Showing posts with label Sophie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sophie. Show all posts

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Fingers are The Only Way to Paint

Helloooo!!! The day before yesterday we went to the crayola factory, which was really awesome. At the end of our day we stopped in the gift shop and got (guess what?) fingerpaint! And fingerpaint paper!
So yesterday me and Owen spent like an hour making masterpeices together, and they're all on display in his room with our signatures in the corner! There's been this empty wall above his bed begging us to do something with it since we redecorated in there, but now it's covered in colorful splotches, and mountain ranges, and fruits and candies and fish and all sorts of other things! It's really pretty.
The actual painting, though, was the best part. I put on some of dad's old shirts as smocks (just like we used to do!) And I painted a sunny field. Owen watched me while I was painting. Eventually he decided he wanted to paint too, and as I was finishing up a picture of a flower, he got another one of dad's old shirts and wore it like a dress. No pants, no shirt, just smock. He rolled it up to look like a toga. :)
What we did was we would both decide on a painting, then work out who would paint which bits. It worked out pretty well. Our first painting was really little-kiddish; it was a tree, a sun, a flower, some grass, and a crudely painted bird. It was still really fun, though. As we painted, we got better and more creative. We put handprints all over the page and signed our names in big letters. We painted an ocean with colorful fish in it. One is a painting of candy, and another (which I really like) is a bunch of fruit like bananas, cherries, pears, grapes and raspberries. (I did the grapes and raspberries, which I'm really proud of. I also did blueberries, watermelon, a strawberry, a pear, and a tomato. And some of the cherries. Owen did a banana and three cherries.) There's one we're both really proud of, which is a picture of the sun setting behind some mountains, with a river running down from one of the peaks. There's another picture of a redwood forest (you can tell they're redwoods from the color) and there's two pictures of random splotches, which are actually really pretty. So that was fun.
   Also, in case you didn't notice; it snowed. A LOT. We've got like fourteen inches out here. Sophie is so adorable, 'cause it almost comes up to her shoulders! She'll run around outside, and come in positively covered in snow! We had to shovel the driveway out so dad could go to work, which wasn't fun, but it was actually easier than we thought it would be; the snow was really powdery. The hard part was getting the car open, 'cause the doors all froze! But it all worked, because mom is driving dad to work right now. In fact, they left when I started this page...
   Anyway. Back on the topic of drawings, I've decided to start a visual dream journal. See, the other day I had a dream about these creatures, that looked like faceless people with black markings on their heads just standing outside the house, watching us through the windows. They were really creepy, so like anyone would do I decided to draw one, complete with a description of the creature and little notes pointing out the details. When I finished, I realized it reminded me of a textbook. No, more like that field guide from spiderwick, or maybe John Smith's Journal of Impossible Things. (Doctor Who reference; You don't have to understand it.) So I thought to myself, what if there was a bunch of these hanging on my wall? Just a whole bunch of drawings of creatures and things from my dreams, with notes and descriptions all around them. That would look so awesome. And that's how the visual dream journal got started. I still only have the one drawing, but it's only been one day, so we'll see how it turns out.
    Before I go, I have one more thing to say; I think I'm immune to horror now. Like, maybe not immune, but more tolerant of it. My reasoning? I recently got through all three Weeping Angels episodes and the Vashta Nerada episodes of doctor who, (I know there's four weeping angels episodes, but netflix doesn't have the seventh season on instant.) And yesterday Torchwood went all slasher film on me, and I didn't freak out even a little. So there.
   Of course, last night I did kind of freak out about the drawing on my wall. The thought process;

In Doctor Who, that which holds the image of an angel is itself an angel. What if this thing becomes real?

Okay, what would happen if it was real?

It has no face, so it would probably want my face.

QUICK!!! COVER UP MY FACE!! (pulled my hair in front of my face)

After that I spent a few minutes imtermittently scratching itches and pulling my hair back in front of my face, trying not to move my lips around too much because I'd be flaunting them. It's the kind of thing that's really scary when it's happening, but just hilarious when you look back on it.

Well... Ciao for now!

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

A Post!

And, here it is; the inevitable post after the long dry spell. So... who wants a recap?

Toothpaste
Remember I told you I was going to stop using toothpaste? Well, I did , and I have been for about a month now, and none of my teeth have fallen out! Yay! Seriously though, my teeth are fine. There is literally no change. One less chemical entering my body.

