2 Years

Dear Cooper,

5 weeks ago you turned 2! This is what happens when you're the second born. It takes mom 5 weeks to finally blog about your birthday. Sorry, but I still love you!

In the past 6 months or so, you have truly been teaching me what a strong-willed child looks like. I always thought Garrett was my strong-willed child, but apparently he's pretty passive and compliant. Who knew.

You love to tell me no. About everything. You throw fits on a regular basis. You make regular attempts to beat up your brother. All in all, you're a very typical 2 year old.

You love anything that remotely resembles a gun. You turn toys into guns, you "shoot" us frequently and say "pow pow". It truly is genetic because this is not something that you've been taught. Garrett does have some toy guns, but rarely plays with them.

You've begun the "eats like a bird" phase. You exist on a couple of strawberries for breakfast, some cheese for lunch, and crumbs you scrounged off the floor for supper. Of course I offer you legitimate food at each mealtime, this is just what you choose to eat.

You attempt to take off your own diaper now and want to sit on the toilet whenever we'll let you. I'm so not ready for potty training yet, so I'm trying to distract you from this for now.

You LOVE Garrett and want to be doing anything and everything he is doing (when you're not trying to beat him up that is.)

You are an absolute, 100% Daddy's boy. You love your Daddy more than anyone else on this Earth. If Daddy is around, he must do anything and everything for and with you and no one else will do. This is a bonus for me, since that means diaper duty for Daddy when he's home. But everybody better watch out when Daddy leaves for work in the morning. I'm dreading when Garrett leaves with Daddy in the mornings for kindergarten starting next month. You'll be left with your least favorite person in the house.

You talk more and more all the time. You copy a lot of things that we say and we can understand about 60-75% of what you say. It's harder for other people to understand you though.

You love anything that you can cuddle. You have a good number of stuffed animals in your bed and you're happy to cuddle with any of them at bedtime and naptime. You also enjoy carrying around your (full-size) pillow and laying down on the floor or the couch and just chilling for a bit.

You did great when you moved you into a regular bed and we haven't had any problems since then. You sleep great in it and you rarely get out of the bed until someone comes into your room to let you know it's time to get up.

I cannot believe you're 2! We love you very much and can't wait to see what your future holds for you.

15 Months

Yesterday, Cooper "turned" 15 months old. He's really changing a lot lately and learning all kinds of new things. I just wanted to jot some of this down for my own personal record.

•Since starting school, he has taken 2 naps on his napmat. The first one was an hour long and the second was a little over an hour and a half. I seriously cannot believe he's been doing this with little problem. One Thursday when I'm not quite as busy, I have to sneak down to his room during naptime and get a quick picture of him doing this. There's actually quite a few things that he's been doing at school that makes him seem so grown up, that I would also love to catch on camera. I may have to sneakily follow him around one day and get some pictures. I must say Cooper's first year of MDO has started off 100 times better than Garrett's did. Though I have felt guilty about starting him so young, that may turn out to be a good thing.

*He walks all the time now. He still has a bit of the "frankenstein" look to his walk, but he's pretty steady and has no problem bending down, picking something up, and carrying it around while he walks. He hasn't taken to running just yet and surprisingly he really hasn't tried to climb much yet. He was attempting more climbing when he was still crawling than he is now. Though the other morning when I went to get him out of bed, he had one leg hiked up trying to sling it over the side of the crib in order to attempt an escape. Thankfully that side of the crib will raise up a few more inches if we need it to, so he should be contained for awhile longer.

•He has been sleeping terribly lately. I'm assuming it's teeth, but who really knows. He's relatively cheerful during the day so I don't quite understand why his teeth only bother him at night. But he's typically up for anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours almost every night. It's loads of fun. I've found myself sleeping through some of his crying because I'm so tired. Keith always hears him though. One of us usually goes into his room after he's been crying for 10-15 minutes (to try and give him time to go back to sleep if he will) and we check to be sure he's not sick or stuck somehow or without a pacifier. So far none of that has been the case. I've tried a multitude of things to see if anything would remedy the situation. Putting him down in less clothes, putting him down in more clothes, turning on his ceiling fan, turning off his ceiling fan, turning on a nightlight, turning off the nightlight. Nothing has helped. I assume it's a phase that will eventually be outgrown.

•He's starting to say quite a few things. This is surprising to me because Garrett was a late talker. He didn't say much until he turned 2 and after that. Cooper says the following somewhat regularly: here, hi, bye, eat, all done, more, momma, daddy, night night, go, bath. I also hear him copying words that we say randomly. His teacher told me the other day he said "here it is" at school very plainly.

•He also understands a lot. I can say "it's time to eat" and he walks over to his highchair. If I say "it's bath time" he walks to the bathroom door. If I say "it's time to go night night" he walks to his room. (That's not to say he goes to bed happily. He always cries for 30 seconds to a minute after I put him down for a nap or for bed. He must let me know he's not ok with this, even if he's cooperating.) If I ask him if he needs his diaper changed, he lifts his shirt with one hand and pats his bottom with the other. Sometimes he will just do that if I haven't asked him if I need to change him and I know that he needs a new diaper.

