Pets and pregnancy

Since I'm sharing my journey into motherhood here, I thought I'd share a post about the three “children” that already call me Mom. My husband and I have one pet for every year that we've been married (hopefully a baby will slow that down a bit before our house becomes a zoo).

First, there is Kirby, the cat (the only uncaged mammal allowed in our first apartment). When we moved into the house we are renting now, we got our first puppy, a chocolate lab runt that's now 55 pounds that we named Peanut (don't worry, the naming style for our real kids will be much different. Though she once met a little poodle also named Peanut, which was quite funny). And then a little less than a year later, we were wandering through a parking lot full of people selling puppies (bad, bad idea) and found one that we had to take home, after all, Peanut needed a little sister to play with. And that's how we got Loki, rightly named after the God of Mischief, a little trouble making beagle-dachshund mix, though she makes a much better lap dog than Peanut.

So, with three pets all under the age of three, our house can get a bit crazy at times. Peanut, being still very much a puppy though she's no longer puppy-sized, tends to jump when she gets excited, so I always have to be prepared to put up a knee to protect my belly. The intention of getting Loki was so my husband could have his hunting dog and I could have my lap dog, but when one is on my lap, the other one is jealous (so instead of a 20 pound lap dog, I have a 20 pound lap dog on top of a 55 pound lap dog)—and I'm sure having a mini human around this fall is only going to intensify the jealousy over who gets my attention. They also have a tendency to take things that aren't theirs, like a glass of milk off the coffee table, and I have a feeling some baby toys may inadvertently become puppy toys.

Since eat-the-kitty is a favorite game for the other two, Kirby spends most of his time in high places, but the dogs get cooped at night and that's Kirby's chance for attention. When the baby is sleeping in our room for the first few weeks though, Kirby will probably be locked out. Cats like to snuggle with warm things, and snuggling with a baby who isn't big enough to shove the cat off his/her face is a bad idea.

Things are going to be changing around our house this fall, and helping the critters get used to the differences while taking care of a newborn is going to take a lot of patience. In the meantime, I better get to work on some training now for a little less barking (and maybe offer them a little more attention while they are the only “children” in the house).