Girls who wear dresses to play in the mud - Part 3 (six years later)

They're still at it. This hour of play time took about two hours of cleaning, two baths, two showers, and three loads of laundry to recover from, but they sure had fun. I couldn't get Mary Cate to come inside!

Eddie, 3.5

It's a little sad; Eddie talks to us nonstop at home and says the funniest and sweetest little things, but around most other people he's wary and quiet. Mary Cate seems to be rubbing off on him. Here are a few of his recent sayings that he said in all seriousness and had us secretly laughing.

"Mom, I'm sorry but I have some bad news. Daddy does not have a blankie."

Eddie is very into potty humor right now. It's gotten to the point where we can't ignore it anymore. We've been talking with him about appropriate jokes and times to use potty words in advance of starting preschool next year. He walked up to me the other day and said earnestly while counting off on his fingers, "Pee is funny. Poop is funny. Toots are funny."

He's been very cuddly again lately. We all spent the night at a hotel this weekend and were watching TV in the morning. One of the kids said it was 7:58, to which Eddie responded, "It's Snuggle fifty-eight!"

After putting on his suit and Thomas goggles, we caught Eddie looking into the mirror in our room singing, "I'm so fansome, fansome, fansome."

So long, old girl

Never has there been a more endearing and annoying dog, we always said. She loved to get into the garbage and if I left butter out to soften she would eat it EVERY TIME. Once we came home from church to find she'd gotten into the closet and chewed up one shoe out of every pair I owned. I was stuck wearing my church shoes for weeks.

We also said she was the dog with nine lives. Connie inexplicably broke her leg when she was a puppy and we thought we'd have to put her down since we didn't have the thousands of dollars needed for surgery. The vet hesitatingly put a cast on it, and it worked, but she limped the rest of her long life. And once she ate glue, and once she lost a ton of weight and we thought it was the end. She always bounced back, but it turned out she was on her last life this year.

Yes, she was exceedingly annoying, but boy was she there to see us through a lot of stuff. We got her when we'd been married less than a year. I first held her at my friend Rose's wedding (they were her father-in-law's puppies) and we later brought her home to my parents' because she was supposed to be my dad's hunting dog. We bought our first house a couple of months later and she came to live with us. We nicknamed her "Cowdog." She was allowed on the furniture! Over the years, she was there when we went to live at camp for the summer, brought home five babies, moved, changed jobs, and mourned our various losses.

So in honor of Connie's nine lives, here are nine fond memories.

1. This was one of the first weekends after we brought her home. We went up to camp at Tahquamenon Falls for the weekend and it was there I learned how crazy people are about dogs. I never got that much attention dogless, that's for sure.

2. For a short time she rode in a kennel in the car, but she got carsick, so after about two minutes she had free reign. Which she held for the rest of her life.

3. Connie with her cast. I remember when Kevin called me to tell me what had happened. I was at school. I had to leave the classroom crying, and my teacher-friend Jessica came and hugged me while I wondered aloud why I'd cry over a dog I hated so much.

4. She used to sleep on the couch or in our bed. By the time the kids came she was banished to a kennel in the basement! Sorry dog, that's how it goes.

5. Nellie's first afternoon at home. My favorite (picture, not child. I love you all the same!)

6. The time the girls painted the dogs.

7. Connie loved paddle boarding in her older age.

8. A dog on the boat!? I'd forgotten about this. During one of her bad spells we thought sure she was dying. We brought her to Pam's "one last time," which is why I felt sorry for her and let her ride on my lap. What an actress she was. She lived over two more years.

9. Actually one of her last times at the lake. Just right.

This one time, in grad school...

I got coffee with Kevin today and remembered something "funny" from my past life. It was a particularly intense time, between starting dissertation research and figuring out life with three kids. One day I met a fellow student/friend at the same coffee shop, where we worked for hours analyzing data for a manuscript. When it was time to pick up Nellie from school, my keys were nowhere to be found. My friend searched around our table and I went out to look in the van. Where I found the keys. In the ignition. With the van running. I'd been there for over three hours.

At the time, I was embarrassed and worried there might actually be something wrong with me. I'm pretty sure I went back in and just told my friend I'd found the keys and left.

Now, I'm glad it happened, because every time I go somewhere and I DON'T do that, I feel like I'm doing pretty great at life!