Confessions

Yesterday when I accidentally walked into the men's locker room at the gym, not once but two times, and saw a nude, elderly gentlemen, I began to think- that maybe I am a magnet for embarrassing calamity. And I feel I have a lot of these moments that are weighing on me and I need to get them off my chest. So, I guess it's confession time.


I confess that at my last job my boss was a little person. He wasn't often in the office because he was out doing important boss things. One day I rounded a corner, walked smack into him, and knocked him down with my legs. And then to make bad matters worse I said, "I'm sorry I didn't see you!" And then I stammered, "Oh I didn't mean you were difficult to see.... Uh I just wasn't looking down there.... I mean, not that I need to look down to see you..." And it continued, in that horrifying vain, stammering inadvertently offensive things in between apologies until I finally slinked away into embarrassment oblivion. And to top it off, that was the first time I had ever met my boss.


I confess that when I waited tables in college, I was the worst waitress ever. We were supposed to grate cheese over each salad we served. It always took quite a while for the customer to say enough cheese and I used to zone out while I was working the slow, dull cheese grater. One day some little old lady with short curly hair leaned over to get something while I was grating the cheese. After a while I looked down to see I had been grating cheese not into the salad, but into her hair the whole time. I was mortified. It was a ton of cheese! But she hadn't noticed so I just sort of walked away and didn't mention it. She still had a mountain of cheese in her hair when she left the restaurant.


I confess that sometimes Cooper is the perpetrator of my embarrassment. Cooper is at the age where church has become basically a three-hour long nightmare. A few Sundays ago I was almost home free and only had 15 minutes left! I was wedged in an area about two feet by two feet with a baby that refused to be held and only wanted to get down and crawl around. After wrestling with this eel for most of the meeting, I finally let him get down for the last few minutes. I gave him a block and let him get his wiggles out. After a while I thought the lady next to me in her wheelchair was maybe giving me dirty looks, finally after dirty look #3 I got down there to see what was going on. Cooper was banging his block, not on the floor like I thought, but on her artificial leg. Cooper usually has two wooden blocks that he likes to bang together, I only brought one to church but it seems he found something else wooden-like to bang his block on instead. To top it off, he was also trying to pull out the pin connecting her artificial leg to her artificial foot.


I confess that I think I committed the worst foot-in-the-mouth moment that has ever happened in the history of the world. A lady in one of my old wards threw her husband an 80th birthday party that I attended. It was in the chapel, there were speakers, there were musical numbers, there were flower arrangements... A few months later we were talking and she mentioned a song to me. I said, "Oh right, isn't that the one you played at your husband's funeral?" By funeral I meant birthday party...


I confess that during pregnancy I abandoned all social etiquette. At work we had a mini fridge for our department that was located behind my cubicle. Most people put their lunches in the fridge in the break room and just used the mini fridge for drinks. But some unlucky person put their lunch in the mini fridge one day. And it stank. And every time someone opened the fridge the smell wafted into my cubicle. It smelled sooooo bad (I'm convinced it would have smelled even if I hadn't been pregnant) that I got up and threw it away when no one was looking. And I never told a soul. And when my co-worker asked if I had seen his lunch I looked him right in the eye and said no. I'm clearly a sociopath. But I did give him some of my food since I pretty much brought my whole pantry to work with me every day so I try to tell myself that I negated at least some of my crime...


Phew.

Ten Months

This morning I texted Josh that I was planning on tripling my caloric intake so that I could keep up with Cooper. I feel that accurately sums up Cooper's changes this month. He is WILD! I can't even fathom how much more wild he is going to get once he can make a run for it. Maybe I can buy a pig pen for our house?

This month:

Cooper LOVES books. And I'm not saying that in the annoying bragging mother way. I wish he didn't love them quite so much sometimes. Sometimes I hide his books for a day. Sometimes I wish he would just play with musical Elmo for ten minutes while I give my voice a rest! We read allllll day long. We read the same book ten times in a row before I can put it away without a tearful protest. I don't understand how even a baby can not be sick of The Foolish Tortoise after the tenth reading. I feel like I should go on a professional reading tour by now. I have all his books memorized and I can do multiple animal sounds.

My wild boy has made great physical strides this month. He is crawling better now, faster and on all fours. He loves to crawl a few feet, turn and look at you, have you say, "What are you doing!", and then chase him. He can pull himself up and cruise along furniture. He can even stand by himself for a few seconds. I was worried about the pulling up phase interfering with sleep, you know when babies pull themselves up in their cribs and can't get back down? But Cooper just falls back down on his butt every time, usually banging his face on something on the way down. He has no fears. 

Cooper finally got teeth this month! Two teeth that broke through within a day of each other. I was really beginning to think he would be toothless forever so I was quite surprised they came. Although the other day he chewed my coaster into pieces... So, be careful what you wish for I guess?

