Thursday, January 30, 2014

Cooper - 19 Months Old!

Cooper just turned 19 months this past Saturday, and - I'll be honest - I completely missed it!  Usually, I know when it's coming up and we talk about it and/or take a picture, but this time it completely slipped by me!  Oh well, at least it wasn't a legit birthday, right?  Cooper was 18 months old (a year and a half!) from December 25 - January 24.

Stats:
Weight: 29 lbs
Clothing: Still the same as last month: 18 - 24 months with some of his 18 month clothes getting to small.  He's going to need 24 months - 2T for summer for sure!
Diapers: size 5
Shoes: size 5 1/2 or 6 wide, but I think some of his 5 1/2 shoes are starting to get too small.

Schedule:
His schedule is the same as last month:
7:00 - up for the day!
7:45 - 8:00 - breakfast and milk 
9:45 - 10:00 - snack and water
11:45ish - lunch and milk
12:30 - 1:00 - down for milk
3:00ish - up from nap
3:30 - snack and water
5:30 - 5:45 - dinner
Bath time immediately following dinner
7:00 - 7:15 - down for bed

Teeth: I am shocked, but he did not get any teeth at all this month!  Where the heck are these guys at???  I am ready for them to come out and to be over with!  We are still waiting on his 4 canines and his 4 two-year molars.  No signs of these bad boys popping through any time soon, though!

Talking:  We had a long talk about Cooper's speech development at his 18 month appointment, but he still did pick up some new words this month: shoes, woof-woof, and choo-choo.  Even at this, he doesn't talk a lot.  I mean, he has said woof-woof once.  And he said choo-choo a ton for like two days, and now nothing.  I also think he said "oh yeah" twice, but I'm not completely sure.  He seriously is just not concerned with talking!

Taking Pictures: This month, Cooper has been obsessed with us taking pictures of him!  I'm not gonna lie - I love it.  One night, I wanted to take a picture of him in some new pajamas that he got for Christmas.  I don't know why I even did it, but I stood him right in front of the wall in our living room and told him to smile.  Well, that did it.  Now, he goes to that wall ALL the time for us to take a picture of him.  It's so funny and completely adorable.  Here's a video he took of himself one evening on the wall.


See - he LOVES it!



Any wall (or kitchen island) will do!






It's a good day if I can get LL in on the action!

LOVE!

Misc:
-Cooper has gotten so good at blowing kisses this month.  He does it a lot on demand, but he also does it some random times on his own.  He for sure prefers blowing kisses right now instead of giving real ones.  I'll take what I can get.  ;)  Here's a video of him blowing kisses (and a little bit of fussing).

-If you don't keep a close eye on him, he will climb up into his highchair in a  heartbeat.  It just makes me super nervous that he'll fall straight onto our tile floor.  It's also a way we know when he's super hungry - we'll find him in there just waiting to eat - haha.


-This one is super gross, but true.  He loves to play in the potty water.  It's to the point where we have to keep all of the bathroom doors completely closed because he knows how to open the lid by himself.  Bleh.  So completely disgusting!  It's funny because we've heard LL yell to us a couple of times, "Cooper is playing INSIDE the potty!".  


-He's started randomly laying on the floor all the time.  Sometimes he'll just take a little rest, and then get up and keep going.  Other times he'll lay on his back and just play.  It's so random to me because LL never did this!





-He has gotten to be a pro at using a fork this month!  At the beginning of the month it was pretty hit and miss, but he practiced a lot and now he's great at it!


-His favorite game, by far, is peek-a-boo.  At any point in time, if you say "Where's Cooper?" he'll throw his hands up over his eyes.  It is so so so adorable and he gets so excited to play.  I love it.

Misc Pictures:

Working hard!



Best play plan: throw all of the toys OUT of the box, then climb IN.





Sitting in his wagon.  :)



This is the first time he's pulled his blanket over himself while sleeping.



He's still a pro at stacking blocks!  He did this all by himself.

These two are amazing.  Snuggling and watching morning cartoons - life is good!

LL gave him the rest of her ice-cream cone on the way home from CFA one day.  Needless to say, he devoured it.  :)


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Monday, January 27, 2014

Cooper's Trip to the ER

After we ate dinner on Christmas Eve, we put both kids straight in the bath tub.  While Coop was in there, I noticed he was coughing some (which I hadn't heard all day).  By the time he got out of the tub and I was getting him dressed, it was already getting way worse.  After we got him dressed, we tried to give him a breathing treatment to see if it would help at all.  While we were giving the breathing treatment, he got super upset.  When he got upset, he started sounding terrible.  It was the same exact sound that he had last year when we had to take him to the ER for croup.  I knew instantly that he had croup again.  And, just like last time, it came out of nowhere without any warning at all.

Because it was Christmas Eve, we had a big decision to make (and fast).  All of the doctor's offices would be closed the next day.  His croup was already escalating quickly, and would probably get worse through the night.  Do we go ahead and take him somewhere?  Do we wait?    I knew it was going to be another 36 hours before we had the option of taking him to a normal, non-emergency doctor.  I also knew that there was no way that we would probably be able to wait that long.  Knowing how his croup went last time, and how quickly it was already escalating, I knew we wouldn't make it that long.  It was only 6:00, so I started looking online and calling around to see if any walk-in clinics would be open (most around here close at 7 or 7:30).  Thanks to Christmas Eve, they were all closed.    That meant we would have to take him to the ER again.  It basically came down to 1- take him to the ER right then and nip it in the bud,  2- wait and potentially have to make the trip to the ER in the middle of the night like last time,  or 3- just wait and see what happens and run the risk of spending several hours on Christmas Day in the ER.  

