Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty one.

Sometimes life with a toddler is just plain crazy!!  The last three months have been simply awesome though, except for one minor incident with the toilet bowl ending up in a few lovely stitches in Cooper's forehead.  We feel like we're constantly in high gear trying to keep this boy safe, fed and occasionally clean. ;)  He's so full of life and is so happy.  If Cooper would've been a girl, I think it would've been a mistake to name him anything but Joy because that is what he brings to everyone who knows him.

So far he continues to amaze us with how quickly he learns things and how much he remembers.  Dave and I sat down to try to write down all the words he says and knows what they mean.  We ended up with over 300 words!!  I can't believe he has so much language at such a young age.  Apparently, we aren't the only ones either, since we hear that from other people all the time.  Just last week our Parents as Teachers worker stopped by the house and she averaged his language development out to roughly a three year old's level.  So, he should be ready to wrap up his dissertation no later than age 7 I would say.  ;)  We have the best time having conversations with him.  He's stringing together sentences now.  One of my favorite recent things he said was, "Look mama, cows go pool swimming."  They were wading in a pond we drove by, and so we had to learn about pond vs. pool.

We took Cooper for his first canoe ride, and his first fishing trip all in one evening.  He couldn't quite understand why he shouldn't bail out of the canoe to swim, but he did enjoy the ride.  The fishing, he totally loved.  We caught a LOT of little fish and Cooper even kissed one!  When he got bored with waiting for a fish to bite, he decided to try to flop into the lake himself and ended up face down in lot of muck.  Thank goodness we always put a life jacket on him around water. He's too much of a dare devil!

We went to a Mizzou football game over the weekend.  Cooper loved watching Truman the Tiger and the cheerleaders.  He would watch the football if it was right in front of him, but otherwise, he was more into the pom poms and beads.  What a guy! ;)

Take care everyone!

Eighteen Months

A nice, cold ice cream cone on a hot summer day--what is better than that?  Cooper discovered the joys of getting his very own ice cream cone.  As you can tell, he LOVED it.  He is getting extremely independent, often becoming frustrated when he can't do something for himself that he really wants to.  He loves animals and birds and can name many and make their accompanying sounds.  He loves to yell out the animals he sees while we're driving in the car too.  Its so cute.

This past month, Cooper has continued to amaze us with how quickly he learns things.  He loves to show off for us, especially with his Incredible Hulk impression and giving us "ATTITUDE," which is an adorable scrunchy face he makes.

Life is good. 

17 Months--Grow, grow, grow!

Man is Cooper growing fast these days.  I'm pretty sure we've sprouted up another three iches this month!  he's still hovering around 30 lbs, but now he's 35" tall!!  He is talking more and more too.  He is definitely a little parrot.  He repeats what he hears, which can be good and bad. ;) 

He loves to sing to us now too. We've been singing a song from an old VW commercial that goes, "da da da. ch ch, ch, ch ch. da da da" for a long time.  In the last week or so, he's started singing it back to us.  It's so adorable.  Some days he talks 200 miles an hour and we have no idea what all that means.  But when you get him to stand still and ask him a question, he does answer pretty plainly.  Him being able to communicate with us more is pretty helpful.

We've set up the swimming pool here at the house.  Of course, Cooper thinks we should be in it. Always. :)  He goes over to the window quite often and says, "poo! poo! swim!"  It would be helpful if it wasn't raining quite so much so we could swim a little more. 

The last few days he's been cutting his most recent batch of teeth.  man, teething sucks.  That's all there is to say about it!!!

Take care!

16 Months

Will I ever stop saying or thinking that its amazing how fast our kids grow and learn?  Probably not, because it is so true.  It has been another month of fun and craziness in our house.  Life with a toddler is not always dreamy, but it is always interesting.  I think at least twice a day, Dave and I look at each other and thank God above for blessing us with such a great child.  That usually happens after he's done something completely bad and then turns on the most adorable, innocent face.  Its so hard to resist smiling at him when he does that stuff.

This month we took a trip with our friends and neighbors down to Branson for a long weekend of fishing and shopping.  The boys were pretty well behaved, even though they rarely stop moving.  Jackson is 3 and Cooper wants to be a big boy just like him.  It was interesting watching him trying to do everything just like Jackson does.  We all had a good time and we all have freezers full of spoonbill now!  Yum!



