8 Months- A few weeks late as usual!

Our little Cooper is now a whopping 8 months old which is just insane. He is now in size three diapers and I pulled out all of Fisher's old 12 month clothes about a week ago since he has almost grown out of all his 6-9 month ones.

While Fisher was/is a thumb sucker who loves to rub his fingers on his textured blankie, Cooper favors the soft snugly blankets that he can suck on and rub against his face to fall asleep. He also loves sucking on tags.

This is a picture of his first official bed head. His hair is longer than his ears and has grown a lot in the front. I have thought about giving it a trim but it hasn't happened yet.

Cooper is officially crawling (and has been for a few weeks now) up on all fours. He kind does this little prance thing that is so cute.

He loves to make noises and a day has not gone by this past week where he and Fisher have not had vocal wars of who can be the loudest and make the most obnoxious sound. It is rather entertaining as long as I have taken a few Tylenol.

Cooper's favorite places to crawl are Fisher's bedroom and bathroom. He loves to get into everything that he is not supposed to touch. He loves following Fisher around and he also loves to chase after Fisher's remote control Lightening McQueen, which Fisher is all too obliging to do. Fisher loves to park it under Cooper's pack n' play where Cooper is just shy of being able to reach.

He was spending a lot of time up on his knees....

Until he discovered standing.

Last night he actually stood on his own a few times for about 3 seconds each time.

He spends 75% of his time in the pack n' play like this.

He also loves to throw his head back at random times throughout the day. He has head butted me in the process a few times when I had no warning.

The first few weeks of him constantly pulling himself up led to a lot of bruises on his head. It was a rough two days leading up this picture.

Cooper generally sleeps from around 9:30-7:30 with slight variations. He seems to like a long nap around 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon and occasionally will take a little one in the morning or in the late afternoon.

He has zero teeth still. Drools non-stop. Chews on his fingers and anything that goes in his mouth like crazy but those little teeth won't come. We wonder if he is going to have a bunch pop up at the same time. Fisher broke his first at 8 months to the day, then another at 9 and so forth.

He picks up little objects now and they go straight to his mouth. I have to be a lot more careful about my floors.

This includes food. It has helped being able to set him in his high chair (or low chair in our case since we keep it on the floor for the moment) and he is happy eating his puffs and rice krispies. He has tried black beans and some pieces of wheat hamburger bun. He loves his rice cereal and seems to favor carrots and bananas. He also like squash and sweet potato. He will eat peas but not green beans and likes to chew on a large apple slice.

No luck on the sippy cup yet.

Cooper is still a happy baby and loves interaction with people. He has his fussy moments, especially when he is hungry and tired (and he screeches a lot during these moments) but he is still such a joy to have around.

Not to mention the fact that we think he is pretty cute. Fisher is still enamoured by him.

He has had a few negative reactions to things with strawberry. It is nothing that hydrocortisone(?) won't fix.

He is in this phase that Fisher also went through where he likes to jut out his bottom lip. This is a frontal view.

And this is profile.

Cooper always sits with his little feet crossed.

These eight months have flown by! In no time at all he is going to be one year old and the thought of that almost makes me sad.

Just to get Tiger out of the top spot

I put this picture on my fridge. It cracks me up every time I look at it.

LOSER

Your apology really moved me Tiger....

Not!!

What a schmuck.

8 months old

8 months old today. How is that possible?

Goodbye wallet, Hello paranoia

I meant for my pictures to be at the end of this post since the bottom half is a little on the negative side but I messed up and can't change it.

Fisher let me cut his hair today finally.

I had to bribe him with a candy cane.

He weighed at least two pounds less than before. There was so much hair. Todd looked at the pile of hair on the floor and said he was jealous. :)

This picture is for nothing other than we think he is a cute little guy.

The other day I left to go running and both boys were sleeping. When I walked in the door, this is what I came home to. It made my heart happy.

Now for the

NOT SO HAPPY....

