Sid and Nancy

Sean got Dorothy a punk rocker costume for Halloween, but we had a hard time getting her to wear it.  She would immediately pull off the spiked necklace and bracelet when we put them on her, and don't even get me started on the purple mohawk.  We found the costume when we were cleaning the other day, and tried again to get her to wear it.  This is what ensued:

She definitely got into the punk spirit!

Then we decided to try the mohawk on Owen.  At first he was equally as unhappy to have it on his head, but then he was willing to smile for the camera:

Sid and Nancy in Pennsylvania!

A Boy and His Bulldogge

I had wanted to get a holiday photo of at least Dorothy and Owen together, but my photo sessions did not work out.  They tended to look like the picture below, where Owen looks like a two-dimensional paper-doll, and Dorothy looks depressed.

Or like this one, where Dorothy is checking to see if Owen's palpable rage is edible.  It is not.

There, there, says Dorothy, with a heavy plunk of her paw, getting said deadweight rather dangerously close to Owen's head.

And so I decided separate photos would have to do.

Thank You, Morrissey

Sean and I were both very apprehensive about our car ride up to Boston.  Owen has been a House Baby for the first four months of his life precisely because of his bad behavior in the car.  He screams in his bucket seat pretty much non-stop.  The idea of being in a car for six hours with a screaming baby had us alternately wringing our hands, cursing our fate, and thinking maybe it would be a good idea to have Christmas in Abington this year.

But we bit the bullet and set off with bulldogge and baby.  Dorothy rode shotgun:

She did an excellent job, too, although she spent most of the trip sitting up with her head leaning in a woebegone fashion against the seat back.  She did not get sick and she didn't need her meds, which was nice.  We did have a bad parenting moment in which we stopped at a rest stop and didn't notice that Dorothy had jumped out of the car with us and was moseying around the parking lot on her own.  Eeek!  

On the way back, we got stuck in terrible traffic, so the six hour ride became a nine hour ride.  I'm happy to report that although I did a lot of whining myself, Owen did a great job both ways.  He was stuck in his bucket seat for nine hours with only one brief outing, slept most of the time and only cried for a bit.

And for that we have Morrissey and The Smiths to thank.  Every time Owen began to cry and get fussy, we turned on a Smiths cd and Owen was asleep in about two minutes flat.  I don't know why he found "William It Was Really Nothing" so lulling, but nonetheless he did.  And now Sean and I are both even more fond of The Smiths than we were to begin with.

Owen Prepares for Christmas

Owen has been getting some use out of a few holiday-themed outfits.  He plans to wear them at family gatherings, but why not get a headstart and wear them now while they fit?

Here he is in a reindeer longjohn outfit, with reindeer hat.  It is hard to tell from this picture, but the hat has a face and antlers:

Yes, that's right, antlers!

Owen also has Santa outfits in both red and green stripes.  Here he is modeling the red version.  When Owen goes south, one can spy Santa on his butt:

And this outfit has Santa and reindeers and gifts all over it, with reindeer on the feet.  What a festive fellow!

Someone else in the family is wearing holiday gear!  Oh Dor-o-thy!  Come show the readers your holiday cheer!

A Very Dorothy Christmas

Dorothy received several gifts for Christmas which she likes very much.  This bone, for instance:

And she loved her new kong tennis ball toy given to her by her southern aunt and uncle and cousins:

In fact, this one she loves a little too much, according to me, since she is now constantly demanding that I hold one end of it while she tugs, or that I listen to how loudly she can make it squeak.

But even more than the gifts, Dorothy liked the busy-ness of her days spent at her Auntie's.  She liked having five kids to play with.  Five!  She liked joining them down in the basement for a bit of roughhousing and soccer.  She liked knocking Josie over and giving her kisses (you might not be able to tell, but that is Josie lying supine beneath):

Dorothy liked the wrapping paper, and she liked to watch people unwrap gifts:

Here Dorothy is making sure that a certain box that Josie had just discarded didn't contain something for her:

Dorothy especially liked spending four consecutive days with her dad!  It just doesn't get any better than that.  And more good news:  she was an angel in the car both ways.  I'm thinking next time we won't even need her carsickness meds....

Dear Granny and Grandfather,

Thank you for my new bed!

It is very comfortable, and I like how its colors and pattern match my stripes and spots.

There is only one small problem--a glitch, if you will.  I'm finding it a little small and its size hinders my ability to stretch out.

Maybe we could send it back and replace it with a large?

Love your favorite granddaughter,

Posy.

Christmas on Spruce Street

I have never had a tree in my apartment here, and do not really have any plans to ever do so.  First, it's a small apartment; second, I have two cats who would climb a tree and a bulldogge who would chase them up it; and third, every year my landlord puts up a tree right outside my door:

As you can imagine, Dorothy was very interested in the tree that magically appeared right outside of her front door.  Surprisingly enough, however, she's been interested in a very non-destructive way.  She sniffs the tree as she passes, and if allowed, she would attack the animals and dolls underneath it, but so far she has obeyed my command to "leave it!" whenever she veered too close.

Plum has also come out to inspect the tree.  Posy continues to walk out with me every morning, though, and she also continues to walk straight down the hallway, instead of turning right to explore the tree.  True to her scrooginess about Christmas, Posy is snubbing the tree.

I had less luck with the cats disinterest while wrapping gifts.  They were very much not disinterested, to use a double negative.  They wanted to help with each gift and each rolling out of the wrapping paper.  I didn't even use ribbon this year, but that did not help stanch their interest.

And as the presents slowly came out of the bags and were wrapped and placed elsewhere, the cats went into the bags:

During all this, Dorothy was moping in the bedroom and occasionally whining about how No One Ever Plays With Her and oh! Life Is So Hard.  This was fortuitous, since I was able to wrap Dorothy's gift without her seeing it.

Dorothy is not yet aware of the fun in store for her--a trip in the car, cousins, plates of cookies, wrapping paper, uncles, aunts, grannies and grandfathers, new trails to walk on!  She is in for a lot of merriment, and a whole lot of cheer.  And permit me to mention again:  holiday cookies!

A Dorothy Xmas, Take Two

I debated getting Dorothy a nice gingerbread man costume to wear for the holidays, but then spotted this and thought it would be the better choice:

Apparently, I thought wrong.

She's supposed to look like a nice, wrapped Christmas gift, but instead looks like she had fisticuffs with a traffic cone and lost.

Oh well, Dorothy!  Perhaps we'll have better luck with my third Dorothy Christmas cheer idea....

Dorothy thinking, please help.

Bah Humbug!

And add to that, a Fa la la la laaaaa, la la la pfffft!

In this next picture, I think Posy's tongue is the equivalent of her flipping me the bird:

Posy is a scrooge!

It's Plum's Turn To Be Festive!

My British Shorthair, Plum, is a cat with dignity.  He's the kind of guy who would choose to wear a pinstriped waistcoat, even on Saturdays and even in the a.m., and perhaps with a bowler hat.  (I admit to trying on several occasions to get my mother to sew him such a weskit, but she, wisely, will have nothing to do with that project, for she knows--that way crazy lies.)

Anyway, prior to tonight's endeavor, I figured Plum would be my pet who would least tolerate wearing Christmas cheer.  But surprisingly, I was wrong about that.  He actually stayed quite still while he was being "dressed," and only gave me cranky ears with perhaps a bit of recrimination around the eyes.  But no wriggling!

Here is the fine gentleman in his Santa Claus necktie.  Behold!

Isn't he handsome!

I also made him try on Posy's santa hat, although I wasn't able to get a very clear picture:

What a cooperative Sir Plum!