How can you not love that face?
Ziva is very cute and she is totally worth all the late night trips to go "potty" and the crying in the early hours of the morning. Matt and I have tackled the chore by taking shifts. We take turns getting up with her in the middle of the night. When we get up for work in the morning we have to take shifts to get ready for the day. Sometimes we even have to eat dinner in shifts in order to keep an eye on her or take her out. So we have managed the whole, "I'll watch her, while you rest" scenario. Our coworkers keep telling us this is "good practice" for when we do have children. I just keep thinking to myself, "Practice? This is having children!" But I am sure anyone with human kids is laughing at me right now.
The only real downfall to it all is that now our new house smells like puppy pee. We try our hardest to keep an eye on her to catch her before she squats, but we don't always catch her and I am sure there are spots on our carpet that we have missed. Every time we think we are making progress with the whole house training thing, it seems the next day we have a huge setback. Since, Matt and I are psychologists, you would think that we would have the whole behavior management and reward system down. And we do for the most part, but its a lot easier said than done. We give Ziva rewards for going outside, but no matter how many times she goes outside, it seems she goes more in the house!
Matt and Ziva
One huge positive is that Ziva and Grady love to play and will chase each other around until they pass out. It is so much fun watching them run around the house and enjoy each others company. It's also fun to watch Ziva dive bomb Grady while he is sleeping :) Grady doesn't think that part is so much fun though.
Sleeping on the couch
Either way, if this is practice for kids, I feel like I can handle that. I know it will get better and Ziva will learn quickly. But until she does, we will keep on doing shift work.