•On the negative side, he's really aggressive. He throws things, he hits (so far no one but our family. I hope he doesn't start hitting other kids.), he throws fits (laying on his stomach and kicking his legs type of fits), he screams and yells when he's mad or frustrated. A funny story related to this: last Saturday our family went to eat lunch at Texas Roadhouse. We love eating there. It's always really loud so I don't worry about our boys disturbing other people since we can barely hear each other. I had given Cooper some pieces of a roll to snack on while we waited for our food. Keith and I each had a Coke we were drinking plus a new cup of Coke that the waitress had brought to us. Cooper had been throwing things, so I had taken everything away from him except for the bread. He picked up 2 pieces of bread and threw them in Keith's direction. One landed in Keith's current cup of Coke and the other landed in Keith's new cup of Coke. I have to confess that we both just busted up laughing (which I know is terrible, but it struck as so funny.) Of course a little bit later, he picks up a bigger piece of bread and throws it at Garrett, hitting him in the head. I have a feeling we will be cutting back on our eating out pretty soon because of him. (We only eat out once or twice a week as it is, but that may drop to once or twice a month.)

Lastly I had to share another funny story. Yesterday, the boys and I ate lunch at Cici's with a friend of mine and her son. We were done eating, the 2 older boys were in the game room playing video games and she and I were talking. Cooper was playing with a Spiderman action figure. I looked down at the table and he has Spiderman laying down on his back, with a cracker under his head as a pillow and a napkin over his legs as a blanket. I laughed so hard that I cried.

Cooper "Walking"

Cooper loves walking like this. He won't do it any other way.

My apologies for the lighting and the brevity. My memory card was almost full so I didn't have much room to work with.

1 Year

(I wrote this yesterday, but didn't get a chance to post it.)

Dear Cooper,

Today is your 1st birthday!! I can't believe a year has already passed since you were born.

We are having your birthday party tonight. Nana and Pawpaw are visiting this week from Indiana, so we're excited to have your party on your actual birthday with all of your grandparents here. Along with other family and some friends. I'm already looking forward to watching you eat your cake!

Here's what you are up to at 1 year:

You finally, FINALLY cut your first tooth. It came through on June 2, one of the front teeth on the bottom. I honestly didn't think you'd have a tooth in time for your birthday, but of course you've proven me wrong. You actually have 2 teeth now. You cut your second one on the 15th. So you have one on the bottom and one on the top.

I also figured you would have taken your first steps by this point, but again, you've proven me wrong. You've only stood alone very few times. Anytime we attempt to stand you up by yourself, you immediately sit down. But you practically run behind your push-toy walker, so I assume it won't be much longer before you start walking.

You have had your right eye's tear duct probed twice in the past month. The first probing didn't completely work, so we've had one more done. In a couple of weeks, we'll go back for a check up and if this probing didn't work, we'll probably end up doing surgery. So far your eye is looking good though.

You're developing a love for cars, you love pushing Garrett's bigger cars around everywhere.

You're completely off formula and the bottle. A few weeks ago I started a slow transition from formula to whole milk, once our can was finished, you were on whole milk completely. You didn't seem to even notice the change. During that time, I immediately weaned you down to 3 bottles a day, then 2, then 1. You took your final bottle last Friday. Mostly because we used the last bottle liner that we had. (You take Playtex Nurser bottles with drop-in liners.) The hardest one to lose has been the one right before bed, but now you get some sort of a snack with a cup of milk and you seem to be doing well with that. I also keep a sippy cup of water in your crib in case you wake up thirsty during the night.

You love almost any food that I give you. I'm looking forward to introducing scrambled eggs soon. I think you'll love them too.

You still nap and sleep really well. 2 naps a day about 1 to 1 and a half hours each and 11 to 12 hours at night. Over the next few months, I hope to slowly transition you to 1 long nap a day. On days when you only take 1 nap, you seem to do just fine, so I hope this won't be tough to do.

The older you get, the more of a Daddy's boy you are. You refuse to let me hold you if Daddy is already holding you. And you have total meltdowns when he leaves the room.

You say "uh oh" all the time now. You've also said "Night Night" a couple of times. Anytime we say hi or bye, you wave. And sometimes when we say no, you shake your head.

It's hard to imagine all the new things you will learn in the next 6 months. It will be so much fun! And so very exhausting.

The Lifes and Times of the Pediatric Ophthamologist

We were in the pediatric ophthamologist's office yesterday. The odd part about this are the random adults that show up for appointments with no children in tow. Are they like Ross on Friends who still goes to his pediatrician?

We were there because of Cooper's blocked tear duct. That was an interesting experience. First off, the doctor put a drop of dye in each eye. In the "normal" eye, you could barely see traces of the dye on his lower lashes, but on the eye with the blocked tear duct, there was dye all under his eye and running down his cheeks, not to mention pooling in the corner of his eye. That's just a visual of the fact that the duct is blocked and nothing is draining the way it's supposed to. (I know when we hear blocked tear duct, it sounds like tears wouldn't come out into the eye, but it actually means the duct that drains tears out of the eye and into the nose is blocked. It's why your nose gets stuffy when you cry, your ducts are draining a lot of excess tears out of your eye and into your nose.)

Once the doctor confirmed that he did have a blocked tear duct, she gave us our options (one was surgery) and we chose to do a tear duct probing procedure in the office. It wasn't pleasant, but it avoided anesthesia for now. I went with Cooper into another room (Keith and Garrett stayed in the exam room). They strapped him on a papoose board, which basically is where they put his arms at his sides and wrapped cloth around them and velcroed it so he couldn't move. There were little cushions on either side of his head to prevent him from turning it. (For all you moms out there, it looked similar to an industrial strength swaddling blanket. But no baby is breaking out of this swaddler.)

