"I guess she can stay" -Cooper

Cooper might just be starting to see some value in having Mallory around (aside from her sharing food with him from her high chair, which we put the kibash on whenever we see it happening).

Cooper has been textbook retriever from almost day one ~ I say “almost” because the first couple of days we had him he didn’t like the water and didn’t like to retrieve…so Rick & I were sure he was defective. But he quickly jumped (and tumbled and somersaulted) into a retrieving beast and will chase a tennis ball until you give up. (picture is Cooper ~ 11 weeks old ~ May 20, 2005)

Anyway ~ Mallory started to play ball with Cooper this weekend. Granted, we have some work to do before it is a full-on game of fetch, but Little Miss Mallory was playing a 9-mo old version of keep-away and Cooper was BESIDE himself because she had his tennis ball. And anytime Cooper would try to gently take it from Mallory, Mallory would start giggling and giggling. But Mals actually got a couple of little tosses in and Coops would just pounce on the ball. In the beginning of video below, it totally looks Mallory is trying to point to the ground telling Cooper to SIT before she’ll play with him.

Just a few random pictures from our Saturday night pizza run; there is a pizza place on the chain of lakes but Rick only likes the pizza if we are eating it on the boat – he won’t eat it if they deliver it to our house. Huh?

Mallory is getting more & more used to the life jacket – she usually screams when we put it on her and then settles down but lately she has offered her arms up so we can suit her up and she totally loves watching the water go by. Cooper got some good lovin’ on this trip – Mallory was patting his head and he got to ride shotgun with dad. But in the middle picture below…Cooper must not know about Mallory’s killer butzies!