7 Months- just a couple weeks late.

We had a major breakthrough today. Cooper took about TEN bites of carrots from a baby food jar. This is about as close to a miracle around our house as you can get. Up to this point the little banana and sweet potato baby puff things have been all that we could get him to eat.

Let's see. Cooper is still happy but also still somewhat of a monster baby. No teeth yet, but we are fully aware of their evil little presence.

The little guy is everywhere. He can easily maneuver from sitting to army crawl to propping himself up on all fours and back to sitting no problem- and not in that particular order.

Although he still tends to army crawl everywhere he has spent a lot of time hanging out on all fours. Sometimes he'll even get onto his feet so that he is in more of a bear crawl position.

I had to bust out the pack' n play for a few reasons:
1- Cooper really enjoys getting into EVERYTHING.
2- Cooper is not the only busy one in this household (Ahem...Fisher) and so I cannot keep my eyes on him at all times like I would prefer.
3- I have not kept my floors as spotless as I would like (see post below about me going crazy.)
4- Cooper likes to put everything I have on my floors into his mouth which I don't always see since I am also watching his brother.
=Pack n' play is just about my most favorite thing right now.



There is still a lot of droolage going on.

Part of that might be the tongue wagging we constantly see and some of it might be those evil little teeth that are turning our sweet baby into a sleepless, screeching little monster at times.

Another drool picture.

And a close up of of his spittle since it looks like a little diamond that I thought was cool. (How mom am I when I start getting excited over a picture of spit??)

Everything goes into Cooper's mouth.

Nothing is safe. He should have a fantastic immune system when he is older.

Due to his little army crawl where he drags himself along on his belly, both sides of his stomach have these rashy looking callouses on them. It is weird. I won't mind when he decides to start crawling on all fours even if he is really fast at his current method.

Some of Cooper's favorite locations are the DVD's, the baskets that have our Wii stuff, Fisher's bedroom, Fisher's bathroom (throw-up in my mouth), under the table, and today our bedroom has joined the Cooper destination get-away club.

He is starting to pull himself up to reach things and has especially developed a fondness for Todd's receiver which has pretty blue lights on it.

He pulls himself up onto just about everything he can. Today he pulled himself to standing in his crib which looks like we'll be dropping it soon.

He had been pulling himself up in his pack n' play bassinet which is why we nixed that sleeping arrangement finally.

We tried one of those mesh bag things for fruits and veggies since he seemed to hate the jarred foods. No luck, although he did like playing catch with it.

This is a very common sight seeing him go after something. His favorites are my books & book marks, remotes, paper, and Fisher's toys. Oh- and I don't think I have mentioned yet that while he hates baby food, he loves to eat paper. Big chunks of it. I am often surprised when changing his diaper with what color of paper he has eaten that day.

He will be sick of Transformers by the time he is Fisher's age.

The green little toy he is holding are these trio building blocks that Fisher loves which are great teething toys. Cooper prefers them to all of his teething rings. Stubborn kid.

He loves his blankets, especially chewing on them, and he likes attacking his stuffed animals. Cooper is very physical.

He talks a lot still saying his "ba, da, wa, ma" gibberish. He also likes to talk "grunt" with us. If he grunts he expects up to do it back.

Here is this cute little shirt I found that I surprised Todd with.

This is often the look I get when I pull out jarred foods.

"Have you not learned yet Woman??"

Balloon...one of Cooper's biggest loves. We constantly are raining on his parade and taking them away. Also, the kid is next to impossible to keep shoes & socks on. This Sunday was a first. He made it all the way to the car ride home before losing a shoe.

We don't have him on a particular nap schedule yet, which sucks. He has spent so much of this winter sick that any hope of schedules have gone down the drain. Maybe come spring.

Despite the fact he is a stubborn little monster baby at times, he has the cutest smile that warms our hearts. We still love him even if he wakes up multiple times during the night and refuses to eat anything.

Sorry for such a long post. If you made it to the bottom then props to you!

All Aboard the Crazy Train

I have had good intentions of putting up some new pics and blogs of the kids but my life is completely unorganized...Kind of like the books that having been balancing precariously underneath my night stand.

Tonight was one of those nights where I felt completely inadequate as a mother & wife. Instead of handling things, I don't know, maybe the SANE way- I instead chose to throw my hands in the air and shout (not sure if in my head or out loud...okay, so looking back I am pretty sure some of it was out loud) "I give up!" and then jumped in the car faster than humanly possible and drove around for a half hour or so with my music BLASTING, which happens to be something I miss A LOT since I drive around with kids in my car constantly.

I could have kept on driving, for a very long time I might add, but a certain sweet little baby has needs that only I can fulfill.

Isn't that the life of a mom.

.
Most of the time I can deal.
.

Tonight I took a ride on the crazy train.

For now I guess I'll just have to be happy with the fact that I have diaper boxes full of books that are now somewhat organized.
Who needs a bookshelf anyway?

And who cares that those said boxes have been sitting on my table for a WEEK now because, as I mentioned, I can't get my STUFF together?

Not me. Because I am done with my train ride. At least that is what I am trying to convince myself.

Party and Joovy

We finally got around to doing a birthday party for Fisher...only a month late. There will be more on that later.

