1 Month Later

I look at the calendar and think "For the love of god, how is it almost februrary?!" Then I think "Wow. It has been over a month since Callie was bitten by Milo on Christmas Eve." While I don't neccessarily want to dwell on something so horrible forever I do think it is important to take stock of what we learned in the process. And learn we did!
I know Callie is a rough and tumble girl and these won't be her last stitches or her last trip to the ER. I am incredibly thankful and blessed that our family is still together, Milo included. I continue to be amazed at how quickly and how well he has taken to the new training and boundaries. Maybe he just knew his goose was cooked otherwise! I love that Callie still adores Milo so much. Every few hours she will walk up to me and ask "Pet Milo?" And Milo will roll over so she can rub his belly, which of course makes her laugh.  When I stop to think that if things had gone differently, I might not get to hear that laugh. It is moments like that, that really make you stop and take stock of everything you have and how incredibly lucky we are. Sometimes I think about re-reading my blog post about that night, but then I stop. Sometimes I think maybe it was worse in my head than it really was, but no. I actually said that to Bill and he pulled out his phone and showed me a picture he took that night when she was sleeping. The answer was definitely no, it was absolutely not worse in my head. It was that bad. It was that scary. I would never wish it on anyone. But the good part of it is that it showed us very strongly what is important and what is not. People used to tell me that about being a parent, that it shows you what is important. I thought I understood that statement, but ends up I had no idea until Christmas Eve. Until we were tested.
Callie's scars are still visible but have definitely faded. I'm sure mine will never go away. Seeing your child in that kind of situation is not easily forgotten. But I know it won't be the last time I feel that sort of panic and get in mama bear mode. Bill and I know now, that night in a nutshell is what being a parent is. It is trips to the ER when you have no health insurance or job. It is holding her tight because you don't know what else you can do to make it stop. It is bloody kitchen towels and clothes.  It is running red lights because you just don't give a damn about anything else except getting her to the place that will fix her up. It is sitting through blood and stitches and other horrible things to make her better. It is telling her over and over that it will be ok, maybe a little bit more to convince yourself than anything.  It is not caring about any other little dramas because we have enough in our arms to keep us busy for a lifetime. It is cliche for a reason, but life is just too damned short.
 We are so incredibly thankful for all the people that came out of the woodwork immediately when they found out what happened to Callie. I am thankful for my parents who stopped by everyday just to see how she was doing and to help with things like grocery shopping and errands. I am thankful most of all to Bill who kept a calm head to make sure our little family stayed together.  Poor Bill had to be the bad guy who put the antibiotic medication on her stitches everynight. I am thankful that Bill's parents stopped by Christmas morning to see her and that his sister stopped by with plates of Christmas Day with the Bunts and told us all the highlights. We received so many text messages, emails, visits and phone calls the next day. People who put their Christmas Day celebrations and holiday vacations on hold to make sure we were ok. We had people bringing us food and visiting Callie which lifted our hearts and spirits more than they can ever know. Just to be distracted from her mauled face, putting on antibiotics, cleaning wounds and the worries of what we were going to do with Milo was priceless. I don't know what we would have done without our village. It also makes me hopeful that this wonderful group of people will be there for us when Callie's sister arrives in a few short weeks. It just makes me happy that we aren't alone and there are people we can go to when the you-know-what hits the fan. There is a great comfort in that.

Callie's 2nd Trip To Disneyland

 We took a family vacation to Disneyland over the weekend. It was originally planned because I had signed up for the inaugural Tinkerbell Half Marathon, but I signed up for it before we learned of our second pregnancy. I was hopeful that if I stayed active this pregnancy that I would still be able to participate in it, but it became clear in recent weeks that was impossible. The baby's head is just too far down to do any serious exercise; the pressure is pretty intense on my pelvis. Doing short walks in our daily routine is sometimes difficult. And I know myself too well! I know that if I started the marathon I would push myself way too hard and probably start labor early. My braxton hicks contractions are also getting more intense. So I decided to not do the race. Especially when they sent the final instructions which said that any runner that couldn't keep a 16 minute/mile pace would be picked up. I probably could have done that pace a couple of months ago, but not now. So we just had a disney vacation instead. When I signed up for the race we had already put down a deposit on a room, so we were all set. The whole weekend we kept talking about "Thank god I didn't do the race." I was struggling enough with just walking around the park.  Although when I saw the runners and their shirts after the race I did have some pangs of regret. Maybe next year.

