Thought for the day.

Worry is the warning light that God has been left out.

Eight! Eight! And we can skate!

Well, not quite yet but it sure is great!!! I'm sure you all know what book my title is from....

It is so fun to go through all these baby stages again with my little girl! She is so much busier than my son was at eight months. He was content to sit and observe everything while she just wants to dive right in. Happily she'll roll around finding fun things to play with - anything paper is her favorite. She's still gagging on baby food but I found some bits of paper - letters on them and all in her diaper. As far as food goes she apparently has a very good gag reflex so that's at least intact.

Those of us that know and love her the best have affectionately nicknamed her "grabby". One example is pictured here!

She is literally days away from crawling. She lurches forward - it takes all she has - but she does it and she knows she's supposed to be up on all fours, it's just what she has to do while she up there she's questioning. This is fun but boy was I spoiled with big brother, he hardly moved before he was a year old! She's giving her Mama a run for her money.

When I just had one child I would sometimes question whether I would have enough love for another child and boy do I ever. It's as if my heart doubled in size the first time we heard her little heart beat and it's just welling up more every day. Love is one of those feelings that can be exponentially increased it seems!

I updated her six month post with stats and another picture of her back then. You can follow the link to get to the last baby update and one each post all the way back to birth!

A lot can happen in a week...

Indeed, we gave our dogs away, but like a boomerang at high speed they came back. The woman we gave them to was surprised to find out that they chased her chickens. Go figure!

On Saturday we drove Molly to her new family who seems very nice and loving and we are keeping Tyler for now. He hasn't tried to nip at me since those last episodes and is content to be outside for the bulk of the nice days so it's a win win so far.

On the home front we have been painting the entire inside of our house for the last week and a half. Talk about an undertaking. It is hard enough to keep up with all my daily chores without tearing things up room by room to paint. I'd say we are two thirds done now, we just have bathrooms and the master to finish. I wish we had done this when we moved in (I briefly mentioned here about the lack of cleaning our tenants did.) The baseboards and walls have been full of nicks and holes and now everything looks so nice and homey! Alas, we are getting our house ready to go on the market for another move and I can see how the new paint will make a huge difference. Hubby is still faithfully searching for work and we're praying a lot more can happen this week!

For about three months now we've been wavering on the decision to give away our dogs. When we lived in San Diego we had one trainer ask us "how much do you really love these dogs?" in response to how we could better train them. Basically, they are not trainable. To make matters worse in the last couple weeks our older dog Tyler snapped and bite me twice for no reason other than my hand was in the air.

They only listen when we raise our voices and we are sick of our kids being around constant yelling. Without going into the whole thing we decided today it was in everyone's best interest (including Molly and Tyler's) to find them a new home. It came almost instantly. It was one of those God things the woman called and it just seemed a good fit.

It was weird tonight when I came down from putting my daughter to bed not to have dogs to feed and let outside and I will miss them dearly. Before we had kids they used to sleep at the foot of our bed but now they spent much more time in their crate. They will be happier with bigger kids around to give them more attention.

I almost can't get over the mommy guilt. I know that when you adopt a dog they become your responsibility and I feel a bit like I failed. I know however that I am being honest with myself that amidst all the other stress going on having two high maintenance dogs with my wonderful two small children was just more than I could handle.

My son threw quite many a temper tantrum in the two hours before the woman came after we had told him but since they've been gone he hasn't mentioned them once. I'm sure it will come up but for now it feels peaceful.