He was thrilled with all of this, by the way.

I sat in the corner and tried to see as little as possible, just to avoid another near-fainting situation like when Garrett got stitches. The doctor stuck a dilator into an opening on his lower eyelid, then took a probe/syringe, the probe opened up the duct and then she shot saline solution through the probe and into the duct. It eventually drains into the back of the throat, so once she could hear him gargling on the saline, she knew it had all gone through. Of course he was screaming at the top of his lungs the entire time. The last time I've heard him get that worked up was immediately after he was born. Thankfully the whole thing literally took 2 minutes, maybe even less.

Afterwards we got to see blood coming out of his eye and nose, which is always fun to see on your baby. But now, more than 24 hours after the procedure, everything is looking pretty good. I've seen some tears pooling in his eye occasionally, but not near what they used to. And I've seen no mucous (which was always a problem before the procedure). So I hope it worked. If not, we'll get to try one more probing and if that doesn't work, we have to go the surgical route where they put a stint in his tear duct to keep it open. The probing itself has a 75% success rate. At this point, the only thing working against us is the fact that children are notoriously fast healers and as far as his body is concerned, that blockage was supposed to be there, so it may reform.

A few more new things on Cooper. I promise to post some Garrett stuff tomorrow.

Cooper has learned to say "uh oh" which is so funny. He has it with the emphasis on "oh" instead of "uh". He also has a very deep voice in comparison to Garrett's high-pitched one. We have a video of Garrett saying "uh oh" at about the same age and Garrett's voice is so high compared to Cooper's deep one.

He has also learned to lay his head down when someone says "aww". Sometimes he even says "aww" with us.

Still no teeth, but total grouch-ville lately. I'm going to rename him Oscar if he doesn't get a tooth soon and stop with the crankiness. He had a few days of low grade fever so I really thought a tooth was imminent, but so far it hasn't happened. I can feel where one will eventually pop through, but I've been feeling that for awhile now, so I'm not about to make predictions as to when it will happen.

Well, little Oscar has reared his head, so I'll wrap this up. But I'll balance this out with some of Garrett's hilarity tomorrow. Stay tuned for his knock knock joke about Jesus.

11 Months

First time to eat spaghetti

Only 1 short month to go until the big first birthday! I promise I will cease the monthly updates at that point!

Dear Cooper,

Today you are 11 months old. Your personality emerges more every day. You definitely have opinions about things, you get highly annoyed with people very quickly and let them know it. Just this morning, Garrett wouldn't give you back your sippy cup that you had thrown approximately 100 times while on our way home from grocery shopping. I happened to look back and see the glare that you gave him when he told you he wasn't giving it back. Yesterday, I was trying to put food on your tray for lunch, but I wasn't going fast enough so you banged your hands on the tray. I copied you and banged my hands on the tray, you reached out as if to hit me and yelled in my face. Oooh, boy. If this keeps up, you and I are going to have it out. And I will win. Mommas always win.

Here's what you're up to at 11 months:

You still have not walked yet. Anytime someone tries to stand you up in the floor, you immediately sit down.

You've stood alone 2 or 3 times, but mostly you sit down anytime it appears that you don't have something to hold on to.

You like to push your push-toy around the house and have pretty good control with it. Which leads me to believe you have better control of your balance than you show us.

You've finally started clapping your hands in the past couple of weeks. Now, anytime we say "Yay!!" you clap your hands.

You always wave when we say hi or bye, and sometimes you'll do it when other people wave at you, but not always.

You still have no teeth. I'm sure you'll be toothless on your birthday. But it doesn't stop you from eating things like small bites of steak. You LOVE meat.

You still get 4 bottles a day, but I've started cutting back the amount of formula in them and adding whole milk in order to get you adjusted to it. Once we're done with our current can of formula, you will be solely on whole milk. Then I'll tackle taking the bottles away completely. I don't think it will be too hard because you don't seem all that attached to them. You just want to eat.

You refuse to hold your own bottle and feed yourself, but you've started holding your own sippy cup, you just need to work on tipping it up in order to actually drink something.

You pull up all the time, on anything.

You love balls and have learned how to roll it, so we sit on the floor and roll the ball back and forth to each other. You usually have to sit sideways and hit it towards your back in order to get it going in the right direction.

You still sleep 11-12 hours at night. And take 2 naps a day, around 1-2 hours a piece.

You hate shoes and complain the entire time you're wearing them. I'm sure it doesn't help that you have fat feet, which makes them fit tighter. Your feet are shorter and fatter than Garrett's were at this age.

I can't believe the next time I post about you, it will be for your first birthday! It's gone by really fast!

10 Months

Dear Cooper,

Today you are 10 months old! It's hard to believe that in 2 months time you will be 1! You are my cuddly baby and most of the time, thoroughly enjoy just being held whenever I can hold you. Of course now that you're pretty mobile, you love to be down to play and explore, but you have your moments of wanting to be held and still.

Here's what you're up to lately:

You pull up all the time, on anything possible. You haven't quite figured out how to pull up to stand at a wall or door, but you're getting close.

You love to "cruise" (aka walk around holding onto furniture), but you're still pretty slow with this. However, I'll find you standing at the end of the couch, barely holding on with one hand, while you lean down to hit Garrett on the head, so I think you could be more mobile than you're letting on right now.

