MommyBlog

Cooper is a brute of a kid.   He’s not chunky in the least – he’s one solid hunk of love and energy, pushing 24 pounds.   The kid can eat more than me when he sets his mind to it, and then burns it off so fast I often find him trying to climb back into his high chair an hour after breakfast.

He’s totally a little brother, too.   Kenny and Dudley are the objects of his intense affection, while Casey and I are the comforters and the ones with the food.   It hadn’t struck me what a tough guy he was, though, until yesterday when we entered the realm of Rolly Pollie.

Rolly Pollie is the kids gymnastic center we’ve been going to since Kenny was a baby.   Kenny has been doing it since before he could walk and is a veritable poster child for fearless acrobatics.   He knows all the teachers by name and can conquer just about any obstacle course they put in his path.   By sheer necessity, Cooper has been attending the three-year-old class for a year now, originally content to watch from the confines of the front pack, but lately pretty adamant about getting on the floor and following the Big Kids around.   Tomorrow for the first time, Kenny will start in a class without me… it’s a two hour session that combines ages three to five and Kenny is barely able to contain his excitement.   I’m sure that there will be a moment of panic tomorrow when I actually leave, but I know that he will do great.

But back to Cooper.

Since Kenny will have a parent-free class from now on, I decided that it was high time to enroll The Coop into a class of his own.   My options were “6 months to walking” or “Walking to 23 months.”   Though I think he’ll probably start walking in the next month or so, I figured that the little baby class would be best – I didn’t want him getting bulldozed by a nearly two-year-old.   He gets enough bulldozing at home.  

So we arrived on Monday evening at 5 for Cooper’s First Class.   I brought a backpack full of things to keep Kenny occupied for the 45 minutes and we settled in to give it a go.   So did 25 other babies and their parents.   Because it was an intro, it was way over-booked, and we could barely all squeeze into the “welcome circle.”   We were instructed to set our sweet things into our laps as we went around the circle and sang a song with each baby’s name (and Mommy’s name) in it.   I sat Cooper in my lap as we began, and he tore out and crawled at breakneck speed to the opposite side of the circle and whapped at little girl on the head.

“Cooper!” I yelled, as the other Mommies sang, “Hello to Jack with his Mommy Lin-da!” and the mother of the unfortunate whapp-ie began to coddle her daughter and glare at Cooper.   Cooper waved happily as I scooped him up and returned sheepishly to our side of the room.   He sat for 4 seconds and was off again.   I grabbed him and grabbed a foam block for him to hold.   He bit off a piece and chewed it thoughtfully before winging it aside and crawling to the teacher and trying to grab the puppet out of her hand.   We finally got through the song and the teacher “released” us to try out the different sections of the gym.   “Mama?” Kenny shouted.     I ran over with Cooper in arms, “Yes, honey?”   “There’s a big boy playing over there!”   Indeed there was.   Another older sibling was present and rather than sitting in the waiting area, as my angel was doing, this hellion was running reckless through the over-crowed gym, dodging babies and swinging on the trapeze.   “Can I play too?”   Kenny asked, sweetly.

Here is where I should have stuck to my guns.   I should have said no, then tracked down a teacher and said, “Hey-   are the big kids allowed to play, too?   If so, I have a three-year-old who wants to jump on the trampoline.   If not, can you please ask that other little boy to go back to the waiting area?”   But no.   I was already flustered from Cooper’s early antics.   And did I mention that immediately before we came to Rolly Pollie we spent a few hours at the pool?     We were already set up for disaster.

“Sure,” I said, not really happily.   “But if you want to come out, you have to stay with me and play with me and Cooper.”   Yeah.   That worked for about 45 seconds.

Within a minute, Cooper and I were following Kenny around and I brought a quick halt to that.   “Kenny, this is Cooper’s class, not yours.   You have to stay with me and him, or go back and wait.”   At this, Kenny began to wail.   Not just sniffle, but bawl uncontrollably.   Maybe too much time in the sun?   Too close to dinner?  Jealousy?   Whatever.   I started getting stares, and I pinched his arm.   “Stop it!” I hissed, and told him to stay close to us and cut the tears.

