Happy Chinese New Year

Today is Valentine's Day, but it is also Chinese New Year. My husband and oldest son are both Tigers, and Danielle will also be born in the year of the Tiger. Our family is a little Tiger heavy. Connor is a Horse and debates with Brandon about which runs faster....a tiger or a horse. They have agreed to disagree. Nicole is a Monkey, which I think is quite appropriate. Our Andrew is a Rabbit. The rest of the kids pretend to pet him. Today we looked up Togo to see what he is....he was born in the year of the dog. Togo would have thought that is obvious.

My parents went to China a couple of years ago and brought the kids back personalized stamps with red ink. The kids like to stamp their papers they write with their own personal seal.

Anyway, on Chinese New Year you shouldn't sweep the floor, because you might sweep away your good fortune. I was grateful for yet another excuse to not sweep the floor, which got me thinking about housework.

All responsible women face the inevitable housework. I had a grandmother who was a compulsive cleaner. She even scrubbed behind the fridge once a month. My mother was much more relaxed in her cleaning style, often to my embarrassment when I had friends come over. I was probably leaning more toward my grandmother's style until a defining moment in a child psychology class. We were discussing family cycles, and I brought up the differences between my mother and her mother. My professor asked me how I was going to be. Up until that point I think the pendulum was going to swing the other direction. But I looked at it and decided I didn't want to be either of them. I wanted to be somewhere in the middle.

Anyone who homeschools knows that some other things have to give. I must admit that my house is never spotless. It is a physical impossibility, when your children are always there, but I think I have also found a balance.

Before I became pregnant, I knew that I would need extra help with the house when the nausea and exhaustion came, so I started training my kids to take on more of the chores. They can now all do their own laundry, do the dishes, clean their rooms, clean the bathroom and they do so every week. It is so wonderful. Even though they complain, they have told me that they are glad that I have taught them to do these things and that we don't spoil them by doing everything for them. I told them that today they didn't have to sweep, because we didn't want to sweep out all our good fortune.

I was born in the year of the Ox. I looked up my forecast for the year of the Tiger, since we have so many Tigers around and this is what it said:

Tiger style is not conducive to your peace of mind. This is not the time to march forth boldly into battle heedless of the consequences. You will have to pick your fights and show much restraint if you want to be successful overall. You are only likely to have two great months this year; make sure to take advantage of the opportunities they provide. The rest of the time you need to tone down your efforts and press ahead carefully with ongoing projects.

Well I guess I'll have to be careful, since I'm only going to have two good months this year. I'm also a Scorpio and am crying out in dismay, because Pluto rules my sign. Now that Pluto isn't really a planet at all reading my daily horoscope may be a futile waste of time. (Christine Lavine)

It's a good thing I'm not superstitious. But I'm still not going to sweep my floor today.

Leave it!

Tonight the kids were playing a game with the dog where they were putting their feet in his face for him to lick. They thought it was a fabulously funny game. It made me think about his place in our family. Togo was born on September 1, 2006, which happens to be Nathan's birthday. They must be kindred spirits.

When we moved to Colorado, we rashly promised the kids that we would get a dog. Then after we got here and had mice in our garage, we ended up getting a cat first. But that is another story.

We acquired our newborn puppy at a charity auction for much more than he was worth, but he was so cute, and it was for a good cause. He is a purebred beagle, who we had fixed right away which kind of defeats the purpose of having a purebred. We bought him under the pretext that he was paper trained and would be a small dog. When we brought him home that night, it became quite apparent that he was in fact not paper trained, and as he started to grow he turned out to be not quite so small either.

The kids were in shock the next morning when they woke up and had a dog. He was pretty cute, but potty training in December was tricky, because it was so cold outside. He cried at night for the next 3 months, and I felt like I had a newborn on my hands, which I guess I did. Finally his bladder grew, and he stopped having accidents.

Coming up with his name was a family effort. We decided to name him after the almost mythical dog that Nathan used to tell about in bedtime stories. Grandpa Costello had a dog named Togo (named after a famous pre-WWI Japanese general), who had killed a poisonous snake that had come into their home, saving the lives of the family. The hotel that housed the charity auction we bought him at was called the Inn of the Rio Grande (being located next to the very river). Hence, Togo Rio Grande.

Eventually Togo Rio Grande grew large and became completely out of control. We decided it was time to enroll him in obedience school. This was very helpful and we started to get a little bit of control back. One of the commands we worked hard on was "Leave it!" which you say when you don't want them to get into something. He started to think his name was "Togo Leave-it." Togo was the proud graduate of the La Jara Institute of dog obedience, graduating Magna-Comuh-Hereuh.

Recently I noticed that things were starting to slip for him. He snuck into some donuts that were left on the table, and I decided we needed to do some retraining. We put a piece of hot dog on the table filled with a large dose of cayenne pepper. He left it alone for several hours, but eventually he couldn't resist the call of a hot dog. It must have really burned, because he licked his chops afterward for a good 5 minutes. We haven't had any more incidents, so hopefully he will live up to his full name: Togo Leave-it Rio Grande.