Did you wonder what happened to me this time?

Well, the Little Princess' daddy went back to work, so I've been having a blast playing with her.  She is SO much fun now.  She's developing a sense of humor, mocking noises we make, and entertaining herself with simple toys.  She's beginning to crawl.  Up to now, I've kept her in the living room to play with her toys on the floor.  Before long, though, there won't be any keeping her there.  

When we moved from "the lodge" back to the ranch house (Pioneer Woman's fans will get it), I decided to keep Iris out of the bedroom and living room, which are the carpeted areas in this old house.  That gave her the run of the kitchen and hallway:  the hallway is where people enter through the back door when they come to see us.  There's a front door facing the road, but nobody ever uses it.  

Even though some hair gets tracked into those rooms from the kitchen, it has been amazing to see how much less hair we were living with.  Hair still piled up in the corners of the kitchen, but at least if we were watching TV and grabbed a throw to warm us up when we were cold, it didn't get covered in dog hair as we dragged it across the carpet.  It was easy to keep most of the hair off the carpet so Cora could play on it; all I had to do was run the vacuum over it for a minute or so in the morning.  

Now Cora is crawling, becoming more proficient at it every day.  We won't be able to keep her out of the kitchen long, and I wouldn't want to anyhow.  I want her to be in there with me when I'm cooking.  So I decided to confine Iris to the hallway, and I've moved her bed there.  Just like the living room, there will be some hair tracked into the kitchen from the hallway, but it should be much less.  A little hair won't hurt a kid, but you don't want her covered in it.  Yuck.  

Iris is sulking and not eating much, but I think she'll get over it.  If I knew someone who wanted a bunch of dog hair in their house, I'd re-home her.  But the only person who has expressed interest in having her intended to build a pen outside and keep her in it.  If she doesn't like being limited to the hallway here, I know she would be miserable locked in a pen all the time.  

We are thinking of spending the summer at "the lodge", and that presents a problem with keeping the living room hair-free:  The only room in the lodge that is not carpeted is the kitchen.  And the back porch.  As long as we're only there in warm weather, I think Iris could live on the back porch.  I would let her in during storms so she could sleep in Cliff's bathtub.  

We'll see how that works out.  

How do you like my saying "the lodge" instead of "the trailer house"?  I think it lends a bit of class to the dwelling.  Heretofore, the lodge it shall be.