This month he's learned how to clap and wave really well, his motor movements are really coming together. I feel like he would have been doing his sign language now if I hadn't forgotten to sign anything to him for the last few months. Sorry bud... But we were teaching him the signs for more, milk, and all done and I figured he always wants more, he always wants milk, and he's never all done so they were pretty pointless anyway.

Cooper has always loved music and now whenever he hears music he starts to clap and then bounce up and down like he's dancing. Last weekend we took him to a sandcastle festival there was some music playing and he just sat there and danced while a crowd of people gathered around to watch him. And he's figured out how to turn on the music on his crib mobile so now when I put him down to sleep, I hear different kinds of music starting and stopping as he plays around before he falls asleep.

When I started these monthly photo shoots, I envisioned each of them looking so uniform and posed so I could have 12 of the same pictures to look at and see how my baby has grown. Well now these photo shoots are impossible. I took 50 pictures and there were only 2 that weren't blurry.

One of them Josh is pinning his legs down in.

And the other non-blurry one I had to let him chew on a pen for. Every day is a battle of trying to chew on pens and mommy taking the pens away.

And the rest of the photos looked like this.

Until he decided to leave the room entirely.

And enter my room instead where in the ten seconds I took to put my camera away he proceeded to eat 3 mouthfuls of dirt out of my indoor lemon tree. 

Love you you crazy kid!

A Visit!

This post is long overdue but for some reason my computer is a real stinker about uploading photos on my blog so I hadn't made the time commitment yet. But two of my favorite ladies came to visit me a couple weeks ago and it deserves to be documented.

We went to Olympia of course. Because Olympia is my favorite place in the world. Insert comments about how it's ok to commute 80 miles a day. Right? Right? I so want to live in Olympia. :( Anyway we toured a historic tugboat which was AMAZING. Probably only for me because I'm in love with tugboats but Alisa and Lauren humored me!

I really like this shirt but it makes me look pregnant. I'm conflicted.

We journeyed onwards to Seattle, saw Pike Place, went up the Space Needle, and ate at Red Mill Burger. And almost got in seventeen different car accidents. 

The next day we hit the Olympic National Park, we saw the tide pools at the beach, Lake Quinualt, Forks, and Port Angeles.

It was foggy at the beach. FOG! It was amazing.

Forks was easily the funniest place I've ever been. Absolutely hilarious. 

This is my impersonation of Bella. I've only seen the first movie and haven't read the books but she seems to be pretty melancholy.

These are pins from places people have traveled from to see Forks. This has to be a joke. Really? People came all the way from Madagascar to see Forks? I bet they were pretty disappointed! Or maybe those barbie dolls made it all worth it.

This was Bella's truck in the movie. I tried to get Lauren to act like she was being crushed under it, I wonder why she didn't want to...

The welcome center in Forks handed out brochures guiding you to Twilight related areas in town. They asked you to please not try and enter Bella's house as it is occupied, to please not enter and disrupt high school classes, and to please not enter the hospital where (Edward's faux-dad?) worked. Apparently some of these Twi-hards are hardcore! But let's be honest, if I could go to Hogwarts I would probably try to sneak into Harry and Ron's dormitory so I guess I shouldn't judge.

From Forks we went to Port Angeles. See look, there's Canada.

At that point my camera died but we had some other good times, some hiking, more beach-combing, and an excellent round of trivia where Lauren was asked what disease killed all three of the Bronte sisters and answered, "the clap!"

Thanks for visiting me!! I'm sorry Cooper woke you up at 6 am! Come again soon!

Sandcastles and Seabrook

Sunny days in Washington are the best. Sunny Saturdays are even better. No matter how tired we are or how much stuff we should get done around the house, it is absolutely impossible for us to stay inside on a beautiful weekend. Today was gorgeous so we went to the sand and sawdust festival in Ocean Shores. We sort of just went for somewhere to go but it turned out to be really fun. Cooper even had a good time! Outdoor-hating Cooper surprisingly always enjoys the beach, he loves eating sand and watching the waves. Combine that with lots of people watching and reggae music and he was loving it. Cooper danced and danced and he had a crowd of people following him to see his sweet moves. Cooper gets like twenty compliments every time he goes outside. I should start stocking my diaper bag with autographed pictures for him to hand out.

The teams technically have one more day to finish their sculptures so the ones we saw were about halfway through but they were still really neat to see. They use pressurized water and build removable platforms and use all sorts of cool ways to create these.

These guys were making the Candyland board game.

A spaceship.

I don't really know where this was going, I guess she was be-headed.

