atomic mama

Well, now we all love Cooper. Everyone except the cats, that is. But the cats hardly matter because all they ever do anymore is eat, poop, and get stoned in the basement.

Lily and Cooper have bonded wonderfully. Though Cooper tires her out, Lily loves to play with The Coops. Loves it. And she’s protective of Cooper, which is adorable. Lily will place her own body between Cooper and the cats, even though Lily is far more fearful of the cats than Cooper is. Lily’s sense of responsibility slays me. I love that dog.

Cooper is totally crazy, fearless, and steps in her own poo far more often than necessary. She eats grass, lichen, bark, slugs, and dirt. Shane thinks she eats poo, but I refuse to believe that. Cooper will “hunt” down her food bowl before she eats. She’ll bark at it, move it around as if it’s a nimble opponent, then finally move in for the kill. I caught this process on video this morning. Knowing I had captured something truly remarkable, I went to wake Shane up so he could watch it right away. As I was showing him the video, Cooper pooped in the kitchen (but did not eat it!). Ah. Such is life with a puppy.

What else…

Christmas! Yes. Christmas was as it should be, with trees and lights and turkey and gifts and stockings and loving grandparents. Shane spoiled me, as usual, but I must say that my favorite gift was something I’ve always wanted but didn’t think I’d receive for another fifty years or so: a Clapper.

You heard me.

Actually, he got me the Clapper Plus. (If you know anything about us, you are totally not surprised that the basic Clapper model simply would not do.) What differentiates the Clapper Plus from the simple Clapper? Well, in the advanced model I now call my own, one can plug in TWO devices and operate them separately by using different clap sequences. True. The only disappointment with the Clapper so far is that the user manual specifies that it’s not to be used for toasters, which totally blows my idea of clapping in bed in the morning and having my toast done for me before I get to the kitchen.

Lina was much more engaged this Christmas than last year, which was fun. We only got her a few things, as to not overwhelm her, and as to have plenty of money left to buy toys for ourselves. One of the things I finally bought her was a doll. If you’re a longtime reader, you know what happened last year on the doll front. Failure. Disgust. Terror. And those were only MY feelings.

After a year of research, I found the perfect doll. She’s small, she’s French, she has Asian ancestry, she contains beans. She has hair. She has no belly button, which is slightly disturbing to Lina, and perhaps also to the doll as she permanently wears a somewhat displeased expression. Lina has christened her “Baby,” which I will hereafter spell as “Bebe,” since she is a French national. Bebe has a stroller, which she pretty much lives in. Last night, Lina was playing with Bebe around bedtime, so Shane wheeled the doll and stroller combination into Lina’s room as he went in to put Lina down for the night. Lina was fine with this until the doll crossed the threshold of her room, at which point the kid protested dramatically. Bebe slept in the hallway. I’m not sure if, like me, Lina was afraid that the doll would come to life and kill her in her sleep, or if, also like me, she simply didn’t cotton to the idea of a baby sleeping in her room.

So I have Cooper, Lina has Bebe, and Shane has the whole kit-n-caboodle to watch over. He takes it in stride. I may revel in the chaos a little more than he does, but he provides the gravity needed to keep everything in check. The spaces between the notes. The height necessary to reach things off of very high shelves. The patience necessary to live with my incessant questioning of everything, all the time. The fashion sense to wear Fluevogs. And so we make merry in the best way I can imagine: together.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

La Maman Atomique

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 27th, 2006 at 23:06 and is filed under stephanie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.