Ruby Rubinowski

I feel like I never talk about Ruby these days. 

Well, she's doing fine.  Still a huge pain in the butt, and she still sneaks under the covers and lays super flat so that when Greg comes to bed he won't see her and make her get out of the bed.

Her breath is wretched, but she's so lovable, it almost makes up for the horrible breath.

She loves to eat, and when you are holding something edible she looks up at you like, "I am so hungry.  I haven't eaten in days.  May I have a small crumb from your tasty treat?"  and I don't fall for it anymore (much), but man, she totally has my sister wrapped around her finger.

Leah LOVES Ruby, and I catch her kissing her and putting blankets on her and pretending to feed her something from her play-kitchen.  She's got this huge eyesore tent that she keeps in the living room, and she loves getting in there with Ruby.  It's so sweet that they are such good friends.

I love my little Ruby Rubinowitz! 

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A Crappy Morning and an Elton John Song

Yesterday was a rough morning.  We had a time, that's for sure.

Our normal morning routine begins with me taking a shower before Leah wakes up.  Then when I'm getting dressed I usually hear her wake.  She helps me make my bed and then we get her dressed before heading to the family room, where she sits and eats her breakfast (pancakes) and watches Barney.  In the 23 minutes that Barney is on, I make coffee, make my breakfast, do my hair, put on my makeup, pack my briefcase and feed the pets.  Oh, and I do all of this while checking on Leah every 3 minutes or so, because hello? She could be choking.

Here is where you  might want to criticize my decision to allow Leah to watch Barney while eating breakfast.

Here is where I'm ignoring you.  Because all of the above stuff happens before 7:30 a.m., and if you know of a better way to get all of the stuff I need to get done while a child is following me at that time of day, then you're a better parent than me.  Also, write a book.

After all of that is done, Leah brushes her teeth, grabs her lunch box and we walk over to Gabrielle's, who watches her for the day. 

Leah is a creature of habit, so as long as you don't mess with her schedule, all is well.

Except yesterday, she slept late, so, by the time we made it to the family room for breakfast, it was already 7:15, and we only had 15 minutes to eat, watch Barney, and brush her teeth.  This change didn't bode well for her.  (You can imagine what my hair and make up looked like, as well.)

By the time I wrestled her, in tears, to Gabrielle's, I was an emotional mess.  She had thrown a major tantrum when I turned off Barney mid-show; I had to literally hold her arms down in order to brush her teeth; her uneaten breakfast was in a baggie for her to have at Gab's house, and she was not happy about that.  There had been a syrup incident.  I don't remember if I even fed Ruby.  I can't recall if I was wearing shoes.  Suffice to say, it was all really overwhelming. 

And as I was struggling to get out of the house by 7:30, I KNEW what was necessary.  I KNEW what would make this right.  I KNEW that I should have called work and told them I had to take a day, called Gab and told her Leah wasn't coming, and I should have just spent the day with my daughter.  I knew she needed that.  We needed that.

But yesterday was Tuesday.  And I have an important meeting every Tuesday morning.  And I couldn't call in.  And I just felt terrible.

Once I got in the car and started driving I began to calm down.  Until Howard Stern began discussing the song "Levon" by Elton John.  In the song Levon has a son named Jesus who works for the family business but wants to leave and do his own thing.  And Levon's really sad.

It got me thinking.  Right now Leah wants to spend time with me.  And soon, like Jesus (Levon's son, I'm not getting religious here or anything) she's going to want nothing to do with me.  Soon, I'll be that thorn in her side, making her come on vacations with us, making her come to visit her grandfather every week, enforcing her curfew.  And I can't help but notice the irony in the situation.

Right now, when she wants to spend time with me, I can't do it.  I have to work.  I don't have a choice in the matter so I'm not even going to get into the stay-at-home-mom verses the working mom debate.  I'm over that. (For now.)  I have to leave Leah at times and go to work.  And she wants me to be with her.  And it kills me that at some point the tables will turn and she will no longer need me.  No longer want me to stay home with her.  With my luck, the day I retire is the day she will decide that parents are lame.

So, it sucked, and then I cried, and then I was ok.  But, it's still worth mentioning that when people say that parenting is an emotional rollercoaster, they are most definately not kidding.
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Stinky Bike

Due to a severe drop in spitting instances, along with a heaping tablespoon of guilt (working-mommy guilt, daycare guilt, dead grandma guilt—you choose) it was determined that a bike would be purchased for Leah last night.

When she was informed of this decision, she almost lost it, for the excitement over the prospect of a new bike was immense.

I explained to her that I would clean up after dinner, and then we would go to Target for the bike.

She then asked about 4 times a minute about her new bike.

After about 10 minutes of this, I told her she had to cool it. I had already explained that once I cleaned up the dinner dishes, we would be heading to Target to get her stinkin’ bike!

