Sharp, 'eh?

Experts tell me that in order to maintain blog readership, I must post new entries on a regular basis, otherwise, people will lose interest and just go back to watching videos of dogs doing handstands. That considered, mine is most likely to receive some type of "worst blog ever" award this year as a result of my lack of contribution to my faithful reading public. My blog has become the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear. crash...

It has been a rough couple of days for those of us in the house standing below the three foot height threshold. Niko and Amelia have shared in a little misery between the two of them in two completely unrelated incidents.
Yesterday afternoon was another beautiful one in Ohio, leaving all but the memory of bitter winter behind in a cloud of warm polleny bliss. Since it was such a gorgeous day, I decided I would let Niko hang out on the back porch to catch some rays. He loves to bask in the sun sprawled with his tongue hanging asunder, stirring occasionally only to lap from his giant metal water bowl.
For some reason, though, yesterday he seemed to be fairly restless as he paced the porch and scratched at the gate.
Deciding that he had had quite enough of it, I let him inside and he ran straight to bed.
A few hours went by and it occurred to me that he had not asked to go out in a while, so I decided to wake him up. When I found him, I made a most startling discovery.

Everyone likes spring, am I right? I mean, whats not to love? You got your warm air, your sunshine, beautiful flowers, fresh foliage on the branches, baby ducklings waddling across grassy fields behind mama duck, itty bitty squirrels popping their heads out of dens for the first time, butterflies flitting, birds twittering, and the world in perfect harmony with its dwellers.
Oh yeah, and wasps. A whole bunch of angry, unreasonable, and spiteful wasps.
Evidently, Niko, being the fun loving soul he is, wanted to make friends with a colony of these flying little wolverines setting up shop under our deck rail. They politely declined his offer in the form of a dozen plus stings around his eyes, mouth, and shoulders. No wonder he was in such a rush to get back inside.

By the time I found him, his eyes were swollen almost shut. His mouth was puffy and looked as though it had been stuffed with pom-poms. Poor guy didn't want to go anywhere after that unless I was right next to him.

Fortunately, though, he is looking a lot less like the shar pei of yesterday and more of his boxer collie self today.

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Remember how I told you about Amelia's gymnastics class and the parachute being her absolute favorite thing to do in the world? Well, not much has changed in that department. In fact, it is my opinion that her love of the parachute has actually grown to an almost alarming level.

Most of today's gymnastics class went by unremarkably. Amelia did her usual round of walking across the balance beam, then over to the uneven bars where she hangs and giggles for thirty seconds and then drops to the mat in a full on guffaw.
Everything went fine until the teacher broke out the parachute.
The parents lined up around the edge, heaved the parachute in the air and all the kids ran underneath screaching and waving their arms as if the parachute were Godzilla about to bear down on them. As the parachute drooped Amelia came sprinting out so as to not get trapped underneath, but instead of stopping where I was, she excitedly ran right by me.
I assume it was because she was far too distracted about recently being under a giant sheet of colorful nylon that she didn't notice that her feet had reached the end of the mat. She tumbled off the soft edge and onto the hard linoleum floor. Her screams of joy suddenly gave way to something substantially less joyful.

I quickly got her nose and lip cleaned up in the bathroom and applied direct pressure where applicable. Being the brave one of our family, Amelia stopped crying after a few short minutes but the damage had been done. Her lip was now swollen and looked as though several pom-poms had been stuffed underneath.

Despite her sudden and accidental resemblance to Niko, Amelia is doing just fine. She was back to her laughing self in less than an hour.