Puppies Poop .... A Lot ... Frequently ... Everywhere

OK, so I shouldn't be surprised. I kinda knew puppies pooped. What I can't figure out is WHY MAGGIE POOPS EVERYWHERE BUT ON THE PAPER?!?!?!?! Here's the thing, she pees on the paper all the time. She's had maybe one pee accident in the past month and she was really, really excited at the time. Not only does she pee on the paper but she pees exactly dead center of the paper, bulls-eye. I've actually seen her squat near the edge of the paper, stop, look around and MOVE to the center of the paper before going. So why on earth won't she poop there? It's little itty bitty puppy poop, not a huge mess, and I do put it on the paper and show her. She still goes off and hides to poop. Hubby's opinion? She's shy, gee thanks hun. Any suggestions? Anyone?

Besides the pooping she's great. She's even learned to go in her travel bag when prompted which is great because now my niece can "help" by zipping her in or out. The two of them are inseparable, just what we were hoping for when we got Maggie. They even call out to each other at night when one or the other is awake and should be sleeping. Tala in her crib and Maggie in her crate. OK, this is probably annoying but since niece and puppy go home in the afternoon and become their parents' problems I can think it's cute.

Haven't been getting to much knitting lately, Mom and Dad FINALLY moved to Maine. They even took all, no most, OK about half their stuff. They'll be picking up the rest here and there and I twisted their arms and got a solid "you can toss it" list. There was no way I was paying for the house until their crap was GONE. Have I mentioned I'm the child of packrats and slobs?? Two people who are organizationally and cleanliness challenged shouldn't marry, they reinforce each others bad habits. At times this house has looked like one of those homes on "How Clean is Your House", unfortunately I'm not joking.

I think it's a teacher thing, all the teachers I know have homes that look like a bomb went off. Mom, Dad and one of my sisters. Everyone else in the family, myself and my other sister border on being neat freaks. In fact, when my Mom went to her parents' house to pick up a dining table my Papa was there to make mom take the boxes from his garage of her stuff. Seriously, my mother has been married for almost 40 years and she still had crap in Papa's garage. PACKRAT!
So, mostly I've been cleaning and purging. I'm not talking grab a mop and do a quick run trough the house. We're talking full on washing the walls and ceilings, removing and polishing the hardware from the furniture, and tossing or donating a TON of just stuff that my parents accumulated for reasons I can't fathom, THEY don't even want it.

One thing they left and I found a purpose for was a china hutch. Well, I don't have "good" china, I kinda hate "good" china. I'm also very anti-knick-knack, even though my mother-in-law gets us them for about EVERY holiday (don't get me started), but I do have some nice teapots. Tea pots border on knick-knacks, they walk a very fine line. Thing is I USE my teapots and I use them a lot. I also like teacups, not sets of teacups like "good" china, I get them one at a time and none of them match. Each cup is unique so they can't be "good" china. I like things with a function first and everything else second. My hubby... well he comes very close to being a knick-knack person like his mother sometimes, it scares me.

Other than teapots the only thing I have in abundance is yarn and knitting books. So they went into the hutch with the teapots. I mean I spent a whole day cleaning this thing I should get to put what I want in it. OK it did take a bit of convincing to get hubby to understand why a hutch full of yarn and teapots belonged in the dining area but in the end he saw the light. I think it looks pretty cool.