Happy Birthday Lev!

Our dog Lev turned 2 years old today. We celebrated by giving him a soccer ball, a big iced cookie and lots of hugs and kisses. He was so happy. We are all ridiculously in love with this dog. Funny story how we ended up with a dog. I, for one, was never really much of a dog person. Our kids, like most kids, asked for a dog fairly regularly but seemed to know it was never going to happen. We all seemed pretty comfortable as a small pet family. Our pet for several years was a little hamster named Peanut that one of our daughters won in a raffle at camp (one of those raffles we permitted her to enter because we never win anything so we didn't feel like we were even taking a chance. Ha!). Anyhow, Peanut died some time ago and we agreed that when the girls felt they had mourned sufficiently, we would get a new small pet. They finally came to us one day and announced that they were ready. Then the twist. They wanted a chinchilla or a ferret. It never occurred to me to suggest a hamster. Instead, I knew I didn't want a ferret so we decided to get a chinchilla. The chinchilla, named Otis, turned out to be high maintenance in the extreme. Did you know chinchillas need to be taken out of their cages and given a dust bath (yes, a bath in dust) every day?! Did you know they live more than 20 years?! Oy!! After a few days of cleaning up after the little beast, I announced that if I was going to work this hard, we may as well have a pet that could reciprocate; it was time to get a dog. I don't know what came over me. I only know that I never looked back. The overgrown rat had opened my mind and my heart. The word "Lev" means heart in Hebrew and if Otis opened my heart, Lev certainly pulled at my heart strings. Happy birthday little man. We love you!

In honor of Peanut, the first real pet we had, tonight's book recommendation, another Kindergarten-2nd Grade Book of the Year finalist, is Hot Rod Hamster by Cynthia Lord and Derek Anderson. It's a book that was made to be read out loud. You can't help but cheer the hamster on! Reading it sparked a memory of my kids on vacation building their own race cars and I couldn't stop smiling. Hot Rod Hamster is ready to ROLL and you'll be rolling along with him!