You're almost exclusively eating table food at this point. You much prefer to feed yourself finger foods than to be fed baby food. I still keep jars on hand for when we go somewhere and there may not be food available to feed you, but I can't hardly get you to eat an entire jar of food because you would rather be feeding yourself. You still let me feed you yogurt every morning for breakfast, but that's it. You LOVE most meats and many veggies and fruits. However, I gave you a few bites of watermelon the other day and you literally threw up in your mouth and then swallowed it (sorry, I know that's gross. But it's true.) So we won't be trying watermelon again anytime soon.

You're starting to wean yourself off the bottle. I still offer it to you 4 times a day, but you only take the first and last bottles of the day well, the middle 2, you don't drink much. In the next few weeks, I'll probably transition those to be sippy cup drinks with a snack.

You like any toys that make noise, books, and balls. You hate our Tickle Me Elmo and get scared anytime we bring it out. You're also very afraid of Garrett's Spiderman punching bag. I'm not sure if it's because it is taller than Garrett and when he plays with it, it looks like it's hitting him since it stands itself back up. But we've limited Garrett's playing with it to his bedroom for now.

You love playing with doorstops as well as being given the opportunity to close any doors.

You rarely play in your Exersaucer or Jumperoo now. I use the Exersaucer when we go outside so you'll have something to play in, but other than that, you never sit in it anymore.

You've only recently realized you can roll over and crawl away from me when I'm changing your diaper or clothes. I've relished this time up until now where you've laid still while I've changed you, but now you know the power you have.

You still refuse to attempt to feed yourself a bottle or drink out of a sippy cup on your own.

You love to wave and constantly are waving at us, or strangers when we're out and about. You also love to shake your head yes and no still. I think you know that the no shake means no because you sometimes do it whenever I verbally tell you no (like when you're trying to play with an outlet, even though they're covered. or when you try to stand up in the bathtub.)

We love you so much and usually find you very funny.

Happy 10 months baby boy!

9 Months

I know this probably sounds goofy, but it's hard to believe that Cooper has officially been on the "outside" as long as he was on the "inside". hahaSometimes he gets himself stuck under the couch. Here's a shot of that. Now that he can crawl, he's able to get himself out, most of the time.

Dear Cooper,


Today you are 9 months old! You are entering the "fun" stage as far as I'm concerned. In the past 2 weeks, you've taken off on the crawling front. I can turn around and you're gone and we have to track you down. For right now, we try to keep all the bedroom and bathroom doors shut and I've got you blocked from getting into the kitchen or dining room, so you're limited to playing in the living room and hallway. I know that's just temporary because you'll eventually figure out how to get around the blocks, but for now it's working. (We have an open floor plan, which means that the "doorways" between the living room, dining room, foyer, breakfast nook are all open and way too big for any baby gates on the market.)


So far you've pulled up a handful of times.


You still have no teeth. I'm not holding my breath that one will show up anytime soon. Your cousin Jake didn't get one until he was 11 months old and your aunt Grace was 1 before her first tooth popped in, so we'll see when it happens for you.


You've become a bigtime babbler lately. You say "mama", "dada", and "baba" all indiscriminately. Sometimes you say, what sounds like "blah, blah" which cracks me up. You still love to screech and squeal too.


Your current obsession is cords right now. I know that if my bedroom door is open, you're going to take off as fast as you can to get to the lamp in my room and start pulling on the cord. If you manage to get behind the couch (which sits well away from the wall), you immediately hunt down the computer cord to start playing with it.


You LOVE to eat. I've started giving you more and more table foods/finger foods for you to feed yourself the majority of your meals. Then I finish off meal time, giving you some of a jar of baby food to be sure you've eaten enough. About half of the food I put on your highchair tray ends up on the floor. You eat 3 meals a day, 4 (6oz) bottles a day and one afternoon snack of Cheerios or fruit puffs.


You are now wearing size 4 diapers and are outgrowing many of your 6-9 month size clothes. You can still wear most of the Carter's brand in that size due to the fact that it runs big, but we've already brought out some 12 month clothes that you fit in well.


You startle really easily and get scared by random things, one of which is the Tickle Me Elmo that we have. Yet you love to watch Elmo on TV. You also love Clifford too. I turned on a "Singing Babies" DVD for the first time the other day and you were mesmerized. I try to limit the amount of TV you watch, but anytime Garrett gets to watch a cartoon, you are very intrigued by it.


You still are a good sleeper, most of the time. You take 2 naps a day that last 1.5 to 2 hours each. You typically go to bed around 7:30pm and sleep until 7am. You love to have many paci's in the crib with you, and when we get you up after a nap or in the morning, you are always sitting in the crib, surrounded by paci's and you're systematically throwing them out of the crib one at a time. Thankfully you've started throwing them into the middle of the room rather than the side by the wall.


You love rocking back and forth in your exersaucer along with spinning yourself in circles. Besides jumping in your Jumperoo, you also do this little move that looks like you're hula hooping where you shake your hips back and forth. It's so funny!

You got your first haircut this month. Your hair was getting shaggy over your ears and along the neckline, so I just gave you a quick trim.

This is the before picture. He was thrilled, obviously. haha But this gives you a bit of an idea as to what his hair looked like over his ears. I normally kept it pushed behind his ears, but I was getting tired of that. He's sitting in his Bumbo seat on the table, which is how I kept him relatively contained and still long enough to do it.

And the after picture. He's very thrilled to have shorter hair. As well as knowing that Momma cut her hand while trying to trim his hair quickly. He felt it was a good form of retribution for all the "pain" I was inflicting upon him.