Anyway, we got our flight from San Jose in the early afternoon on saturday. It was nice to not to have to rush too much to get to our flight. We got there early so Callie could walk around a bit. She just about lost her marbles when there were birds inside the terminal. Then we boarded the flight. I wasn't really sure how Callie was going to do on the flight since this was her first flight since before she could walk! But she did great. The flight wasn't full at all so we had our own row. The only thing that was a little tough was that she wanted to be on my lap and well...I don't have much of a lap left! Luckily we had books to distract her and the flight was only 50 minutes so it was really do able. And oh so much better than having her stuck in a car for 6-8 hours! We had several people (including flight crew) mention to us how good she was on the flight. She didn't seem bothered by the pressure at all.
Once we landed we got to our hotel and unpacked a little. Callie had napped on the car ride from the airport to the hotel; about 20-30 minutes and that would be all that she would nap that day! I would have put her down in the hotel for another nap before hitting the park but we were meeting friends at the park so we pushed her. And I'm glad we did, we would have missed them otherwise. We walked over to the park and rented a stroller. It was really affordable ($15 a day) and it is a decent stroller but I think next time we will bring our own. It was just tough making the walk from the hotel to the park without some wheels! Finally, we made it into the park and met up with our friends just outside It's A Small World. I was bummed the ride was closed since Callie liked it so much last time. So we opted for FantastyLand. Of course the second she saw the carousel it was oohs and ahhs. We went on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

A kiss for Mr. Toad, before she realized what he was all about!

Since she was overtired, any time spent in lines was tough going. But we made it on to the ride. And she was....completely terrified! Crying by the time we were done. I think the ride was too dark and there was just too much for her to take in too quickly. So that was one of the only Fantasty Land rides we did. Since she was so upset we opted for the carousel afterwards.

This is more like it!

 That made her happy! At that point, our friends took off and we were on our own. We thought some food might help her calm down, and we hadn't eaten much that day either so we headed over to Frontier Land for some food at the mexican restaurant. Callie devoured a fruit plate and her rice. The burrito, not so much. It was pretty funny getting into the park so late because we witnessed a great many family meltdowns by that point in the day. We were just getting going, but some people had obviously been there all day. We heard one harried mother yell at their kids "You are never coming back to Disneyland ever again!" Happiest place on earth? Not always! After we ate we got in line for Pirates since she liked it last time and it is Bill's favorite. She didn't do quite as well this time. She was definitely scared by that first little drop despite our little cheers of "Weeee!" She did better on the rest of the ride where we could point out the doggies and pigs and that sort of thing. Since we had tickets for the next day we decided to call it. Especially since she was so tired and my back was already very sore. We got back to the hotel and let her run around for a bit and then put her in the pack and play. We love the Anabella Hotel because they have a little half room off to the side that we can set her up in. She put up a bit of a fight but eventually went down.

When she got up in the morning she was extra snuggly. It was so nice because I realized if I had done the marathon I would have missed it. She came into bed with us and kept turning to each of us and saying "Hug?" "Kiss?" over and over. It was awesome. After we all got ready we decided to walk down to the Paradise Pier hotel because they do a character breakfast, and it's on the way to the park. I thought since she had gotten over her fear of Sharkie that she would have fun with the characters, especially Pluto since she loves dogs so much. WRONG, WRONG and WRONG. Cue the super freakout. The one that scared her the most was Stitch. We did get a picture with all of us with Mickey when we first walked in where she isn't screaming, but she doesn't look overjoyed either. It was a lot like Santa Claus. If they were a little bit away she liked them but once they came up to her, forget it. So we ate fairly quickly and went on to the park.

We noticed as we walked though Main Street that they had added a Mad Hatter shop there so we went in since it was totally empty! I knew the Mad Hatter store next to the tea cups would be nutso. It was great to choose her hat in peace! I put a couple of hats in front of her to see what she wanted and the choice was...Dumbo. She even put in on long enough for a picture or two!


