Zoo

Any takers for the zoo tomorrow? It's going to be a nice day? I need to get some more use out of this pass. I can get one adult and child in for free. Anyone interested?

Friday Fun

We had a family fun tonight after dinner. We started the night off by playing outside in the sprinkler, of course it started raining as soon as we set everything up, but it only lasted about 5 minutes. At first Cooper was only concerned about the hose. Then he tried out the water, I don't think he was so sure about it at first. But he kept on going.

Next it was time to play with the ball, Steve got the video camera out and asked if it wrong that he wanted to get him on film falling.

Then it was time for the lawn mower.

After running around he decided he was tired and made the decision himself to go inside. We then had strawberry chocolate chip muffins... I am on a huge strawberry/chocolate chip phase right now.

Then it was off to coloring with daddy. This never lasts too long, Cooper always wants to eat the crayons.

Finally it was bedtime. I love night like this, I was looking at past posts the other day watching how much he has grown. Time goes by way too fast. We were outside playing with the lawnmower after lunch time and a guy was out walking with his 6 month old. I told him to enjoy these moments now, actually it was more like enjoy these non-mobile times now. But same thing. So Cooper is in bed, I'm finishing up blogging, Steve is playing a video game and later we are watching a scary movie. We had free movie channels last weekend and taped a bunch of movies. It will take 6 months for us to watch everything since we can't stay up past 10:30 w/o falling asleep, but we rarely watch movies so it's a nice treat.

Just in time...

Last year I took a picture of Cooper in front of the lillies we planted in memory of grandmother. I planned to do this each year and I kept forgetting, I made it just in time this year. A few of the flowers had already wilted off. Sorry, but I have to post another remember when shot.

"Eat your Green Balls"

Steve and I both cannot stand the taste of peas, but somehow Cooper will eat them. How? We tell him he needs to eat his green balls... it works. He eats them all up.

Snack Time

Cooper didn't want to eat his lunch one day but had no problem getting in the diaper bag, finding his snacks and opening them, spilling them all on the floor and them eating them.

Remember When

I think I may have posted this last fall, can't remember and didn't want to look for it, but this was taken sometime last year Now check him out... he can barely fit.

Happy Father's Day!!!

We decided to celebrate Father's Day on Saturday morning as opposed to Sunday. Sunday's are such a rush to get to church and I wanted to Steve to be able to enjoy his morning. By luck Cooper slept in so I was able to get up and prep the Monkey Bread and get it in the oven before he woke up. Usually Cooper wakes us up on weekends, and Steve got to sleep in a little extra as well. After Cooper gave Steve a big Happy Daddy Day hug I went back into the kitchen to finish working on something and out come my soon looking like this....

While the monkey bread was cooking we gave Steve his presents, he got a Jay Cutler jersey (Chicago Bears new quarterback) and two framed pictures of Cooper. I got his pictures taken as as surprise for Steve and his dad wearing an IU shirt and one of Steve's hats. They were too precious.

After presents Steve's parents came over and breakfast with us. We also gave his dad his present since half of it was the same as Steve's. Afterwards we took Cooper to the mall to play, he is so cute, he can climb up the stairs of the tree slide but won't slide down by himself. After lunch he took an awesome three hour nap. Steve's parents watched him that night, it was girls night for me and Steve had tickets to the Bats game and went with some guys from work. Today we had lunch with parents at Texas Roadhouse followed by another three hour nap. I took full advantage of today's nap, the girls kept me out way too late last night.

Here are my two favorite guys....

Thank you Steve for being such an awesome father and husband. I love watching you interact with Cooper and how much you love him. My favorite time of day is watching Cooper's face when you get home, I think it's his favorite time as well. Happy Father's Day, Love you!!!

Warning.... Cuteness Up Ahead

Last Saturday we had a photo shoot with Leslie from Letography, and WOW!!!! That is about all I can say. The pictures turned out amazing. Steve & I were a little worried because it was hot outside, getting close to lunch and nap time, Cooper was just not having it that day, but she is amazing. I had no doubt her work would be good, I've seen some in Alicia's blog, who is one of our Jazzercise instructors and her sister in law, but I was still blown away. What am I saying, of course I was blown away, it is my son. What worked great was not being in a traditional studio, Cooper was free to roam and play and she was able to get some candid shots. I highly recommend her, the price is reasonable and you get a copy of the CD with full rights to print any picture you like. Click on her website above for more information. Here is just a sample of the 217 pictures I have.

For the Birds

One of Cooper's favorites activities is to stand at our living room window and stack his little people on the window sill. Since he also likes to look outside at the birds we decided it would be nice to put a bird feeder in front of the window. We went to Lowe's Saturday night and picked up a bird feeder, bird seed, and a hook and now the birds are coming. It took about a day for the "word" to get out but they are coming in full swing. I got home this morning from Jazzercise and the remaining bird seed was all gone. I think they took advantage of no one looking out the windows and decided it was time to finish eating. Some of the birds that try to eat are too heavy for the feeder, it was only about $2, so we may need to get something to weight it down or buy a heaver one. It makes me want to get some bird books and figure out what is visiting our backyard.

