I am the same age as my daughter.....

No T hasn't gone all bizzarro Benjamin Button. D turned 5 this month so if you multiply that by 7 that makes us both 35. D has really gotten the short end of the stick since the two small people have come into existence. She really is my original baby and she has been through a lot. I was looking at puppies online for awhile and they were all gone. Then suddenly one reappeared. I took it as a sign. I emailed the woman and drove probably almost 3 hours to go see this little puppy. Well she wasn't very interested in me, she was more interested in food and the other dogs. And her name was Stella - I kept thinking of Seinfeld. So was returned because the woman thought she had spinal bifida which is pretty serious. I was nervous about getting a dog that could have that though something like that should be totally obvious and this dog was running all over the place so I took a chance. And I had already driven 3 hours and I had another 3 ahead of me, now with sleet, so I threw her in the backseat and started my drive home. About 10 minutes in she was in the front seat and after 20 she was in my lap. I brought her into the house and put her on the ground in the kitchen as a surprise for Andy and I believe his reaction was 'What the hell is that!?'. I think he thought she was a rat.

Poor D has been through a lot. She was about 3 days from being fixed and she got her period - that wasn't fun for anyone. After having her about a month I got pregnant so I was tired and not much fun. Then we went on our final vacation, the 'babymoon', and had some very serious issues with the construction of our house. This resulted in the use of an aerobed for my entire second trimester. D was right there. She slept with her head between our pillows and snored all night. She has had 4 major surgeries - eyes, being fixed, and two knees. She is just coming out of her second knee. She is definitely no longer the same dog. She is scared of a lot of things and at times I honestly think she is depressed. Plus she has had to deal with LOTS of construction which honestly I think has made her hate blue collar workers - she can pick them out on the street. It is odd.

D was a very good prep for kids. I discovered that there really isn't anything on at 7 AM or 8 AM on Sunday mornings. I started to watch a lot of ESPN. Somehow I could tolerate Sports Center a lot more exciting than infomercials. I thought Outside the Lines was on super early! Little did I know that about a year or so later it would seem like I was up for hours by the time it came on instead of the first thing I watched.

Hopefully her next 5 years is a little smoother than the first 5. I am hoping for no more surgery and like the surgeon said, she doesn't have any more knees so that is good news. I sure hope so!