My own kind of parenthood

I'm working at a local radio station now, and have been there for 3 months. Love it!-- but that's not what this post is about. At work, everyone is able to record a Christmas greeting that they will play between songs and such. Lots of people bring in their cute little kids to say Merry Christmas, or they list off all their kids and nicknames or whatever. I on the other hand have only my husband, myself, and my baby Cody. And I can't get him to "speak" on command, so I don't think that would work.

Cody is my yellow lab, and he is Spoiled. When people ask if Mark and I have kids I always tell them, "No, but I have my Codydog." And you guys, he is my frickin kid. He's my baby (my baaa-bbyyyy.) I joke that he's our requisite dog before child, the test run, or whatever that everyone does. And I know that kids are different and blady-blah-blah. But I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what it's going to be like when I do have a kid. I already know what it's like to not be able to sit down on the couch by myself, or that if it's quiet and he's not in front of me, I need to be worried. I cannot go to the bathroom alone, and I've even been woken up in the middle of the night because my kid was about to get sick. And yes Mom, I completely understand what you meant when you said that kids only get sick in the middle of the night-never in the middle of the afternoon or early evening or sometime easy like that.

The other night I woke up to a nose right in my face. I could tell he needed to go outside (which is probably a slightly different need than if my kid wasn't four-legged.) As we started to make our way down the hall, he paused and made that wretched dry heave sound. I started to yell, "Go Cody, go outside!" He made it to the stairs before he stopped again, "Whehh, whhhelllhhhh." (Those are my impressions of a dog dry heaving.) "Go Cody, don't stop, go go go. Outside!!" I was still behind him in the hallway, and I just really did not want to face cleaning up dog vomit all down my stairs. "Please outside Cody," I begged. Finally as I slid the back door open and he made one last shrug forward with his shoulders, he was able to let it all fly out on the back porch. Bright yellow dog vomit all over that pretty white snow we had had earlier that day. So yes, Merry Christmas to you, from Mark, Miranda, and Cody….