Cooper's visit with the Parents As Teacher worker went really well this month.  Cooper exceeded all of his developmental and physical milestones for his age.  Miss Christy said he's more on track with a 24 month old, especially with his physical skills and speech.  We know Cooper is special, but its nice to hear that someone else thinks he's pretty smart too.  ;)  Cooper is still right around the 30 lb. mark, but he is really shooting upward.  He was wearing 12 month pants up until about 3 weeks ago, when I swear he woke up one morning 3 inches taller!  So now we have 18 month pants that are plenty long enough, but he can't keep them up around his skinny butt.  Its a good thing its mostly shorts weather!



Cooper is really big into helping right now.  If I'm doing the laundry, he wants to put things in the dryer or pull them out for me.  He's also really helpful with unfolding all the clean stuff onto the floor out of the baskets. ;)  He really, really wants to help with the dishwasher, and he gets a little mad when we won't let him because of the sharp and breakable stuff.  Cooper has had a really good time with Daddy out in the garage lately, working on the motorcycle.  Cooper thinks he's working on the motorcycle too and he will tell you all about his "tooooools!!!!"



We also took Cooper to the St. Louis Zoo over Easter weekend.  He LOVED seeing the animals, especially the elephant and the tiger.  Here is a picture of him in front of a bed of tulips at the zoo, showing off how Papa Drew taught him to giggle.





Drumming has become one of Cooper's favorite activities.  When he sees the shed doors are open, he makes a beeline for the drums and gets right to work.  This is probably the only activity I can think of that holds his attention for more than 5 minutes right now.  Last weekend I took him to see Dave's band play and he loved it.  He really had a hard time understanding why daddy and I wouldn't let him play the drums there though.  When he gets tired of drumming, he has to explore every inch of the yard, visit the dog pen, inspect all the cars, ride the John Deere pedal tractor and move rocks to new places in the driveway.  He also runs next door to see Jackson every chance he gets.  Jackson has a motorized tractor that he drives around his yard and Cooper just loves to chase him.  They're really quite the pair.

Unfortunately, Cooper has also started having what we think is night terrors.  He wakes up at the exact same hour every night, screaming and crying and in generally inconsolable.   We do our best to get him to really wake up and realize he's dreaming, but sometimes it works better than others.   Hopefully this is one of the shorter lived phases.  I hate seeing him so upset and not being able to fix it for him.

Until next month, we love you!

Fifteen Months

Gosh, it's so hard to believe Cooper is already 15 months old.  It doesn't feel like 2 years ago this month that we found out he was coming.  He is really enjoying himself the last few weeks.  He loves going outside and takes every opportunity to beg to "Go! GO!"  Every evening after I pick him up, he thinks we should explore the yard, say hello to the doggies and hit the swing set.  I haven't yet figured out how to simultaneously get his dinner ready because when he decides he's hungry, he's hungry NOW.

The Easter Bunny brought Cooper some new books, eggs filled with all kinds of balls, bubbles, sidewalk chalk (which he loves to throw) and his very first golf club.  Daddy was so excited to give him his first golf lesson using eggs for golf balls.  Easter weekend we also hit the St. Louis Zoo with Uncle Bub and Aunt Lala.  He really enjoyed looking around at everything, especially the elephants and the "shishes" aka fish.

He talks a lot these days.  If we show him how to say a word, he tries to mimic it and sometimes he gets pretty close.  He was trying to say bouncy the other day while bouncing up and down on a pile of blankets.  It came out "bow-cky" instead, but he was proud of himself.  He seems to not care much for toys right now.  He just wants to do whatever we are doing.  He gets an extra brush out while I'm doing my hair and tries to comb his.  He wants bowls and spoons to stir on his own while I cook.  Its so cute.

Fourteen Months and Flying!

I swear time simply flies anymore.  Cooper is almost halfway into his 14th month now, and continues to be the light of our lives.  I find myself being more appreciative of all that Dave's and my parents have done for us, and what they do for their grandson, now that I have a better grasp on what it means to be a parent.  Its neat, having that understanding that our parents enjoyed watching us grow as much as we're enjoying watching Cooper grow.

Cooper is becoming more opinionated every day.  Thankfully, his understanding of language is also growing by leaps and bounds, so even though he doesn't always want to do what we're saying (hardly ever, some days) at least I know he mostly understands us.  He doesn't fight getting dressed anymore--PRAISE GOD!!  As long as I tell him we have to get dressed so we can go see Miss Angie, or so we can go outside and see our dogs, then he will comply.  He bangs on the front door and yells, "GUNGA!" when he wants to go visit Gunga and PaPa Drew.  He picks up a phone and says, "Gaga" when he wants to talk to Grandma Jones.  If he sees a John Deere tractor, he says "Papa. Tractor."  He's figured out where PaPa Jones works! :) 

The Parents as Teacher visit this month went very well.  Cooper is ahead of the curve by 3-4 months depending on the developmental milestone you're looking at.  Cooper is very verbal and loves to read books.  PaPa Drew built him a tiny little adirondack chair and he pulls it out and sits down and looks at books in it by himself.  Its just about the cutest thing I've ever seen.


