Harvey's First Week

Harvey is such a joy! Seriously, I can’t imagine a more perfect fit for Josh and I. He’s a playful and snuggly pup who has quickly found his way into our hearts.

The last time I talked about him, I shared with you some of our training experiences. Today, I want to share some of the adventures he has been on.

Deciding to not check out the water despite Josh prompting...

Josh and I live in an “outdoorsy” area. We are less than 5 minutes from Lake Michigan and incredibly close to bike paths, parks, and nature preserves. And since we want to include Harvey in as much as possible, we didn’t want to skip a beat in getting him acclimated to different things. (Plus, we want him used to the car so he doesn’t struggle when we go visit family). So this week we have been taking him with us whenever we can, even if it’s just a trip to pick up lunch.

Checking out the path

On Monday we took him to one of the beach access points nearby. Our thought was that it wouldn’t be crowded like the actual beach would, while still allowing us to expose him to the water. He came down the stairs and started walking in the sand, saw the water and decided it wasn’t for him. So we instead took him on a little walk on the path which exposed him to bikes, other walkers, and cars as they went by.

Tuesday, Harvey met his first little kid. We took him on a walk to the mail box (which is 4 buildings away in our apartment complex) and as we were heading back a little girl and her mom were just getting home. We saw he checking him out and offered to let her come meet him. He did fairly well, barked a few times and eventually hid behind me, but nonetheless he met her and made contact outside of Josh and I.

Harvey joining in on a workout

Wednesday was a big day for our little guy. He had his first vet appointment and took it like a champ. Harvey literally slept through his entire exam and the shot. Unfortunately, the shots made him sore so he lounged most of the day, but don’t think he didn’t make up for that at bed time when he turned into a little tornado.

Harvey at Lake Michigan

My favorite of his first week adventures was yesterday when we took him the beach. We figured mid-week and on a day that it wasn’t particularly warm, not many people would be there. And we were right. We got to let Harvey run on the beach and play in the sand. He even went in the water on his own!

It’s been a blast taking Harvey to try new things and watching him develop more of a personality. I can’t wait to introduce him to our families this weekend and continue exposing him to the fun stuff we can include him in on.

Apologize

Every once in a while, something warrants an apology. If you are like me, the smallest of infractions has you spewing out an “I’m sorry.” (And not in an ingenuine way). I believe it is incredibly important to say you’re sorry and acknowledge a wrong doing or misstep. And as part of my quest to be a Proverbs 31 wife, I find myself needing to say it a little more often.

Yesterday was a prime example of that. I was being a little moody and to be 100% authentic, I was kind of nitpicky and short fused with Josh before he left for work and again when he came home for lunch.

After he went back to finish off his day at work, I did a little online work and ended up on Pinterest (oops). As my “pinning” tends to go, I ended up looking at quotes and marriage articles, one which ended up reminding me of my Biblical call as a wife.

Almost instantly, vivid recall of the not so nice encounters I had with Josh came flooding into my head and I realized that my “attitude” was so not deserved. And since I am big on apologies, I really felt the need to make it right.

Because he was at work, I knew I would either have to wait for him to come home so I could apologize, or text him.

Well, texting doesn’t cut it for me (too impersonal) but I really didn’t want him to dread coming home to a cranky wife. So I opted to send him an email, (we tend to write letters to each other as sweet form of communication from time to time, I just modernized it for my need of instant delivery).

I wrote my email as if I was writing him a letter and detailed each incident I remembered being a less than loving wife and apologized.

Apologizing for me is so important because the hardest part is admitting when you messed up and owning it. No one is perfect, but ignoring a wrong doesn’t make for healthy relationships. Opening up yourself to admit a mistake makes a big difference. (And of course, follow it up with changed behavior).

Shortly after I hit send on my email, I received a reply. In typical Josh fashion, he made light of the situation by sending me a hilarious response. Because he was at work he emailed me as if he were addressing a client, totally made me laugh. Here is one of the lines from his response: “I look forward to future dealings in our marriage in perpetuity.” Isn’t he funny!

And he of course accepted my apologies.

So I guess, the moral of the story here is don’t ever be too big to admit you were wrong. Humbling yourself and asking for forgiveness is an important part of relationships. And I think that it’s important even for the small stuff.

Also, here is the article I was reading when I had my epiphany: http://www.kellycoxathome.com/75-ways-respect-husband/

Crate Training

Today’s post is much more difficult to write courtesy of Harvey.

No, he isn’t being bad, he’s actually being a little love-bug. In fact, the reason this is so hard to write is because he snuggled up next to me on the couch and despite the fact that I was already typing, proceeded to fall asleep on my wrist. So every tap of the keys moves his little head, but he is sleeping soundly through all the movement.

