Starting Him Early, Silly Dogs, and First Playdate

These are just a few pictures from over the weekend. We stayed around the house mostly but Kevin's parents did come over to babysit on Saturday for a few hours (thanks, J&S) so that we could go out to lunch and to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. 

First, Kevin was sweeping dog hair, and Lewis tried to 'help' by snatching the dustpan when Kevin put it down. One day, we'll have to use this interest in the dustpan to our advantage and put him to work on the ongoing and neverending Dog Hair Eradication Project.

  So helpful. :)

And here, Kevin captured Lewis' new CHEESE face and motion. He puts his whole body into it, while walking, eating, bathing, getting his diaper changed, etc. He just stops mid-action and throws his head back and grins and chuckles to himself. He's a nut.

And a few pictures of the dogs, being their weird selves. We have rearranged the furniture so that the front windows are semi-barricaded in order to keep the dogs away from the front windows some. Reason #2 is to provide a little buffered area out of Lewis' reach to keep the laptop, a bowl of cereal, cups of coffee, etc. 

The dogs, of course, have found ways to still look out to see/bark at the mailman, other dogs walking by, etc. Here are just a few of their latest smooth moves.

 The Half On/Half Off

Hattie usually sneaks down into that little piece of floor space, but Peter is apparently too big to go all the way. :)

This is Peter's 'usual' spot, atop the chair cushions. He'll pull the blinds back with his snout and then Hattie fills in below in that spot I mentioned above (as noted by the obscene amount of black dog hair on the side of the chair--oops, we live in filth). :)

Speaking of Queen Hattie...

Atop her throne (on top of the back of the couch)

She posed/looked straight on at the camera! She's never done that before, my sweet girl. Usually she turns to the side when I try to take a picture of her. Emily, you'll appreciate this: She had a gnarly, thick whisker that was sticking off her muzzle (literally) 6 inches the other day, so I had to attend to that. I thought about plucking it, but I decided to just trim it in half so that it was the same length as the rest of her beard (in case it served a purpose i.e. a navigational tool...don't cat whiskers do that? Or am I thinking of a rabbit?).

I guess we had our first official playdate last week! My friend Rachel came over with her son Abram, and I forgot to take any pictures until the very end and didn't get any of them together. However, here is Abram relaxing on his mom at the end of a fun couple of hours:

Being a kid is exhausting. :)

They played very well together (and it was great catching up with Rachel), and we look forward to the next time!

Oops, and here is a video from the playground early last week of Lewis' much-improved walking skills. He'll be driving before we know it. :)