Update! dogs: good news/bad news; boy: fantastic

Thanks for your support over the dog crisis.  It has been unimaginably awful here this past week.

The good news is that Ozzie is having a strong post-op recovery.  We do not know her prognosis, but at least she is recovering her strength and spirit quickly.  We will keep her as happy and healthy as we can for as long as she has.  We have a consult with an oncologist next week, but my feeling is that extraordinary life-extending measures are undesireable if they come at the expense of quality of life, so I don't know what options will be available to us. 

Sophie, too, is doing well post-op-- they found she had a twisted stomach and a necrotic spleen.  While they could not guarantee that there was not some underlying disease process that was driving it, right now it does not appear to be cancer.  She is still in the hospital but is alert and eating and will probably come home tomorrow or Saturday.

Milo is stumping around as irritatingly as ever with his cast--tick tick tick, thump; tick tick tick, thump; tick tick tick, thump-- all day, all night.  He seems to be unabatedly himself despite the broken toe. 

And now to what you really care about: the boy.  The boy is just pure delight (minus the toenails!)  While I am committed to keeping him on 100% breast milk until six months, I am afraid he might have other plans-- he launches himself head-first off our laps toward whatever food item we happen to be ingesting, and grabs our fingers to stuff them into his mouth for a taste-- pesto, mashed potatoes, butter, ricotta, pickles, mangoes.  I dare say he eats the best of all of us these days.

We are still sleeping with him in bed, though he peaceful infant slumber has given way to this new phase of constant motion, and it's a little like sleeping with a tazmanian devil, or maybe a rabid wombat.  The kicking, thrashing, head-butting and snoring.  Still, I am not ready for the battle of putting him in his crib full time.  He slept there for a 25-minute nap last evening and we felt victorious.

As with sleep, he is all movement when awake-- arching out of his swing, precariously twisting in his bouncy seat so as to stop my heart as I dash to rescue him from the force of gravity, yet again.  Bouncing, standing, kicking...and biting.  Oh yes, we have moved onto a new phase of nursing misery... as he is constantly watching what is going on around him, and sometimes his attention is at odds with his appetite.  He twists his head to watch a cat walk by, the nipple slips, and he in turn, clamps onto it with his gummy vice-grip so as not to lose it.  I have been closing his nostrils when he does this to make him release, but omg, the OUCH!  Not to mention the hair-pulling, glasses-grabbing and face-mauling he does every time we pick him up-- all lovingly, of course.  Wow.

But I have to say that this new interactive, giggling, flirty boy is so much fun.  I can't get enough of his smiles and blooming curiosity.