Happy Birthday Ashlyn!!!

I cannot believe that my baby is one today! It makes me so sad how fast she is growing up. I wish I could freeze time and keep her little forever. She is such a sweet girl. We are amazed everyday that we are so blessed to have this little angel in our home. Ashlyn is pretty small for her age, and she started walking around ten months, so everywhere we go everyone is so amazed that this tiny little thing is walking around. When it comes to speaking she has the basics down; mama, dada, baba, doggie, nana. Although every once in a while she will jibber a whole mouth full of nothing. She loves to point at things, as soon as she wakes up in the morning she is pointing at various things in her room and wondering what they are. I think I am so emotional because Doug says that she is our last baby. (we will have to see about that nudge-nudge-wink-wink) I love her so much and I look forward to seeing her learn about her world around her in the next year.

She wouldn't even touch her cake! Which is quite amazing because this little girl LOVES to eat.

Kids are so funny

I just thought I would post this funny picture really quick. I had to hurry out the door to do some quick visiting teaching yesterday. Both Doug and Jaxon were sleeping so I just took Ashlyn with me. When I got back this is what I found on the family room floor.

Jaxon woke up, and instead of waking up his dad, he made his "body" out of poker chips on floor. He was laughing because he said he had a jelly bean body. IJust incase you were wondering there are not two sets of arms, the top set is his ears (and yes his face is in the middle.)

The Puppies are here!

I knew Maya was getting close to having her puppies, I figured we had a few days left before she would go into labor. I was sooo wrong! This morning I woke up and went out to check on Maya (she usually sleeps inside with us but since she has to pee every hour lately she has been outside) and I notice that she is carrying something in her mouth. I realize that it is a puppy and I am mortified because it is obviously not alive. I rushed inside to get Doug up to help me then I went back out to see if I could find the rest of the puppies. I looked around and found one other puppy in her igloo doghouse, which she very rarely goes in. I grab the puppy and try my best to save it, it looked like she had the puppy in the dirt, it was covered in mud.

Side note- we had built Maya a whelping box a few weeks ago so she would have somewhere to give birth in, however for some reason the ground seemed much more appealing. We also thought that we were quite prepared for this whole procedure, it turns out if everything went by the book we were prepared, if she had the puppies in the middle of the night we weren't.

Back to the story, so at this point we are both pretty scared. We don't know why the first puppy is not alive and why the other puppy is all alone, of course 'in the moment' you think of the worst case scenario i.e. she killed the puppy, she has abandoned her puppies, she ate the puppies. All these terrible things that she would never do. So after figuring we need to get her to the vet and figure out what is really happening, we call grandma Laura to meet us down to take the kids.

Long story, kinda short - she ended up having NINE puppies, two at home and seven at the clinic. Five boys and four girls. Unfortunately, we lost three of the boys. The vet said it is common to lose a third of the puppies in a big litter. One was still born and the other was barely breathing at all. We still don't know what the story was with the one that didn't make it at home, but he was pretty small so he was probably also stillborn; and Maya was probably trying to get him to breathe which is why she wasn't with the other puppy this morning.

It was a highly emotional day! We are just glad that Maya is doing good and the six puppies we have are nursing and doing well. Maya has turned into such a good mom already, she won't the puppies for a minute. I know it is going to be hard to sell them when the time comes because I am already attached to the little girl we saved this morning.