It's beginning to look a lot like Ihatemydog...

I don't know what the heck has gotten into Scotch lately, but he is seriously pushing my buttons.  Not Skip's, of course, because Skip is perfect in Scotch's eyes.  I'm the evil obstruction that keeps Scotch from his master... urgh... So I get home on Tuesday night after running a quick errand with Preston, and when we were coming in the back door, I see Evil Red Dog peering around the corner of the stairs, and he goes running off (chewing on some plastic something).  That's code for: "I'm doing/just finished something I'm not/wasn't supposed to do."  So I walk into the kitchen, and I see a trail of crap from the garbage all the way into the living room, including a torn up plastic baggie, random paper scraps, and wet coffee grounds, fresh from the coffee that Skip had made before he went to work.  Yay.  Keep in mind that I have white carpet, so wet coffee grounds look like pure mud.  It also came to mind that I'm assuming what he was after in the garbage were the turkey bones I had thrown in there from dinner, and they are nowhere to be found.  Which worried me because dogs aren't supposed to eat cooked poultry bones.  Let's just say I wasn't a happy camper that I had to sweep, mop and vacuum at nine o'clock at night... Scotch knew I was pissed, too, mostly because I scolded him (since he was in mid-plastic-chew when I walked in the door), and because he followed me around like a little puppy the whole rest of the night, until he curled up on the sofa facing away from me.

So last night, we get home from dinner, and everything looked fine in the house.  There were a couple of little pieces of paper on the floor, but I assumed they were just scraps from something Scotch had maybe just chewed on.  Well, a couple of hours later, I go upstairs to bed, and as I'm walking up the stairs I step on what looked like the paper cups from Reeses PB cups.  Hmm... Just then I realized there was also a torn up black and green striped box along with those paper cups, indicative that Evil Red Dog had done the following: Jumped up to our dining room table (which is counter height), torn open the gift wrap on my parent's gift to Mannings, torn open the plastic wrapping on the box of Frango mints, taken the box to the landing of the stairs, and eaten ALL of the chocolate... leaving just the torn up box and paper cups.  Urgh... Once again, though, not only was I pissed that he ruined part of the gift, but also that he had eaten all the damn chocolate!  He seemed fine, though, because Evil Red Dog has a iron stomach, and rarely gets sick.  So I put the gate up to keep him downstairs since I was pissed, and an hour later he's at the bottom of the stairs barking his Evil Red Brains out.  This was approximately midnight.  Urgh...

I don't know what's getting into him.  He's been exercised, fed, loved.  So who knows.  I do know, however, that it's time once again to restrict him to only certain parts of the house when we're gone-- parts of the house that do not include anything edible!

More to come later on our holiday festivities, since we have kind of postponed most of them until this weekend...

It's been almost a month... (long, sorry)

...since I last wrote!  Yikes!  Welp, here's an update:

11/20: Knightwind dress rehearsal, then out to Waukesha for Megan's 1st birthday party.  Fun times with the band and the fam!

11/21: Knightwind concert, then dinner out at Bravo!.  They have flights of wine there, so I ordered the white variety.  It was tasty, but I had an issue with what they call it.  White Flight.  Anyone who has any interest in history or sociology would appreciate the irony that's occurring with that menu option being served in Brookfield, the whitest suburb west of hyper-segregated Milwaukee.  Ponder that one...

11/25-27: Thanksgiving.  Skip got off work at 3, snoozed until we got up, then me and the boys headed down to the Racine Yacht Club for Tom & Jerry's and a visit with Mannings and Galls.  We got to meet Justin and Julie's new baby Shelby, which was a nice bonus to the little road trip.  After our visit, we came back up to Milwaukee, dropped off Skip and Scotch, then Preston and I headed down to Crystal Lake (since Skip had to work that night/day).  We got there just in time for dinner-- in the livingroom!  Mom had rearranged the furniture to have the kitchen in the livingroom and vice versa.  It actually worked out quite well with a house full of people.  On Friday, Mom, Sarah and I, and the kids went to see Andy's new office up in McHenry, then us and the babies went shopping and had lunch with Nancy.  Good times, and the stores were not as chaotic as expected.  The Harrisons left for Illinois City in the afternoon, and Preston and I stuck around to go have sushi and a leisurely evening with Mom and Dad.  We got up and made an obligatory Joseph's run on Saturday morning, then headed back north.  The rest of the weekend was nice, just hanging around home with the boys.