Needless to say, Cooper did not have much time in the sun for the remainder of the class.   Oh, we had fun in the moonbounce, fun in the foam pit, fun on the parachute, but somehow the glow was off the playtime for me.    I really wanted Cooper to have the experience of being #1 for once and I felt  like it was snatched from him.  

Afterward, we got in the car and had to catch a late dinner and then drive to pick Casey up at the airport.   I don’t even need to recount going out to dinner with two over-tired, over-emotional, really hungry kids, do I?   Just imagine food flying everywhere and Kenny jumping on his chair and you’re right there with us.

As for Cooper and Rolly Pollie, we’re going to try out the older baby class later in the week.   He was a little past most of the stuff we did last night, and I’m hoping that with a smaller class, and at a different time of the day, Kenny will do better hanging out with his coloring books so that I can just focus on Cooper.   He really is a fantastic kid, and so often he ends up banging blocks together in the corner while I more actively play with Kenny.   I want to be able to engage with Cooper like I did with Kenny when he was one.   I don’t want to miss this sweet little explorer age.

But how do you do it with Number Two??

It’s been a busy week around here… For once, I actually took pictures as each adventure came our way.  

First up: a weeknight Oriole’s game!  

It was nearly rained out, but we survived through a delay and then headed to our seats as the drops stopped and an evening sunset came through.   Cooper met The Bird for the first time…

… and in spite of a momentary frown and sniffle, he decided that he was ok (as long as he didn’t get too close!).   Kenny had an uncharacteristically rough night.   He is usually so happy to be there, but got on a whining streak about just about everything and we left much earlier than we’d planned.     C’est la vie… or at least, la vie avec les enfants, mais oui??

My sister came over the next day with her girls, aka. Kenny’s BFFs…

They had a blast, as usual and entertained each other so well that my sister and I actually had some time to talk!

We had friends over for a dinner party on Friday – six adults and seven kids is a party, right?   Kenny and Casey caught nearly two dozen huge crabs off our dock and we prepared a feast…

We ate and drank and all the kids had a turn in the kayak (except Cooper!) and tried out the fishing poles.   IT was a late night, by the time everyone finally left and Casey and I hosed off the crab debris from the deck and cleaned all the big pots.   I had temporarily forgotten that I was running in a 5K the next morning and, regretting the two (or three?) glasses of wine I’d had, I collapsed in bed close to midnight.

Ah, but it was up and at ’em early Saturday.   Kenny got up early with me to get there to sign in and Casey and Coop arrived just in time for the line up.   I did pretty well, considering the imbibing the night before, and the fact that my uterus was recently stretched to the size of a watermelon and back, and that I’m turning 35 in a few weeks…

My time was 26:30.   Not bad for an old, hung over gal, eh??   Kenny ran in the fun run, and did great, holding his own in the under-6 race…

We drove into town after the race and had giant slices of pizza at the City Dock before heading home in utter exhaustion.   I put Cooper down for a nap as it started to rain.   We unanimously voted for a family movie time and Casey and I were able to blessedly veg on the couch while Kenny sat enraptured with The Tale of Despereaux.   Amen.

Sunday was truly a day of rest.   Church.   Home.   We checked the crab traps and found another four, so we decided to steam them up for lunch.   Casey took Kenny out on the kayak while I put Coop down for a nap and read a novel in the Adirondack on the deck.   It was practically a vacation this afternoon!

Now I’m ready to hit the sack, after finally coaxing two very wound up boys to bed way past bedtime.   It’s so hard to get to bed with the sun setting over the water and the ducks quacking and the fish jumping.   Can you blame them for protesting?

All in all, quite a fine week!

PS – I just noticed that in all these pictures, which do indeed span a week, Kenny is wearing the same Oriole’s jersey!   Yes, I wash it.   Yes, he owns other clothes.   Really.   I swear.

Casey and I both love our yard.   We’ve completely redone it over the past five years and are proud of all we’ve accomplished.   When we first moved in, it was way over-landscaped and that was way over-grown, not to mention Hurricane Isabel had just stormed through town and put the entire property under water.   That first summer we were married, I would often spend an entire day pulling seaweed and trash out from inside the bushes.