He's Back

As of Saturday morning by little guy was officially "back". Below are some shots of my living room around 8:30 am.

He hasn't had a fever since sometime Thursday, his throat seems better since he is eating normal foods and acting himself again. We go tomorrow for our ENT check-up so we will see how his ears are doing. For some reason my house only gets this messy on weekends. Weekdays, it's just me and Cooper, it stay much cleaner. Wonder why?

Helping Daddy

I love it when Cooper tries to help us do things, here he is helping Steve unscrew Elmo's foot so he could put new batteries in it. That is just what I need, new batteries for Elmo! Can't he stay broken for a little longer? Love the intense face.

Sweet Innocence of a Child

Tonight after dinner Steve got some ice cream for dessert. Of course Cooper had to have some as well, so there he was standing in front of the chair getting his bites of ice cream. Steve asked him if he wanted to give mommy a bite. So I walked over and Steve gave me a bite of ice cream as Cooper looked up with the sweetest grin on his face, I think he was more excited for me to get a bite then he was to get one himself.

Snuggling

If you see my son doing this, you know something is wrong.

It all started Wednesday after his nap. He woke up and he felt warm, well no warm but hot. I took off his shirt and gave it a few minutes waiting to see if he would cool down. After about 10 minutes he still felt warm so I gave him some Tylenol and within about 15 more minutes he felt much better. He played for a while, ate dinner and seemed to be himself. Then around 6:00 he started feeling warm again and it looked like he getting chills. This is when the cuddling session started. Steve ran out to get some Motrin, gave him some of that and by the time 8:00 rolled around he was normal and playing again. He slept good all night, woke up this morning and felt hot again. I did my best to get a good reading but he was very wiggly, it came out to 101.6. I gave him some more Motrin and called the doctor. Of course by the time we got there at 10:30 the fever was gone so here I go again looking like an over reactive mother. As soon as our doctor walked in he buried his head in my shoulder and started crying. He knew an ear check was coming. As it turns out his left ear is infected and he has a viral infection causing blisters in the back of his mouth and throat. She swabbed him for strep but that came back negative. Now we just have to let it run it's course with Tylenol and Motrin for fever and pain and drops for his ears. I hate it that he feels bad but I love snuggle time.

Here he is before we left this morning, obviously the Motrin was working well.

Random Thoughts

Nothing new has been going on in the Lee household so I thought I would post a few random items. Two weeks ago I was browsing the computer and found a house for sale in a neighborhood that Steve & I both love. It's called Lincoln Heights, it's in Clarksville and we have always admired the homes there. It's an older neighborhood so it can be hit and miss with the houses. This particular one however was beautiful inside and out, oh and it was built in 1936. We hadn't planned on moving for another 2-3 years but we went ahead and scheduled a time to go look at it. That morning I got a call from the realtor and found out the house had sold. No big deal, it just wasn't meant to be, although it is still showing as pending on the website so who knows, maybe it won't go through. This got me thinking, we need to be prepared just in case the right home for us does become available. We have now cancelled a few home projects, we were going to get a shed for storage but are putting that off unless we absolutely need it. Let me back up, we moved into our current house 3 1/2 years ago with the plan to stay 3-4 years. Then last year I quit my job to stay at home and we entered into a building project at church so the plan to move was pushed back another 3-4 years. We are quickly running out of room, especially if we ever want to have another child, thus the need for a storage shed. So here we are now, I am going into crack down mode. I've casually started looking at homes and will only pursue if the "perfect" home is available. I'm so much more critical this time around because it will most likely be our home for many many years. So this means no shed and no extra spending. Even though I did just buy Cooper a lawn-mo-mo-mower (see below post). Good thing those Colts tickets are already bought and paid for. I don't think I've blogged about that yet, we got Colts tickets for our anniversary gift. It's the for the first home game of the season against Jacksonville, super excited!!!!

Lawn-mo-mo-mower

That is how Cooper says Lawnmower, so I decided to go and get him one of his own. I found one at Walmart last week and went back today to get it. Of course we got home and he was interested in everything but the new toy.

He would rather play with the weed-eater. Or the recycle bin...

Or the mulch.....

So he does like his new toy....

Wait a minute, now he wants to push the stroller.

The Key to my Heart

Cooper is getting in a bad habit of throwing his food off the table. It is so frustrating, not because I have to clean it all up, I would have to sweep anyway, but sometimes he tries to dump his entire plate on the floor then he is left with no food. We have been trying really hard to get him to eat better off a plate and with a fork or spoon but it is requiring a lot of patience. It's so much easier just to lay it in front of him directly on the table and let him pick it up with his fingers. This brings me to Sunday after church, as usual he threw a bunch of goldfish on the floor, so after he finished what little food he had left I cleaned everything up. Then he tries to be all sweet and innocent and help me clean up the floor. Who can stay mad when he does something like this?