She’s Tizzielysh-ous!

(I wrote this article on 7/3/09 – the day after Tizzie blessed our lives with her furry little self!)

What am I thinking?!  My 9 year old and 5 year old daughters are finally old enough to be relatively independent, able to travel lightly and with flexibility (i.e., no baby gear and happy to “crash” just about anywhere), and embracing their newly self-assigned household chores.  Personally, I recently decided to rearrange my daily agenda a bit to allow for better work/family balance.  Life is great and the summer living is “easy”.  (At least as easy as it gets for a work-from-home mom whose husband travels weekly!   So what do we do?  We fall prey to our daughters’ big, begging eyes, heart-felt pleas, and promises of everlasting big-girl responsibility… if we get a puppy.  When your 5 year-old has heart-broken crocodile tears every time you leave a pet-owning friend’s house and your 9 year old can list 10 types of hypo-allergenic, non-shedding small dog breeds, it gets you thinking maybe it’s time to get them a puppy of their own.  After all, I remember the deepest pangs of puppy desire when I was their ages and all my friends had dogs.  (I finally got my first pup at 10 years old – “Suzi-Q”!)  Then we found the cutest little puppy I’ve ever laid eyes on one Saturday afternoon as my older daughter was “researching” more family-friendly puppy info on the Internet.  I knew I was in trouble when I saw the puppy’s head playfully cocked as her sweet little eyes saw straight into my heart.  I was done for.

Needless to say, my husband arrived home from a business trip yesterday afternoon and we surprised the girls with the puppy of their dreams.  Tizzie has arrived, and although it’s absolutely life with a new “baby” again, she’s already stolen all our hearts!  We are now officially a party of five, fur-baby gear and all!  At least I enjoyed a week or so of my re-balanced life!  I’ll keep you posted on upcoming re-balancing!