We are back from Kayla’s 4 month check-up and everything is great.  She hasn’t grown as much as she did before her last appointment ,which is good because she was a monster child in the 90th percentile for length.  Now she weighs 13.3 pounds (50th percentile), her head is 16¼ inches (55th percentile) and 24¾ inches (75th percentile).  She’s also hitting all the normal milestones and one or two that are a bit advanced for her age.

Marshall’s coworker, who has a baby about a month older than Kayla just recently learned to sit-up and so of course Marshall had to see if Kayla could do it too.  I don’t think it counts if the parents are the one that position the baby so they can sit up. Doesn’t seem like she “learned” to sit up that way, does it?  She stays up for a while using her arms for support but usually still wobbling a bit back and forth.  Either way it sure was cuuuute!

On another note Odin is  adapting well to the Pepper household.   If he could, he would totally be a lap dog.  He is still always getting in our face just wanting to be loved.  In the morning when he hears us awake but we haven’t taken him out of his crate yet, he starts to whine and it sounds so much like Kayla cooing it’s crazy.   The first time I heard it was a few days ago and I had Kayla in my arms and her mouth wasn’t moveing, so I was confused on where is was coming from.  It was about 6am so when I first thought it might be our neighbors kids outside playing, which I thought that was crazy since the sun was barely up.  I looked outside and nobody was there so I concluded it must be Marshall’s computer and went back to sleep.  Marshall heard it yesterday morning and thought Kayla and I had woken up so he came down to see us and I just met with a sleeping daughter and wife.  He finally noticed it was coming from Odin.  Crazy puppy.

We picked Odin up yesterday!  When we went to go pick him up he had wiggled loose of his collar and since I had gone out Tuesday to buy some essentials like a new collar and bowl (which was at home) we left without searching their backyard for his old one. Marshall tied the leash around his neck and out the door we went.  Right when we got outside Odin tugged on the leash and started running.  The knot gave loose and he was off!  We had the dog for 5 seconds and we already lost him!  We watched as he ran to the end of the cul-de-sac thinking he couldn’t go far when Marshall noticed the large drainage area that went between houses and out into a wooded area.  Marshall ran in after him with the car keys leaving Kayla and I in the cold stranded for a while until he came back and gave us the keys.  He still hadn’t found him because there was a fork in the road so while he went back to search I took Kayla and drove down the rest of the neighborhood.  I found him at the very end peeing on a mailbox.  He came right to me and I put him in the back of the truck with ease.  Now I just needed to find my wayward husband!

Picking him up early gave us enough time to give him a bath which he seriously needed, considering he is outside all day and in a crate each night. He had never been to a vet so he wasn’t neutered either.  Now we have a 12-18 month old black lab mix, whom we renamed Odin and it seems his goal in life is just to be just be petted all day long.  He barely lay down at all today because he was so hyper!  All day long he just kept trying to get as close to us as possible.  He’d lay his head in our laps giving us sad eyes because he just wanted to be with us and loved.  Sure sounds sweet doesn’t it?  It is sweet until you have to deal with it while you are trying to get something done.  He’s just so forceful about being loved we have to push him away so he learns boundaries.  We are keeping him away from Kayla until we know for sure how he will be with her.  Although we have noticed she finds the dogs funny.  While they are roaming around us as I hold her, when I try to get the dogs into some semblance of order she starts to laugh.  It’s happened before but I didn’t realize what exactly she was laughing at.   She laughed when we picked him up and again tonight.  She is definitely our daughter.

About a week ago while Marshall was out of town, our neighbor’s new dog learned he could slip through a gap in our back fence.  We’d notice he had slipped over when Juno would end up going crazy.  He’d end up barking at us from a safe distance then would wiggle his way back into his own yard.  Because of all this commotion, we noticed that they had our other neighbor’s dog Bentley as well.  We wondered about how he came to be with them but we closed the gap somewhat by driving rebar into the ground in front of the gap and didn’t think much on it again.

Apparently that didn’t work as well as we’d hope.   Few days had passed and their dog once again was in our yard only this time he couldn’t seem to wiggle back over.  With some persuasion by having Juno around and giving her some water we found out her name was Jordan and Marshall walked her back to her house.   (More like she dragged Marshall.)  When he dropped her off he asked Kayla (Our neighbor’s name is Kayla, which we thought was fun.) about Bentley and found out that Matt and his family were moving and since they never really wanted him in the first place they gave him to them to try and find a more permanent home.  Marshall and I talked about it and we decided to take him in.  We knew he was a good dog since he’d gotten into our backyard before as well and we hated the fact both families just stuck him outside all day in rain or shine.  So, we have another member of the Pepper family.