Cooper Turns Two

Cooper's birthday is actually the 26th but he's two and doesn't know the date so we made Saturday his birthday instead. All week I talked to Cooper about how this weekend was going to be his birthday and he was going to have a birthday party with balloons and cake and his friends were going to come over to his house and he was just wildly excited all week long. Since we aren't around any family this year I thought I'd invite a couple of his toddler friends over for a small, short party so he didn't have to spend his birthday staring at his mom and dad like he does every day. The theme this year was balls as balls have replaced Hello Kitty as his new favorite thing.

This was Cooper's party invitation he sent to his little friends.

We turned our dining room into a party room and we kept the doors closed until his friends came and when I finally opened the doors Cooper screamed and bolted inside to play. It was sooooo sweet and made me so happy.

The chalkboard is kind of hard to read in the picture. It lists all the things Cooper loves: balls, trucks, stop signs, rocks, oreos, his kangaroo, bubbles, Super Why, Michael Buble, dirt, trains, blueberries, puppies, pretzels, running, babies, Daniel Tiger, water, hiding things, milk, letters, mom and dad, his friends, and circles.

We also played a balloon/parachute game that I didn't get photos of and Cooper was just in heaven. He wanted to keep playing that all day long.

Gene brought Cooper an awesome ball!

This is the story of my life. Everyone sits except Cooper. Even when there's chocolate cake involved.

I didn't get pictures of him blowing out his candle and singing happy birthday because I was chasing him around the house with his cake. As soon as he realized everyone was singing to him he ran for it.

Cooper didn't care for his cake or his ice cream. Because he's weird. He's refused two birthday ice cream treats today.

But he sure loves balloons.

Cooper handed out party favors of bouncy balls and candy with this little note.

Then we opened presents when his party was over. Josh and I got him a bunch of car stuff as he's starting to get really into cars and trains.

He was very excited about his car rug.

He immediately started lining up his new matchbox cars.

His cool new car from Nana and Papa was very exciting.

He started driving it right away.

And he got a million trains from Aunt Becky which he loooved.

He lined those up too.

                                      

Then we set up his car ramp we got him and he played with that for hours. Notice the screwdriver and scissors right there? Nice one Mom and Dad.

He also got some new clothes and some more presents from other relatives that we're waiting to skype with before he opens them, and some presents from his party guests I didn't get a picture of. Spoiled little guy.

After naptime we decided to take Cooper somewhere to dinner that would sing to him and give him a little treat.

He was very excited about the singing but not so much about the ice cream. He drank his milk instead and Josh and I ended up eating his ice cream sundae.

Then we went to the mall and let him ride the train which I think is officially his favorite thing in the world to do. If you ever want a really good laugh, ride the train with Cooper at the mall. Passersby just bust up laughing at how excited this kid is to be riding the train.

And that was the end of Cooper's big birthday bash. It was quite the day for a two year old! 

I love my little bubby so much words cannot express. He makes me laugh every day and I just love getting to know more and more of his little personality. I can't wait for many more birthdays to come! I love spoiling someone who gets so excited! Love you Coop!

Portland Take Two

We went to Portland this weekend, almost exactly one year after our last Portland trip. A year in young child time is a long time, instead of screaming for 30 minutes about sleeping in a hotel room, this year Cooper went right to sleep! Probably next year he'll even make us dinner before he goes to sleep.

We went to meet Josh's sister's family on their way to the Oregon coast. When we were almost there I turned to Cooper in the car and told him we were almost there and we were going to play with our cousins and he got the biggest smile on his face. He is always so excited to see his cousins, it's so sweet. But first things first, we had to stop at Ikea! Oh man do I love Ikea. We bought the most adorable orange folding chairs for extra seating. A car rug for part of Cooper's upcoming birthday present. And shelf and two wood picture frames for our upcoming woodland nursery. Ah Ikea...

I love my new orange chairs.

Then we met our cousins at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry which was a really cool museum. It's an awesome place for kids, so much to do. They had a live dinosaur exhibit which was sooo cool! These huge dinosaurs were moving and roaring and looked so lifelike. Cooper clung to me for dear life and buried his head in my neck. He was terrified. But the children play area more than made up for it. Cooper played in the water for hours. Balls + water = one happy Cooper.

Digging for dinosaur bones. Or rubbing fistfuls of sand into your hair as Cooper interpreted it.

Sometimes the only way Cooper will allow himself to be restrained is if he's riding on your shoulders. But then he puts his hands all over your face and gives you a bunch of wet willies. I'm not sure it's worth it.

Then we ate dinner at Jimmy John's which shouldn't be exciting but it is because I live an hour away from the closest Jimmy John's, and checked into our cute hotel. Josh and I put Cooper to bed and then took our baby monitor into the hall to sit and wait for Cooper to fall asleep. The outlet we needed for the baby monitor was actually in front of the hotel room next to us so we plugged it in and sat down and I got ready to read my book. Josh left his phone inside the room and had nothing to do so we decided to take turns reading my book out loud to each other. Eventually the people staying in the room we were sitting in front of came in to get into their room right when we were sprawled out in front of their door laughing our heads off and Josh was loudly acting out a scene from the book. We must have looked insane.

