D'Garebear came home at nine weeks of age. He's been home for nearly two months now, which explains the lack of blogging on my part.

It's an interesting experience. D'Garebear was due on October 27th, so he's not quite a month old. And yet he's been home for six weekish. We're told to treat him as if he was born on his due date, so to expect him to act as a newborn although he is nearly four months old. That's all well and good, but I'm ready for a four month old sleeper. This extended new born thing is for the birds. Young birds at that.

Molly, our Golden Retriever, has adjusted to the change in the family quite well. Ever the team player, she too had surgery, just last week. As D'Garebear, Father Figure and I managed to max out our family deductible for the year, she kindly went ahead and added vet bills to the mix. Goldens are especially prone to cancer, so we had a mass removed from her. She's recovering well, perhaps regretting her desire for more attention from us.

I hadn't even lacked for thing for my kids to fight over. They are nothing if not creative when it comes to this. Cinco and X-Man fight over who gets to look at D'Garebear. Baby and Baba fight over who gets to hold D'Garebear. And Mac simply is trying to stay out of the way.

Baba stated very clearly, before D'Garebear arrived, that she was uninterested in holding him, or having much to do with him. Her indifference stemmed mostly, I assumed at the time, from her irritation at her parents for creating him in the first place. I told her that was fine, Baby could hold him and she could clear the house while I ran other kids to various activities. Basically the routine we had before. She gladly agreed, we share the same personality trait that clutter causes anxiety. Cleaning is therapeutic.  If I was the kind of person who likes to make others eat their words, I'd enjoy pointing out that I do all the cleaning these days as Baba lays on the couch with D'Garebear. If I leave him in his swing, I'm liable to reenter the room to a missing baby, up sleeping on Baba as she does homework. Baby, who was excited for D'Garebear's arrival is slightly irked by this change in plans. I'm mostly amused, but somehow it seems to take both of them to care for D'Garebear. And an amazing amount of cleaning is not getting done.