the bulldog

Here is an email we sent out to the family this morning:

Most of you have had a chance to meet our beloved bulldog Norman Winston Weseloh. We lovingly refer to him as our "best Christmas present ever" - we got him as a 6 month old wrinkly and very "well fed" puppy in 2006. He has been our loyal companion over the last four years - probably more a "mama's dog" than anything as he liked to follow me around pretty much wherever I went. In his early years he ate all of our leather bound books, Bibles and several pairs of my dress shoes. He chewed up a leg of our dining table, our coffee table and the corner of one of my dresser drawers. We used to come home and see that he had knocked over every single trash can in the house and pawed through all of the trash. This happened again just a week or so ago when we came home to the desk trash all over the floor, a piece of paper hanging from Norman's jowels and an empty glass beer bottle sitting on his bed.

Norman has also been quite the snuggler. His breeder named him "Snugs" as a pup and this name sure carried through to be true throughout his life. I think he thought of himself as "petite" - always wanting to sit directly on your lap just to be near, not realizing that his 50 pound frame did not always make this very comfortable. And as is pretty typical with bulldogs - he has quite the snore when he sleeps and has slobbered pretty much anything at his height level throughout our house.

Unfortunately bulldogs are also pretty well known to have skin issues. Since moving to St. Louis he has battled allergies and a resistant staph infection. Despite numerous attempts to get his allergies controlled and the staph infection healed, he unfortunately is just not getting better. And so, with very heavy hearts Pete and I have made the decision to put him down.

We have scheduled a time with the vet for tomorrow - Thursday at 5:45 pm. We are really praying for courage to be there with Norman until the end and would appreciate it if you could maybe pray too. It's been a tough week.

I've attached a picture of me and Norman when we first brought him home 4 years ago. Oh bulldog, you sure have been loved.

Love,
Melissa

ethan at 3 months

Where does the time go? Here we are already into September and Ethan already at 14 weeks today. We had a busy end of August with Ethan's first road trip to Minnesota. He did awesome on our 15 hour drive there and 10 hour drive home, although we had quite a few outfit changes for both Ethan and me as he pooped and peed out often while I was feeding him. We made sure to get home early enough on September 6th so that we could snap his 3 month pictures.

A few observations of Ethan at 3 months. He is huge! He was starting to eat 6 times a day (down from 8-10 when he was first born) but has creeped back up to 7 per day this week (we are hoping it is a growth spurt!). He is currently wearing 6-9 month outfits comfortably and 12 month gerber outfits. He started to blow raspberries at around 13 weeks and absolutely just loves his hands! He is holding his head up really well and is starting to stand a bit with his long legs. He smiles all the time and loves to coo and babble. He is growing up so fast!