Todd's wallet was stolen today. On a good note- we don't have a lot of credit cards and the ones we do have were wonderful to work with over the phone. On a bad note it is creepy knowing that someone out there has pictures of us, our address and who knows what other information they were able to find in his wallet/back pack. Todd is completely stressed since all of his notes from the semester were in there along with a lot of other things that are valuable to him.
Then....
The mailman came back in the afternoon to drop off a package (because our mail man rocks!) and his mail truck happened to break down in our driveway. It was only in the 20's and was windy and COLD. The nice person inside of me was wanting to invite him in so he did not have to sit in the cold. (Don't worry- the nice person in me was did not seriously contemplate this, knowing it was completely ridiculous and there are probably company rules against anything of the sort anyway.) The paranoid person in me was thinking "what if he asks to use the rest room and sees the inside of our house? He'll know where the boys sleep"...and so forth. I was thinking about how it would have been to live 5o years ago where I would not have had to think twice about extending my hospitality and being worried about being robbed, raped or murdered...I know it sounds PARANOID and everything but we have had some crazy things happen lately.

About a week ago Todd had gone out shopping and stopped at the gas station. A car pulls up at the pump across from him, a man comes and asks Todd for money, Todd said sorry but no cash (which was a lie), Todd goes back to pumping, guy gets in his car and then out of the blue FIVE (yep, I said FIVE) cop cars come tearing into the parking lot, lights blazing. All cops jump out of cars with guns pointed in Todd's general direction yelling very loud expletives something to the effect of "GET ON THE GROUND!" They had the guy and his friend on the ground (near where Todd was) and had guns drawn to their heads. Todd said it was the scariest and most intense thing he has ever seen. It turns out the guy and his friend had stolen the car and robbed a store. We were thankful that day that the "criminals" had not held Todd up or gotten upset when he said he didn't have any money.
Since we have lived in Louisville there has also been a murder at the park behind the apartments where we lived less than a mile away. Todd also was home one day (in the same apartments) and witnessed a real deal S.W.A.T team in full armor and guns while some guy in the complex was holding someone hostage.
Our next apartment was another great place to live with all kinds of stories. In fact, if you go back to the beginning of our blog around 2006, those good times are all recorded.

I know this is nothing more than a post of rambling but as I said- it has been an odd kind of day. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

By the way, I did offer our mailman hot chocolate although he declined. I realized I should have made some anyway. In the end I did take him out some blankets to bundle up in.

This is where the pictures were supposed to come in so that I did not leave off on a bad note.

Valentine Packages!

The boys were so excited when not one (which would have been exciting) but TWO packages (can we say excitement overload??) showed up on our doorstep on the same day from both sets of grandmas & grandpas.

Fisher, of course, was in charge of tearing them open. Cooper was in charge of inspecting the tissue paper. (The markers were a total hit. Thanks G&G Lund!)

G Lund made pillow cases. Fisher was so excited when he pulled it out and exclaimed "A baby blanket!" He was just as happy when he realized it was a pillow case.

No explanation needed.

As I was saying...

I felt it was my duty to help Fisher sample all of the chocolates that came in G Church's package. It took a quite a few (okay...I might have enjoyed A LOT of them) before I felt confident they were safe. :)

Fisher opened Cooper's card and Cooper ate Fisher's.

Fisher was very confident he was going to be receiving a transformer for Valentines Day. I kept trying to explain to him that it is a girlie holiday with lots of hearts and candy...not Transformers. You can imagine his delight when he opened a package and found Skids waiting in plastic wrap for him :) Thanks G&G Church!

Cooper received a fun new cell phone so that maybe he will leave mine alone.

But mostly he enjoyed playing with the boxes.

And here are a couple of pictures of the boys doing their thing.

And a picture of my three favorite boys.

I realize I have not mentioned much of Todd lately. He has been really busy with school and trying to get in to study mode again. They have their hardest class in all of dental school this semester- Oral Pathology. He has also been enjoying his time in clinic working on his own patients.

It is hard not to think about how after this semester we are down to one more year. Already, we only have fifteen months left until graduation.

It is hard not to grow a little anxious but we are enjoying this time while we have it.

We had a nice laid back weekend.

I was telling Todd how I used to hate February 14 but now that I have him I love it. And not just because I love receiving flowers (I might have mentioned a time or two about how much I love flowers) but mostly just because I have him in my life.

And our two little crazy offspring. They're not so bad.

And only 15 more months of being in dental school.

(Like how I always group myself as "being in school" with Todd? I figure it is a team effort.)

We don't have much to complain about despite the fact I seem to always be able to come up with things to do so.

I am working on it.

