03/20/18 Pupdate

     These puppies are certainly cute.  And they are quite active as well.  I’d been putting them in smaller container than the whelping pool at times (during cleanup or moving from the sleeping pool to the nursing pool) but a couple of them have decided to show me that they are no longer going to cooperate for that.
They especially do it when Gator the Mater decides to come by and rile them up as I’m in the middle of doing something with them but they’ve also done it when Phoebe was checking in and once just because they could. It’s a good thing I had it inside one of the other pools most of the times and on a fleece pad the others.  It was certainly convenient while it lasted.  They aren’t even making a pyramid and going over, they just stretch up and hoist their little dog selves right over and motor where they think they want to go.  Their eyes and ears aren’t open yet for Pete’s sake, where do they think they are going to go?  They are generally amenable to a little cuddle when I pick them up though, even if they’ve been on walkabout.
MaterGator (that doesn’t actually work if one uses the correct pronunciation of Mater but I’m still searching for just the right blognomer for Caly) has really gotten into licking the puppies since the 4am feeding.  She still prefers to get in position in the nursing pool and then have the puppies added over trying to join them and we’ve worked out a pretty good routine with that.  It does make it a little easier for me to keep track of which puppy is eating, especially since I’ve now scheduled it out.  Jill (the Mama’sMama), SammieDoodlebug (GrammieSammie now), and even Bela stayed in with the puppies almost all of the time for a long time but Caly doesn’t choose to emulate that style.  Now that I’m getting a little rest, I can appreciate some things about her style (but life was a lot easier the other way.  Or I was sleep deprived enough not to have created accurate memories of that time.  I suspect some combination thereof but ultimately nostalgia wins the day on this one ;-)
Caly and the puppies have pretty clear signals when it’s time for them to eat.  I suspect they’d be willing to have some between meal snacks but so far, she doesn’t offer that often.  She must’ve heard about the obesity epidemic in children.  She does check on them frequently, as do Phoebe and GrammieSammie.  And she adds face washing and occasional inspections of their nether regions.
Today, Caly adopted an alligator toy that the girls appropriated from Cooper’s visit.  (Either he or they took them out of his packed bag when he was going home.  We had just made the babies so Caly was here, too). I’ve been letting Caly decide where she wants to nurse the puppies: in either pool (they have different beddings: one has a warmer fleece the other has just a blanket for good traction) or on a couple of different surfaces on the floor EXCEPT I draw the line at nursing them on the couch.  So she got her alligator puppy and very very gently carried it to where she wanted to have it on the couch and positioned it. We had it in the pool for feeding time but fortunately it didn’t eat much.
Phoebe knows the difference between toys and puppies and she wanted to play with the alligator.
Speaking of which Phoebe seems to understand that she is a mother’s helper (although at times I think she’s starting to think she’s the understudy and could be called upon to take  Caly’s role) and knows to take her cues from SDB.  When I was encouraging Caly to stop worrying about the puppies and start licking them, I was giving squirty cheese for letting puppies at her front legs (before that, I was giving Caly a combination pillow/puppy blocker) and when she was actually putting her muzzle really close to the puppy, I put a little cheese on it.  No dice on that one.  The puppies were finished eating so when Caly got up to leave, I offered the cheese on the puppy to Phoebe.  If she’d had an opposable thumb, she’d have called the men in the white coats to come get me. Her whole attitude was very reproachful.  I could hear her: “we don’t eat puppies.  That’s not food.”  So I called GrammieSammie over to clean the puppy for me.  As soon as Phoebe saw that, she was all about licking that puppy clean.  She’s been licking the puppies since then, mostly faces but she’s cleaned the occasional pee, too.
And last night after I’d brought the sleeping pool back over to the more secluded, protected spot by the ottobenbed; Phoebe got into the nursing pool and slept.  I didn’t offer her a puppy though.
We held our weight watcher’s meeting while LeAnne was here today.  I don’t have the spreadsheet yet but I do know that each puppy gained nicely again.  We’ll start playing fun with numbers again soon. (I intend to look up how to let LeAnne post to the blog, too but I have quite the list of things to accomplish so that hasn’t happened just yet).
During Puppy yoga tonight, they didn’t bolt right off of the cold cloth.  The other days, they’ve been off before I get to the count of 2.
I think that’s all.  I have plans to compile blog fodder throughout the day tomorrow but there isn’t much time left after all of my puppy cuddling duties. Puppy breath to all and Nighty nighty nighty for now