The next day we went to the Portland Children's Museum. Cooper had a great time at this one too. There was a lot for little kids to do.

There was a water area at this one too. What's with Portland and these weird little kid lab coats?

Grace and Brady at the pet hospital. Sooooo cute.

There was a mini splash park outside and Cooper had a blast but got soaked and covered in mud. We were driving home from there so we made him ride home in just a diaper, which was awkward when we stopped for lunch. Josh wanted to take him in his diaper! But I dug some pajamas out of his suitcase for him instead. Classy parents.

Then we left our cousins to go to the zoo while we went to lunch and drove home. We went to Panda Express (another thrilling thing for me) and some guy came running out of the hair salon next door with a balloon for Cooper loudly proclaiming him to be the cutest baby he's ever seen. I'm glad someone finally noticed! 

Then we drove home about 5 miles an hour all the way home from Portland in the worst traffic ever. And Cooper sat in the backseat successfully fighting sleep to the death.

Utah Trip

This is going to be a fairly boring vacation post because I didn't take pictures of anything! Self: that is your new goal, get with it. But anyway despite the lack of photographic evidence we did indeed visit Utah.

The flight there was the worst part. I was flying alone with Cooper which is already number one on my least favorite things to do, I would rather spend the day getting a root canal. We decided to try and get there an hour and half early because every other time I've gone we've gotten there way too early, breezed through all the special family lines the Seattle airport has, leaving a long two hours to wrestle my wild man at the gate before we could board the plane. So this time I decided to try not to get there too early... Well we got to the airport and there were five Alaskan cruises that had just docked in Seattle and about one million cruise passengers were all at the airport right then catching flights that didn't leave for hours and hours. Long story short, when I got out of security I had ten minutes before my flight took off so I ran with Cooper as fast as I could to my gate (why is it always the last one?) and I was the last one to board. Somewhere in my hectic running I dropped Cooper's boarding pass and they weren't going to let him on the plane, the flight attendant at the gate asked me to please look through my stuff so I set Cooper down for a second to look through my papers even though I knew I dropped it somewhere and Cooper bolted past the flight attendant and ran down the ramp to the plane. I couldn't chase after him because they hadn't checked me in yet and the flight attendant got on his walkie talkie and called security to come get Cooper! He was so mad, he was yelling into his walkie talkie, "we have an unidentified passenger making way to the aircraft." And Cooper was just standing right out of reach and ignoring all my requests to please come back to mommy and counting to three. It was so embarrassing. Finally the flight attendant took Cooper's birth certificate and made a phone call and let me through before security came to arrest my toddler.

Once we got there things got a lot better! We hung out with family and friends which is why we go to Utah. We saw all of my family members which was fun! We went to the aquarium and to a splash park with my good friend and her little girl Lyla who is Cooper's age, they are good friends too they just don't realize it yet.

Cooper threw his toy car into the piranha tank at the aquarium. We were leaning over the edge to see the fish and just as I was thinking "wow this is kind of a scarily open, accessible tank of water" Cooper hurled in his toy car.
Also in this picture Cooper is wearing a leash attempting to be disguised as a stuffed animal backpack, I immediately became a lover of the leash and purchased Cooper his very own for the plane ride home.

The splash pad was awesome! Cooper had a huge blast because it's nice to play at splash pads when it's warm outside.

I also got to go to dinner with my high school group, minus Lisa who I guess I'll forgive since she's in Africa. And Cooper got to meet Rachel's baby Marshall who is a sweetie, they are also the best of friends they just don't realize it. That was super fun and I'm glad I got to catch up!

I got to see a movie with my favorite non-family family, the Waters girls! And we got to listen to Divergent being translated into Spanish behind us the whole time which was hysterical. There are no better people to experience that with!

And I got to see my Texas friends, Debra and Megan and their collective cute little girls. We went to lunch and took our kids to a playground. It was fun to catch up. Debra has a new baby girl and Cooper was in love with her, he kept touching her tiny feet gently and looking at me in awe and then he would go over and rock her car seat. I think he has more maternal instincts than I do! He is going to make a great big brother!

Sometime in the midst of this Cooper and I came down with an awful stomach flu! Hooray. It was three full days of fevers and other stomach flu related ickiness and it was awful. Yuck. Trip illness number one of three.

Then one day Josh finally came! I was so happy to see him that I cried at the airport like I had never seen him before! Geez. And Cooper was so happy to see him that he did not let him out of his sight for the rest of the trip. Me he didn't care about so much but Josh was not going anywhere, to the bathroom, in the other room for a second, no where.

Right after Josh got in we headed to his family reunion in Eden. It was so great to have one trip and be able to see both of our families! We got to see everyone and I even got to meet a few people in Josh's family I still hadn't met yet, including a new baby, Carter! Cooper kept trying to give him kisses and as soon as we got home Cooper marched over to Carter's picture on the fridge and gave it a big kiss (he does this several times a day.) There were lots of cousins there for Cooper to play with and he had an absolute blast with them.

