project dog off the bed

Long night, real long night last night. We’ve been talking about training Eliott to not sleep on the bed with us anymore. He has a little bed that he likes to go to sometimes that’s under the bed. It’s like his little cave. We’d like him to sleep there. When we first got him we didn’t even consider letting him sleep with us and he didn’t for about 4-5 months. Then one day he just jumped up there and, well he’s so warm and snugly.

There are a lot of great things about having E sleep with us. He’s Warm and snugly, he’s cute, it makes us feel like a little family and most importantly, when he sleeps with us he sleeps through the night and he sleeps in past 6:30am on Sat. and Sunday.

Today is Saturday and I was up at 6:30am walking him and feeding him and now I’m on the computer letting him sleep at my feet so that Dup can get some sleep because he was the one up with him the most last night.

The bad thing about letting Eliott sleep with us is that he is a little bull dozer. He only weighs 29 pounds but he slowly wedges his way up between us and then turns himself horizontal so that we are each respectively sleeping on the edge of the bed. We can get up and move him a few times a night but when you want to get some sleep sometimes you don’t fight him and just make due with your 12 inches. The other bad thing is that it separates Dup and I and makes snuggling and “intimacy” challenging.

I know some of you parent types are probably thinking to yourself, “well all of this sounds very familiar! I imagine it’s very similar to having a kid or two. I remember crawling into bed all the time when I was little, when I had a bad dream or I was sick. I would always sleep with my parents. I’ve seen my sister and my cousin play musical beds with their kids and I’ve heard them complain about the lack of space to sleep and the challenges of having sex in their own bed at night anymore. So it seems in a way that this is preparing us for parenthood. We're in training.

But what happens when the baby comes? I’m going to be a first time mom and I’m going to be protective and paranoid and I’m not going to want the dog in bed with us. We're probably going to use a co-sleeper but I'm going to be breastfeeding and in the middle of the night I know that baby is going to be sleeping in bed with us from time to time out of comfort and convenience. There won't be room for the bulldozer. I'm going to need more than 12 inches of mattress. And I know myself, I am going to snap and yell at Dup and Eliott in anger. I’m going to scream something like, “get that mangy dog out of the bed!” How horrible. Like it’s not going to be hard enough for poor baby E when the baby gets here. I think it’s much better to do it now so that he doesn't connect the baby arriving with his getting the boot and subsequently try and eat the baby.

I really wish he could read this or understand english or even understand basic concepts because poor baby E is confused as hell. We decided rather haphazardly that last night would be the beginning of the re-training – project “off the bed” if you will. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason in it for him. He’s been sleeping up there with us without a hitch for over a year and he loves it. Then, all of a sudden, whammo, he’s back on the floor. What did he do to deserve this?! Nothing, poor dear.

So it went like this: Dup picks him up off the bed and places him in his own bed under the bed and asks him to lay down, which he does rather sweetly and obediently. Then Dup gets back into bed. We wait about 30 seconds, listen to him get up, shake himself off, then he paces around the bed, finds his platform and jumps back up on the bed. Then Dup picks him up of the bed .... repeat about 50 times in a row. He did eventually sleep for like three one-hour intervals. At one point he got up and peed in the middle of the kitchen, which he hasn’t done in a very, very long time. He was obviously distressed. He would just pace around the bed and pace around the room. He probably only got about 3 hours of sleep total. Same with Dup. I slept through a lot of it but I was conscious of it the whole time.

Anyway, it has to be done. I only hope that last night was the worst and it will get a little easier each night.

At least he doesn’t cry.

In happier news I’m starting to show. My stomach really “popped” this week and people have taken notice. It depends on what I’m wearing but you can definitely see my little belly sticking out. I’ve always had a little belly on me and I always thought that it would be a relief to actually be pregnant so that I could be what I looked like I was. It is a relief. I like it. I think I’m going to be one of those women that gets really big though and people are like, “WHOA! YOU’RE REALLY PREGNANT! ARE YOU PAST YOUR DUE DATE?” but I’ll really only like 5 months along or something. We’ll see. I'll be 16 weeks (4 months) on Wednesday and I've gained 10 pounds total so far but I've been feeling nauseous again this week so I'm not eating big portions. My sweet mommy was kind enough to buy me some maternity clothes on-line, which I really, really need now because I only have 2 pairs of pants I can wear and one of them are jeans and I can only wear those to work on Fridays. I can't wait for them to come in the mail!

I’ll take a photo of my belly and post it later.