meet Jasper

He's a very polite and mild-mannered boy.

He was kind of an impulse dog, if you will. Not that we hadn't been planning to get a new dog. Eventually. Which for J meant sooner than it meant for me. Of the two of us, he's the real dog person, and despite my foot-dragging, he had begun trawling petfinder.com, looking for possible candidates. Fast forward a few weeks, and we found ourselves at the shelter (hey, how'd that happen?), where we fell in love with Jasper's composure and affectionate nature and, truth be told, his superficial resemblance to our dear departed Thisbe.

Iris was asleep when we got home with him—she’s on the mend, but not all the way better, and still sleeping as much per day as the average cat—so she did not meet him till early the next morning. “Just you wait,” we said to Jasper that first night. “You think you’ve been adopted by such a nice, quiet, mellow family. Just wait till Little Miss Smother Dogs With Love wakes up!”

In her fever dreams, Iris has been traumatized by foxes, so we were a little worried about what would happen if she woke in the night and came into our room only to find what appeared to be a real fox lurking there. But J played defense between them all nght, and when morning broke, all was well. She reached out and very lightly patted his velvety head, and then she actually said, “We got a new dog! Hooray!”

Other recent happenings of note:


Iris' school art show. The Japanese mother of a boy in her class made these paper cranes out of the kids' artwork, which I thought was really great.


Iris helped her dad make a fresh peach pie.


And she had her first sleepover with Anya. In the morning, they made breakfast in their pajamas and aprons. Mmm, play-doh pancakes!

J gallantly took the girls for the evening part of the sleepover, since my friend Kat was visiting from Ithaca and we were invited to a girls' night of pesto and wine at another friend's house. Got home at 2:30 a.m. Felt 28 again. Until Anya and Iris woke up a scant four and a half hours later. Oh, right, that's why I don't do that anymore!