Animals

Remember how the day before I had Isaac, the cat managed to get herself UNpregnant? To the tune of 5 kittens?

Yes. Well. I would like to retract the statement that we have five kittens. Instead, we seem to have four (4) kittens and one (1) pooofball.

I mean this kitten? It’s so fluffy that you could tie it into a ball and use it for a pom pom on top of your hat.

You can lick your fingers and give it a mohawk. Not a very good mohawk mind you, because it’s head is JUST TOO FLUFFY.

It isn’t a kitten, it is just a ball of fluff with eyes and feet.

It looks three times the size of it’s siblings, simply because of it’s fur. It is a pooofball.It is so fluffy that my photos don’t do it justice. I can just imagine it complaining to it’s mother about backyard teasing.

‘I’m not fat! I just have BIG FUR!’

So the big question is, does anyone want a kitten that you could use for a mop? Free to a good home…

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Last night as I was cooking dinner, I realised I had been yelling at Seven to stop barking for an awfully long time. Strangely enough, she was barking near the house, normally all barking occurs at the property line as she protects us from strange people trying to post letters or answer mobile phones.

So, I did what anyone would do. I yelled some more and then headed outside to investigate. Lo and behold, what did I find but an echidna! Quite common in Tassie, not so common on my actual property.

The poor little thing was terrified and had buried itself in the hay up against the house.

I called the dog inside figuring that the echidna would trundle away once s/he wasn’t scared anymore.

However, 17 hours later? The echidna has done nothing but burrow into the hay more, creating itself a little tunnel and hidey hole.

Now I have NO problems with an echinda taking up residence in my backyard. God knows that we have enough ants about the place to feed an army of echidnas and Amy thinks it’s fantastic. The cat and Seven however? Are less than impressed.

Seven seems to think that she needs to protect us from the spikey burrowing thing and the cat isn’t sure whether to ignore it, or to spend all it’s time wandering around eyeing the moving hay uneasily whilst puffing up to 3x her normal size.

[An impressive feat when you consider that the cat is due to have kittens any day now and is therefore as big as a basketball]

So to the disgust of my domestic pets, we have an echidna living in our yard now. Ner ner.

Unfortunately Seven can’t seem to stop barking at it. I wonder how long until my ears start to bleed?

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Also last night, [not while I was cooking dinner] Nathan discovered why Seven barks at apparently nothing.

There is a possum, living in the giant pine tree nearby.

This possum likes to come into our yard and run in circles taunting Seven to chase it. When Seven obliges, the possum darts away up the nearest tree where Seven can’t get to it.

Sort of like how your younger siblings used to taunt you when you were a kid, only as soon as you went and told on them, they promptly looked all angelic and you got into trouble for making things up? Or as soon as you went to chase and hurt them, they ran behind your mothers knees to hide?

Yeah, the possum has been doing that to Seven.

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So an echinda making a home in the backyard and a possum that has learnt to tease the dog.

What will be next?

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Also, what is the world coming to when spellcheck doesn’t recognise the word ‘echidna’? It’s not like I am talking about some kind of exotic animal here. Sheesh!

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I feel like I’m at my wits end.

And to be honest, I wasn’t even going to blog about it, because it’s more of a hunker down and deal with it type thing, than a whinge about it on the Internet type thing.

Amy has forgotten how to listen. I know that it’s all about her being TWO! and exerting her independence to either listen to me or not, but it is driving me mad. If I sit her down and make eye contact and make her listen, it immediately dissolves into a tantrum.

Her tantrums aren’t that hard to deal with honestly. They generally involve some stomping and some throwing of herself on the ground silently. Sometimes they involve crying, but we ignore tantrums so she knows that they don’t work.

Hence the silent throwing herself on the ground ones. I think they just her way of getting her shit back together again. 2 minutes of laying on the ground with her head hidden and BAM, she’s good to go again.

But the not listening. Oh my word, the not listening.

I feel like a broken record as I tell her not to do something 100 times and she still goes ahead and does it.

Like not jumping on me.

Or climbing onto the bench.

Or pulling the books out of the bookshelf.

Or emptying her entire toy box on the floor and then refusing to help pick them back up.

Or jumping/kicking/sitting on the dog.

Or any of the other hundreds of things that Toddlers just do to drive us mad.

I know that alot of it is simply me being out of energy and patience, but those things aren’t her fault (okay, they are a little bit her fault, but she can’t help that).

We’ve reinstated time outs for poor behaviour (she had stopped needing them because just the threat of time out worked).

I’ve cut almost all sugar out of her diet.

There is to be no more cordial or juice given as drinks, she can have water or nothing. She is allowed milk, but only from a regular cup and only 1cm at a time as I am sick of her sipping and spitting the milk all over the house.

No giving in to nagging, no matter how much easier it might be.

And the big thing, no more milk overnight. I’m sick of her waking every 2-3 hours to let me know her milk is empty and needs filling. I stopped breastfeeding overnight more than 12 months ago to stop night wakings, not to just replace them with a sippy cup.

We stopped milk overnight 2 nights ago and mostly she has been sleeping better. Ish. Really, with Amy better is a relative term.

So fingers crossed that some of these things start to pay off soon.

[It’s not all bad though, she is still cuddly and snuggly, gives kisses on demand and will talk about whatever is bothering her once prompted to ‘talk to me, tell me what’s wrong, don’t just cry/whine/yell’. Plus, she has the mother of all colds so she hasn’t exactly been feeling 100%. Funnily enough, I was sure her cold was getting better, but last night and today she has practically drowned me in snot. Not fun]

While we’re talking about behavioural issues, I should really mention Seven.

Seven was a difficult dog to toilet train, but recently she had been really good.

Recently, as in, up to 3 days ago.

3 days ago, Seven starting shitting inside again.

Now, my answer to that was simply ‘Fuck it, I cannot deal with this, dogs go OUTSIDE.’

However, that didn’t exactly work, because yesterday, as Nathan and I cleaned up the study, while we were IN THE ROOM, she shat inside 3 times. Within an hour.

I would have killed her. Nathan was much gentler than I would have been and I don’t know if that is a good thing or not.

This morning I woke up to find dog shit on the bathroom floor AND underneath the table in the dining room. This despite me putting her outside at midnight, 3am, 6am and 8am when we got up for the day.

Nathan reckons that it is because the cat and kitten have been sleeping inside. He seems to think that it’s territorial.

I don’t disagree. Not exactly.

But the cat and kitten have been inside for nearly 3 weeks now, if it was territorial, wouldn’t she have started it 3 weeks ago, not 3 days?

Sigh.

So here I am. Venting. I am out of energy and patience. I just want Seven to stop it and be good and stop the constant fucking whining already. I just want Amy to listen and talk and behave without me having to stand there and MAKE you behave.

I want it to be easy.

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