The previous day she seemed curious about the Dumbo ride so we headed over to Fantasy Land. We tried walking through Sleeping Beauty's Castle but that was scary too. Too dark I guess. One of the funniest things she had done the previous night while we were in Fantasy Land was that everytime the Dumbo ride would stop (and she noticed ) she would exclaim "Elephant Fall Down!" So we got in line for Dumbo. Somehow, through the magic of Disney, we all fit in one car! She had a good time and wanted to go "Up up and away!"

Flying high on Dumbo

 So at least there was one ride that she liked this time around!

Kisses for Dumbo

By that point it was pretty near her normal naptime so we put her in the stroller and let her sleep. It was nice for us to have a break, since anytime we were in line for something she wanted me to hold her which was getting very hard on my back and joints. So we got to eat in peace! We stopped for a pineapple float near the tiki room and then found some seats to relax. As she was starting to stir we headed over to tomorrow land because we knew she would love the Nemo ride, since she is obsessed with Nemo. We waited in line, but luckily this line was in the shade.

Chillin in line with Daddy

I wasn't sure how she would do with the dark/enclosed space but she did pretty well.
She was pretty excited when she saw all the bubbles as we were "diving."

Bubbles!

There were lots of calls of "Starfish" and "Fish". But oh boy, when she saw Nemo? Look out. "Nemo!Nemo! Nemo!" She was so excited. It was awesome. Especially after how many rides she had been scared on. When we got off, since we were in Tomorrow Land we thought we would try the rockets.
We figured they would be similar to Dumbo, but probably a little bit faster. She did ok until the end and then she was a little freaked out. But we did get some cute pictures in the process. We decided to finish up in Adventure Land and then call it a day. So we did The Jungle Cruise and Callie's absolute favorite, The Tiki Room.

Jungle Cruise Cuddling

Good god, she loves that thing. "Beeps!Beeps!" And wild clapping at the end of each song.

After that we grabbed some dinner and walked back to the hotel to turn in for the night. We had an earlier flight this time so we got an early breakfast from the hotel and headed to the airport. She did really well on the flight again. Except that everytime she looked out the window she would call out for Nemo because the shape of the window was similar to the one on the Nemo ride. Poor kid! So confusing!

We definitely did a lot less at the park then we normally do, but given how incredibly pregnant I am and how tempermental toddlers are, I think we did pretty well. Bill and I were talking a bit as we left, that we've always had fun at Disneyland but there is just something about seeing your child enjoy it. It is such an amazing feeling. To see her get so much enjoyment and awe out of seeing animatronic birds sing about tiki gods and flowers is just so cool. I guess that's why parents deal with the tantrums and the high ticket prices, to see that look of joy on their kids' faces; to transport them to a magical place just for one day.

You know, this face.