“Stinky bike! Stinky bike! Stinky bike!”


{Greg doesn’t think it’s as funny as I do, but, even today, every time I asked her what type of bike she has, she tells me a Stinky Bike. It’s freakin’ hilarious!}

Once we got to Target, we decided to purchase a scooter instead, as she was grasping the concept of scooting a lot faster than the concept of pedaling. I had her give her birthday gift card to the cashier to pay for her new “bike” and off we went to our house to ride it.

We didn’t have a lot of time to spend outside with the stinky bike, but hopefully we will tonight.

Simulating going very fast on her bike.

She woke up this morning screaming for her stinky bike.

 
 

And even watched her sacred Barney on her stinky bike.  She doesn't normally like distractions while watching Barney, but her bike proved to be a perfectly fine watch-point.  Ruby didn't even get yelled at for being too close to her while she was concentrating on her show.

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Introductions: Ruby

Let me tell you a little about Ruby.

In April of 2005, my husband Greg came home from work and told me about a stray pitbull that he had played with that day while on break from work. The girl who lived next to Greg’s place of employment had taken her in, after a friend of hers decided he couldn’t care for her. Her name was Alizé (yes, Alizé) and, according to Greg, she was about 4 months old and very sweet and playful. I wasn’t sure why he was telling me about Alizé, as we already had a perfectly fine dog named Doozer and a finely perfect cat named Penny. Apparently, Greg’s friend’s apartment was too small and she was looking for someone to adopt Alizé. Well, good luck with that one, I thought, and went on with my day.

Here was our pet situation in April of 2005. 
Notice its perfection:

Two animals totally fine without any other animals present.

Over the next week or so Greg continued to play with Alizé at work (seriously, was he not required to actually work at his job?) and would come home and tell me about it.


Oh, Alizé is sooo sweet! She gives kisses all over my face! He would say.

Wonderful! I was wondering what that smell was. Is how I would react.




So, today, Alizé sat when I asked her to, and she took a treat so gently! He would gush.

Good for Alizé. I would return.





And on and on it went. And then one day Greg came home and surprised me with his daily Alizé news:

I told my friend that maybe we would keep Alizé, and she’s bringing her over here in an hour to see how it goes! OK??!!

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I'm going to tell you that I reacted in a perfectly sane, quite respectful manner, and you can choose to believe me or not.  Completely up to you.  You see, we already had a dog, Doozer, and he was huge! He was lovable and snuggly and produced copious amounts of saliva! He was all the dog that I needed.  See:

Yes, I am that person who puts shirts on their dogs.

Furthermore, we had a snotty spiteful wiked precious 7 pound cat who, I believed, the sun rose and set forth from her butt.  And she definately did NOT want another animal to enter our house. See:

Please don't force me to pee in another animal's water bowl.

And neither did I! Especially a pitbull!

Greg! I shrieked, Pitbulls are bad! They eat cats and bite people’s faces off! Even when you think they are your friend and let them sleep in bed with you, you will wake up with one less limb! We cannot get a pitbull!

About an hour later, Alizé showed up. And, meh, she was cute, I guess. She had a sort of cute nose.

And, kind of a cute face.

And, you know, she wasn’t acting like she was ready to eat my face off, but I could tell she was thinking about it.

And, oh man, she just made herself at home, plopping her butt down on our couch, wrapping herself in our blankets, rubbing up against us, getting comfy, and breathing her sweet little smelly puppy breath in our faces.

Is this not enough blankets? Perhaps I should crochet you an additional afghan?

Aaaaaand about ten minutes later, I was telling her that I was her new mommy and I loved her so much and mwah, mwah, mwah, come give your mommy a kiss! We’ll sleep together and snuggle and I’ll just snack on your soft little ears my little snooky doodles!

So, I fell for her.

We ALL fell for her.

Mom and Ruby

Dad and Ruby

Including Penny.  But, please, shhh.  Don't tell anyone.

And we changed her name to Ruby. For two reasons. One, Alizé? Really? I mean, I guess it’s nice if that’s YOUR dog’s name, but, I wasn’t very fond of it. And we couldn’t shorten it to Ally because that was the name of the dog that belonged to very good friends of ours. Two-I wanted to name a future daughter Ruby, and, since I didn’t have any human children at the time, I figured I use the name for my dog-child. Ruby ended up being 6 months old and small for a pitbull.  The vet suspected she was the runt of her litter.  So, just like our other animals, her birthday was sometime in October.

It’s been 5 years since Ruby came into our lives. Doozer is no longer with us, and we’ve since added an actual human child, Leah. Ruby, however, never really thought she was a dog, so to her, we now have two kids and a cat. We love Ruby very much, especially since Doozer’s death taught us to not take our pets for granted. Everybody loves her and enjoys her company immensely.

Uh, most of the time.

The Fabulous Ruby