We were duped. DUPED. When we first brought Cody home, he was all sorts of angelic. He displayed absolutely zero annoying puppy behaviors. No chewing. No destruction. Heck, he came mostly paper-trained, so it's not like even the whole housebreaking thing was all that bad. For a week we marveled at his extreme tolerance for all sorts of torture, the way he didn't seem to care to chew on anything except food, how he really wasn't even interested in toys, and his total and complete lack of a Care Face. He was soooo chill. For a week.

I guess he thought he came with some sort of 7-day return policy because on day 8 BAM! There's the puppy! In the span of twenty minutes that I spent trying to put garland on the Christmas tree today(don't even start mocking me for that--Christmas is only 36 or so days away), I do believe I yelled at him 14,251 times.

"Cody, let go of the garland."

"Cody, quit eating the snowflake."

"Cody, put down the paper."

"Cody, quit pulling on my sweater."

"Cody, leave the tree alone."

"Cody, stop chasing the cat."

"Cody, let go of the garland."

Lather, rinse, repeat. Over and over and over and over. I would no more than spit out one command and he would have already moved on to the next object of his affection, weaving a path of destruction all throughout the house.

The split seconds of silence were filled with yet another . . . ummmm . . . challenge. Yeah, "challenge." It seems that there was a pop quiz scheduled for tonight. The 18,450 questions weren't all that difficult, just . . . "challenging."

"Momma, what you doing?"

"Momma, where's Cody?"

"Momma, what's that?

"Momma, what you doing?"

"Momma, where's Jasmine?" (Yeah, we still get that question, and we still like it about as much as we would like to be stabbed in the gut with a knife.)

"Momma, can I have crackers please?"

"Momma, what you doing?"

"Momma, why you doing that?"

Of course I had an answer for all the questions, but that doesn't mean I was all that interested in answering them. Over and over and over again. While trying to keep an eye on Destructo-Pup.

Just as Massive Brain Explosion was about to set in, Alexis decided the pop quiz was over and broke into song. The kid pretty much always has her mouth open, either talking or singing, and has been known to sing songs that I know she didn't hear in my car. For example, daycare loves to let the kids groove to oldies like KC and the Sunshine Band. Yet, I was still surprised to hear the new tune she belted out. As she sang, "Cele-brate dot com, c'mon! Cele-brate dot com, c'mon!" I totally forgot about the Duper Puppy and the Pop Quiz.

Celebrate dot com, indeed.