He's such a sweet boy!

Josh and I got super lucky with this little guy. We have only had him for a little over 3 days and he’s been such a joy.

It has been so fun watching him discover new things about his new home, and also learn how to manage his own body. For example, our apartment has hard floors and because he is so soft, when he sits down he spends most of the time trying to keep from sliding backwards.

I have also been loving his constant desire to be in our company and get cuddled. No matter what we are doing, he finds a way to wriggle his body close to ours. Whether its nap time on the couch or following us from room to room as we go about our day, he loves to be where we are.

Unfortunately, his constant need to be with us has also been the source of some training difficulty. Because he is still so young and teething, we have decided to crate train him. That way anytime we have to leave we know he isn’t getting into trouble.

As you can imagine, he isn’t fond of that.

Starting Monday, we worked on getting him acclimated. He would go in and check it out, grab whatever toy we put in there, and then quickly leave. If we locked the door, he would start to whine and then let out this horrendous round of barking. It was terrible. And according to everything you read, you aren’t supposed to let them out when they whine or bark because that teaches them to keep doing it until you cave.

So I hit the internet. I watched videos, read training blogs, and basically scoured for any information that would be the “magic bullet” to stop the barking.

Monday’s training didn’t go well, even though we only tried a few times and not for very long stints. (We live in an apartment and I am so anti being a bad neighbor with the obnoxious dog). But yesterday we had to figure something out because we are a part of a Tuesday night volleyball league.

I spent all day worrying about how we would break his barking habit and wondering how we would ever be able to leave the apartment together again. I tried multiple methods, interrupting the barking with a loud noise and giving a command, ignoring the dog while he barked, only giving attention when he was quiet, etc. Nothing was working. We tried 5 different times while Josh was at work yesterday and each time, I ended up feeling even more defeated.

Once Josh got home, we made another attempt. This time we would let him cry it out. We fed him dinner in his crate (like the trainers say to do) and left the room. Together we listened from our bedroom for 15 minutes until he finally stopped barking and crying. It was torture for me. But I couldn’t have been happier that he finally stopped. We let him out and rewarded him for being quiet.

Then came the real test, leaving for volleyball. Because I have this burning desire to not come home to hateful letters from neighbors, we decided that we would leave one phone on the counter and bring the other with us so we could make sure he wouldn’t drive our neighbors crazy for the hour we were gone. That way worst case scenario if he wouldn’t stop someone could come home and handle it.

As luck would have it, our little plan didn’t exactly work out. We listened to him bark for our entire drive and then somehow the phones got disconnected. All I could imagine was neighbors banging on our door (even though I ran into most of them during the day and told them we would be crate training and to bear with us and everyone was totally fine with it, in fact they said they hadn’t been hearing any barking. They were definitely lying to be polite).

Thankfully, when we arrived home an hour later it was silent in our apartment. Harvey had fallen asleep and didn’t even start his barking rampage again when he heard us come home. I was so happy! I know that the one time isn’t going to be the cure-all. And that he will probably have to bark it out several more times until he learns that we will come back, but it’s comforting to know he doesn’t carry on for the entire time we leave.

So hopefully, our training experience in the crate department is encouraging. I know it was helpful to hear from other people who said they had the same or similar crate experiences.  Now, hopefully our first visit to the vet goes well today… wish us luck!

Anniversary Year 1

I cannot believe it is already a week into June! 

This year feels like it has completely flown by. For those of you that don’t know, Josh and I got married on June 20^th of last year so we are getting close to our one-year anniversary.

Since typical milestone events (birthday’s and holidays) have been taking a back burner this year due to our crazy schedule and fluctuating finances, we have committed to making our anniversary special.

So after a little bit of going back and forth on the topic we have decided our anniversary will be a 2-part celebration.

Because the first anniversary is traditionally the “paper” anniversary, our plan is to book an event of some sort for later this summer or early in the fall. This may be a spa weekend, show in the city, or something else that gets us out of the apartment and trying something new and would come with a paper receipt or ticket. And we are booking it further out because we have our new puppy we don’t want to leave.

The second part will be the immediate celebration. The plan is to get dinner reservations at one of the fancier restaurants in a nearby town and treat ourselves to a wonderful dinner out where someone else will cook and clean.

What makes celebrating this anniversary special is the fact that Josh is totally into it. He is putting in serious effort to not be one of those husbands that “forgets.” He actually is the one who got the planning started, which is amazing since he is not the planner in our relationship.

I am so looking forward to celebrating our first anniversary and cannot wait to get started on year number 2!

Welcome Harvey!

So I have been waiting 2 weeks to share some really exciting news! Josh and I adopted a puppy! He is a black lab mix named, Harvey, and he has already completely won us over.

