Cry baby

The new windows are here, and our house is quite active today...full of hammering and such. Otis is unnerved to say the least, but he is handling it well. It helps that he found his doughnut toy and a rogue tennis ball when the couch was moved from in front of the windows. As I knew that I would be "holed up" in the house, I bought my first Parents magazine to read, and I just ran across what I found to be a very interesting statistic. In a baby's first year (on average), she will sleep 4,745 hours. She will cry for 730 hours. I saw the crying statistic first, and it scared me to think that divided out, that is a solid month of crying. A month, people. Then I saw the sleep statistic. The crying thing doesn't seem so daunting when the baby will be sleeping for almost seven months. It's nice to see those two things listed together...it puts things into perspective a little. Maybe when little S is screaming her head off, and I can't remember the last time she wasn't crying, I'll force myself to look back at this post.

Speaking of cry babies, though, Otis has been the biggest whiner lately. I'm really trying to break him of barking at everyone who walks by the house. Fisher the dalmation barks at everything, constantly waking my friend Anne's child. I don't want to have to worry so much about that with Otis, and he's starting to get it. I understand that he is a dog, and he is going to bark. I just want him to understand that he doesn't need to bark at everything- like our neighbors checking their mail...they are not a threat to our home. Anyway, he has been putting two and two together, figuring out that if he barks, he gets squirted with the water bottle. So, he circumvents the punishment by whining loudly instead of barking. I can't decide if it's funny or really annoying. Mostly, I just make fun of him for it. I love that dog.

Here's a picture of him chilling in his kennel...I don't want him jumping out of any of the gaping holes in the house...