This week you had your first bout with real fever. You have roseola, so your temperature has been fluctuating between 101 and 103. You're a bit grouchy, but not terrible.

I can't believe that in 3 months you will be 1 year old!!

8 months old!

Dear Cooper,

Today you are 8 months old! You are getting to the age where you make us laugh on a regular basis. Almost every day you're attempting to do something new, which usually looks so funny.

Here's what you're up to lately:

Instead of dropping you down to 3 bottles a day, I've dropped you to 6 ounces, 4 times a day. You were seldom taking all 8 ounces at any of the bottles and I was having a hard time figuring out what times to give you the 3 bottles, so we're sticking with out same times, just smaller amounts.

You eat 3 meals a day (usually). For breakfast you typically have baby yogurt or fruit with cheerios. I've learned that you must have something you can feed yourself while I'm attempting to feed you your food. Eventually you'll feed yourself the entire meal, but for now I don't think you get enough if I rely solely on you to feed yourself. For lunch you typically have a fruit or a veggie with fruit puffs or saltine crackers. For dinner you have a baby food dinner, like spaghetti or turkey and veggies sometimes with cottage cheese, and I'll give you small pieces of whatever we're eating so that you have something to feed to yourself.

You're starting to outgrow some of your 6-9 month size clothes, but for the most part, you can still fit in them. I'm hoping that will continue until the weather gets permanently warmer because we have no cold weather 12 month size clothing. As soon as we use up all of the size 3 diapers, you will be moving up to size 4's. You've had too many leaks in the 3's, so I'm tired of that.

You still have not cut a tooth!! I'm so tired of all the drool and crankiness. I still can feel where one is slowly making its ascent but I am more than ready for it to pop through. And I know you are too.

You aren't much for baby babble. You prefer squealing/shrieking/screaming. But sometimes when you're fussy you say "mama". With Garrett, I stressed about his babbling and then later on his speech. He didn't really start talking until he was 2 1/2 and now I can't get him to stop talking. So I have no stress in the babbling area. Eventually you'll start and then I'll wish for a moment's peace. For now I'm enjoying the relative silence. Most of the time you have your paci in your mouth, which is probably why you don't babble as much. But I'm ok with that. :)

Physically, you are learning something new every day. You have completely mastered sitting yourself up from a laying down position. As well as moving from a sitting position to being on all 4's. You like to lunge forward when you're doing this in order to try and get yourself moving forward. You have finally started crawling forwards, after crawling backwards for a few months now. You're still slow and mostly do an army crawl rather than being on all 4's, but between army crawling, backwards crawling, spinning around on your stomach and being able to sit yourself up, you get around really well. Thankfully you haven't attempted to get out of the living room yet, but I know it's coming. The baby gates are ready and waiting in your closet. Your newest determination is trying to pull up. A negative to this is that we really don't have anything that you can attempt this on. So I've brought out a table of Garrett's and you try to pull up on it all the time. So far you've managed to get on your knees.

Your favorite toys are balls, anything with tags, and anything you can open and close. You love opening and closing books. You also love toys with music, as soon as the music starts, you start rocking back and forth.

You've also started shaking your head no and yes. Though it usually means nothing when you do it, it's still funny to watch. You did it for Nana and Pawpaw on Skype the other day and they thought it was hilarious.

You still love to jump in your jumperoo. But you've stopped jumping when people are holding you. I can tell you're trying to figure out your balance now so that you can stand upright.

You sleep 11-12 hours at night, which is awesome. I've discovered that you've decided you like throwing your paci's out of the crib. Unfortunately you only do it on the side of the crib that's by the wall. What's up with that? Throw them into the middle of the room so that I can actually get to them. You take 2 good naps a day. The first one is usually from 9:30-10:30 and the second one is 1:00-3:00. Those are approximate and obviously differ on the days Garrett has school since we have to pick him up at 2:00.

It's just amazing to me how much you have learned in a short period of time. I'm really enjoying seeing your personality shine and grow. And you're still my cuddler and enjoy lots of time being held whenever you can get it.

Monday Morning Recap

I know I mentioned in my last weight loss blog that I'm changing my weigh-in date to Fridays, which I did, so I'll post a weight loss recap on Friday. But I will say that I jumped on the scale this morning and saw a 1.5 pound loss, so I was happy to see something. But it's not my official weight loss for the week, just thought I would share it.

This weekend we rented a couple of good movies that I thought I would briefly share about. I've been on a terrible roll of renting bad and dumb movies. I'm not sure if Blockbuster online doesn't do a good job of describing the movies or if I'm just bad at choosing them. But this weekend I went to the actual Blockbuster store to rent a few. The nice thing about doing Blockbuster online, as opposed to some of the other online rentals, is that you can return your online rental to a brick and mortar store and rent another movie for free. We watched "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" with Michael Douglas, on Saturday night. It was a good legal-type thriller movie with a twist. I personally didn't like the twist at the end, but Keith did, so it depends on your movie preferences, but on a whole it was 100x's better than the last 2 movies we had seen.

Sunday afternoon, before the Super Bowl started and while Cooper took a nap, we watched "Love Happens" with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart. Great movie! A romantic comedy, light on the comedy, but not your typical romance. I really liked it. It definitely had its sad moments which can be affirmed by the fact that Keith said at one point during the movie "He just makes me want to cry." Not talking about the main character, Aaron, but another man in the movie, a dad. I'll just leave it there.

