Back to the drawing board

I am sitting in my bedroom with the baby while strange men explore my attic and basement. No, that's not a cute euphemism. It's the rat guys. They're here to kick some ass.

Much to my surprise this morning I got an email from the rescue group saying yes, they could take the dog back, and if I want I could bring her Sunday. Agh! Now I'm all conflicted. But even they asked if I've worked with a trainer yet; so I decided to contact a dog trainer friend of mine, and let the rescue group know I would try this first and then be in touch. Much like with the breastfeeding, I feel like I at least need to try. I emailed the trainer and told him the situation - older chihuahua, baby, acting out. We'll see what he says. He may very well say that there's not much point in trying, or he may want to meet her. Anyway, I've accepted that this is going to be a bit of a roller coaster no matter what. But she's my responsibility so I need to make the best decision here and not be impulsive.

My play date yesterday was fun - it was interesting to see this other baby at 10 months and see my future. I can't imagine Bumpus crawling, pulling himself up, actually playing, making lots of sounds...but it's coming, oh boy is it! I think he's squirmy now - ha. Lord help me. I see a lot of chasing and bending over coming up. Hopefully the fun of an active and interactive baby will make up for the exhaustion of it.

It's funny because I think back to the newborn days and how hard it was - the breastfeeding issues, the cranky evenings, the not being able to put him down for a second, and it fills me with dread; but I have to remember that at the time it wasn't that bad. I wasn't depressed, or exhausted, or fed up. Most of the time I was thinking how it was a lot easier than I expected. So let's hope the future has a similar outcome.

It's dawned on me that most, if not all, of my systems improvement ideas for next year's event are not good ideas. It sucks because I so want to improve things - the Japanese concept of kaizen, continuous improvement - but I think re-orienting the registration and not having the merchandise on display would probably in fact cause far more problems than fix them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? However using a better credit card system is definitely a good thing. So at least I can say I fixed one problem.