another holiday, another...um...let me try to explain this one

So I was kind of having a rough go of things before the holiday season even started.  We were expecting a family of 4 to visit us for ~6 days around and through Thanksgiving and as much as I love them all was still feeling pretty anxious and conflicted and anticipating those kinds of comments.  The ones that are in no way meant to be spiteful or hurtful toward me, but stick an unsuspecting quiet dagger right through my heart just because of where I am at emotionally.  You all know the kind. 

"Well, mommy and daddy have grey hair because of YOU *giggle giggle* (said to ornery child in playful manner after child points out the parental's obvious grey hairs).  See, Uncle M and Aunt Brenda don't have any grey hair."

No, no we don't.

  and there is always

"When child 2 graduates college, I will be around 50.  Can you believe that?!  And then we can start thinking about retirement." 

Did I mention that I am around 4.5 months OLDER and have yet to even have child 1?!  There is also one of my personal favorites while complaining about a coworker who adopted 6 children through foster care,

"...and her 6 adopted children..." 

because it has such relevance to the alleged work related incompetence of the woman under fire.  And yes, they know all about our status (I heard that's what all the cool infertiles are calling it these days).  Okay, so off my side tangent rant and back to the sometimes-holidays-can-really-suck-in-the-IF-world.   

I don't know why some holidays are worse than others, but this one seemed to be one of those cry-over-everything-didn't-start-my-shopping-until-the 24th-of-December types.  I even succumbed to bringing chocolate chips to work on a near daily basis for a little perk.  No, not cookies, just a bag of chocolate chips*.  Ghiradelli if you must know.  Don't judge.  I was sad, remember?

*Self Control, please, please, please come back to me soon...

Some of you might remember the last holiday I was a blubbering mess at was Mother's Day this past year.  And some of you might remember that we picked up this little guy way back on that fateful Mother's Day (you know, when I was still a real blogger who actually posted more than sporadically - crap, I guess that was more like 2 years ago - hmph - anyway...). 

~3.5 months old

Moose has been a welcome distraction and the best coping skill I have found to date.  He made last year my best Mother's Day to date.  He is still such a Velcro dog (meaning he is happiest when he is right next to (or on top of) one of his people.  On top of has become a bit difficult as he seems to have grown just a little bit since May.

~11.5 months old

He passed not only his 8-week puppy class, but also a follow-up 8 week intermediate class. Not that he needed it or anything, but yeah, he pretty much needed it. I suspect he was graded on a curve or given bonus points for cuteness somewhere along the way because seriously "dear god would you please just leave it, Moose?"

He used to play at a dog park until he became enamored with a white pit bull there. He tried to fancy that poor pit one too many times for my comfort level and I haven't been back since. Did I mention his pit friend is a boy?

I knew I should have rethought his Halloween costume...

We finished off a dog run we were in the process of building paying for during the summer. It was a really great design with a small portion set up as a potty complete with underground drains and pea gravel. It was going so well until we were woken up at 2AM to some blood curdling yelps.

All the rocks are now gone (in both his belly and the dog run) except for the few still rattling around in that big old adorable pea brain.

So I have stalled you all and gotten slightly off the main point of this post as I became lost in showing how my little pony is growing up and suppose I should get back to the whole finding happiness during tough holidays thing.

I want to say that there was a great deal of thought and reason put into what what we did the Friday before Thanksgiving, but I can't.  You already saw her on our holiday card, but here she is in all her naughty glory.

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Meet Moose's little sister Paris. 

I'm blaming the pomegranate margaritas the (dog) breeders fed to us at their party...or that we got Moose wet and he multiplied...or that holiday blues thing - yes, the whole point of this post, right!?...or that Moose really needed a playmate...or that Molly (Remember our almost 13-year-old Molly girl?  Yes, we still have her too.) really needed for Moose to have a playmate so he would leave her the f alone once in awhile.

Love my sweet old grey-faced girl.

Her name is based solely on her personality: 

Spoiled rotten, high maintenance, big attitude, bossy, blonde beauty who finds herself in short stints behind bars no matter how much she bats those pretty little eyes.

At any rate, Paris is here to stay. And not just stay, but she has pretty much taken over...

Moose's toys

and Moose's beds

and Moose's food

and Moose's personal space

I can't decide if Molly's face is saying "Save me!" or "Shoot.  Me.  NOW."

So I guess it had to happen eventually.  We have become a 3 dog house AND I just posted 15 pictures of them on my baby-making-failure blog.  I think this might be the beginning of the end.

We are officially those crazy childless dog people.

I promise not to create facebook profiles for them...at least until Mother's Day rolls around again.