Though we both love cutting the grass (hey – an hour of white noise = peace and quiet in my book!), last week we talked about hiring a neighborhood kid to do it instead.   With two little rascals and home and a new job, Casey is guarded of the time he spends with them and an hour mowing the lawn on the weekends could be spent fishing on the pier, right?   Anyway, we agreed that he would talk to our next door neighbor, a sweet teenager whom I’ve actually written about here before.    

Oh, we did not know what we were getting into.

First off, he somehow convinced his grandad, John,  to help him (a nice guy in his late-60’s who had a heart attack last year) and they came through the fence with their ancient riding mower.   Ok, our  yard is only a half acre,   and we had told him to use our mower – a decent push mower with great mulching blades.   Anyway, I ran out, Cooper on a hip and shouted, “Hey!   You can use our mower!”   “Nah,” Justin said with a shrug, “This is faster.”   So off he rode, as  John starting doing the edges with a 30 year old push mower.   I looked out the window a few moments later to see his Grandma, Charlotte,  sweeping the driveway.   I crouched down, feeling really… odd about the whole thing.   But it got worse.   Looking up again, I saw his Great-grandma, Sylvia,  on the other side, sweeping the sidewalk.

Let me stop for a moment and deliver a little back-story.   We live in a very unique community.   We are on a peninsula (our house is on the water) and at least half of our neighbors were born here, their parents were born here, and their parents before them.   In fact, this  Sylvia’s  family used to own most of the peninsula, and John and Charlotte actually built the original structure of the house we live in.   Charlotte has raised five children, now grown, and had raised three of her grand kids (Justin is the only one there now) and babysits once a week for her great-grandson.   She is in her mid-50’s.     They are the kind of neighbors who would give you the shirt off their back, who show up with mounds of veggies from their garden all summer, who always keep an eye out in the neighborhood.   Justin has had a rough life – he was born addicted to cocaine and has only had his grandparents to look after him most of his life.     They don’t have much and we hoped that hiring Justin would be an encouragement to him, as he seems pretty lonely, as well as give him a good way to earn some pretty easy money.

Back to today.   I had to run out to buy some dog food, so I went outside with Kenny and Cooper in tow to give Justin his money before we left.   The yard was a wreck – long grass all over the place – including  an inch-thick blanket of it  over the mulch in the flower beds –   mulch  it took us  two weekends to spread  not a month ago.   They’d cut the grass so short it was tangled in clumps all through the yard and there were whole rows of ridges where they’d spaced the mower too much.   I figured, surely they’re not done, don’t freak out yet, right?

Anyway, I’m looking around for Justin, so I stop Charlotte from her rather in-effectual sweeping and ask where he is.   “Oh, he took a break.   He’s probably in there eating ice cream!”   ACK.   Ok.   “Can I give him the money we promised?”   So she went over to get him and he came out, wiping his mouth.   “You took a break?” I said in a teasing tone, “You were only out here a half hour!”   He shrugged.   I handed him the money.   “Thanks,” he said.   I told him to use our mower next time, and that he was welcome to use the blower to get all the grass.   “Thanks,” he said again, and I left.

I came back to disaster.

The yard looked so bad.   Clumps of grass everywhere, tons of missed spots and grass all over the sidewalk and mulch beds.   It looked like someone had used a weed-whacker post-sweep and it was absolutely hideous.   Casey got home from work and just stared.   I offered to get out the blower and try to pile it up so we could bag it.   I worked for 20 minutes without making a dent.   We talked about going to get him and asking him to re-mow it with our mower, at least to shred up the grass, but Casey remembered that he had a ball game tonight.   “I’ll re-do it – they’ll never know…” I said, and Case took the kids inside while I got out the mower.   I looked up.   Dark thunderstorm clouds loomed.   I was not deterred.

I literally ran with the mower and went over the whole yard again, twice in some places, trying to shred the grass.   Then I got the blower and started to blow off the mulch when the rain started and I had to go in.   Casey and I looked at each other and laughed.   At least we had the best of intentions…

Cooper loves to hide.   Yesterday morning, it took me several minutes to find him, hiding behind the curtains in our bedroom.   What I should have guessed is that the game was only half the reason he was hiding.   He had a monster poop in there, smell wafting deftly through the air.   I scooped him up to change him when there was a knock at the door.   It was the guy from our car dealership to pick up our car for service.   (Yes, our local dealership picks our car up for service and leaves a loaner.   It rocks.)   I knew that he was coming, but somehow it escaped my mind that there would actually be a person arriving at my house that I would need to converse with.   Dudley was somewhere loose in the yard, I was still my my sweaty running clothes with my stringy hair in limp tangles, Kenny and Cooper were in pjs and now the smell of poop was undeniable.  

I answered the door to find a slightly shy guy my age in a crisp polo shirt, clipboard in hand.   “Hi!” I said brightly, as if my chipper demeanor could mask the l’air du poop I was holding in my arms.   “Did you meet a large grey dog on your way in?”   “Um.   No?”   “Oh!   Oh dear.   He usually jumps on strangers.   I’d better find him before he sees you.   Can you stand over there for a minute…”   I look around for Dudley.   Nowhere.   Bad sign.   He must be rolling in dead fish.   “DUDLEY!”   He comes barreling in from the water, and I grab his collar just as he makes  a lunge for the car guy.   He smells Cooper’s load and decides that it is more interesting than Mr. Car Man  and starts burying his nose in Cooper’s rear, making him cackle uncontrollably.   Kenny, not to be outdone, starts running in circles around us and roaring like a lion, holding his hands out like claws.  

I offer a fake laugh and ask him if he’d like to come in for a minute.   He looks at me like I offered to hand him a snake and shakes his head, “All I need is your driver’s licence and your keys, Ma’am.”   “Right!   I’ll be right back!” and I leave him on the doorstep with Kenny, still roaring like a lion, and Dudley, smelling like dead fish and sniffing his hinder.   I run upstairs.   Licence.   Oh.   No keys.   I run back down, Cooper still on my hip, still smelly, and still laughing.   I look at the guy.   “I can’t find my keys.   Hm.   Oh, don’t mind the mess – we made an obstacle course out of the couch cushions this morning!” I shout, and I run back upstairs to look again.   By now Kenny has tired of roaring, and has started to just run laps around the living room, singing random words from random books that we’ve recently read to him: “Bossy sprockets!” (from Thomas the Tank Engine) and “It’s as hard as the ham at the cheesemongers!” (from Two Bad Mice) float up the stairs as Mr.  Car  Man  shuffles his feet nervously.   I call Casey.   “Keys!?”   He tells me that he used them yesterday and doesn’t know where he put them.   I start tearing around, opening drawers, looking through pants pockets in the laundry hamper and finally find them behind the IPod in the kitchen.  

“Here you are, then!” I say, still cheerful, as if this nice guy hadn’t just witnessed me losing my mind.   “Oh!   I need to go up there with you and make sure my husband took the carseats out!” and we traipse up the 100 foot walkway to the detached garage, me in the lead with the now toxic Cooper, Dudley prancing close behind, still trying to get a good whiff, Kenny galloping behind Dudley and Mr. Car Man in the rear, obviously pondering a change in occupation.   We get to the garage.   Carseats are still buckled in.   Oops.   “Do you need a hand?” Mr. Car Man asks politely.   “Sure!” and I start to hand him Cooper.   “Uh.   I meant with those seats?”   “Oh, yeah!   Great!   Thanks!” I say, tucking Cooper in my elbow and wrestling with one of the carseats.   We get them out and on the ground.   Mr. Car Man says, “I have kids.” in a tone that implys that he understands that I am not completely Cuckoo, just mildly disorganized.   And he leaves.   Whew.

By the time he came back three hours later to return the car, I made sure that all of us were clean, dressed appropriately, and that the house was reasonably picked up.   Not only that, but I had a cake in the oven.   Take that, Real Housewives of Madison County.   He squinted at me, almost as if he wasn’t sure I was the same person he’d meet this morning.   I gave him a breezy, nearly lofty  smile and thanked him warmly.   He squinted a little more and looked at Kenny, now quietly engaged in his legos.   “Anytime,” he said, and tipped an imaginary hat.   And with that, he left the Cuckoo’s nest.   Whew.