Cooper and I have a new toy I received for my birthday to help me get back in shape and possibly run the Derby 1/2 marathon if I ever get the guts to buckle down and register.

My Joovy 360.

For the first time all week the temperatures were up and the rain stopped so that I could give it a try.

LOVE it.

Photos gone bad

Dear Fisher,

Please never get arrested because we are fairly certain your mug shot would turn out like this.

And please do not become some psycho killer guy because we're pretty sure your picture would look like this.
I will be posting some much cuter pictures later.

For a Twilight related laugh

Is it too early to wish for spring?

Mood Swings

Our nice calm morning that started like this...

Has now turned into a day more more along the lines of this.

And then there is our slobber baby. This darn tooth has to pop up sooner or later. The steady stream of drool dripping off his chin and the ever present beast like screeching has to come to an end soon or else I am the one who is going to look like Fisher in the above photo. :)

Cooper's Food Faces

Cooper is still not loving solid food. I think he is going to be a "boob guy" when he gets older based on his current eating preferences.

This is a typical technique to keep us from putting the spoon in his mouth. Purse lips and blow.

"Oh, please just stop already!"

On another note, he loves Fisher's old foam books from Aunt Jeanne.

Random

As I was working out today (so that I can beat my brothers in our little weight loss bet we have going on) I told Fisher my bum was burning. Next thing I know he is grabbing on my pants trying to pull them down. What the heck?!?

M: "Fisher, what are you doing?"

F: "I'm trying to see the fire."

Our sweet little baby has become a monster lately. He wakes up about every two hours and is extremely fussy these days. We're thinking maybe he is teething but there is no sign of a tooth. In other words, we are stumped.

My finger hurts!

Today as the boys were playing with each other on the floor, I had one of those moments where I remembered exactly why I love being a mom and what true happiness is all about.

Then Fisher decided to show me his sore finger...
A day full of happiness and laughter is a good one.

Like Mother Like Son

He may not look like me but he has my blue blankie gene.

Mom's.

Fisher's.

Today

Todd went back to school after a three week break and this is how we are all feeling about it.

Fisher has been coloring snowmen because there was a skiff of snow and ice on the ground this morning.

He's even so creative as to have drawn a pregnant snowman. I guess he has little snow babies on the brain.
F: "This snowman has a baby in its tummy!"

His gumball machine from G&G Church has worked great for bribing Fisher to clean. He has been doing a lot of chores to earn pennies so that he can buy a gum ball.

This picture wasn't taken today but he has spent a lot of time quietly playing with his new little building blocks.

This picture is not from today either, but Cooper has spent a lot of time wandering off his blanket to play with the DVDs.

.....

Somehow we'll cope with Todd being gone during the day even though it seems a little lonely. After this semester only two more to go!

The Fisherman

There was a time when we were concerned by the fact that in all the family pictures Fisher drew Cooper was about this big and he was about this big. Now, Cooper seems to have disappeared from the family portrait masterpieces completely. Hmmm.....

You would think he'd have learned his lesson with the tic-tac.

Although Fisher loves Cooper most of the time, he has become a little annoyed with Cooper trying to grab his toys. (Never mind the fact that he starts it by shoving the toys in Cooper's face, taunting him.) Last night Fisher had one of his "episodes" and yelled:

F: "Mommy! I want Cooper to go back in your tummy now!"

M: "Cooper is too big now to fit in my tummy."

F: "Well, then, I am going to yell at him very badly!"

F: " Look Mommy!..."

F: "I'm Rudolph."

At Fisher's four year check up his stats were as follows:
Weight: 38.6 lbs (5oth%)
Height: 40 1/2 inches (45th%)
His weight had dropped about a lb from the last visit about a month before, but he did have a massive BM only minutes before being weighed :)

This year I was not in the mood to make sugar cookies. It might be due to the fact I had made them recently for the Halloween party. Fisher was dying to make them and so for his birthday I promised him we would. We did all the wet ingredients on the 23rd, finished the dough and baked them on the 24th and then they just sat, un-frosted, until a few days after Christmas. Finally on the 27th I made Fisher some frosting and let him frost a few for him to eat.

And eat he did.
There is nothing like a good, stale sugar cookie.

"The face."
My kid is weird and most of the time I love it.

He has been much better in the behavior department over the last 3-4 days. Todd and I were talking last night about how much fun he can be when he is not acting like a monster. Go figure. :)

He loves his transformer gloves and hat.

Fisher is always tired which is the cause of a lot of his problems. Lately he has taken a liking to napping on the floor. It still is hard getting him to go to bed before 11pm when he has napped, but sometimes it is so worth it to have a happy kid. On the other hand, sometimes it is nice to have a tired, grumpy little boy all day that then goes to bed by 7:00. Tough call.

He is starting to care when we are upset with him. You can see that he is trying to control some of his impulsive behavior.

He still has some of his perfection issues such as when he draws and it does not turn out how he envisions or if he is building something and it breaks. This often turns into a tantrum of frustration. It is the same with racing at anything. If Fisher is not first he freaks out. We have started telling him (frequently) that we love him even if he does not win and if he is not perfect.

He still jumps a lot.

I think my boys were born with springs in their legs. Tonight he jumped for 8 minutes straight. That may not sound like that long but considering how short his attention span is, it is a long time. He told me he was "getting some of my (his) energy out."