Today, we celebrate the one year birthday (that’s 7 in dog years) of our Chiapoo, Copper. He joined our family last February, his little nose was smaller than a dime back then. My sweet little Chickeymonkey claimed him one Sunday afternoon while we were at our local garden and pet center. Her big eyes filled with tears, she had to have him, and Daddy wasn’t going to leave that store with our little monkey looking so pitiful.

He’s spent the last several months napping. I think he’s nocturnal, but when I go to check on him in the middle of the night, he’s still sleeping. If he’s not sleeping, he’s our own personal little Roomba, with his nose to the floor and his tongue at the ready.

This, this is our beloved little lap dog. He melded perfectly into our family, and he’s irresistible to boot.

This is how Copper and his mom get along. They have a play or I’ll kiss you silly kind of relationship, which keeps her giggling, and keeps him active. He is a blur of fur, when he’s with her.

Chickeymonkey wished her pup a Happy Birthday as soon as her eyes opened this morning, as he slept on her lap through the night last night.

She gave him his first present, a purple fuzzy tug toy, which he really didn’t pay much attention to. I think he knew what was coming…

You betchya. The bone. The BACON bone. MmmMMmm….. he quickly got to work.

Gimme the bone back. Gimme the bone back. Gimme the bone back.

Please gimme the bone back. Please gimme the bone back. Please. Please? Pleeeease?

Aaaaah. A little prince and his bone. Happy Birthday, Copperhead.

Our little dude, Copper, had some surgery last Friday. He’s been wearing this cone for a week – can you stand it? He’s been pitiful. The sound of scratching plastic has filled my ears and my head. Plastic scraping on the floor while Roomba Jr. tries to resume normal activities.

I’ve slept with him on the couch, scratched his itches, and made sure his water dish was full enough so that his little tongue could reach beyond the cone.

He looks at me with those big watery eyes as if he’s apologizing for spraying my pillow on his quest to dominate me in my home.

Yes, well, I think he’s learned his lesson, don’t you? (Kidding, it’s been a week – his incision has healed enough. Not that I was trying to teach him a lesson – he learned that one fast and furiously the day I washed my bedsheets THREE TIMES.)

Time to take the cone off…

Okay so I lied. This hand is related. To me, that is.
It’s the hand of someone I love, and it is hurting her.
Anyone know what this is? A fungus? Eczema?

Grooooovy.

Copper, the Little Prince.
Time for tea. He does lift his pinki when he drinks, too.

Our giant sunflowers are blooming.
That bumblebee is the size of a quarter. Okay maybe a nickel.
(Can’t a girl embellish for effect?)

He looks like a scaredy squirrel, doesn’t he?

You might not be able to tell from this photo, but Copper is smiling from eyeball to eyeball about his new bowls. We took a day trip to Ikea yesterday and found these cute bowls and matching mat and just HAD to get them for Copper. When we got home and started unwrapping and unpacking things, I replaced his old generic bowls with these new fancy ones and he went crazy. He kept coming up to us and bringing us over to his new dishes and then looking up with this little twinkle in his eyes.

He’s a happy dog. With happy dishes.(Wanna see? Huh? Huh? Do ya? Come look! Look!)

We’ll be playing.

And relaxing.

And maybe even reflecting over how little we are in such a big, big world.

What are your weekend plans?

It’s been a couple of months since I carried my camera around with any kind of passion to take a photograph. Winter had me tightly in its grips – until last week. I wore open toed shoes to church (my piggies are aubergine, go figure!). I cleared away the dead and dried out iris from last fall to reveal tulips and new iris making their way up out of the earth. I felt excited again! So much so that I even took the cover off the grill and fired it up, we had grilled chicken for dinner that night.

Aaah spring is coming.

My camera is at the ready once again, I removed the screen from the front window yesterday for clear photos once I saw the “official” confirmation of Spring in my front yard:

I’ve seen them around, yes, but I needed to see him in my front yard. He needed to be right there.

More random and springy snaps in between dog naps below!

Our resident red bellied woodpecker has begun making regular appearances
on the suet block out back,
While Copper collected all of his toys,
and one of my furry flip flops,
in and around his cozy little shoebox.

I’m debating what to do with my bathroom, tile, paint, wallpaper?
We’re still piecing it together…

While Copper takes a nap.

I admired the architecture of the buildings around Palmer College
on the way home last weekend,

Quintin joined in the St. Patrick’s Day festivities,
donning a clover scrunchie,

And our sweet little Chickeymonkey
smiled adorably at her piano recital…

While Copper took a nap.

The red bellied woodpecker made yet another loud entrance
(you can’t miss ’em when you hear ’em)…

And we figured out how to fix this mess and reinstall the toilet,

While Copper took a nap.

As you can see, Copper sleeps through most everything, and I have entirely too much stuff to do. Any suggestions on the bathroom remodel are MORE than welcome. My dear sweet hubby can tell you how many times I’ve changed my mind about what to do, since I’ve lost count. I was going to install ceramic tile last weekend until the floor decided to be WAY too unlevel (we live on a slab) to even out without a professional and a load of concrete – and I ended up at Lowe’s 5 minutes before closing time for peel & stick flooring.

I cannot tell you how I yearn for a custom built home. Maybe next year, eh?

Or the year after that… or the year after that…

He moves from the back of the house in the morning (his current station in the sun) to the front of the house in the afternoons to lay in the sun. He’s got it made. Oh and hubby wants me to mention he’s totally litter box trained. Hasn’t had an accidento on el carpeto in over 3 days.

Taco Bell has me all puzzled about how Copper would sound if he could talk. Dude. I hear him speaking Spanish when he smiles and pouts at me, and yes – he absolutely smiles and pouts. I’ll try to capture that so you can see. I’m sure we’ll be having caption contests. Oh, yes we will. I already have the starter photo for the first Copper Caption Contest for you, so you might want to brush up on your Alta Vista Spanish.

Our sweet little dude needs a category. I’ll be accepting category name suggestions here in comments and then we’ll vote after I get a handful of cool snarky Coppertastic titles. Get creative! I love creative. Once he’s got a category, captioning shallo commencio.

Yes, this is our new puppy. He belongs to Chickeymonkey, officially, as she’s the only one in the house without “her very own” pet – she just wanted a pet she isn’t afraid of. How could anyone be afraid of this little dude? He’s a long haired Chihuahua-Poodle mix, they call ’em ChiaPoo’s. His momma is 5lbs, daddy is 3.5lbs, so he’s not going to get much bigger than this. He’s had a nice bath, his toes are clipped and filed, and he slept in a little ball next to my head last night. (And he’s curled up in a ball in my lap right now).

Say it with me now, c’mon… “awwwwwwwwww”.