Right after his first bath at home

I don’t know if any of you have ever adopted a pet from the shelter before (and it had been a few years since my family adopted our family dog) but I had no idea how in depth the process was. Each shelter we looked at had an application that needed to be filled out which is pretty standard, while some of the shelters included background checks, requested references, and grilled you about your knowledge of canine diseases. Then some would do home visits, and visits with the actual dog, before making their decisions.

It was quite the experience looking for a furry family member, and to be honest, it felt like the process would take forever. If we found a puppy we liked, I was convinced it would be over a year old by the time the process was completed.

And then we stumbled upon the shelter we ended up adopting from. The owner of the shelter was awesome! She reviewed our application and approved us within 2 days. And she kept up with our emails and answered all of our questions. She even sent pictures and videos of the dogs we were looking at. (Which was especially helpful since her shelter was located in Tennessee).

He's already at home on the couch, munching on toys

Which is where we saw our boy Harvey. He was in one of the videos climbing on his siblings and the picture online was just too cute. Before we knew it, Josh and I were signing the contract and scheduling the pick-up of our pup. (The shelter works with a puppy transport that makes bi-monthly trips up to the Mid-West).

Then came the waiting game. Like I said, they only do transports bi-monthly. Josh and I spent plenty our waiting in and out of pet stores picking out toys, food, and dishes. And finally this past Saturday arrived and we were able to get Harvey.

He was tired from the journey but took to us really quickly and has already made himself at home. Harvey is such a sweet little guy and we are so happy to have his as a part of our family.

Loving his new bed and window view

If you are looking to add some fur to your family, I highly recommend adopting from a shelter. Josh and I went through Mercer Animal Rescue, but there are SO many other wonderful shelters who are taking care of pups who would make excellent additions to any family.

**Also, I wanted to add a disclaimer. Now that we have a puppy, you can expect to see more puppy related posts and adorable candid pics of our little guy.

Renting...

For the last year, Josh and I have been renters. If you’re up to speed on my blog you know that in the last year we have been in three different apartments, each bringing forth their own pros and cons.

When I was younger, I never wanted to rent. I didn’t see why on Earth anyone would want to throw money into something that wouldn’t amount to anything in the future. However, with our lifestyle and financial situation, owning a home was not something we were able to do right off the bat. And oddly enough, I am really happy about that.

Renting different apartments has taught us a lot about what we will look for and avoid in our future home.

For example, in our second apartment the bathroom set up made no sense. You could not easily open the cabinet because the door was in the way. And the storage options weren’t prime for taking advantage of the space. The main storage closet turned out to be a mountain of stuff we hid behind the closed door because it was too hard to organize things and make them fit well. (Don’t even get me started on the tiny kitchen).

But in our current apartment, (and my favorite thus far), we have ample storage and the kitchen is set up to have a wonderful flow. We actually can have our utensils and pans put away so that when prepping food, it all makes sense.

It has also been interesting to live under the rules of the landlord. Especially when it comes to decorating! Every apartment has a “no nails” policy which forces us to use those Command Hooks. In my experience those end up doing more damage than a tiny nail hole would have. (We have taken off our fair share of paint and even drywall because of them).

Renting has been an adventure. And one that I am actually glad to have been on. I love knowing that we have gotten to experience different layouts and set ups so in the future, Josh and I will be able to make wise decisions about what we want our house to be like.

And I because I am really proud of what we have accomplished since our move 2 weeks ago, here are some pics of our new place!

It's official!

Yesterday was another milestone for Josh! The two of us ventured back to Madison for the day so that he could be sworn in as an attorney in the state of Wisconsin.

It was a really cool experience, even for me who just had to sit and watch.

We were in the Capitol Building surrounded by history, beautiful architecture, and an extreme sense of professionalism. The ceremony was held in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, which was awesome. Three giant paintings hung on the walls, the marble/stone is gorgeous, and most of the furniture is antique. Not to mention the 7 empty seats and bench in the front of the room that have an incredible presence of their own.

Having never been in an actual court room with a judge present, this experience was really cool. And getting to be present for such an important moment in Josh’s career was awesome.

We got to hear from a few of the various judges, other lawyers as they moved to have their child admitted, and some other important people in the law community. And then the prospective lawyers were asked to stand and recite the oath. (Which I am thankful we got to move to take pictures of).

It was a quick ceremony but one I was thrilled to witness. And then Josh got to go and sign the “Book of Lawyers” which has been signed since the 1800’s! It was a truly cool day!

So it is now 100% official! Josh is an attorney in the state of Wisconsin. And I strongly encourage that if you are ever given the opportunity to witness an event like this, take it! It is such a great experience.