2 Girls and their Dog.

As previously mentioned, I spent most of my weekend entertaining, spoiling and supervising my nieces this weekend. My mom came down as well and she brought the family dog, Max.

Max was a gift to Mir on her 2nd b-day. Sammy was only 6 months old and Max was just a puppy. I remember the day vividly when I first met Max. I walked into my brother's house to see the epitome of utter chaos. It was Halloween that night and in this one evening, the life insurance agent, trick-or-treaters, and a medic were coming by all within the hour. To make things worse, my sister in law was throwing together some resemblence of dinner before heading off to work. I walked into the house to hear Sammy wheezing like a 80 year old smoker, Mir prancing around in a princess dress and this giant puff of fur yapping in a little cage. My brother looked at me as if I was a gift from God, handed me both kids and the puppy and asked me to take them out of the house while he and Julie settled matters with the insurance agent prior to Julie leaving for work. We walked around the block, (stroller, puppy and princess) and when I came back, the medic was there dropping off the nebulizer for sammy's bronchitis. My brother looked at me again and said, "not yet." Another block. I came back this time and handed Matt the kids, stuck the dog out in the back and then proceeded to hand out candy while Matt finished getting the girls dressed. Julie was long gone off to work. Suddenly, there was a candy shortage, which is a BIG NO NO as my brother would never want to be the house that ran out of candy. I left to get some candy. Came back, Matt took the kids to a few houses and when they came back, it was time to initiate sammy to the nebulizer. TEARS. She looked like an elephant. I got Mir in the tub, Sammy quieted down and then I hear this "yip yip yip" from the garage. OH CRAP! The puppy!

I looked at my brother with incredulous eyes and uttered something about being a saddist. He just sat back and smiled and said, this is life, and I love every minute of it.

We decided to name the dog "Max" because Mir could say his name easily.

Fast forward 3 years. Max is a Big dog, weighing close to 90 lbs. He was great with the girls, but he didn't have enough room to play and run and get exercise.

We had a family meeting with me, my mom, matt, and Julie and even Julie's parents, and it was decided Max was going home to live with my mom and dad (nanna and pop-pop.) We presented this to the girls that Max needed to keep Pop-pop company and he could run and play. The girls were sad at first, but since they visited nanna's house often, they knew they'd get to see Max.

This weekend, when my mom brought Max down the girls wanted him back. You have to love the logic of children. We explained to them when we took Max away that he was going to Nanna and Pop-pop's house to play with Pop-pop. Pop-pop is now deceased, so it only makes sense to them that Max should come back to their house.

It appears Mir and Sammy have been talking about Max coming back for some time, because now the time line for Max's return is when "Nanna downsizes her house and moves to a condo." When my mom came into the house on Friday night, Mir hugged her, and very pointedly asked, "Nanna, when are you going to move so we can have our dog back?!?!?"

Last night, when I tucked the girls into bed, gave them kisses and wished them sweet dreams, they asked me to tell them 2 stories. I asked what they wanted to hear. They asked about how their mommy and daddy met (1st story) and to tell the story about how Max came into their life.

They giggled and squealed all the way through my stories and when I was done, we said our prayers. We didn't pray for anything else but Max. I even asked about praying for sick and sad children, mommy and daddy, etc.. the answer I got back was, "Nope, we just want to pray for Max. We don't want him to die before he comes back to us... Can we go to sleep now, Erin? We're very tired."

Oh Alright.

Gotta love kids. Their thought processes are so simple and pure.