Raining cats and dogs...

Hi everyone,

Not a lot to report today but I thought I'd right a quick update so those of you who have been checking this regularly aren't annoyed with me for another day of no posting. :)

Today is nice and warm in Cincinnati, however it's been raining pretty hard since yesterday evening. Our snow is all but gone and I have a feeling that we won't be seeing much more until next year *tear*. Ah well.

Brock enjoying what's likely to be his last snow this year... Poor thing is confused now - when we take him out to pee, he's not sure where to go because we had been taking him to the snow.

Brock is growing like a weed and is doing well. He is a lot of fun now as he's learning and discovering his little world at a very rapid pace. I suppose the most excited thing he's learned to do to this point is to ring his bell in order to be let out for a pee. It's actually very cute. Now that he's house trained and we're not needing to take him out every hour, it's a very handy trick. We just started by hanging a couple large 'jingle bells' that I purchased at Michael's from a chain of tie wraps (Dad, aren't you proud of me for being so handy?) as we didn't want him to chew through a string or ribbon or something. We would have him nudge the bells with his nose and then sit every time we took him out and now he's learning to do it on his own. Ah, we're such proud parents! We must give him credit though, he's been incredibly easy to train....

Michael's doing laundy...
oh wait, I knew it was too good to be true!

Tonight, we're off to our second puppy kindergarten class (last week's was canceled due to the big storm), which should be a lot of fun. Brock has made a little friend there, named Graham, who's an oatmeal-coloured poodle mix (his parents got him at a shelter and so they're not really sure what he's mixed with) who's a good match for Brock. Graham's only about five or so pounds heavier than Brock but he's full grown so he's a little less excitable, which is nice.. all the others in the class are fully grown large breed dogs - two labs and a boxer. And actually, those three are not very well behaved so we were glad that Brock and Graham became fast friends :)

Brock looking particularly pathetic and defeated by the end of his first bath a few weeks ago (this week's bath was thankfully much less eventful!). It's amazing how much he shrinks up when he doesn't have his big fluffy hair to hide inside!

So yeah, not a lot is going on here right now. I got a library card in the mail yesterday (which I ordered online) so I think I'll head over there this afternoon to activate it and see if I can find a good book to get me through the rainy weekend. Tomorrow, Michael and I are off to Ikea to pick up my knitting chair - see the last post about how I won a 100$ gift certificate there - which I'm also pretty excited about. Michael's not so much looking forward to it - he hates stores full of people - but I promised I'd get up early enough to miss the rush.

Brock's 'pounce' while playing at the tennis courts... too cute :)

Well, that's all for now. Must go as Brock's jingling his bell for me!

Take care,
Mariah