Day 23 Slice of Life Story Challenge: Fur Baby

I am the mother of two children.

Lily, my daughter, is five years old. She loves the outdoors, and building things, and science, and dramatic play. She loves to storytell, and draw, and write (wonder where she got that from?). She’s very organized and is quite the perfectionist. She’s a firecracker, a ball of very enthusiastic (and often LOUD) energy.

Jackson, my son, is fifteen months old. He is sweet and easy and happy-go-lucky. He’s inherited his sister’s delicious sense of humor, eyes sparkling when he knows he’s being cute and funny. He has a soft voice and a strong hugging and snuggling instinct.

But I am also have one more–a fur baby.

Our dog, Indie, was here first. He arrived in our family long before our life revolved around diapers and preschool, before we worried about things like fevers in the night, or babysitters, or play dates, or anything like that.

Before Lily, and before Jackson, Indie was the baby. I worried about him constantly. My office wall was plastered with pictures of him. I made him his own Facebook page. His groomer became one of my best friends. I blogged about him constantly. We bought him the very best toys, the very best food, and took him on the very best walks–four or five times a day.

But Indie is not a baby anymore. The day Lily came home from the hospital, we watched Indie transform before our very eyes. He looked with doggy-wonder at Lily, sniffed gently at her toes, and jumped back in surprise when she moved, and then became focused, with laser-like attention on not letting Lily leave his sight for even a second.

And from that moment on, he was not the baby of the family–and instead he became little furry soldier, on guard at all times.

Indie sleeps next to Jackson’s crib while he naps. He sleeps in Lily’s bed when she’ll let him. He follows their every move, and if one of them cries, he howls a sad, sad howl along with them. When Indie goes out in our backyard, he marches back and forth along the picket fence, on guard (for squirrels). He watches over our house and our family with the purest of heart.

These days, we buy Indie’s dog food at the hardware store across the road, not the fancy Brooklyn gourmet home-made food we used to get for him. I’ve lost the password for his Facebook account.

But he still gets a blog post in his honor now and again.