Had a pretty good day today, despite a slightly wobbly start. Morning came far too early for my taste when La woke me up at bloody early o'clock for a marathon feed and then got up at 7:30... blerg. Equally promising was the fact that the second his feet hit the floor - literally - the whinging started.

My normally happy, cheerful, helpful boy whinged to get down, then whinged because I let him down, then whinged because I picked him up. Whinged and flipped his way through a nappy change, getting dressed, being carried/walked to the kitchen. Sobbed "unna cacka!!!" for a cracker, then threw it away. "Jooooosss!!!", he hiccuped (juice) latching onto a bottle of hot chilli sauce and attempting to uncap it. (I told you, the child's a lemming!) Finally, he fell into a tantrum at breakfast when the toast was made before the rest of it and I didn't immediately hand it over. (Because we eat at the table...)

That turned into total melt-down with a full fledged tantrum, complete with an agonized shriek of disbelieving outrage (YOU'RE TAKING THE TOAST AWAY!!!!) when I took the toast to the table so he could eat it. Said shriek was followed by laying/falling on the floor, kicking, rubbing at his ears in agitation and crying until he decided following to get the toast was a better option than bawling about it in the kitchen.

Mercifully Sif saved us from early mummy-head-implosion-due-to-whingy-child by having us over and we had a nice time catching up... thank the gods for friends with children and tea! LOL Sir Bubby Lala is a social butterfly, so with Bryn and Kaeden around, not to mention the older boys Erik, Luey and Elijah who are delightful with him he was a much happier bubba. He really seems to delight in interacting with the big boys, they're just so darn cool you know, being big boys and all! ;-)

Tomorrow should be a lot of fun though since we're going to Lang Lang with Hope, again just to watch and work a little with Hope in a show setting, since our first show is coming up in only a week! (EEP! Start praying to whatever gods you believe in for me... if you don't believe in any, humor me and ask St. Jude. He's the patron saint of hopeless causes, so well suited to me even if I'm not Catholic! *G*)

I'm going to have to work with Hope a lot more on her stacking but it seems there's not enough time in the day some days. Mostly we've been working on eye-contact in the face of distraction and her tendancy to be snarky around other dogs near food sources. IOW We're doing a lot of changing her views from, "OMG... another dog near my food! ACK! He's gonna steal it!!!" to "OMG... another dog near my food! YAY! Mum is gonna making something wonderful appear!!! Please, come closer to my food strange dog, you make manna rain from heaven!"

I'm also doing a lot of rewarding her for not diving at food in general, not diving at dropped food, not diving towards other dogs when I feed them, food zen, how to ask for something politely (bumping my hand with your nose to remind me you're there and want a treat is not polite Hope!) and wait till given permission to eat it etc. etc.

The other big thing we've been working on is convincing her that the mist-bottle (she gets a light misting with a bit of conditioner in it before brushing out) is not an evil alien entity that eats puppies. (This from the pup who is so unaffected by the noise that she won't move her tweenager-scrawny bum when I'm vacuming...) Anyhoo, enough rambling. To bed, to bed...