Zen and the Art of Pet Parenthood

We used to half-joke that we couldn't own anything nice while our children were young.  Tate was our worst offender.  Last August we finally repainted the walls.  They were covered in hand prints and foot prints.  They had the lingering stains of spilled sodas.  And Tate liked to decorate with pens and pencils and even nail polish.  So we repainted.  It's plain, but it looks clean at least.

We've managed to go many, many months with limited damage to our walls.  Or our floors.  For the most part.

So I don't know what I was thinking when I agreed to add another member to our family.  After all we have clean walls!  We can buy nice things again!  Our family is complete!  But somehow, getting a pet felt okay.  And the opportunity just fell in our laps.  It was a fluke- a high school teacher (and colleague) of mine - someone whom I adored and who was always very good to me - bumped into my family at the grocery store the day before Easter.  We got to talking, and it turned out he breeds Labrador retrievers.  He very graciously gifted us one.

As much as I love children, I'm not so much a pet person.  I've never had a puppy. And I'm pretty sure I could have made it through life without ever having had one.  But the kids are happy. And Jason is thrilled.  And the dog is cute.  We thought of all sorts of names we liked, but I didn't want to give him any names that would lead to self-fulfilling prophecies (like Digger).  I pushed hard for Dozer.  But he's not a sleepy puppy.  So we landed on Bandit.

Here's the new family photo: