They also woke him up at 6:05 this morning

Harry and Jack are going to be so bummed when Jon leaves tomorrow.

Jon's here!

And he made this for dinner. So, so good-- you should make it too!

Name game

Today, we went to parent-teacher conferences at Harry's school-- they were adorable. Harry's teacher says it takes him a long time to put his coat and boots on at the end of the day. No shit. She should see him get dressed in the morning. Yesterday? 20 minutes to put on a shirt. One shirt. He sees something shiny and then poof! Concentration gone. She also said he is great at math. He loves story problems because he gets into the story aspect. Like if 5 kids are playing and 2 leave, it's not about the 3 who remain. It's about WHY did they leave? WHERE did they go? Cracked us both up. After the conference, he wanted to show Ben the library, and we got meet the 2 librarians who let him check out a book even though there's no school today-- he even got to operate the scanner by himself. A very big deal. We wandered around the hallways for a bit with a sleeping Cooper, trying to find the door that was the dead closest to our house, and as we passed a group of lockers Ben said, "Oh! Emmerson! That's one of my favorite names. Doesn't it sound great with Dennis?" I almost punched him. I also love that name. So why didn't we consider it for our little baby number 3?

Cooper was almost Wallace, Sebastian, Darwin, Bradley, Woodrow, Griffin, or Wyatt. I mean, he was really almost Wyatt. We loved that name and then one day? We just didn't. So we took the letters off the wall and Ben suggested Cooper, my most favorite baby name in the whole world, the name that everyone vetoed right after our big 20-week ultrasound. It was the middle name that clinched it. If we were naming him Wyatt, I wanted to use Bradley, after our alma mater, the place where we met as high school speech campers and spent 4.5 years in undergrad. Ben, though, wanted the middle name Dennis after his dad. I thought Wyatt Bradley sounded better. Ben said if we could use Dennis, he'd go for Cooper. The rest is history. And I do like the middle name-- Harry is Harrison Benjamin after, uh, Ben. Jack is Jack Leonard after Ben's paternal grandfather, and Cooper Dennis is for Ben's dad. Symmetry. I think we also went with Cooper because it's my favorite, and Ben feels bad that we won't have a little girl. (It's probably better that we don't-- you know she'd be wearing a bow the size of her head right now).

2 Months Old!

Moderate Home Makeover

We went to Pier One today to buy a bunch of stuff for our living room, which has been really blah ever since we moved in. We also moved the couch around, which really, really, really helped it look less like a furniture store display. I realized that I decorate like I am a SIM-- no cords showing, furniture squared off and usually around the edges of a room. This is us breaking out of our comfort zone.

This cabinet has been devoid of decoration since I knocked the cactus that used to reside there all the hell over the floor. Now it is home to a globe! And a picture frame!

When you walked in our front door, all you used to see was the back of a couch. Now you see this:

I also came to to terms with the fact that I am not likely to go buy a ton of books to fill the rest of the shelves-- seriously, I never remember to scour thrift stores or hit up used book sales at the library-- so we bought other stuff to go with the books:

And throw pillows!

Still a little empty, but think of it this way: plenty of room for Cooper when he starts to crawl.

Next up: our room, which has not a single decorative item on any surface or wall. But it does have a yet-unused pack n play filled with diapers and extra blankets, so there's that.

OMFG. Time change. Blurgh.

Cooper woke up at 4:58 this morning, which is not unusual for him. But instead of eating and going back to sleep, he has been cooing, laughing, and smiling his fat little face off for the last hour. He's up. For the day. Before 5 am. Neat.

****

I take advantage of the quiet house and pleasant baby and work for an hour, holding my laptop on my knees in bed, cooing baby beside me.

****

A whirlwind morning-- big kids up at 6, the earliest possible second they are allowed to be out of their room barring some sort of special circumstance. Beds made by 6:05, breakfast on the table by 6:15, clothes on by 6:40. I even completed half a workout before we had to take Jack to preschool, would have done the whole 40 minutes but the baby got tired of his gym. Just as well because the preschool parking lot was a Monday morning zoo. A brisk walk from our driveway to Harry's classroom, dropping off two huge boxes of snack we bought at Costco yesterday (And the rest of the stuff we bought at Costco? Totally ridiculous. Next time you come over, be sure to have a V8 or a Gatorade and some Wheat Thins.)

****

Harry and Jack at school. Cooing baby. Third cup of hot coffee. Fistful after fistful of cinnamon Teddy Grahams. Laundry humming in the dryer. Husband and preschooler home at noon, on-campus meeting waiting for me this afternoon. How to fill these next 3 hours, me, baby, and a soft bed?

He doesn't even need a bed-- he can sleep sitting up

Another photo-flashback

Here we are trading our first babies for a picture in October 2006:

And trading our last babies yesterday:


Sometimes when I am walking across campus staring with open envy at the beautiful college students with their trendy clothes and swinging hair and too cool for school sunglasses, I want to stop them and say, "Smile! You are leading a charmed life! Anything you think is stressful right now? Is NOT. Enjoy this time and stop worrying!" Because all the stuff I remember worrying about when I was in college? Doesn't matter even a little bit right now. I would love to worry about stuff like tests and what to wear to chapter and having to ask my dad for more money for like the 5th time in 5 days. But I digress. I'd also like to say that to the mom I was is 2006, so stressed about developmental milestones and whether or not my baby was getting enough breast milk and wondering if I would ever sleep again. But I would like to be 2006 skinny again.