Because LL is also a part of this equation (and we still wanted Christmas to be great for everyone!), we decided to go with option 1.  We ended up leaving Matt with LL to finish our Christmas Eve traditions, and my mom rode with me to take Cooper.  We got to the ER right at 7 (Cooper's bed time!), but thankfully there was no one else in the waiting room.

Even though it was bed time and he didn't feel too great, little man was in a terrific mood!  We are blessed with such a happy boy!


We got back to triage after about 20 minutes where they took all of his vitals.  Even the nurse in triage said it sounded exactly like croup.  By the time we got to the hospital, Cooper was sounding terrible, so I knew we had made the right decision to go ahead and come.  We got put in a room, and both an RN and the doctor came to check him out.  They both said croup, and that he would need an oral steroid and a breathing treatment (not the kind we gave him at home, which actually wouldn't have helped croup at all).  The oral steroid was pretty gross, so they gave him a  popsicle to help out.  He was making the most hilarious faces while eating the popsicle, that I couldn't resist taking some pictures and a video.



They came to give him his breathing treatment (not fun!), and then we had to wait a while to make sure that it helped and that he wouldn't need another one.  It was about 8:30 at this point, and Gigi and I were pretty tired of entertaining a very active little boy who wasn't feeling great, was super tired, and couldn't play in the hospital room.

Going through Gigi's purse.

The doctor finally came to check him again about 9:15 and said that he was sounding better.  Then he dropped a bomb, would would have to stay another 3 hours for him to observe Cooper to make sure that he didn't rebound after the oral steroid.  My jaw literally hit the floor.  I seriously asked him, "So you're telling me that we have to just stay here?!"  The answer was yes.  By this point, it was almost 9:30 and Cooper was exhausted.  There was also no way that he would lay down in the hospital bed (even with the rails up) and try to go to sleep.  And have I mentioned that we never hold/rock Cooper to sleep?  Nightmare.  We turned off all the lights, pulled the curtain in front of the door, and I just sang to him, held him and rocked back and forth (while standing up!), until he finally went to sleep.  Thank God!  After he was good and out, I laid down in the bed with him and just snuggle him.

I would like to sit here and complain and say that it was a terrible experience, but it really wasn't.  Snuggling my boy for so long, I really had a chance to think about what Christmas was all about.  My mom and I sat in the dark for 2 hours and (silently) watched A Christmas Story and tried to keep from laughing at each other.  And I knew LL was home and happy and sleeping.  It was just really a great time to reflect on what was truly important.  Thankfully, Cooper was better within a few days (probably because we got him there so super fast), and we didn't have to miss out on any of our Christmas Day celebrations.  I'm just to thankful to have two healthy children and that we have the ability to take them to the doctor whenever we need to.


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Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Christmas Eve 2013

Now that we have kids, our Christmas schedule is getting into a pretty good routine.  We have a lot of family in town that we want to make time to see, but we also have a lot of important things we want to do as our own little family unit.  I think we're really starting to get a great flow!

Christmas Eve has always been my mom's favorite, so they usually come to our house to celebrate with us.  On the morning of Christmas Eve, we went to see Grammy and Pop.  Grammy got the flu right as I went on Christmas break, so the kids hadn't seen in her over two weeks.  We had also been having some yucky weather, so the kids were going stir-crazy!  It was good to get out of the house for a bit.  We came back for naps, and Gigi and Poppy came over when the kids got up.

We only opened our Gigi/Poppy presents.  Meaning, we only opened gifts from them and they only opened gifts from us.  The rest of them stayed under the tree.  LL has been loving Lalaloopsy, but she only has the really small ones.  Gigi and Poppy got her her first big one!

Cooper got a fire station and was immediately in love.

About a month ago, Gigi and Poppy kept Cooper for the day.  They went running errands with him, and they had to go to Sam's.  While they were in there, Cooper fell in love with an activity square.  They bought it for him for Christmas and he was super excited to see it.  He couldn't even wait until we put it together to start playing with it.

He also decided to try out playing inside of it before we put the top on.  ;)  You can also see LL and her new scooter in the background!

After presents, we had an awesome dinner of pork loin, mashed potatoes, and veggies.  

After dinner we did baths and tried to get some pictures of both kids together.  We got a few cute ones.  :)



After we took those pictures, we ended up having to rush Cooper to the ER (post up next!) because he started coughing literally out of no where and it sounded exactly like croup.  It wasn't really an "ER worthy" cough, but guess what?  NOTHING is open on Christmas Eve.  Trust me.  This was our only option.  After our terrible experience last year, I knew there was a high chance that we would end up in the ER in the middle of the night, so we opted to go ahead and take him.  My mom went with me (since she was already at the house), and Matt stayed with LL so that they could continue on with the rest of our Christmas Eve traditions.  I just couldn't think enough that night about how blessed I was with an amazing husband.  He stayed with LL and gave her the fun night that we had all been looking forward to.  While he wanted to come with us to the ER, we also wanted LL to still be able to enjoy the night.

While we were gone, LL and Daddy made cookies for Santa.  Sparkle told us that snicker doodle cookies were Santa's favorite, so that's what they made.


They also watched the classic version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.




When they put out the cookies for Santa, they also went outside to put out reindeer food!  LL made it at school - it was a bag with food (for them to eat) and sparkles (to help them see where to land).

It wasn't my idea of a "perfect" Christmas Eve, but I feel blessed that 1 - I was able to take Cooper to get meds before it got as scary as it did last time, and 2 - LL was able to still enjoy her night thanks to an amazing Daddy.  He would go to the moon and back for our kids!  I'm also SO thankful that he took so many pictures for me and sent them to me while we were at the hospital.  You can look back at our Christmas Eve last year HERE.


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