I just wanted to publicly announce that Cooper, three weeks shy of his first birthday, has suddenly turned into a real looker…

His crazy little personality has just exploded.   Today while I was brushing my teeth, I briefly left Kenny and Cooper playing in the floor in their shared room.   Two minutes later when I popped my head in, they were gone.   I went into my room and saw Kenny on the couch reading a book.   “Where’s Cooper?” I asked, a little nervously.   “He’s hiding” said Kenny, mater-of-factly.   I looked at the curtains on the window.   There was, in fact, a little bulge at the bottom.   “Cooper?”   He whipped the curtains off his face and giggled with unfettered glee, then hid again, clearly waiting for me to continue the game.   Which I did for another ten minutes.   Who can resist that face??

Stinky Boy #1: Dudley, who has inexplicably rolled in death three times now in the last two days.   For newer readers, we live on the water – on a creek off a river off the Bay – where there are fish and crabs and tiny shrimp in abundance.   We have a dock as well as a boat ramp on our property, the latter of which occasionallyserves as a dying field for beached fish.   Dudley loves to roll around in them, grinding his neck into the rotten, decaying flesh.   Then he runs inside and you can smell him before he even clears the dog door.   Nasty.   Today he got his second shower of the weekened and Casey even pulled out the steam vacuum to wash the couch cushions.   Ugg.

Stinky Boy #2: Cooper.   The kid poops, like, eight times a day.   He relishes it, too.   When I see “the look” – you know, the slightly reddened face, the baited breath, the concentrated stare, I’ll sing-song, “Cooper… are you poopin’?”     and he’ll reward me with a killer smile.   But just try to change that poop, and whoa!   Call in the reserves, because he howls like he’s being tortured.   He bucks his body, violently kicks and throws a tantrum worthy of an Oscar.   I’m tempted to make him sit in poop all day, just so that he understands that the alternative to those mean old diaper changes is no picnic, but the smell propels me to even the most difficult of hiney-changes.

Stinky Boy #3: Kenny.   He is also a happy pooper and is quite fond of calling everyone in the house into the bathroom to check out his “creations” when he’s finished.   Fortunately, he understands that they should then quickly be flushed and then moves on with his day.  

Stinkyness aside, it was a great weekend.   The weather finally cleared and the humidity stayed low so we were able to spend most of the two days outside.   I even took Kenny out in the kayak yesterday while Cooper napped and Casey caught up on some yard work.   He’s such a sweet little guy.   We talked and talked and just enjoyed the peacefulness of being out on the water.     It is so nice to be alone with him every once in a while.  

I guess I’ll keep my little stinkers.

Last year for Kenny’s birthday, we gave him a little kids’ digital camera.   It’s pretty indestructible and the picture quality isn’t great, but it was  a good distraction for Kenny’s obsession with our camera.   He would “borrow” it and we wouldn’t see it for days, uncovering it only to find 447 shots of the underside of his chin.

Today, playing in his room, I saw the camera we’d given him and decided to upload the 300 some-odd pictures he’d taken on it over the past 9 months.   Some were blurred beyond recognition, but some were actually good and several downright arty.  

Just for fun, here is a sample…. I think my boy’s got talent!

Just like his big brother, Cooper has reached a stage where he has to have a ball in his hand at all times.   Mostly, his ball of choice is a wiffle ball, occasionally a Major League baseball, sometimes a ping pong ball (holy terror choking hazard) and even at times a soccer ball.   If he does not have a ball in his hand at any given moment, he will scour the room (where we have a seeming abundance under chairs and couches and behind bookcases) until he spots one and then begin his diatribe:

“Baa?   Baa!!! BAAA!   BA !   Ba.   Baa!   Baa.   Baa.   BAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!”   until you give it to him or he gets to it himself.     He will attempt to throw his entire body weight out of any hands that hold him in the direction of said ball and will flap his arms violently, as if to fly to be reunited with his veritable appendage.

Other “words” emerging from his lips:   “Cacker” (cracker); “Dud-ee!” (Dudley); “Deen?” and “Deenk?” (drink); “Ba” (not to be confused with “ball” – this one refers to a block!); “DA!” and “Da DA!” (Dada); “Mam-mam” (Mamma); “Tee!”  (Kenny)

He is also mastering “peek-a-boo” and loves to play catch – he’ll throw a wiffle ball with surprising aim and force to anyone who will sit across from him, then “catch” it when you roll it back, occasionally stopping to clap and say, “Yay!”     He will chase Kenny just about anywhere, and loves to be tickled.   He will crawl over to Dudley out of the blue – at least once an hour – and give him a hug, saying, “Dud-ee… awwww.”   He is a great napper, and finally sleeping most nights all the way through.   He eats anything you give him, with voracious glee, and loves to drink ice water.   He hates (hates) having his diaper changed and will scream hari-kari and buck his body until you finish, at which time he will smile charmingly and say, “AH!”  