We ended up staying home for the Super Bowl this year. The past few years, I've been teaching Sunday School in our church's pre-teen department so I've gone to the pre-teen party. But this year, with Cooper being little and going to bed about 7:30, we decided to forgo our adult SS class party and stay home to party by ourselves. I really enjoyed it, but I tend to be a home-body, so I know it's not for everyone. My absolute favorite commercial was the Stevie Wonder/Volkswagon one. I really hope we'll see that one again. I was rooting for the Colts, largely in part to the fact that I lived in Indiana for 10 years of my life and my parents currently live there, but I guess I'm ok with the fact that the Saints won since it's their first win ever. And I've heard good stories about their QB.

We've been spending the past several days (weeks) really trying to encourage Cooper to crawl forwards. He is a very fast backwards crawler and has been doing it for months, he just doesn't quite know how to go forwards, unless he's holding onto something, like the edge of the area rug. He will go from sitting to his hands and knees which obviously puts him in a forward motion, but once he's on his hands and knees, he ends up going backwards. The good thing though is that he spins on his stomach and turns around in order to get to where he needs to go, so he's getting better about running into things (or under them), but it would still be nice for him to figure out the forward part. I've put all sorts of things to try and entice him to move forwards, he just doesn't quite know how yet.

He's also started getting on his tiptoes and his hands, so he looks kind of like he's doing a man's push-up. Or crawling like a monkey, except he usually isn't moving when he does this, he just stays stationary. He can also pull himself up to where he's standing on his knees, and he has started rocking back and forth when he's sitting up. He usually does this when he hears music, but sometimes he'll just start rocking and there isn't any music playing. And yesterday he started nodding his head yes, which looked so funny. He'll be 8 months old in 9 days, which is just crazy!

Garrett celebrates his half birthday in a few weeks, so I promise I will write a big post just about him in honor of that birthday. He's a total goofball sometimes and absolutely loves playing Wii. We've had to limit him with it because he would play it all day long.

Well, it's almost naptime for someone in this house (I wish that someone was me.) then I will hop on the treadmill. I'm actually to the point now where I love walking on it. I've downloaded some great music and put together a fun workout playlist, so I look forward to having some alone time with my iPod while I'm also getting myself into shape. I do NOT look forward to the days I do the "Shred". Yikes! I haven't done it enough for it to be getting easier or something to look forward to. But I definitely feel the workout when all is said and done, so I know it's worth the time. But I countdown the minutes while I'm doing it.

Dear Cooper

Dear Cooper,

Yesterday you turned 7 months old! Only 5 months now until your big first birthday!

Here's what you're up to lately:

~You love to sit on the floor and play with toys. You prefer this to sitting in your exersaucer. But you still like the Jumperoo pretty well.

~You love to jump. All the time. If someone is holding you where you're standing in their lap, you immediately start jumping up and down.

~You still rock back and forth on your hands and knees and end up scooting backwards, no forward crawling yet.

~You've started waving and shaking your head no.

~You're trying to figure out how to get from laying down to sitting up. You've come really close a couple of times to doing it.

~You always are taking your socks off and usually put one in your mouth to chew on.

~You are so close to cutting your first tooth. Sometimes I think I see one in your mouth, but I still can't feel it. I think by the time I'm writing your 8 month post you'll have at least one tooth.

~You are wanting less and less to do with your bottles lately. This week I'll be dropping you from 4 bottles a day to 3.

~You also aren't liking any baby food right now. You really prefer anything that we're eating. I've fed you cottage cheese (you loved it!), toast, mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans, rice and a few other table foods and you couldn't get enough. So I'll probably be switching you to table food over the next month. There's only a couple of jarred foods I can even get you to eat at this point. Otherwise you clamp your mouth shut and blow bubbles at me so I can't slip the spoon past your lips. Then you'll arch your back, slump down in the highchair and cry if I keep trying. It's loads of fun.

~You LOVE bathtime. I've been letting you and Garrett take baths together ever since you could sit well independently and you boys have the best time together in the tub.

You're fussing at me now so I will wrap this up. I can't wait to see what you'll learn this month!

Happy Half-Birthday!

Dear Cooper,
Today you are 6 months old! I can't believe we're halfway to your birthday. I guess I should start thinking about birthday party themes...

You absolutely love your dad and your big brother. (I think you're pretty fond of me too..) If Garrett is around and doing anything the least bit entertaining, your eyes are glued on him and you're squealing and talking, trying hard to get his attention. When Daddy gets home in the evenings, you don't take your eyes off of him until he finally picks you up. If I'm holding you at this time (and I usually am), your body gets all tensed up as if to say "Pick me! Pick me!" And of course he always picks you up as soon as he can.

