Our New Puppy: The Surprise

Helloooooo, from the flip side of an amazing, epic, can’t-top-it kind of milestone weekend, bringing our new family member home to us!

Say, hello, to Coda, the puppy!

Could she be any cuter (said like Chandler)???

Coda is a Cavapoo (King Charles Cavalier and miniature poodle), and pretty much like a stuffed animal come to life. Seriously. She is everything we hoped for—and more.

She’s so stinking petite (at 2.4 pounds), and will grow to between 11-19 pounds (though, if I had to guess, our girl is going to stay quite small, especially in comparison to the current size of her three brothers she was born with).

If you read my lengthy last post, you’ll know that our puppy journey led us down this Cavapoo path, thanks to a friend and classmate of Chicklet’s, whose Cavapoo is a relative of our little Coda (a half-sister, I believe).

We had such a beautiful and happy and positive experience finding and bringing home our new family member, and I don’t think we’ll ever pull off a surprise of this magnitude on behalf of the kiddos, like, ever.

The kiddos have obviously known for ages (and ages) that we were working towards having a puppy—since they were the ones pushing for it! They’d been insanely involved in the lengthy process of preparing our household. They’d even seen pictures of our girl, Coda, from as early as two weeks, but we were careful to guard them against any sort of guarantee that she would be ours.

But talk about tugging at the heartstrings when we saw her in this pic all alone, just begging to be cuddled!

Needless to say, we were pretty done for as soon as we saw her, but, still.

We were working hard on the logistics and financials of adding this major family member to our wallets and our schedule and our home, so we made no commitments beyond checking in to see how she was growing.

And grow, she did!

At six weeks, she was even cuter. Gah!



I mean…I die.



Still, we made no commitment to the kiddos—beyond a vague promise that we hoped (hoped!) we could maybe, hopefully, kinda, sorta, if we were lucky, add her to the family around November-ish.

Meanwhile…the hubby and I officially committed behind the kiddos’ backs (the only kind of acceptable fib, yes??) and made plans to retrieve our girl from about four hours away, once she’d made it past the eight week mark.

We’d told the kiddos that the hubby was on a business trip, and when he arrived back home, we set them down in the living room and told them he had a surprise…before bringing Coda inside and pulling off the most regarding reveal, ever.

I was so torn prior to the big reveal—between remaining 100% in the moment versus capturing reactions through pictures and video. Luckily, I seamlessly pulled off both, and it was such a beautiful moment of joy and tears and happiness so full the kiddos’ were bursting.

The sequence of videos I captured is priceless, but I adore these photos, too. So much beauty to behold. :)

Every moment since Coda came home on Friday night and been full of joy—and so many incredible firsts to experience as a family (both good, bad, and a combo of both, ha.)

I’ll apologize in advance if you could care less about any puppy posts because there will be oodles to come, as our newest addition is pretty much the focal point of our lives right now, ha.

I selected the name Coda ages ago, just because I loved the sound of it (and the kiddos did, too), but I think the meaning is perfect. In Italian, it means “tail,” but the true reference that I intended is the musical meaning behind a “coda.” In a sonata, it’s the conclusion of a musical piece, and that seems pretty fitting since, this is the end of my life as I know it. ;)

But, hopefully, the beginning of a really beautiful, new chapter. :)

So much more, soon, on all things fun and challenging and training and exciting.

Happy Coda Surprise!

Over and out.