Hellobee Boards

Thanks everyone for the welcome! I lost my peer support in our cross country move so I'm excited to find one online

@MrsBrewer: Pet twins! Yes and no. Through a communication mixup we ended up in a rental without a yard, so that has been the biggest problem. For me to take the 2 dogs out 1-2x while DH is at work is a challenge with LO. Mostly though because our younger dog has crummy leash manners (despite sooo much training) and pulls like a truck and they both get a little squirrel happy. Also because LO will not nap in her crib so she's attached to me while napping so I don't have the option to leave her inside with the monitor on (it's happened once or twice when she accidentally overslept in the morning in her PnP bassinet). And I'm too nervous to leave her awake with the monitor on while walking them out, not sure why, she is sometimes amused with her mobile long enough to make it happen. Otherwise it's fine with the dogs. In fact our first outing (besides her first doctor's appt) was to the dog park with us! Although I don't get out to the dog park as much as I had before because treking LO is a bit of a pain and so the dogs are a bit antsier, but again, a yard would solve it all. The cats could care less overall - I started kicking them off my lap when I got too preggers anyhow so they're used to it when LO is in my lap, and DH was already on cat box duty. Though at this point LO has probably accidnetally ingested more animal fur than healthy for a 7.5 week old Our younger dog thinks her play mat is a bed.

A sort of funny aside, when we brought LO home the first night our older dog thought she was in mortal danger whenever she cried and would pace and howl (presumably to alert us to her imminent demise). That first night home he was the bigger nusciance than the crying baby! Instead of sleeping in our bedroom as usual we had to banish him to the crate downstairs instead. I think once he saw her in the bouncer on the floor, so his level, crying and saw she was just making the noise and not dying, it clicked and he's never done the howling/pacing since. The dogs sleep through all her MTN wake ups, which are a lot!

This was a novel already but if you have other questions about strategies for the pet-baby survival just PM me