Doctor Who
I started watching Doctor Who again. Something you need to know, though, is that the Doctor and I have kind of an interesting history.
   See, a long time ago, (maybe about three or four years) I noticed my dad watching Doctor Who. So I decided hey, that show looks cool, I'll try it out. It terrified me.
   A few years later I tried watching again. I pushed past the terror each episode inevitably brought, because besides that it was an awesome show. Until I tried to watch "Blink", the first weeping angels episode. That scared me off for one or two more years.
   Last month, (or maybe early in this month) I decided to try watching again, for the sake of my friend KC, (Not K; KC.) who watches the show. I don't know why, but it just didn't seem that scary anymore. I loved it, and watched all six seasons (There's a seventh, but it's not on netflix) Including all three weeping angels episodes, the episodes with shadows that eat you, (Vashta Nerada) And the gas-masked kids episodes. These, in my opinion, are the scariest sagas in the whole show. So that's one score for... I don't know who one, but I think it's awesome. But now I have to wait for the seventh season...

Sophie
Did I say that Sophie is sleeping in my bed now? Well she is. And whereas she started out waking me up around six in the morning, she has now drifted to the decent hour of seven or seven thirty in the morning. Just thought I'd share that.

Fish
We have fish, in case you didn't know. Bereznoff and Calcifer, who live in my room, and Alex and Dave, who used to live in Owen's room but now live downstairs. See, it used to be that A and D lived in a big aquarium in Owen's room, and B and C lived in a little one in my room. But mom found a giant, 30-35 gallon aquarium in the basement, so we put that downstairs and moved A and D there, and we put their old (medium) aquarium in my room and now B and C are living in there. So. There you go.

Spinning
I had a lesson in spinning thread! See, my cousin Nate's other grandma, Nelda, knows how to spin thread, so she taught me how! I'm going to go back for another lesson sometime. I'm wearing my first thread on my wrist.

Sooo.... there you go. My life in a nutshell.

Friday, December 14, 2012

6:30

Okay. Last night Sophie slept in my bed with me. So can you guess why I woke up at 6:30 in the morning?
   Yeah.
I woke up on my own around 6:15, and saw it was still pretty dark outside. So I tried to get back to sleep, but Sophie kept running around on top of the bed and eating my face and other such things, so I got up, picked her up out of the bed, and went downstairs and out to the backyard so she could pee. While she was going, I looked at the stars to pass the time. Yeah; the stars.
   She had a good piddle, and I took her back through the house and up to my room, where we both got under the covers and I shut my eyes and tried to go to sleep. And then she started whining and running around. After a while of her acting like this, I finally gave up and looked at the clock; it said 7:30, but I still haven't set mine after daylight savings time. (Spring forward, fall back; my clock's an hour fast.) So it was 6:30. Fine; it wasn't that ridiculously early. So I picked up Sophie and went back downstairs, where I put Sophie down and attempted to turn on the TV to pass the time until the others woke up. And as she nipped at my ankles while I groped for the cord, I realized that I couldn't watch TV; I had to watch her, to prevent such things as the peeing on floors and the eating of electrical cords. So basically I spent about two hours (mom & Owen woke up around 8) walking around the house trying to keep a bored puppy out of trouble. I woke up early enough to see the sunrise but I didn't even get to sneak a peek.

(Okay, to be fair she did nap with me through a whole episode of "Monk", and a good part of "Queen of the Sun". But still.)

So, in other news, (although not so much a non-sequitur) I have some pictures of Sophie!

Here she is with dad, on her first day;














I love this one; not exactly an accurate depiction, but so cute!














Here she is being held by Owen and petted by me. She's so calm when she's being held.















Here she is being held by me. (Notice how almost all these pictures are of her being held;
that's 'cause she has almost no chance of standing still otherwise!)














This is a picture of her lying down being all sweet; you don't see much of this.














Here's a picture of her chewing a stick while sitting on me.
Can you see where she got the nickname "Crocodile"?














Here's her and Max sharing a stick; he's really good with her, so stuff like this happens
more often than you might think. (Like, as I type this, for instance.)














Here she is chewing on my hand just this morning.














And the same.














And here she is napping today. :-)














Sooo... yeah. As you can see, we really love our puppy! :-)

Thursday, December 13, 2012

SOPHIE!!!!!!

So, my computer hasn't been working right for a while. No internet, no E-mail. It was just a nuisance for a while until something AWESOME happened and there was no way to write about it on my blog. But I just realized; I can use my mom's computer! So; here we go.

