Oh, Charley...

I have neglected to write about the dog recently, and he's done some fairly entertaining things, so I thought I would give him the spotlight for a moment.

Charley has never been the most graceful dog on Earth. It's pretty entertaining to watch him when we're playing and he runs past his toy, then suddenly realizes that he's done so and practically flips himself over to get the toy. The other night, I was using the guest bathroom (located in our main hallway) and Casey was playing with Charley, throwing the toy and having Charley bring it back to him. For some reason Charley got so excited, he apparently saw me in the bathroom while he was running, got distracted, and face-planted into the wall right in front of me! It's probably a good thing I had just gone to the bathroom, because I would most definitely have peed my pants from laughter... Charley just (literally) shook it off and went back to playing. Once he face-planted into the back glass door because he apparently didn't realize the door was shut... I'm surprised he didn't break anything! What a blockhead!!

On Monday night, Casey was playing the new Super Mario Brothers Wii game. He'd been playing it quite a bit the day before, and for a few hours already that evening, so it was nothing new. For some reason, Charley suddenly noticed all the strange noises from the game coming out of the speaker on the floor near our entertainment center. He stood in front of the speaker for almost 2 minutes and cocked his head from side to side, listening to all the noises. I wish I had the video camera at that point, it was too funny! He's such a puppy sometimes!

Other than that, he's basically been my little brown shadow the rest of the time. Since I'm home all day now, I have started to be able to tell all of his little noises and what they mean. I know his boredom whine from his potty whine. I know what the little sniffing noises mean based on when he wants something, or is excited, etc. People that say "it's just a dog" have obviously never spent much time around dogs, because they definitely have their own personalities. When Charley wants something, he will think of all kinds of ways to get it. He always brings Kong to me and wants me to fill it, but if he hasn't eaten his dog food yet, I tell him, "You can't have Kong until you eat your food." Sometimes Charley will go back, get a few pieces of food in his mouth, come to where ever I am and show me that he's eating it, and then pick Kong up and hand it to me. He's too smart for his own good... which is reassuring considering how many times he's busted his head on the wall, etc! And if he can't find Kong, he will find just about anything that you can put a treat in, and bring it to me. Such a spoiled guy. If he gets too insistent, I try to make him do an elaborate set of tricks before he gets anything, so I'm not just giving in to him... so far that seems to work.

Life is going to drastically change for him in the very near future, and I hope he does well with it. I can see him really enjoying being around the baby, but I can also see him getting frustrated when our attention isn't on him as much anymore. I feel a little guilty, but I also realize that he's almost 6 years old, and he's been an 'only child' long enough. (As I write this, Charley walked up to the baby swing and pushed it with his nose! Haha!) He'll be a good big brother, I think.

Anyway, that's enough from me. I'll post a (terrible) pic of Chuck and I with Peanut... minus the fact that I have no make-up on and look pretty scary, I thought it was cute of CB because he looked like he was feeling Peanut move in my belly. :)


-Ash

PS: So far this week, 4 people (of out ~20 pregnant women I know) have had their babies!!