Matthew
and I were having breakfast. I made him
those toaster waffles, you know the Ego Waffles, only these were Aunt Jemima’s.
Matthew
doesn’t like them crispy (no idea why, I prefer them that way) so I’ve come up
with a process where instead of toasting them in a toaster I microwave them for
one minute. They are usually soft and yet warm, and
instead of maple syrup Matthew prefers chocolate whip cream on top. Matthew at five years old is a slow eater and
gets distracted by the newspaper I’m reading on my side of the table, or
chattering about any stray thought that comes to his mind. So at almost every meal I have to focus him
on eating or drinking, otherwise he’ll be at the table forever.
On
top of that, he’s a fussy eater. I’m
like a wolf when I sit down to eat, gulping down everything in ravenous
bites. He’s like a cat, sampling
everything, ordering what he likes to eat best, drinking at intervals to wash
down what he doesn’t like.
So
Sunday morning I’m urging him to eat up and drink his milk, which is also
chocolate. I know, he’s spoiled. Suddenly he came upon a piece of waffle (I had cut them up into bite size pieces) that
had hardened.
“I
don’t want to eat this one. It’s too
crunchy.”
“There’s
nothing wrong with it. Take a sip of
milk.” He was slow at drinking the milk
too and he had hardly touched it. So he
took a “crunchy” piece of waffle and put it into his mouth. I could see he wasn’t chewing it very eagerly. “Take a sip,” I repeated.
He
took a drink.
“And
don’t tell me,” I said, “the milk is too crunchy too.”
It
took him a second to get the humor of that and when he did his laugh caused chocolate
milk to squirt out and dribble down his chin.
His first spit laugh.
-------------------------------
For the past few weeks Matthew had been bugging me about having
a piece of chewing gum. I didn’t think
it wise to let a five year old chew gum, so I’ve said no. He knows I keep a package of sugarless gum in
my study. One day this week he told me
he’s figured out how gum works. I didn’t
quite understand what he meant.
“You chew it,” he explained, “until the flavor runs out and
then you spit it out.”
“That’s right. Where
did you learn that?” I figured it was
some kid at school. At least he won’t
swallow it in the future.
“I just thought it and figured it out.”
OK. He’s a smart
kid. A bit later I go into the upstairs bathroom
and there on the floor by the little trash can that he obviously missed, was a
little red something. I picked it up and
it was hardened gum. I shook my head knowing full
well that someone just three and a half feet tall chewed a piece gum and tried
throwing it away. I tossed the gum in
the can, but then I thought better of it and took it out and put it back on the
floor.
Later still, when Matthew and I were both upstairs I had him
come into the bathroom.
“Matthew, what’s that on the floor?”
“Where?”
“By the garbage can.”
“This?” And he bends
down and picks it up and holds it up. “What
is that daddy?”
“Don’t you know?”
Silence. He says nothing. So I ask, “Isn’t that gum?”
“Yeah, that’s what it is.”
“Well, how did it get there?” Silence.
So I volunteered, “Did you take a piece of my gum?”
“Yeah. But I figured
out how it works. You chew it until the
flavor finishes and then you spit it out."
Sigh.
-------------------------------
It’s hard to tell if there’s any improvement between Rosie
and Matthew. He’s not quite as scared of
her and most of the time now he fights back when they tangle. Rosie sees him as a play friend, and play to
her is to use her mouth. And then he
makes a run for it, which only triggers a chase instinct in her. And of course she catches him, and so on.
Here she is giving him a lick.
And playing tug, Matthew trying to be as far from her as
possible.
As you can see in the five weeks we’ve had her, Rosie has
really grown. I’d say she’s more than
doubled.
Here’s an interesting tid-bit of information for dog owners I
discovered. I was searching around to
see if Rosie was on track with her weight.
There are a lot of dog weight calculators on the internet and when I put
Rosie’ information in, they spanned from as low as 48.8 to 82 lbs. Now that’s quite a range, which shows you
they’re not worth much. The one rule of
thumb I found more often was that a pup of a medium to large breed at 14 weeks
will be about 2.5 times that at one year old.
If Rosie is 20 lbs today at under 13 weeks, and she’s gaining over two
pounds per week, I estimate she’ll be 24 lbs at 14 weeks, which will put her at
60 lbs at a year old. That’s about right
for a Lab.