Some old lady stopped me and said, "You know, he probably shouldn't be in the sun." I assured her that he had about seventeen layers of sunscreen on, and she said, "Oh good. I'm so happy you're one of those smart moms." This kid is basically glowing he's so pale, of course I put sunscreen on him! 

This is what one of the sand sculptures is going to look like. Artistic people are beyond me. 

It was such a beautiful day! Cooper was too tired after the sand to see the sawdust so we left after that.

Cooper fell asleep in the car and if we stop driving he wakes up so we decided to drive to another beach town called Seabrook. It's an adorable little planned development like Daybreak. I wanted to take a bunch of pictures but everyone was outside and I didn't want to wander around photographing their house like a weirdo. So I'll use someone else's photo instead...

Let's live here!

The houses sit on this little hill with a view of the ocean.

I'm consumed the best french fries of my life here. A really good burger too. And Cooper ate half of a grilled cheese sandwich. This kid LOVES food!

  

Reasons I Hate Small Towns (and you should too)

Aberdeen supposedly has a population of 16,000 people. I think that's probably a lie because I've only come across about six of them. Maybe the rest are mole people? Either way, it is a small town. A small town I have tried very diligently to like for about six weeks. I gave it a good solid effort. And now I'd like to talk about how much I hate it. Would you care to hear why?

• Because it takes a pain-stakingly, agonizingly LONG time to check out at the grocery store, even though there's usually just one or two people ahead of you. That's adorable that everyone knows everyone else in town and some people really love that, but do they have to play catch up while Cooper is chewing on a packet of taco seasoning that's seconds away from dissolving in his mouth? Every single time I've gone to the store I've sat and listened to the cashier discuss with the person ahead of me what potluck item she's planning on bringing to the "pig roast" while Cooper tries to eat every single one of my groceries that I've yet to pay for. At this point I don't even feel bad when she has to pick up a drool-soaked packet of taco seasoning so she can scan the bar code. You brought that on yourself, lady.

*Yes the pig roast is a real thing. Some guy roasts a pig every year and apparently it is quite the ordeal. People camp out the night before. Old ladies bring pies. And the cashier at the grocery store is thinking of bringing potato salad. I can't wait.

• I always read the local newspaper of wherever I live. In Salt Lake it was full of actual news. Here, Kurt Cobain's grandpa died and it was on the front page. And Leland didn't even live here. Now that's just kind of pathetic. No offense Leland.

• Lack of shopping. We got rid of our dresser when we moved, assuming it would be really easy to find another one when we got here. Big mistake. Basically if Wal-mart doesn't sell it, you're not buying it. Every Saturday we cruise the yard sales hoping someone somewhere is selling something that looks remotely like it could store clothing. Our clothes are still in piles on the floor. What's that you say? There's something called Craigslist? Well there's nothing even close to an Aberdeen category. You have to scan through pages of furniture listings to finally see the magic word of Aberdeen just to realize that someone is selling a lava lamp.

• The fact that people notice when I don't go to the gym for a few days. This is probably the worst part of small-town existence, and it's especially irksome when it's an 85 year old man that's giving me the third degree.

Old man with no body fat: Oh, haven't seen YOU here in a while. And I would know because I've been here every day.

Me: Oh, uh... I've been working out at home? Total lie.

Old man with no body fat: Looks me up and down with a raised eyebrow... Sure you have.

I'd really like to stay home and eat doughnuts without all the judgement.

• And perhaps the most depressing small-town moment was when I was watching tv (I can feel the old man at the gym judging me right now) and a typical car commercial came on. At the end they advertised the location of the dealership as being "next to the Burger King." My hopes and dreams died as I realized that these were un-ambiguous and clear directions. 

I should clarify that I actually really LOVE the Pacific Northwest, before someone gets the idea to run me over with their Prius. I just really hate small towns. My apologies to Aberdeen, Leland, pig-roast guy, Mr. Cranky at the YMCA, people that love lava lamps, and to all cashiers that recieve products directly from my son's mouth. 

Cooper at the playground

For Memorial Day weekend we went to visit Josh's sister and her family in Pullman. It's nice to be 8 hours away instead of 12. Ha. The state of Washington is too big. It was such a fun weekend with our sweet little nieces and nephews. Josh was in seventh heaven having other children to play video games with. While we were there we took the kids to a playground that was "full of colors" in Grace's words, and snapped some adorable pictures of Cooper's first time on a baby swing. Please ignore the crazy facial expressions I apparently make to Cooper, poor Cooper... And focus on the world's cutest baby!

Josh and I look HOMELESS in these photos. Yikes. I would normally never post ragamuffin pictures of me but Cooper looks SO stinking cute in these. Look at his cute cute face!

Haha seriously kid?

This kid loved the baby swing.

So excited at the top of the slide.

Not so excited at the bottom.

World's cutest babe.