Never Saw It Coming

It's amazing how having babies changes your life - or at least how it changed my life. I'm not talking about the stuff like years of being sleep-deprived, suddenly loving driving a mini-van, having leftover baby fat, or other typical - and somewhat expected - changes. I'm talking other things. Things I never in a million years saw coming.

Seven years ago (I say seven because six years ago I was pregnant with Abby and the changes were under way), I was so different it's amazing. Well, not just me - my life. My husband and I had some close friends with whom we'd stay up into the wee hours of the morning playing games and just hanging out. (We still have those friends, but they moved to another state and we don't see or hear from them much.) Oh, yeah, and I worked second shift as a copy editor - a job I generally hated. I hated reading all those boring news stories, then having to write headlines. I think I've mentioned before that I'm not very good at that - and knowing that made it all the worse, especially when TPTB like puns. I hate punny headlines - so overused - and I could never write them. Well, not never, per say, just VERY rarely!

Seven years ago we had a nice house (we still live in it) with new carpeting and a dinky garage we were hoping to replace in the near future. That garage was so small that one of my sisters thought it was a shed the first time she saw it! LOL Pathetic - and, really, that's all it was worth. We could barely fit a Dodge NEON in it, let alone anything else! In that house, we had one cat and were planning to get another one - we ended up with two more. The first cat, Shadow, was our "first baby" - as I'd referred to her many times. She was a sweet cat, and was my pet before DH and I were married. So, naturally, she was part of the package - marry me, marry my cat. And I was one of those people who doted on her cat. I bought her birthday and Christmas presents (and presents from her for DH) and loved her to pieces. All that despite the fact that she was literbox-challenged to the worst degree. She would NOT pee in a litterbox to save her life. She had had a couple of UTIs, but even healthy she flat out REFUSED to pee in the litterbox. Thankfully, she did at least poop in there, but the pee's almost worse. The smell - and the fact that it's next to impossible to get out! Let's just say I wish we'd gotten rid of her long before we did. It was heartbreaking to do so - she's such a people kitty and really was my furbaby. We gave her to my ILs, who were planning to keep her outside. She's disappeared. :-( I feel guilty - a tiny bit - but less so than I did a couple of years ago. Anyway, what compelled me to get rid of her was - you guessed it - the kids. I was pregnant with Grant when finally I'd had it. I was ready to let her go. By that point, we already had Zeus and Huckleberry - angels compared to Shadow. Well, unless Huckleberry's antics were bothersome - he'd attack the toilet paper, shredding an entire brand-new role when we weren't looking. He'd done plenty of other things, but that's the one that most sticks out in my mind. I think what Dh and I referred to as "the voices" would tell him to do it. Either that or the toilet paper was taunting him! We'll never know, but - thankfully - he has out grown that. My point is I was one of those people who doted on her pets. Loved them and even referred to them as her babies. Until I had babies. Poor cats were forced to take a back seat when Abby was born. I still tried to give them attention and whatnot, but they definitely became second-class citizens. That's something I'd NEVER thought would happen.

Between Grant and Natalie we got a puppy. I don't know WHAT possessed me, as it was my idea. And, yes, I'm still kicking myself for that one! Grant was 6 months old when Sawyer was born - on Abby's third birthday. He was about 8 months when we brought Sawyer home. The cute thing is they are like buddies. They're growing up together, sorta. It's neat to see their bond. Anyway, Sawyer is a PITA. Now, I grew up with cats. So, perhaps part of the problem is this dog is much needier than any cat I'd ever had. I'm sure I'd have enjoyed him more if we'd gotten him before kids. Now, he's just extra work - an extra kid, if you will. But not an extra kid - they trump him. ALWAYS. I found myself thinking of him today as just a dog, and all of the pets in this house as "just animals." GASP! That's what prompted this post. It made me realize just how much kids change things you never see coming!

I had more on my mind, but it's gone. Maybe having to write between feeding the kids, letting the dog out, and other things is to blame! LOL Yeah, that's it! ;-)