I love you, Cooper!

We had our first Big Scare with Cooper this weekend.

Let me preface by saying that Casey and I are crazy careful about being baby-safe around the house: cords for all the blinds on hooks, doors double locked with bolts so high even I can barely reach them, permanent gates on the top and bottom of our stairs (they even match the railing) and nary an electric socket without a plastic cover.   One thing that I’m always super careful about is that, ever since Cooper  learned to pull  himself up,  we never put coffee on the coffee table.  

On Saturday morning we woke up and all wandered downstairs, hanging out in our pajamas, playing and talking and listening to music.   Casey was sitting on the couch reading a story to Kenny and I walked over to hand him a cup of coffee.   Not thinking, I set it for a second on the coffee table and turned around to get something else from the kitchen.   Cooper, who had been playing in the floor about ten feet away, crawled over and pulled it over on top of him.

The instant he shrieked I felt my knees give out – I knew exactly what had happened.   Casey and I reached him at the same time.   There was hot coffee all over his arm and down his shirt and into his diaper.   We raced him to the sink and put him under the cold running water.   I held him there while Casey filled a cold bathtub, and then I ran in with him and we sat in it together, still in our pjs, while Casey called 911.   Kenny jumped in the tub, too, instinctively playing with Cooper and trying to make him laugh.

After about five minutes, Cooper had stopped crying and sat in my lap, resting his head on my chest.   I took his clothes off and we wrapped a cold wet towel around his arm and torso, then a dry towel around the rest of him and Casey held him on the couch.   We could hear the sirens outside, and assumed they were on their way in.   I ran upstairs and threw on dry clothes and packed a diaper bag, in case we had to head to the hospital, then Kenny and I went up the sidewalk to the street to look for the paramedics.   They’d passed our house at least once, and we could hear the sirens just on the other side of our circle – it’s a crazy street and they were obviously not finding our house.  

We waited for what seemed like forever, then saw the firetruck and and ambulance turn the corner.   We flagged them down and two volunteer firemen and three EMTs  followed us down the walk, into the house.   A lot of action for our sleepy neighborhood at 7 AM on a Saturday.

They were super-kind, and the head guy checked Cooper carefully, and announced that he was not only fine, but more than fine – not a single burn or red mark remained on his chilly skin.   They affirmed that what we did was right, though advised that it’s best not to remove the clothing, just in case.    We made some relieved small talk as the second-responders arrived.   With ten strangers in our living room in the early sunshine, we made some cracks about inviting them to stay for pancakes.   They reassured us that we did the right thing to call and bid farewell, each of them patting Dudley on the head and high-fiving Kenny.

Strange that by 7:30, it felt like a whole day had passed.

Cooper is fine, and we learned a huge lesson.   It really is a miracle that he wasn’t seriously burned.     Not only had I just poured the coffee, but Casey and I always microwave ours to make it “extra hot.”   In a moment our whole lives could have been changed, and I keep marveling over the fact that Coop made it through without so much as a single mar on his perfect skin.

Amen, and amen again.

And no more coffee on the coffee table.

Cooper left babyhood today – in looks at least.  

His bouffant of wild hair is no more.   He’s been called a girl too many times lately – or rather, everytime he isn’t wearing head to toe blue with some kind of logo on his shirt that says, “Mommy’s boy!”    

I  begin with the notion  to just  trim his bangs – something I’ve done at least three times before, but the rest has gotten so long and billowy that he suddenly looked like I’d put a bowl over his head.   I trimmed the sides and he looked decidedly like one of The Beatles.   So, past the point of no return, I literally crawled behind him and trimmed and clipped for another twenty minutes, at times scrambling with a piece of hair between my fingers and the scissors poised as I paced him around his room.

It’s not a perfect haircut, but Wow!, doesn’t my little guy look good?

(Ok, a little gel never hurts either, right?)