With a pair of toddlers (otherwise known as puppies, 18 months and 3 months old respectively) at home, I’ve been thrown back into the deep-end of stay-at-home-mum life. The gaps between feeding them, playing with them, walking them, cleaning up behind them, making sure they don’t chew anything important or squish each other (one weighs 25kg, the other 5kg!) are few and far between.
Puppies are fun, no doubt about it, but this stage does remind me of when my human children were small. When they finally conk out for a nap it comes as a welcome break, but it’s also quite regularly when my brain starts reminding me about the restless nights monitoring said children/pups. Sleeeep, it says, sleeeeep nowwwwww…
With the children, well meaning friends and relatives – even strangers – would tell me, ‘Nap when the babies nap. Make the most of your time.’ After a while I started to wonder whether they all had home help. Or perhaps they had a secret supply of magical wee folk lurking in the background, ready to do all the nasty accumulated chores in exchange for small gifts of food…
In the absence of magical or other help, and with catch-up-sleep the stuff of daydreams, I nevertheless learned that it was possible to chunk away at various tasks while the babies napped – sometimes even while they entertained themselves for brief periods.
Similarly, the first few weeks with the two dogs together have been pretty full on. House-training a new pup takes determination and vigilance, also a goodly supply of paper towel and a bottle of clean-up spray. We’re getting there and, in some ways, it’s no worse than potty training. If anything, it’s easier as it’s taking far less time. Nunzio/Cassie’s conquered the doggy door and now usually makes it to the lawn in time (and there was great rejoicing!).
As with any toddlers, playtime can be a tad fraught – although Molly has been surprisingly patient and it’s suddenly clear just how much she’s matured over the past few months. However, the puppy has an endless supply of nippy little teeth and a good deal of persistence, and patience definitely has its limits. The trick is to leave them to it and to intervene/distract just before drama happens. That way some learning happens, but she doesn’t get chased and stomped on too badly. This too shall pass – Molly’s coping and her Nunzio’s getting bigger and less squishable each week.
Meantime, I fit writing in where I can, conquer the household chores where possible and – today, after a certain amount of procrastination, have finally started my chicken-piñata. This has already entailed a certain amount excitement. The first balloon I inflated exploded – making both dogs duck for cover and me dive for the remains before either of them could decide they were edible! Later, the second balloon – now part-covered with strips of soggy papier mâché – got knocked off it’s stand and fell on Molly’s head, pretty much confirming her notion that balloons are très dangereux 🙂
Piñatas take about 50 hours to create, from start to finish, depending on how large and how complicated you decide to make them. The process is done in stages to allow the layers of papier mâché to dry, which is just as well since nap times are fairly brief. I’m 3 hours in, having made the glue, torn up some newspaper and started to apply the first layer. With luck, by the time I have this piñata completed we should be through the worst of the toddler stage…
