Playing Around - Day 25

Another day done and another weekend ahead of us.  I'm so tired, and so thankful that there's an uneventful weekend planned.

Growing Up

It's exciting starting to see more and more changes coming up.  Though honestly, it was a bit of a relief to have a few days that were kind of "same-old".  At least it gave an opportunity for me to get into some kind of rhythm.  So while I'm excited about the changes, they are a sign of the upcoming changes to our lives.

As I mentioned before, we have now put a litterbox out for the little guy.  He's not using it yet, but we're helping him use it.  So we still stimulate him above the litterbox to get him used to this.  But today, I suddenly noticed him kind of in a crouched position over the blanket.  He was pooping!  So I grabbed him and dropped him into the litterbox.  And he finished his poop there.  And an impressive poo it was!  So while the poop wasn't originally destined for the litterbox, the fact that he was able to push it out himself is a wonderful sign of progress.

Phoenix also showed some interest in one of his crinkle balls today.  He started playing around a little bit, and it seems that he's getting a lot more interested in engaging with things around him.  He also attacked the feet of one of his stuffed toys and likes to roll around with them.  I don't have any wonderful videos of him actively looking like he's intentionally playing, but here's another equally as fun-loving video.

Here's another video of him seemingly playing with the blanket?  His positioning reminds me of a a cat right before it would pounce... except the pounce never came.  He was backing up like this from one end all the way to the other.  I only got the video towards the tail end of his backwards exploration.

Phoenix has also started biting me while playing a bit.  Had read something that mentioned how we'll have to teach him not to do that.  If he had littermates, then he'd learn from them that biting "hurts", and it's not something he should be doing.  So when he bites, I'm supposed to make a noise that shows hurt, not move my hand around as if it's a toy, and redirect him to something he should play with or take away my attention.  This sounds easy, but when something bites you like this and it doesn't hurt, it's hard to do this seriously.

Mini-Adventure

We had a last minute invite to my mother-in-law's home for dinner today.  Of course, if both Nguyen and I go anywhere, we bring the little guy with us.  I don't think we're mentally ready to leave him by himself for a few hours, even though we could.  It's also not a bad idea to have the little guy experience car rides at a young age to make sure he gets used to these kinds of things.

This was a fairly short drive, and we didn't have to pack all that much since we would only be away from home for about 2-3 hours.  So off we went!  Since we had fed him right before leaving, I hung out with Phoenix in the car on the way there.  Here's some photos and videos of that experience!

Little guy was falling asleep but trying so hard to stay awake

Moments before he fell asleep and right after.

Was hoping to show off that his eyes do have blue in them... but the photos continue to only show black holes.

Are his ears actually a bit orange?  Or is that just his skin peaking through?  No idea!  But time will tell!

Brotherly Love

Asher has been generally fine with Phoenix.  Now that Phoenix walks around a bit more, there's more opportunity to see how Asher feels about this.  Overall, things are looking good.  I'm still wary of having them touch each other or lick each other, so we still keep them separate.

Asher last night and this morning was happy just watching the little guy and keeping an eye on him.  Take a look at this video (and no, the commentary is not because I have a blog... I would have done that whether or not this was here 😂).

But most surprisingly was tonight.  I was hanging out with Phoenix on the living room floor post-meal.  We were "playing" around before he finally went to bed.  Asher had come by and stopped near the edge of our play area and was sniffing the air a bit.  And then he turned away and went on to check out the window.  I was quite impressed and thought it was a great sign.

But!  After Asher's window tour was over, he stopped by again.  This time he decided he wanted to get closer.

Asher ended up coming within a few inches of Phoenix after I took this photo.  Since I was worried about the too interacting, I didn't take a video.  While I wish I did, it's more important to make sure these two don't get each other sick.  Mostly I'm just wary of Asher licking him and possibly getting a bug that might be in Phoenix's GI track.

So when Asher got close enough, I went ahead and picked up Phoenix to move him further away.  Asher didn't even run away!  That's a fantastic sign.  I asked Nguyen to go get him a treat, and Nguyen walking around did get Asher to take off down the hall.  But once he heard the snack bag a few seconds later, he was back in the living room area waiting for his treat.

Close Out and Photos

If anyone happens to follow along on the weight chart, my apologies.  I haven't taken the time to update it, but it'll be updated in the next 10 minutes.  While it's not hard, it requires some HTML formatting, so it's more of an irritation to put it in than it should be.  But his weight gain has been impressive and he's doing well.

Just going to end with a few other photos from today.  No captions (if people even read those 😛), since I'm tired.  I'm not even going to bother resizing.  Here's my photo dump for tonight.