Happy Valentines Day!

Hope you had a great one.

Flowers make me happy

I know most of you could care less but since this is my blog I can put things on here that I like.

(Robbie does pictures of buildings and I do flowers.)

$5 at Walmart provides me with happiness and a chance to dink around with my camera.

Weight loss...

This might be the reason why I haven't had any.

Ciabatta bread, a little mayo, brie cheese, honey ham, granny smith apple slices, poppyseed dressing and a toaster oven. Can I say heaven??

I am thinking about it right now.

Thankfully, it is too snowy at the moment for me to hop in my car to go replenish the ingredients at the store.

Snowy Morning

We heard the news there was going to be snow through the night and today and we laughed it off like we always do. It was so fun to wake up this morning to see that the weather man was right! It is a beautiful snowy morning and both Fisher and Todd are home from school. I will be drinking a lot of hot chocolate today (or hot cocoa as Fisher likes to call it) since it is the perfect day to stay warm and bundled up with a book, my Snuggie (another one of my favorite gifts EVER-thanks mom & dad Church) and many mugs of hot chocolate to go around.

Of course, now that I have actually registered and paid for the mini marathon the snow has now fallen 3 times. We made it all winter with no snow. Then I buy my cute little jogging stroller and all of a sudden it turns frigid cold and snowy and wet...go figure.

I was so sad when I went to do this post and realized I deleted a bunch of pictures off my card. I am so sad. They were Fisher ones, too, which is extra disappointing since he doesn't let me take pictures of him very often compared to Cooper.
The past few mornings we have woken to Fisher going into Cooper's room to play on the Rock Band/Guitar Hero drum set. This morning made my heart do one of those warm fuzzy things as I heard Fisher in there talking to Cooper and then all of a sudden there is a lot of heavy breathing into the baby monitor and a big, muffled "I love you Mama!"
He is learning how to start the day off in his favor.
Smart kid.
Todd went in to go check on them and found that Fisher had climbed in with Cooper and was reading him books again.

Cooper woke up at 4:45 this morning but the four mornings preceding this one he slept through the night. There is light at the end of my sleepless tunnel. I can feel it in my weary, sleep deprived bones.
It helps that we FINALLY moved Cooper into his own bedroom. Crazy that it took so long and so different from Fisher who was in his crib at 2 weeks old.
Also, we had a huge breakthrough last night. Cooper actually ate a few bites of rice cereal. We've mixed it with my milk, formula, fruits & veggies and he has refused to unlock that stubborn little jaw of his. However, when I finally mixed it with a little bit of water....

Cha Ching!

Jackpot.

I know you all will be so relieved (ha ha) to know that I finally went out and bought myself a bookshelf for all of those sad little books living under my night stand. It makes me so happy to have them up off the floor. I am sure it makes them happy as well. The top two shelves with the empty spots are a lot of the ones I have lent out at the moment. My problem is that if I buy any more books (which I will...oh yes, I will) then I am back to no room on the book shelf. Hmmmm....the dilemma.

I am now off to play memory match with Fisher (by HIS rules, of course) and to drink up my hot chocolate.

A good day.

Seasons

So you might have noticed I have been having some fun editing photos lately. As much as I love pictures of my boys, my favorite pictures are of scenic things. I was looking through old pictures and found different photos of our backyard through the seasons and thought I would share what we are able to look out at every day. This house really has been the perfect little starter home for our family. (They look better when enlarged.)

Oh, how I long some days to take a photography class...

Buddies

Cooper is at an age now where he loves to follow Fisher around. They play together and roll around on the ground and for the most part are best buddies.

They spend a lot of time playing together through the pack n' play.

Both of them take turns smushing their faces into the mesh.

I would hear others talk about their kids playing together in the crib and I would always think how the day would NEVER come when I could trust Fisher alone in a crib with Cooper. I mean, come on, this is Fisher we are talking about here.

Now I love seeing Fisher read to Cooper in his crib. It is one of their favorite things to do together.

Fisher shows Cooper all the ropes on playing with toys.

And helps me monitor Cooper when he starts to get into the DVDs.

"Oh no! Mommy, Cooper is playing with the DVDs again."

"No, no, no Cooper!"

Fisher loves Cooper so much he even shares his Transformers.

Now if that isn't brotherly love then I don't know what is.