He was quite enamored with his cousin Toby. :)

So we swam and went for a hike one day and hung out in beautiful Eden for four days. It was great! Until the last night when... Cooper got another stomach flu! He had been healthy for about four days in between the two illnesses. This one was awful as it included a lot of projectile vomit. it breaks my heart into a million pieces to see my kid sick. As soon as he woke up barfing Josh and I rushed over to him and he said the saddest "mama, dada" I have ever heard in my life! Poor buddy was just so sick. The rest of the night he refused to sleep unless he was on my chest with his arms around my neck, he just had to snuggle me or he couldn't sleep. It was sad and awful and we both got about two hours of sleep that night. And as a pregnant lady in the first trimester I had to do three loads of vomit laundry when I usually can't even wash the dishes without gagging. Let's just say it was unfortunate.

After that we went back to my moms for a couple days before our flight home. Thankfully my mom took care of my sick baby while I took a five hour nap. We said goodbyes to family and our last night Josh and I ditched Coop and hung out with our friends Andy and Alianna! A nice way to end the trip.

Thankfully Cooper was semi-recovered by the time we had to fly home, but I had a cold (illness number three.) Though we did have three diarrhea blowouts in the airport and had to buy another package of wipes! Poor guy. Our flight was an hour late but eventually it came. And Cooper was a very good traveler for the airport, the plane, and the two hour drive home! (Purely because he watched Daniel Tiger the entire time but I'll take it.) Cooper was so excited when he walked in the door and saw his home (I was too, I cried again)! He ran around screaming and dancing and laughing for hours. And now we're home and Cooper caught my cold and we're taking a break from traveling and illness for a while!

Seattle Day

Josh had some time off work this weekend because we had plans to go see family. Those plans were quickly thwarted by some snow and my Prius. We decided to spend a day in Seattle, we've both been there with visitors but never with each other so away we went. We really wanted to get a hotel room and stay for the weekend but after our fiasco in Portland we decided to make it a day trip. Turns out the day trip was also difficult in it's own way for my Cooper diva, but probably less difficult than suffering through bedtime in a hotel room would have been.

First we stopped in Tacoma for Krispy Kreme. I always hit up Krispy Kreme when I'm up this way. Cooper was excited at the prospect of doughnuts but not so excited once he tried a bite. He promptly spit it out and ate goldfish crackers instead. Coop doesn't enjoy sugary things like gummy bears or suckers. He does however really enjoy mushrooms from a can. Weird yes?

He has his pointer fingers up and he's waving them around in excitement.

As soon as we got downtown we had to go to Target and buy Cooper a quart of milk so we could keep a steady stream coming all day, baby tylenol for his tooth he's about to pop, and a lunch of turkey, cheese, and berries because he refused to eat any of the lunch I packed for him. Then after we fed him and pumped him full of milk and tylenol our trip became much easier. Then he spent the rest of the day screaming for berries from his stroller every five feet. I'm pretty sure this kid would kill someone if it meant he could have a blueberry.

Then we went to Pike Place. Coop really liked all the bright lights and the people watching. A terrifying homeless man dressed like a clown came and talked to him for a while so next time Cooper wakes up in the middle of the night screaming, I'll know what he's having a nightmare about...

Then we went to the library because for some reason none of my visitors ever wanted to see that with me. The Seattle library is so gorgeous. It's ten stories with ten escalators and that was heaven on Earth for Cooper. This kid LOVES escalators. But unfortunately that leads to giant screaming tantrums when you have to get off the escalator. And public tantrums in a library are quite mortifying. We got separated from Josh because the stroller wouldn't fit up the escalators and I didn't have my cell phone and the library is enormous and Cooper was having a loud escalator fit so I asked the security guard if he could page Josh Beach over the intercom. When Josh got back down to the lobby the security guard looked at me and said, "Oh. I thought he was going to be a child."

Me and my second child

Then we went to the Seattle Aquarium. Cooper really loves the fish tanks at Walmart so he would be really excited about a whole aquarium right? He clearly would have been just as excited at Walmart, and I could have kept my 40 dollars. Seriously? The aquarium was expensive! Cooper's favorite part was the color changing light in the jellyfish display. Of course.

Then we had dinner at Red Mill Burger. I was too busy wolfing down my food to take any pictures. It's recommended by Oprah so every time I eat there I imagine that Oprah and I become that much closer to being friends.

Then we went home because it was 3:30 and we figured that was the only way Coop would be able to get at least one little nap in. We started driving and he was talking to himself in the backseat quite loudly and laughing and trying to grab his toys and then five seconds later we looked back to see this. He literally fell asleep mid-talking. Cutie.

And then we went to Krispy Kreme again on the way home. So I've eaten four doughnuts today. And this time we caught them coming right out of the oven! It's a good thing I don't live by Krispy Kreme.