Callie at 20 Months

As we are trying to get ready for Baby #2, I find myself desperately trying to hold on to these little moments with Callie. I know part of that desire is because of what happened on  Christmas Eve, which continues to run through my head every now and then. We are still just so thankful that everyone is ok; that our family is back in harmony, Milo included. I am so glad that Callie isn't too much worse for wear. She does have 3 lines/scars on her forehead but they have healed remarkably well. It really is amazing how fast these little ones heal!
In some ways I feel horribly guilty for what is about to happen to her world with this new baby coming in a few short weeks. This is certainly not something she has asked for in her world.  I do hope in the long run that she enjoys being a big sister and having a playmate, but it is going to be chaos for a while, for all of us. I see girlfriends who have sisters and love the connection that they seem to have, even as adults. I really hope that we can instill that in our family for Callie and her sister. But I know it is going to be really hard.  A friend told me an allegory for bringing a new sibling home a couple of weeks ago. It would be like Bill coming home and telling me that he is bringing home another wife and trying to tell me how great it was going to be for me, how fun it would be to have a friend. Yeah. Riiight. I know we are going to lose those family of 3 moments where we all snuggle on the futon in the back room reading Go Dog Go or Cat in the Hat or watching Finding Nemo for the millionth time.
But anyway, Callie is at this amazing point where she is just soaking everything up. Language is everywhere and it is so cool to watch her figure it out. It does, however, mean we are fully in the realm of "watch what you say" because you will hear it come out of her mouth! Luckily we've been really good about that so no bad words yet:) It became clear we had to be careful just before Christmas when we were watching Monday Night Football, you know the game where Candlestick Park lost power? Bill was watching it more than I was and yelled out "Nice!" in response to some play that had happened. Without missing a beat, Callie responded with "Nice!" as well. I gave Bill a look that said "Be careful!"
She has been so into animals and sounds for a while. One of our favorite things that she does is she calls birds "beeps." It started because we were doing animal sounds months ago and I told her birds say "tweet tweet" but all she could say was "beep beep." So whenever she sees birds outside or in a book she will exclaim so proudly "BEEP!" We love it! I know that one day soon she will say "bird" instead and that will probably make me a little sad, so I'm going to hold onto her and her beeps for as long as I can.
She also loves airplanes. She will squeal "airplane!" clear as day anytime she hears one. When you give her something to eat she will (most of the time) exclaim loudly "Gank Yoo!" You can't help but smile and say "You're welcome!" especially when she says it 4 or 5 times in response to receiving a piece of cheese or some watermelon. She will come up to us at night, usually, and say "Kiss?" and plant one on us. Then she will say "hug?" It is the sweetest thing I have every experienced. The selfless love is something I wish I could bottle and hold onto forever. She will even do it to my belly so she can kiss the baby. When Bill walks through the door she screams "Dada! Dada!" And no matter how crazy she has made me during the day, it just makes me melt. These sweet things don't mean that she has really mellowed though! She is still a wild girl who loves to run and jump with abandon, always trusting that the universe or someone will be there to pick her up. I know that her wild streak will be tough to manage when I am on my own with a newborn and a toddler but I hope that we can all adjust without losing our sense of fun and maybe we should all be a bit more like Callie. The world is a pretty amazing place afterall! So I am going to try to be like Callie, not get too worked up about what I think is going to happen and just react when it does and try to find the fun in it too.

The Re-education of Milo (and us)

