And they call it puppy love

There is a bundle of love fast asleep under my dining room table. (I say dining room table for lack of a better term...I probably should call it my only table...or the table that we eat / work / colour in / make Lego on...or the table in the middle of our living space. Anyway.)

He is black and white, and soft, and a big sook. He is eight weeks old. He cries when I leave the room. His name is Archie. And he is a little, little, parcel of love.

We went to see our beautiful friends, Anna and Adam, last night. As always, the kids had a ball playing together, and Christian and I enjoyed a lovely evening. When we left them, with three tired and happy kids in the back seat of the car, we took a piece of their family home to join ours. Archie rode in my lap all the way home, crying and wriggling and whining. I must admit I was bit concerned about the night ahead of us, but having had three puppies before Archie, I knew it was to be expected.

He fell asleep on my feet while I fed Maisie, and stayed that way when I put him in his brand-new bed in the bathroom. I listened with one ear all night, waiting for the crying to begin. When he eventually began to whimper, it was 6am - hardly an unreasonable time for a puppy to want to play!

By 6.05am, I had Jack, Phoebe, Maisie, Daisy and Archie in the loungeroom. To be honest, at this point I was wondering exactly where I was going to put everyone. Eventually, I boxed Maisie into the corner with all the toys behind an over-turned chair, put the gate up across the kitchen so that Archie couldn't go too far, and gave Jack and Phoebe a quick tutorial on "Things Archie Isn't Allowed To Chew or Swallow". It wasn't very successful.

Poor old Arch was looking a bit lost by this stage. He'd eaten his brekkie, done a poo in the corner, attempted to eat most of Maisie's toys and had them removed from his clutches, and couldn't find his mum. So he sat down on the floor and cried. The only thing that would stop the caterwauling was for me to sit with him. Which meant I sat on the floor for about an hour, with Archie, Daisy, Jack and Maisie on top of me. At least I was warm.

Throughout the course of the day, my new baby has pounced on a tennis ball, run around the garden, and met a cat for the first time (I think it went like this: "Oh hello! You're a funny looking dog!". To which Ernie replied with a swear word. When Archie persisted in being friendly, Ernie bopped him soundly on the head and stalked away. Archie has not bothered the strange-looking orange dog since.) He has eaten all of his dinner, spread most of it across the kitchen floor, had lots of little naps in his new bed with his head flopping on the floor, investigated beetles, and tried out his bark on Daisy.

To her credit, Daisy has been very patient and kind to the newbie. She has sighed, a lot. But generally speaking I think she's quite happy to have some doggy company - she just wishes he'd pipe down a bit. Bella was initially horrified that we had expanded the family...and remains that way.

And right now, Archie is crying and howling as though his legs have been amputated, because it is bedtime and he has no intention of going to sleep. I'm not quite sure how much shut-eye I will get tonight...I can only pray the kids sleep through the hullabaloo, because this is one baby I refuse to breastfeed to sleep!