one hour earlier than necessary for me get up. No matter how much noise he made, I was determined to make him wait. It took a few irritating days, but it worked.

Mornings are now much better and we get our rest as he patiently and quietly waits for the alarm to sound. The moment it does, I jump out of bed so he can climb in. I guess I showed him, right!