yappers and construction

our dog Katie is a little yapper, and we love every ounce of her 6 pounds of fluff. Caleb is a big fan too, and since he started crawling, he's been having more and more fun with her. and since he started eating (and throwing) Cheerios, she's warming up to him again. for a while she stayed just out of his reach, as he was fond of pulling her fur, but now she's not shy about removing moistened cereal from his hands.

which brings me to Caleb's funniest antic these days. we were out in the yard, and someone was walking past the back fence, so as usual, Katie ran out to greet him with her maniacal yapping. Caleb looked over and imitated her quite nicely with his version of squeeky yapping. it may not be that funny to read about, but it's rather hilarious in action. sometimes we think he's actually trying to call her with his yap, and he certainly knows to look for her when we call her with her more conventional names. hopefully we'll catch the yapping on video sometime.

---

my dad and brother-in-law worked hard for us over the weekend (I supervised, cleaned up, and played gopher). we gutted the water-damaged part of the back porch, replaced beams and whatnot, layed a new floor, and put up a new screen door, all before the rains came last night. dad worked especially hard all day yesterday to beat the weather, and now all that's left are a few details. it's great to no longer get a sinking feeling (in more than one way) when you step out the back door. it's so nice to have a successful, quick project done so well (assuming the rain isnt flowing in the house at the moment). now I've got to figure out how to replace the old aluminum siding back there.