12/2 onward: Skip and I had both fallen asleep down in the living room Wednesday night, and when we finally went upstairs (around 3am), we noticed Preston crying and a distinctive smell coming from his crib.  Turns out he had just thrown up, like real throw up.  My poor baby.  I picked him up, only to run him to the toilet where he got sick again.  It was so sad having this teeny kid standing next to the toilet throwing up.  He managed to get it all out, so we cleaned him up, and all went to sleep.  He seemed okay Thursday morning, when in the afternoon he got sick again.  We think it was from having milk again.  So we held off on that, and he seemed fine for the rest of the day and through Friday.

On Friday night, we met Justin, Julie and Shelby at Fiesta Garibaldi for a quick dinner, then went to the 'Tosa village to see Santa and the lights.  We walked around the village for a little while, which was fun, then went to see Santa.  Preston was funny, just kind of looking at him like "who the heck is this hairy guy whose lap I'm sitting on?"  It was cute.  After Santa, we took a horse-pulled wagon ride around the village, complete with Christmas-light-decorated horses.  We got home, only to be woken up that night with Preston getting sick again.  3 times.  I ended up laying down on the couch with him and a pot next to me, so that I could "catch" him when he got sick.  I worked out okay, until, what do you know... I got sick.  Twice.  Yuck.  So Saturday morning the two of us got up and went to urgent care.  The doc gave me meds, but left Preston alone saying to just push the fluids.  He seemed way better, and I was okay enough to get through the day.

Since he was better, we felt comfortable sending Preston down to CL with my mom and dad, since Skip had to work while I was going out of town to San Diego for a conference.  Skip took me to the airport and I had what felt like a long, drawn out series of flights (even though it was only 2), finally getting to San Diego around 8 their time.  I got to my hotel, then walked to the World Market around the corner to buy dinner to cook. 

I come to find out Preston had gotten sick again that night, which made us all worry.  Mom and Dad were taking good care of him, but we still were worried... Anyways, the rest of my conference was good, and I had some opportunities to get out and enjoy the city, too.  I flew home on Thursday morning, and got in around 2.  It was good to be home, because I really missed my guys.  I'm glad I was home, also, because Preston was starting to spike a fever.  We were really worried about him.

So, I got up and went to work on Friday, while Preston was home with Skip.  He made an appointment to get Preston to the doctor at noon, and then called me at about 12:20 and told me Dr. Meyer wanted us to take Preston to the ER.  It turns out Preston had lost over a pound since his visit to urgent care, and the doctor was worried about dehydration.  So were we, because Preston really hadn't had much of an appetite or drank much for the whole week.  He was really acting like a "wet noodle" and just really lethargic, which is SO unlike him.  So we went to the ER, and 3 1/2 hours later were discharged with instructions on how to handle diarrhea and vomiting.  No IV fluids like we thought they would have done.  We think that the ER staff was kind of blowing us off as panicky parents, which we were a bit offended by since we totally aren't.  We had just exhausted all other options in how to make him better, plus we were there at the urging of Preston's doctor.  So we went home, and pretty much spent the rest of the weekend laying low and getting Preston back on track to eating and drinking.

We managed to go out and get a Christmas tree on Sunday, and amusingly realized how big it really is as it relaxed and thawed in our living room.  I even ran out of lights 3/4 of the way through, so right now it sits in the living room almost finished... 

This morning I called the doctor and talked to the nurse, and made a follow up appointment to check Preston's weight on Wednesday.  Hopefully he's put some back on, since he's been eating and drinking a lot better the last day or two.  We're also making an appointment, at the urging of the doc, with a pediatric gastroenterologist to make sure there's nothing going on inside Preston's little GI tract that needs to be fixed.  So stay tuned... Until then, we still have a pretty ornery little baby, but at least he's smiling every once in a while!