So, what are you up to at this 6 month mark?
*You're still practicing your sitting up skills. You sit up very well when propped, but with your attempts to pick up and play with toys all the time, if you sit up independently, you're not upright for long.
*You love your toys, especially the ones you can chew on or the ones that light up or make sounds.
*You hold your pacifier really well and can put it back in your own mouth. You even throw it sometimes. I've found several outside of your crib on the floor, and since you have a bumper pad in the crib, I know they didn't just fall out.
*You LOVE veggies. All veggies. It doesn't matter what vegetable it is, I can feed it to you and you will almost always eat the whole jar.
*You're learning to tolerate fruit. But you still haven't eaten more than half a jar at one sitting. And it has to be a mixed fruit, you don't want one solo fruit in the jar.
*I started giving you baby yogurt this week and you seem to like that well. Better than cereal anyway. You will eat about half of a cup and then you're done.
*You still love your sippy cup and have even tried giving yourself drinks from it.
*You're starting to notice some of Garrett's cartoons on the TV.
*You scoot backwards a lot now. I have to watch you when you're on the floor because you've ended up underneath the couch when I wasn't watching. (That's the negative to having hardwood floors, a scooting baby, and a couch that sits off the ground several inches.)
*Getting on your hands and knees is second nature for you now. You even do it in your crib when you're fighting sleep. You also rock back and forth when you're on them too, so I'm guessing crawling is in our near future.
*You sleep well at night, going to bed around 7:30 and waking up about 6:30 (then I bring you in my bed for half an hour because I just can't bring myself to get up at 6:30). Some nights you wake up during the night for one reason or another. Lately it's been because you're cold.
*You still don't take great naps and they're very inconsistent with how long you go. One morning, you'll sleep for an hour and a half, the next morning you only sleep for 30 minutes. This drives me slightly bonkers because I can't get anything done when you're napping! I never know how long you'll stay down, so of course on the days you sleep a long time, I end up getting nothing done because I think you're going to wake up any minute now.
*You don't have any teeth yet. I really thought you would have your first one now with all the drool, crankiness, chewing on things, etc. But nothing's there. I can feel a spot on your gums, but apparently we still have a ways to go.
*You went to the church nursery for the first time 2 Sundays ago. They said you did really well and all the ladies in there had Garrett when he was a baby, so they are excited to watch you now.

I'm really looking forward to your first Christmas next week! I hope you'll enjoy attempting to open presents, or at least eating the wrapping paper.

5 Months

Dear Cooper,

You have been BUSY this month. You're learning a lot of new things all at once. I absolutely love this stage! It's so much fun!

Here's what you're up to at 5 months:

You are consistently sleeping 11 1/2 to 12 hours every night with one to zero times waking me up during the night! I'm so proud of you that you're doing such a great job with the sleeping thing! (Consistently, as in, most of the time. Last night would be the exception, of course, when you woke up 2 or 3 times and then ended up in my bed. But we'll just blame that on the tooth that is just about in.)

Your naps are getting more and more consistent now. You typically take a nap from around 9am-10am every morning, another one around 12:30 or 1:00 until 3ish and occasionally a catnap around 5pm for 20-30 minutes. I can always tell you're ready for nap because you start getting fussy and even with me holding you, you don't really quiet down. Our nap routine is to go into your room, turn on your sound machine, sing "Jesus Loves Me", and then I lay you on your side, give you your paci and stuffed cow that you've come to love and you either lay there and play with the cow for a minute before going to sleep, or you push the cow out of the way, roll onto your stomach and go to sleep. Sometimes, if you're having trouble falling asleep, I will cover you up with a light blanket and pat your bottom and that puts you right out.

When Garrett was a baby, I put 2-3 small stuffed animals in the corners of his crib to see if he would be interested in any of them being a "lovey" of sorts. He never was and really didn't care if they were in there or not. I've done the same with you and that is what has resulted with your love for the beanie baby cow. Sometimes I can go in your room before or after a nap and see that cow waving around in the air as you're playing with it. It's so funny!

Physically you can:

Roll both directions, but you haven't figured out that rolling can take you places. Though you do roll all over your crib, you haven't done this on the floor yet.

Do a big push-up where you're entire upper body is off the floor. It's so funny to walk into your room when you're doing this in the crib because your entire head is peaking over the side of the crib (when the rail is down).I would think you're sitting with the way you look, but you're just pushing yourself really high off the mattress.

When you're in the middle of doing something, I can rarely get you to smile...

You have started pushing yourself up onto your hands and knees. I'm still a little surprised by this because it seems early to be doing it, but you do it a lot now that you've figured out you can. I can actually fit my arm underneath your stomach because you have it lifted completely off the ground. Garrett army crawled for at least a month before crawling on his hands and knees. I will be interested to see if you do the same, or if you figure out the hands and knees crawling really quickly.

You've actually gotten onto your knees a little better than in this picture, but I don't always have the camera out when you're playing on the floor.

Sometimes when you're pushing yourself up onto your knees, you end up scooting backwards. You've gone from being in the middle of the blanket I laid for you on the floor, to being with your bottom half completely off of it.

You're able to sit independently for good stretches now and you love it! You've already sat in a restaurant highchair a couple of times and loved that too! (We have a Floppy Seat that covers the entire sitting area of a highchair and a shopping cart, so you're not touching any bit of the germy surface.)

You are very funny when it comes to baby food. You've let it be known that you do NOT like any baby cereals and you also have decided you don't like any fruits either. But you LOVE veggies and will eat an entire jar in one sitting, whereas you only take 4 or 5 bites of the others and start crying and turning your head after that. I'm betting you'll enjoy "big people" food once that time comes. I'm thinking in another month or so we will try baby yogurt and see what you think of that.
This was after eating almost an entire jar of peas. You loved every bite!

You LOVE LOVE LOVE drinking from a sippy cup. After every meal of baby food, I always give you a sip from a cup and you have taken to that real well. After 3-4 swallows of water, I have to take it away or you would probably drink it all. But I don't want you filling up on water, so we'll just stick with it being practice and the chance for you to "cleanse your pallette" after eating.

