Happy Brothers Day!

 Right after Mothers Day and Fathers Day, Harry asked when we would be celebrating Brothers Day.  And just like that, a new holiday was born.  Second weekend of July.  Come, celebrate with us.  (I hope the kids get together in Brothers Day forever).

Jack wearing the traditional Brothers Day donut breakfast beard.

 Harry with a sugar high and Jack's beard again.

 Cooper ate a bagel like he's people.

 Celebratory lunch at the brothers' favorite restaurant, Panera, where Cooper continued his big food trend with a grilled cheese.

 We adjourned to Toys R Us where Harry selected a gift for Cooper; Cooper "Selected" one for Jack, and Jack picked out a present for Harry.

 Jack was in the toy room building his new Mega Block Smurf village with Ben, and Harry was outside trying out his new explorer vest, so Cooper wasted no time claiming the magnatiles.

 He also worked on his new puzzle.

 And yelled at explorer harry out the window.

 Super awesome.

Brothers Day was so! much! fun!  And Harry learned how to ride his bike without training wheels.  A big day.

Odds, Ends

I have gone to work in the afternoon the last two days, and OMFG I have missed going to my office SO MUCH.  Especially since I have nothing to do but officey things.  Like box up an entire file cabinet's worth of shit to be shredded (and 2 bankers boxes of random crap that have been sitting on the floor of my office since before Cooper was born).  Then, I could put the towering stacks of paper that covered every surface in the newly empty file cabinet. In file folders, even, because I am fancy like that.  I even unpacked the giant boxes of textbooks on my table (and ordered more, so that victory is short-lived).  I went so far as to clean out the credenza that holds old baby toys, changing pads, and wipes on one side and old, old, old stuff from the last guy who had my job on the other side.

That's where I found these:

Floppy disks that are floppy.

Then today, I got all of the fall teaching materials ready for the big class I direct, and I made the syllabus and schedule for the small class I teach.  If fall semester started tomorrow, I would be ready (well, I'd be ready of someone could run off a few thousand pages of photocopies real quick, but that's practically ready!).

I decided to finally lose the rest of my baby weight before Cooper turns 1 (zOMG), and Ben is also counting calories. We are eating so  much better.  Ben's using a My Fitness Pal app on his phone, and I am sticking with Sparkpeople.  It's a pain to measure and then enter all of our food, but neither of us has had food from a  box in almost a week, and we've gone through a ton of produce, poultry, and salmon.  At first, I was having a hard time making my protein grams for the day, but peanut butter, cottage cheese, gouda, and grilled turkey breast have saved the day (not all together-- blech!)  I am having a hard time drinking my bajillion cups of water a day. I don't drink anything else-- I just found out that I don't drink as much as I should, so I am working on it, especially since water makes me feel full (and cold).  I'm down 3 pounds-- woo-hoo!  I am not sure how many calories I should be eating since I am still breastfeeding round the clock, so it's all a big experiment.

My mom bought this shirt for Harry, and I was glad to pull it out again for Cooper.  Ben said this outfit made him look like the manager of a Nissan dealership on Memorial Day.

 Jack showed off his karate moves (and his ribs) at the pool tonight, where I discovered that Cooper has quite a tan.  #MOTY

Today in pictures

He dribbles

He shoots

He scores

Cooper on the rebound

Jack emerging from the back yard, dishevled and with a soccer ball.  Thanks to our behind the fence neighbor for the freaking awesome and super classy view.

Cooper want CAMERA

I didn't want to clean up lunch today.  Voila!

As you might imagine, Cooper made a huge mess with this cup

He spilled these Cheerios and ate them out of the dirt.  #MOTY

I also wanted to go home at his point.

Back splash!

10 months old!

Sweet baby Cooper is 10 months old today.

It took us a long time to get pregnant with Cooper.  Almost a year, which for us was a really long time.  I went to see my doctor, who is really sweet in general about my anxiety issues and ran a bunch of tests even though she told me I was probably just fine.  When I went to the doctor's office to take a pregnancy test (because that's how our awesome HMO works-- you have to have a positive test in the clinic before the whole prenatal care system begins), I was stunned to find it was negative because I had a row of peed-on sticks of varying sensitivity and spendiness lined up on my bathroom counter at home.  I expressed my dismay/distress to the chatty nurse who called with the result, and she had me come in right away for a blood test (the exact same thing happened with Jack, too-- apparently the clinic uses super shitty pregnancy tests).  I got the results almost immediately on my phone (another awesome feature of our HMO-- an iPhone app called MyChart.  Sometimes I get the kids' strep test results while we are still waiting in the pediatrician's office).  About 15 minutes later, MyChart pushed a notification of a message from my doctor, and I opened it to find a smiley face icon next to the positive result-- told you she was sweet. 

Even though we waited  awhile to conceive him, I remember a pregnancy filled with trepidation.  About having 3 kids to look after, take care of, keep from killing each other.  About pregnancy complications.  About labor and delivery.  That one kept me up many, many nights, and I think it's the reason Cooper was so late-- I was seriously freaked out about giving birth, unable to relax and let the process happen.

Cooper, though, is so wonderful that all of those fears have fallen away.  Harry and Jack (but especially Harry) dote on him and make him laugh wildly.  He loves the water and fits into my perfect pool summer without a ripple.  He has such a winning, two-toothed smile, and except for his terrible night time sleeping (but he slept like a dream-- 10 hours at like 2 weeks-- when he was tiny), everything he does is easy and perfect.

These past 10 months are a blur, and my little Cooper is almost a zombie toddler.  My Mr. Baby, our third stooge.