In food news, Cooper pretty much eats everything now!!  We seemed to have finally crossed over into the land of being able to eat meat without him spitting it up later. YAY! Double YAY!  Its taking some time to get him used to the textures, but he is doing pretty well.  He loves all kinds of fruits and vegetables, but somehow we seem to constantly be fighting the constipation battle.   Sometimes its amazing how poop can rule your life when it isn't going well. ;)

Anyway, have a wonderful month.  I know we will. :)

Thirteen Months

I could make the title "1 year and 1 month" but that makes Cooper sound like a big boy.  Well, he is a big boy now, but I'm not ready to think of him as not being my baby anymore.  But the signs are everywhere that he is well on his way out of babyhood and into toddlerville. 

A lot has changed since last month's update. At that time, he was only taking 3-4 tentative steps by himself.  Now he's RUNNING everywhere.  It's so cute to watch him zoom around the house.  Walking is still new enough to him that he reaches his destination and turns around and grins to see if you're going to cheer for him making it the whole way there walking.  Cooper has also gotten into the climbing stage a lot earlier than mama and daddy are really ready for.  I used to have a ladder quilt rack in the living room.  But it had to go in hiding for a while since he was using it as a ladder.  It's especially funny to see him flatten himself against a wall and look up at it.  I just know he's trying to figure out how to scale the wall itself.  Cooper continues to be just about the happiest kid I've ever met, unless you're trying to put on his coat or get him dressed.  He still cries most times we dress him.  But otherwise, he is always giggling and laughing and bringing loads of joy into our lives.

This month Cooper started giving kisses back.  When he leaves now, he says buh-buh, flaps his arms to wave and smacks his lips together to give kisses.  It's about the cutest thing ever and just melts my heart every time.  He is still very big into dancing.  If he hears music of any kind, he drops what he's doing and starts shaking his tail and waving his arms.

We made the transition from formula to regular milk this month.  It took us several weeks to switch since he spit up most of the regular milk the first couple weeks we gave it to him.  His tummy seems accustomed to it now though, so no more buying formula!! YAY!  We also found out that Cooper is very allergic to raspberries this month---not YAY at all.  Thankfully though, he doesn't have problems with strawberries.  He gobbles those up without issue.  He still doesn't eat much meat, but it seems to be somewhat less of a problem than it was.  He had chicken mixed into his veggies I gave him last week one night and did fine.  The next day I tried it again and he spit it all up.  I tried giving him turkey a couple days ago, but he wouldnt even swallow a bite of it.  Just spit it out of his mouth.  One of these days he might eat meat...right?!

I bought Cooper his first movie this month--Disney's Cars.  I wasn't sure if he would pay attention to it for very long, and he didn't really stay focused on it.  But when it was time for the cars to race, he would drop what he was doing and sit down and watch them race.  I'm guessing his grandpas will have a new little budy to go to the races with them.

We made the switch this week, to what I hope is the last daycare provider Cooper will have before he starts Kindergarten.  The is the fourth in a year's time.  We left sitter #1 because we had an offer from #2 to keep Cooper for half what #1 charged.  Since Dave's job has been hanging in the balance and we were looking for ways to save money, we switched.  Then not even two months after we switched, sitter #2 grew very ill and closed her daycare.  We called everywhere looking for daycare and finally begged a favor of a friend of my mother in law's and Cooper started going to sitter #3 until we could make permanent arrangements.  We would've LOVED to stay with sitter #3--Cooper loved her and her family so much, but she doesn't watch kids in the summer and I didn't have any idea who would watch him those 3 months for us.   Going back to #1 wasn't an option since she'd filled up with new little ones after we'd left, so after much calling around and freaking out at the cost of the daycares with openings, I found sitter #4--Miss Angie.  It was hard leaving #3 and we all cried on Cooper's last day.  But he seems to like Miss Angie's okay so far.  I really, really, really hope it goes well.

This past weekend Dave got a new lab for hunting, but she's also going to be a semi-indoor family dog.  Cooper has had the best time playing with little Mojo so far. He loves yelling her name at her, but it usually comes out more like "MOW-YOW" than Mojo. :) I hope they grow up good buddies, since they'll both be spending lots of time hunting with daddy in years to come.