Tired

I am tired.
Of course I'm tired. I'm 34 weeks pregnant. I have a 2-year-old. I have four dogs.
For all I swore I wouldn't, I am now letting (if that's the word) Cee cry herself to sleep when she wakes up in the night. I hate it. But she has been waking up again and hollering "Mommy, rock" or "Mommy, bed" or just plain, "Mommy", and when I would pick her up and rock her, I couldn't get her back into her bed. So I put her in our bed. Which meant that no one really got any good sleep. So, since I know there's nothing else she needs (she's not sick, teething, hungry), I've been letting her cry for 4 nights. I think I'm doing the sort-of Ferber method, which is going in at 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and so on. The first night, it took 70 minutes. Night #2, 50 minutes. Night #3, 8 minutes (and I was so hopeful) but last night took an hour. So here's hoping that this works in a few more nights. Cee has put herself back to sleep many, many times before, without crying and needing to get up, so I also know that this is in her capacity. But I need her sleeping decently before Little Girl #2 arrives sometime in the next 6 weeks, because I know no one's going to get any sleep for awhile after she's born.
I just wish I wasn't quite so tired now.

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And the fur was flying

Literally!
We have four dogs: a 5-year-old Doberman named Samwise, a 4-year-old chocolate Lab named Freya, a 7-year-old cairn terrier named Molly that we adopted from the LT's parents, and a 6-month-old German Shepherd mix named Luna that someone dumped down the road from us back at the beginning of November.
Samwise is the (usually) undisputed alpha dog. He's the only male and he's lived here the longest. The LT and I adopted him less than a week after we bought our house. The three females are in constant battle to figure out their pecking order. When we adopted Molly from the LT's parents, she ended up being over Freya, since she's older. So okay, we have Samwise, Molly, Freya. Freya was pretty much okay with this.
Then we found Luna. She is a puppy and FAR too big for her britches. She took on Molly about a month ago and it seems like she now outranks Molly, the oldest dog in the house. BUT, she has not overtaken Freya (not for lack of trying). So we have a really bizarre pecking order among the female dogs where Molly outranks Freya, Luna outranks Molly, and Freya outranks Luna.
This morning Cee and I were in the basement (we have a split-level house) with the three girl dogs. The boys (the LT & Samwise) were in bed. All three girl dogs were wrestling, fighting, playing, whatever. Then Luna went after Molly and after an impressive tussle, there were several hunks of Molly's fur on the floor. Cairn terriers are mostly groomed by tugging gently on their hair, not combing or cutting. So it's not too surprising that after a fight with Luna, Molly would have lost some hair.
And then Luna, ever obliging, ate the hair.

C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-I-O-N

There is just so much to celebrate right now.
#1. President-elect Barack Obama. The LT actually said, "I finally feel hope." This is HUGE coming from the LT. I am really excited to have an intelligent, well-spoken President again. I have a lot of hopes, but I'm trying to keep my expectations down. Let's face it, he's got a lot of people to work with and a lot of work to do.
#2. There is, in fact, a baby growing in my belly. I had my 12-week checkup yesterday and finally heard the beautiful "lub-dub" going 148 times a minute. Almost thought I felt the little bean move last night, too, but that would have been awfully early.
#3. Wedding this weekend! On Thursday we're dropping off 3 of the dogs with the LT's younger brother, the 4th dog with our neighbor, and heading to my parents' house. We'll spend the night there with my youngest brother and then bright and early Friday morning we'll be driving to Indiana for my sister's nuptials. While none of us are particularly thrilled about driving for 12 hours with a toddler in a small car with possibly lousy winter weather, we're all really, really excited for the wedding. And the party afterwards. It sounds like my future BIL's family is pulling out the stops for us to stay with them on Friday night, which is really, really nice of them. The LT is going to preside over the wedding. He's not actually marrying them; they're having a civil ceremony Friday morning. But they'll say their vows, have Scripture verses, etc, on Saturday in front of the friends and family, and the LT is going to sort of run the show. Oh, it's going to be so much fun!
Ahhh, life is good.

Vote or Don't Complain

That's right. If you don't care enough to get out during the 13 hours the polls are open tomorrow and exercise your right to choose your leader, then you don't get to complain about the leadership.
People in this world are still dying, trying to obtain the right to vote. Some countries let you vote, but there's no real election. The United States has existed for over 232 years because of the right to choose our leaders. We may not like the results, but we still get a say.
The LT and I are heading out to our township hall completely in the middle of nowhere (thank God for the Garmin) and we're taking Cee with us to demonstrate the reason why we've endured nearly 2 years of political ads.
So get out and vote. I don't much care who you vote for (really). But please, vote or don't complain later.