A big day for Coooper

Not only did he eat his first grilled cheese sandwich (cut up into tiny little pieces, of course), but he also had his first ride on the zoo merry-go-round.  W.O.W.

He totally loved the sandwich, but the whole zoo experience was seriously underwhelming for him.  Minutes after we took this picture, he freaked out, unable to withstand the indignity of both a stroller and a hat, and I (not Ben-- just me, or he would flail like he was being tortured) had to carry him through the zoo and push my purse in the stroller.  Also, Harry and Jack's hands turned blue from their popsicles, and their arms got stained to the elbow.

 He did not drink this apple juice, but he insisted upon carrying it with him, much to thirsty jack's consternation.

 Harry had on a lot of sunscreen.  He was also happy to sit on the giraffe because he does not like merry-go-round animals that go up and down.

 I don't think Jack has ever ridden on the carousel by himself.  Last year, he was the special snowflake baby, and he held him on his horse (or, in this case, polar bear).  Clearly he was cool with his new freedom.

 Ben set the camera up on a bench behind us.  As soon as I saw this picture, I bought weights at target and will be working on my triceps hardcore.

 Very serious about the ride.

 Photo bomb!

Looking forward to lazy

We haven't done anything to our room since we moved into the house and bought a couple lamps and a comforter we now both kinda hate at Target.  We've added a Boppy pillow on the bed, some clutter, a couple stains on the carpet.  As you can see from the picture below, Cooper likes it rough.  Also, the room is bare, as in NOTHING ON THE WALLS:

All of this sounds like I am getting ready to tell you we have improved the room, but actually, we have made it worse. We added some bright blue Safety First bed rails because a certain almost-10-month-old has turned into the world's worst sleeper and ends up in out bed most of the night. Since he only has 1/10 of his teeth, I am hoping he's getting a few more, and that's why he's so terribly restless right now.

We continued our summer theme of being sickeningly happy by having a lovely 4th of July with some old college friends and their adorable toddler who came to town to cook out and go to the pool.

Harry has discovered a new happy place: His Lego table in his room, where he spends hours making stuff.

This morning, he showed up in the kitchen in this super freaky outfit. He and Jack were playing robber because if you ask Jack, he'll tell you that he wants to be a robber when he grows up. Um.

Our house celebrated its one-year birthday with a team of contractors descending to do drywall repairs (anyplace a nail pop appeared or a large crack showed up), fix a door and a window, replace the water-damaged kitchen counter and cabinets, and install the new, deeper sink and faucet we bought.

I love the new faucet, which is funny because before this week, I don't think I have ever paid any attention to faucets at all.

We are getting a back splash on Monday, and I am super excited! (and seriously, another thing I have never cared about before).

Cooper, as I have mentioned, will not drink a bottle, so he and I are together a lot. Lately, though, he is able to self-feed more and more. Tonight he ate watermelon and cottage cheese all by himself, and tomorrow morning he is going to try a waffle, assuming Ben makes good on his promise to get up and make them. (A promise, by the way, made as we prepped for the workers to arrive and emptied our kitchen cabinets and happened upon our waffle iron. Also, remind me to never buy another cookie cutter because I have thousands.)

One thing he does that I love, though, is hold and eat his own puree pouch, which must be the equivalent of a formula baby holding his/her own bottle:

 We have waffles and bacon and berries on the horizon tomorrow ad not much (anything) else.  Lovely.

Happy Third!

 Tonight, we BROKE FREE of the confines of our nightly routine, which we knew would certainly backfire since our kids have gone to bed at the same time their entire lives.  We stayed late at the pool, which was open until 9:00. 2 whole hours after we tuck 3 children into bed.  Cooper was so confused when he nursed at 7 this evening and wasn't all zipped into his sleep sack.  All of them played happily at the pool, though, and despite a small incident in the shower when I was trying to rinse the California Baby off a slippery, naked Cooper, and he did that thing where he arches his back and tries to get away and I almost dropped him on his face but saved him by squeezing extra hard with the hand that held the shower head and scratched the shit out of his chest and stomach and I hope he doesn't get flesh eating bacteria from the gross pool shower nozzle, we had a lovely time swimming until the lights came on underwater.

Then we adjourned to the tennis courts and set up camp on the prickly grass (seriously-- it was like sitting on needles-- we need rain) outside them to watch fireworks.  Fireworks that didn't start until 9:30.  Gulp.  Ben grabbed some emergency glow sticks that he keeps in the tornado box in the basement (what the hell are glow sticks going to do for us in a tornado?), and Harry and Jack ran around like idiots lording them over their pool friends, some of whom brought light sabers, which is pretty much the best idea ever. 

 Cooper tried to get in our beer cooler (so classy, aren't we?) and got really sad when he couldn't.  He was out of his mind tired.

 His favorite thing to do was stand up holding onto only Harry's hair.  Harry is an awesome big brother.

 Jack freaked the hell out when we took away his glow stick because Cooper was trying to eat it and becoming enraged when we wouldn't let him.  jack cried through the rest of the fireworks display, out of boredom and exhaustion, although he did tell Ben when we got home and Ben was putting him to bed that the finale was his beautiful because it had all of his favorite colors.

 Crappy iPhone picture because I forgot my camera.Because THAT'S how spontaneous our trip was.

 Still crying.  Wanted to be running around on the grass with the other kids again like before the show started, but he couldn't because all the other kids were watching the damn fireworks.

 Ben mocked the shit out of my outfit because of my neon shirt and also because the other moms changed into cute sundresses, and all I packed in my pool bag was workout clothes.

But, yeah, my shirt did actually glow in the dark.  Oops.