First Day of School

Big VPKer and Second Grader!

Ryan wanted in on the annual picture with the dolphin. He'll be taking his own dolphin picture next year for Kindergarten.

I'm up to the dolphin's eye now!

My new class and teacher are the best best best ever. Mom tries to leave me alone at dropoff, for autonomy and learning responsibility and all that. But she'll probably still want to walk me to class and take pictures when I'm in high school.

We were most sympathetic for Buddy, he had the hardest change this time in school. He's in the VPK class with my old VPK teacher. 

She is an awesome teacher, but she don't play.

His best buddies are in the classroom next door, so it was a bittersweet day moving to the big kid room.

He's excited to be in a real class, ready to learn his letters and numbers, and grow his brain really big.

But he was very nervous to change teachers, saying he "didn't know how to be good" in the new class.

We decided to give him lots of love and support to get through this tough time. It could end up being inspiration for his college admission essay. Think about it- you're 4 years old living the dream with your best friends playing nonstop with your sweet teacher who you think is pretty and has soft hair. Then you get dropped cold into a room full of strangers, half of whom are 5 year old red shirted Kindergarteners in a class where they are practically speaking another language learning letters and numbers.

We're going to be really, really nice to him.

Ready For School

We're way behind on the blog, so let's do a brief recap: I got swoop bangs for second grade and loved them.

I had a thrilling encounter with Adam Levine's giant face at the mall shopping for new shoes.

 

Ryan enjoyed every last second with his favorite preschool teacher.  

And soaked up his last carefree days with his best buddies.

At our well child checks, he remained an upbeat optimist, despite the fact that Mom told him there will be FOUR shots, and they will hurt.

He was heartbroken to realize that four shots do, in fact, hurt very much. We gave him lots of hugs, and four lollipops. 

(I know it seems weird that Mom took this sad picture, but he asked her to do it to send to Dad.)

I was the opposite, worried sick about my ONE shot.

Then surprised that it didn't hurt much at all! Then we were ready for a new school year!

Sweet Maggie

We lost our sweet Maggie in August. These pictures are from the day Mom brought her home in 2002. They perfectly capture her Nervous Nelly temperament and her favorite squished-head-snuggle position.

Mom adopted Maggie while she was in residency.  Mom calls Maggie her first baby and credits her with saving her sanity. So, please forgive the long post here. Maggie's passing to the Rainbow Bridge is basically the end of an era for Mom.

There was just something about Mag's beautiful Bitchy Resting Face that Mom couldn't resist.

She had lots of playdates as a puppy, because all of Mom's friends were getting puppies in their twenties to compensate for not having babies.

Her best friend, Nola, was more like a sister. These two practically grew up together- their parents helped each other co-parent during the crazy work hours of residency. Watching them wrestle and play was the best therapy after a tough week.

This picture makes Mom laugh- Maggie was a runner. She was always looking for a way to escape, so everyone learned the hard way to keep her on a leash.

She was soft, cuddly, and a total princess.

 Mom knew it was irrational to have two big dogs all by herself in a tiny apartment, but she never regretted bringing Moxie home in 2003. Maggie's whole world filled up with his arrival- she treated him like her own puppy. 

And he adored her.

You could tell when Maggie liked you, because she would try to curl up in your face.

She liked most people, but when Tim showed up in 2003, she lost her mind. She forgot all about Mom, and fell head over heels for him. Her affection probably helped soften his initial impression that Mom was a crazy dog lady.

Her general sweetness also helped them forgive her when she did bad dog things, like getting kicked out of doggie daycare for fence aggression, killing neighbor's cats, and attacking all female dogs.

After Tim proposed to her and Mom,

she reluctantly agreed to his new house rules... like No Dogs On The Couch.

She loved our move to Austin, the most dog-friendly city on the planet.

She reluctantly learned to swim.

It's hard to say if she ever really liked it.

2008 was her darkest year. The arrival of a human baby and move cross-country to a hot place where thunderstorms happened every day were too much for her nervous temperament, causing her to have seizures. 

She adjusted, and eventually warmed up to the terrifying creature named Kelsey. This picture captured the first moment Maggie approached me on her own.

And then, months later, the second time:

Mom knew she would be okay after seeing this squished-head-snuggle .

Moxie's natural exuberance and fearlessness always helped Maggie come out of her scared shell. 

So, she was better prepared when the second mini-human arrived.

She was literally terrified of Ryan for the first 3 years of his life.

Any time he came into a room with his signature high energy, she would make a face like this, and escape to her happy place- Mom and Dad's bedroom.

In the last couple of years her arthritis kept her pretty lazy.

She convinced us that old dogs are the best dogs.

She appreciated the extra love from us, especially since she missed her furry brother, Mox, after he left for the Rainbow Bridge in summer of 2014.

The epic summer thunderstorms of 2015 were a breaking point for her, so we put her on Prozac and took her to AMI with us for our vacation. 

We think of it now as the luckiest week because she got to spend time with our Boston family, getting lots of extra love. It was our last week with her.

It was a tough year for Maggie, being 95 in dog years with thyroid, liver, and kidney problems is not easy, so Mom had been asking her to please give a sign when she was ready to go. 

One morning, almost exactly one year after Mox left us, Maggie woke her up at 4am, ready to say goodbye.

Even though we knew she had to go to the Rainbow Bridge eventually, none of us were really prepared for that moment. Dad saw this rainbow on the day we lost her, and we're sure it was Moxie ready to welcome her home.

Mom still looks for her in the corner where her bed used to be, and we miss seeing her scrunched up happy face when we walk in the front door. In thunderstorms we talk about how the thunder must be Mag and Mox playing up in heaven, and that's how we'll always remember them.