Monday evening was our first night without a dog since '09.' Tuesday morning I found my myself without Tink. Since then, I've experienced many "firsts." Tuesday evening, for example, Brian and I waited for Jeff to come home from work out on the lawn. Brian always liked to ring the door bell and hear the reaction from the dogs. That evening he rang the door bell expecting Tink to bark from inside the house, but Tink wasn't home.
Tuesday was also a day in which I found myself not having to take measures to minimize the possibility of having Tink wake Brian during his nap. I didn't have to leave the TV on in order to have the TV drown Tink's environmental noise. I didn't have to lead her from the bedroom in to the living room, or close the sliding door to the hallway. I didn't have to semi-close the blinds on the large windows so that she wouldn't bark at the activity she spotted in front of our house.
Tonight, even Jeff mentioned that we don't have anyone to which to give our leftover dinner meat to anymore.
Brian and I went to get groceries shortly after his session ended today. At the grocery store I didn't need to buy a bag of treats for Tink. Because we had been out of town for a while, I suspected that Brian might fall asleep on the way home and he did, shortly before we reached our house.
Our living room floor is a sheet of plastic. It bothered me very much that I would pull my young half-asleep child out of the car and walk in to the house where Tink greeted us with her "tap-dancing." Tap-tap-tap-tap... Her feet would clap the floor and because she followed us, we'd here it until we reached the carpeted bedroom. I used to think that the baby, or my now toddler, might continue to sleep, which would allow me to have a little break, if Tink would stop "tap-dancing" every time that a sleepy Brian and I walked in to the house.
And so it was today that we walked in to the house, Brian in my arms with his head resting on my shoulder, and it was completely quite on the other side of the door. I paused for just a moment to take in the silence. Tink wasn't there to happily greet us and she was not tap-dancing, she wasn't making any noise, something that I had complained about for years.
Needless to say that I wanted to see Tink on the other side of the door, I wanted to see her prancing happily with a soft toy or slipper in her mouth. I regret that I never stopped to think that she was dancing happily because she was excited to see us again, to understand that it was a good thing, something that should have been appreciated. Instead, I perceived it as noise that was disturbing my son and making things more difficult for me. I'm very sorry for that, Tink.
Brian UPDATE:
Brian has continued to surprise us daily with new phrases, thoughts and formed sentences. Jeff said that this evening, while he was eating cake, Brian asked him, "Daddy, can I have cake please?"
In the morning, I was showing Brian photos of our dogs and showed him how to find the photos on the mobile phone. He wanted to keep looking at Pip's picture. Pip was his favorite dog. While he was on break from session, he was holding the phone in his hand and looking at Pip's photo. Lydia called him back to work for the third hour and he climbed down from where he was seated on my lap, took the phone with him to the pet gate and proudly showed Lydia Pip's photo. He turned the screen to show her the photo and raised it toward her and said, "Pi."
"Are you showing Lydia a picture of your dog, Pip?'
"Es brown," Brian added.
While we were out of town running errands in the afternoon, we passed the street that leads to the center. I was nearing the Starbucks where I was going to buy him a drink when he said, "Nina." "Nina," he repeated a few times. I didn't know what he was talking about until it occurred to me that he might be referring to his teacher Nina. He hadn't been able to say "Nina," he called her "Nana." I suspect that he will be able to say Nina properly now, too.
It's also become routine to sing songs with Brian when he goes to bed so tonight I asked him to pick a song to sing. There are a total of five songs that we sing together. They are Pat-a-cake, Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, Old McDonald, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round.
"E," he said to me.
"E?"
"E," he repeated. I had no idea what he was talking about. "E," he gestured. I named a few of our songs, but, no, those were not it.
"P," he said.
"I'm sorry, Brian. I don't know what you're talking about. He was growing more frustrated. he grabbed my hand and positioned it in a particular way to get his message across but I didn't understand him.
"E," he said trying to help me understand by making a gesture with my hand. He began kicking me for which he was reprimanded and then we laid there in silence momentarily. I couldn't identify what he was thinking about. And then I had an idea.
"A, b, c, d, e..." Yes, that was the one he wanted. We sang it a couple of times for the first time this evening. Jeff said that he had been singing the song with him, but I had never done it before.
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