WE GOT A PUPPY!
Yup! Her name is Sophie, and she is sooooo adorable! 
See, about a week ago, mom found this dog she liked on petfinder. His name was Scout, and she thought he was adorable, but I didn't think he was all that cute. So mom insisted we go to the shelter so I could meet him in person.
   See, we had been thinking about getting another dog for a while. A companion for Max, to get him some exercise and maybe calm him down when we left the house. Mom wanted an older dog; she said that she wanted someone easy to manage, who would be calm enough to have a good effect on Max.
   We got there, and Scout was nowhere to be found. Apparently, he hadn't even arrived at the shelter yet. There were, however, two adorable honey-colored puppies in a crate in the side room. We played with them for two seconds before I told mom that, of course, we had to adopt one. No, she said, we were going to get an older dog. That was when one of the volunteers came in and took one of the puppies away. "Is she getting adopted?" Mom asked. Yes, she was. Without her sister.
   I looked at mom with what I hoped were puppy-dog eyes. "Come on," I said, "We have to get her now!"
   Mom sighed and started explaining again why we couldn't get a puppy. And I started listing the reasons we should.
   First of all, I told her, puppies are a lot of work, but the training you do with puppies sticks. It works that way with people, too.
  Second, mom had been worried that we would get a dog who wasn't as cute as Max, and Max would end up being the favorite, with the second dog lonely. "But the reason why we love Max so much," I said, "Is probably because we got him as a puppy. We would bond with her if we got her now!"
   And the final, most important reason; "She's sad! She would be happy if we brought her home!"
Mom sighed. Again. "How about you hold the puppy while I think about it." She said. She walked out of the room, and I eagerly took the puppy (who I was calling "butterball) out of her crate. There was Christmas music playing on the radio, and I found myself rocking her gently back and forth while I sang along. She would occasionally interject to lick my face.
   I don't remember what exactly led up to the decision itself, but mom eventually caved and decided to adopt her! Not foster; adopt! Right then and there! Of course, now there was a ton of paperwork to do.
   As I held Sophie while mom filled out the paperwork, a group of kids who must have been on a school field trip or something filed in. I was told (by someone) that they wanted to see a puppy. But we had just taken the last puppy. No big deal, though; it was show and tell time!
   I walked over to the kids and introduced her to them. Everyone had a blast petting her and holding her and cooing over her while I found myself talking like I worked there;
"We don't know how old she is, but we're thinking ten weeks." "Not sure, but we're thinking Shar-Pei/ Lab." "Yeah, her sister just got adopted about fifteen minutes ago!"
When that was over, two girls who weren't with the group came in and started cooing over her too. They stayed the entire time we were filling out the paperwork, one girl holding her and taking pictures to send to her mom and say, "this is what I want for Christmas!"
In the time we were there, we learned that she had multiple siblings, and loved dogs, but wasn't allowed to have one. She was obviously persistent though; somehow I think she'll keep taking pictures of puppies until her parents relent.
   Eventually, the paperwork was done. We took her home and Owen marveled over the new puppy. She played well with Max, had a good pee outside; but we still had to name her.
I had come up with "Sophie" and "Noel" at the shelter. Mom and Owen liked "Rosie".
   I really loved the name Sophie though, so I asked mom, and she said that if Owen was okay with it, that could be her name. And so, we ended up with a puppy named Sophie.

So it turns out that that calm, sweet puppy we met at the shelter is actually not so much calm. Sweet, yeah, but not calm. I fell in love with her from the moment I met her, so I call her things like "Honeybooboo", "Honeybear", 'Honeybun" and a lot of other pet names with the word "Honey" in them. But the names she earned from the rest of the family?;
"Crocodile"
"Psycho puppy"
"Crazy puppy"
"Nippy puppy"
"Psycho"
Does that paint a clear picture?
She is such a lab. She does the "play snarl" that I've only seen labs do, when she's playing with Max and starts growling and snorting like crazy, and you look over to make sure they're okay, and both their tails are still wagging. She is also very chewy; I think she's in the teething stage, because she will chew on anything; including people.
   Not to say she actually bites, but she's not exactly too gentle, either. For the most part, though, it doesn't hurt, and I let her chew on my hand. It's funny; I was terrified of Max chewing me when he was that age, but now you could call me a human chew toy! Unfortunately, though, her favorite chew toy isn't hands; It's feet. And shoes, especially if someone's wearing them. Mom's moccasins are already slowly but surely being pulled apart.
   For all that she's a little psycho puppy, (even I call her that sometimes!) She's also very sweet. She's already slept in my bed with me twice, and although both times I was woken up around seven or six in the morning, she hasn't woken up once for purposes other than to lick my face, then fall back asleep.
   All and all, she is just a wonderful puppy. I am absolutely in love with her, and can't wait to introduce her to everyone! And sorry to everyone I haven't E-mailed with this big news; once again, my E-mail is down for the count. I'd keep writing, but there's yard work to be done. I wonder how that'll work out with a puppy around...

Ciao!

P.S;
I totally forgot! Yesterday was my blog's fifth birthday! Yaaay!