Since Callie is pretty much healed up at this point we have turned our attention to our next hurdle: what to do with our dog, Milo. I should preface this blog post with a couple of things. First of all, we have had Milo for the past 11 years and he has been an incredible companion. We have never had any problems with him except too much snuggling and dog hair in the house! Secondly, I know that there are many people who won't understand our decision to keep Milo for the time being, but that is ok. Because when we come right down to it, it is our decision but rest assured, we did not come to it lightly or easily and it is not necessarily a permanent decision.
Over the past week we have been doing a *lot* of research on why dogs bite. We came across quite a bit of information that said if a dog bites and they have no history of aggression it can be because of a health problem. Things like, dogs going blind/deaf and they get surprised by toddlers/people sneaking up on them. Thyroid problems are also common causes.
So Bill took Milo to the vet last week, just to see. At that point we were still assuming we would have to get rid of Milo and this was just going to be for information's sake. The vet did a full work up on Milo and didn't find any health problems, except of course for some nasty breath:)  Our vet has had a lot of experience with exactly this type of situation, biting dogs. He even gives talks to school kids about how to approach and deal with dogs. So we felt very comfortable in his expertise. He tried to provoke Milo to see if he could get a reaction, but he got none. Bill told the vet where we were in our heads concerning our fear and concerns for our about to expand brood. He said he understood the fear, since he had to put down one of his dogs because they took on some unfortunate new "hobbies" just before their second child was born. The dog started killing small, furry animals. They knew they couldn't keep the dog, so they put him to sleep. That is obviously not the situation with Milo. That story told us that if we did in fact need to put him down, this vet would be straight with us about it. The vet told Bill straight up that he saw no reason that we couldn't keep Milo with a few changes in our household. He referred us to a dog behaviorist/trainer named Kimberly that had a lot of experience with this sort of thing. Bill came home and filled me in and I was shocked. For the first time there was a glimmer of hope! But I tried to temper it by not getting too excited at the prospect of keeping Milo.
I emailed Kimberly about what had happened and that we surmised it had a lot to do with Callie having food and or doing something to Milo to provoke him. She has been very into eyes lately so it wouldn't be a shock to discover that she had shoved her finger in his eye. We have spent the last week or so wishing one of them, Callie or Milo, could tell us what actually happened! Kimberly responded very quickly. The great thing about her is that she is very accessible by phone, text, email plus she is local! She has been doing this type of training for the last 7 years and is very knowledgable. She came to our house on saturday and we met for just over 2 hours. Again, at this point we were still on the fence about Milo. Neither one of us was totally convinced that we could keep Milo with a toddler and a baby on the way, but we were willing to talk to Kimberly openly and honestly.
We spent the first hour or so just talking about what had happened, our fears and what would be involved in retraining Milo. There was a point that I was almost in tears because I felt overwhelmed at what I felt I was going to be responsible for when Bill returns to work. Kimberly, like our vet, saw no reason that we couldn't keep Milo if we just put a little bit of work in to him. I'm sure Kimberly saw my stress and decided just to jump in and do some of the training with Bill while I held Callie. She had explained that she would be doing the "leave it" exercise after first seeing how well Milo would respond to your basic "sit" and "stay" commands. He did very well with the basic commands, so she moved onto the leave it command. She had explained that with the leave it command he would leave a treat alone and not eat it. When she was explaining it I wanted to throw up my hands and show her the door. I thought to myself "Have you ever done this with a beagle?! There is no way this is going to work. Where is that white flag?" But to my shock, Milo did it within 2 minutes of teaching him the command! I couldn't believe it!
We learned a lot from Kimberly. We had been doing a lot of things wrong with Milo. Most days we would feed him first, more often than not, just to get him out of our hair. What we didn't realize was that was telling Milo that he was the head of our "pack".
Food is obviously a big trigger for what happened on Christmas Eve so we are changing a lot of things in our house concerning food. Now when we are preparing food in the kitchen Milo is not allowed in the room. When we eat in the dining room as a family, he is not allowed in the dining room. Instead he now has "his place" in the living room. If Callie is walking around with snacks like cheese or crackers or whatever, Milo is put outside. We also have an exercise to do with him when he does eat his dog food. When we take him outside to eat we put him in a stay and put down his food. We keep him at stay until we are ready for him to eat. Then after a few seconds of letting him eat we put our foot over the bowl and remove the food and put him back in a stay. Then we release him to eat again. We do this three times. This tells Milo "This is not your food. This is my food and I am allowing you to eat it." Again, when we first started this with Kimberly I was shocked at how well he took to it.
We also talked a lot about boundaries and "ways out". We realized that there was really no place for Milo to go when he was feeling overwhelmed and stressed out by Callie. We are going to put in a dog door in the back door so he can escape if he needs to.  We also are going to utilize a few more baby gates, so that if I am feeling too anxious with Callie and when her sister arrives, I can simply put Milo behind one of the gates or just put him outside.
We talked a lot about Milo's personality. It was apparent, very quickly, to Kimberly that Milo is not a follower. He is a leader so we have to be very vigilant in showing him that we are the alphas, including Callie. There are a few ways we do that. We will hold Callie while doing the food exercise with him so he sees her as an extension of us and our dominance. When we take him for walks (which we really had not been doing!) the stroller will always be ahead of him. Kimberly gave us a new harness for him that is similar to the ones that dog handlers use in dog shows. It makes it very easy to control him on walks but is not painful for him like a choke collar.
We also talked about our fears about the baby's arrival. When we all sat down and talked/thought about it, we realized that Milo probably won't see the baby as a threat, just as he was fine with Callie until she got so very mobile and fast. We have also been working a lot with Callie. We no longer keep them in the same room alone, not even for a second. We have been showing her how to be more gentle with Milo. Nice gentle pets on his back or belly, nothing near his head or face. And if she gets too hyper or starts throwing things, as toddlers do at this age, we put Milo back outside to avoid any problems.
Keeping Milo is still not a 100% sure thing. Kimberly is going to come back in two weeks and we are going to check in with her again and work on some new things too. If we are still feeling nervous about having Milo around then we won't keep him because he will pick up on that fear/tension and act accordingly. And if for any reason he shows any type of aggression he is a goner. We do know that if we try to get rid of him it will be tough to get him adopted because of his age and because he bit someone. So we are not kidding ourselves, if we can't keep him he will most likely have to be euthanized. But hopefully the training will continue to go very well as it has been since we started this on saturday and we won't have to make that tough decision and our old guy can live out the rest of his days with us.