Of Bows and Begging Dogs

A. has never liked bows. Even when she was only a couple of days old she would grab at the headband and try to pull it off. I never really forced the issue, but each time we were given a bow or she was wearing an outfit where one of the bows we had would be cute I'd try it again. Unfortunately, the bow rarely lasted more than 10 minutes before it was being pulled off and thrown. Eventually I decided that it was a battle not worth fighting and gave up on the bows. That lasted until she turned 10 months old (it happened a few days ago and I am a bad mommy and didn't say anything). At this point her bangs are long enough that they are brushing her eyebrows and I was seriously considering cutting them. I didn't want to cut her hair and I'd really rather sweep them over to the side, but what's a mom to do when her daughter hates bows? I decided to try again. On a whim I bought some little barrettes and tried them. She loves them. I swept her bangs to the side and put the pink one in to hold them in place. She was so cute and I told her so. This made her grin. :) We were still out running errands (I'd tried the bow as soon as we got out of the store) so we tried the acid test of the car seat. I sat in back while K. drove so I could see what she was doing because I didn't want her pulling it out and trying to eat it. She just kept grinning! She kept it on for all of our errands and up until it was bedtime. I'm so happy that she has finally learned to like bows. Unfortunately, the other thing she learned this week doesn't make me quite so happy. She has learned to feed the dog from the table. It started when the dogs (especially Bueford) noticed she wasn't always the best at getting the food in her mouth and would sometimes drop it on the ground on accident. Under the high chair became a favorite spot during meals and we didn't stop it because it did make clean-up easier. (Don't worry, I still mop frequently, the dogs just get the big chunks before A. can get down and try to put them in her mouth before I can grab them.) At some point A. noticed the dogs going for the food she dropped and that it made them happy so she started dropping food on purpose. Bueford immediately picked up on the new game during snack time and by lunch we had this...


Now for the fun part of breaking the dogs of begging while teaching A. not to feed them. For some reason though, I think that DH and I may be the only ones bothered by the new arrangement...