The Dog and the Baby

This morning I was talking to my students about how everything they write has a persuasive angle to it. Simply put, there's the positive stance and the negative. (Of course, there are many shades of gray in there, but that didn't apply to the lesson or to this blog post.)

It got me thinking about the biggest issue in our home right now (now that we've gotten through the terrible week of teething, that is): the dog and the baby. Frequently before Lily was born, and even when she was a teeny little thing, Adam and I joked about how Penny and Lily would be best buddies. And that they would eventually team up to wreak havoc on us.

We sort of pictured them being like Brian and Stewie from Family Guy.

We're there. They are making us nuts. So here's my list of the positives and negatives of having a rascally dog and a toddler.

Positives:

Lily has a playmate.

Penny is extremely tolerant of Lily, who antagonizes her, lies on top of her, pulls on her, and taunts her with toys. All this in spite of Penny's breed supposedly being bad with kids.

I never have to sweep the floor after meals. For example, tonight we had rice and Lily thought it was fun to pick up handfuls of rice and toss them onto the floor. No problem, I thought. Penny would eat it all up. And she did. (Side note: Scooter, the cat, attempted to eat the rice too, but she's too much of a priss to eat that much rice.)

Penny is cute. Lily is cute. They are cute together.

Negatives:

Though Penny is very tolerant of Lily, her primary form of retaliation is compulsively licking Lily or jumping on her. A lot of tears come from these things.

Lily's favorite thing to say now is "Menny, no!" Even when Penny is nowhere to be found, and especially when Adam or I have just corrected her.

Lily seems to think she is Penny's boss. Of course, she might be mimicking how we talk to Penny, like tonight when I said, "Penny, go away," and Lily parroted, "Go away." Lord, help me.