The Bwun ♥s dogs.

Remember I said I would tell you all about how the Bwun is obsessed with dogs?

Finally! Here we go.

When the Romgi and I were doing some last-minute Christmas shopping last year, I spotted a fantastically ridiculous wolf calendar and I had to have it. It went perfectly with our honeymoon souvenir: a cross-section of a tree with a heavily-lacquered print of a giant-eagle-attacking-timber-wolf-in-a-snowstorm drawing. We made a goal before the wedding to find the tackiest souvenir possible, and I’m pretty sure we succeeded.

Anyway. That was why I got the wolf calendar. I hung it in the hallway on the door to the laundry room.

For a while now we’ve been teaching the Bwun to recognize the animals in our Berkley Illustration prints – dog, rat, tiger, sloth. One day he began pointing at the wolves on the calendar and, to keep things simple, I said they were dogs. Soon he would crawl over and babble at the calendar; we looked at some pictures of dogs online, and suddenly he pointed and said quite clearly, “Dah!”

This is a big deal because the Bwun does not say any other words. He doesn’t say mama, ma, dada, dad, pa, baby, up, or anything useful. But dog: before long he was saying dog all day.

A few weeks ago we were enjoying the nice weather outside and visiting with our neighbor, whose daughter is a month older than the Bwun. Next door to them is a cat. The cat wandered over and, of course, the Bwun greeted it with shouts of “Dog! Dog!” I explained that it was a cat; we played with it for a while (as much as you can play with a cat, that is); then it wandered off and we went back home to eat lunch and take a nap.

The Bwun was furious.

That night he refused to go to sleep, and constantly cried out for “Dog! Dog!” I really wanted him to just go to sleep, so in desperation I got out an old stuffed black bear I had and gave it to him, telling him it was a dog. Worked like a charm. He calmed down and was soon asleep. I put the Bwun in his crib and the bear on the dresser.

Can you guess what happened the next morning? The Bwun wanted his “dog” as soon as he woke up. I heard him from the other room saying it over and over again.

I do have some sense, so we headed to Toys R Us that day to pick out an actual stuffed dog. I put 5 different types in front of the Bwun but apparently he’s not old enough to really choose – although he did keep pointing at a giraffe and calling it “dog.” Since the choice fell to me, I picked a husky. The Romgi and I plan to someday own a husky (not for a long while), so it seemed like a good start.

By the time we made it back to the car the Bwun was in love with his new dog.

But he still thought the bear was a dog.

And then he thought every animal was a dog.

We have a pet rat: it is “dog.” The stuffed monkey I was forced into buying is “dog.” The cat outside is “dog.” The bird chirping outside the window is “dog.” The only exception seems to be the large stuffed turtle in our bedroom, which comes out something like “durl.” Hey, it’s different enough. And he recognizes a real-live dog when he sees one. Sometimes we go on walks just so we can find some dogs.

Are you convinced? The Bwun is obsessed. Dogs, dogs, dogs.

Dog and bear. And Bwun.