You are definitely cutting your first tooth. I have found a "rough, raised" spot in the front on your lower gum. Assuming this tooth breaks through before you're 7 months, you will have cut your first tooth before Garrett. And I'm praying it breaks through before then. You are very clingy right now and our house is a disaster because of it.

Bottle feeding you has become a lesson in flexibility. Sometimes you're very intense and take the entire 8 ounce bottle (or close to it) pretty quickly without any playing around. But other times, you'll drink a few ounces, then sit up, look around, take a few more ounces, sit up, then I'll just attempt to feed you the rest of it with you sitting up.

You love your crib mobile and I'm so sad that I will have to take it down soon. But once you're sitting up well, it's only a matter of time until you figure out how to sit up on your own, so that means the mobile can't be in your crib anymore. It has become the spot to put you while I'm making your bottle. It runs just long enough that I can: get a bottle made, run to the restroom, and sometimes do something quick for Garrett. Hopefully you'll still be good with hanging out in the crib during that time even without the mobile because our system works really well.
This really doesn't have anything to do with the above paragraph (though you can see the bottom of the mobile at the top of the pic), I just had to include it because I thought this was funny. I came in his room to get him up after a nap and found his arm outside the crib. He wasn't crying about it, he was just laying there. The above pic of him and the cow in his crib is what he looked like inside the crib while his arm was outside.

Your tear-duct is still blocked in your right eye. I don't know how many people have asked me if you're sick, have a cold, have pinkeye, etc because your eye is watery and sometimes mucousy. It's getting very old. I've started being very blunt and telling them that you have a blocked tear duct and eventually will have to have surgery where they will shove a metal wire in your eye to unblock it. That usually shuts them right up. I'm still hoping that it will unstop on it's own.

We're now approaching the half-way point!! This weekend we went a 1st birthday party for your cousin Michael so I was able to refresh my memory as to what 1 year old looks like. It's hard to comprehend how much you'll be doing over the next several months, but I'm going to love every bit of the time leading up to the point where you hit the tantrum throwing stage. Then it's downhill from there.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten that I have another child!! I will post what Garrett's been up to lately, real soon!

4 Months

Dear Cooper,
Today you are 4 months old! It's hard to believe that we are one-third of the way to your first birthday!

When you were born, I really expected things with you to be similar to the way things were when Garrett was a baby. Mostly because I planned to do things the same way. However, you are definitely your own person and want to do things your own way regardless of my attempts to do them my way.

Ever since you were born, most people have told us many times that you look just like Daddy. I didn't really see the resemblence and didn't really know who you looked like. Until I saw Daddy's baby pictures last weekend. You look a lot like him as a baby, minus the hair color and eye color. And you definitely get your ears from him. :) As Daddy said, "Well, atleast we know he'll eventually grow into them."

At 4 months old you are:

-rolling over, mostly from stomach to back, though you have gone from back to stomach once so far. You mainly want to roll at night in your crib. And then during the day lay on your stomach on the floor and cry because you want to roll over, but can't figure it out.

-sitting up really well with support. I can put the boppy pillow around you and you can sit for atleast 5 minutes before you have trouble staying upright.

-beginning to play with toys. You hold them in your hand and sometimes wave them around. You also try to put them in your mouth. Your current favorite toy is an Elmo radio that plays a few different songs when you push the button. You've hit yourself on the head with a rattle a couple of times now and don't like that very much.

-loving to sit in the Exersaucer and Jumperoo. You jump some in the jumper and enjoy the toys in the Exersaucer.

-starting to enjoy cereal. You've had it a few times now and definitely prefer it mixed with cold apple juice. You eat quite a bit before I can tell that you're tired of sitting in the highchair.

-doing better about sitting in your car seat. You haven't had a total meltdown in it since our trip to the beach, so that's been a nice change.

-squealing a lot. You love to talk to us and squealing is your current choice of communication.

-loving the time on your changing table. Weird, but true. Anytime I lay you there to change your diaper or clothes you start smiling and laughing and seem so happy to be there. Even pulling your arms and head through shirts doesn't bother you. You think it's funny and laugh. The exception to this is first thing in the morning. You want your bottle immediately and don't appreciate the time taken for a quick diaper change.

Naps are finally becoming more predictable and we're down to about 3 a day. Sometimes more on the days Garrett goes to school because you go down for a nap and about 45 minutes later we have to leave to pick up Garrett, so you finish the nap when we get home. Eventually I hope to move that nap to after we pick up Garrett, but I know you're not ready to go that long between naps, so we'll just keep doing what we're doing.

You're down to 4 bottles a day and take 6-7 ounces with each feeding. That's been a very nice change!

You go to bed between 7:00 and 7:30 each night. You usually sleep really well until 4 am, then you start stirring and rolling over and searching for your pacifier. So from then until 7 ish, I'm up and down getting you settled again. Sometimes, if I'm really tired, I'll just bring you into our bed. But I know that needs to stop. We will begin crying it out to get past this hump soon. I'm sure you're excited about that.

I know the next 4 months hold a lot of new things for us. Assuming you do things roughly the same as Garrett did (and who knows about that), then you'll begin sitting up on your own, crawling, and pulling up during this time frame. It will be a busy time for us, I'm sure. I'm looking forward to it!!

And here are a few recent pictures I've taken of you.

First bites of cereal

Even though you do look a lot like Daddy, you remind me of Aunt Grace's baby pictures in this shot. I guess it's the expression on your face.

But in this picture you really look like Daddy...