Cooper - 2-1/2 Years

Cooper turned 2-1/2 years old today.  Wow. He is growing up so fast, and his personality is really budding. He LOVES to do whatever Nathan and I are doing.  If I'm doing the dishes, or folding laundry, he wants to help.  Most nights and weekends Cooper follows Nathan around like his little shadow, and he's very concerned when Daddy is not here.  If Nate even goes in the other room, it's instantly, "Where's Daddy, where's Daddy?!"  He MUST be with him doing what he's doing most of the time, or fits of the terrible-two's-kind ensue.

One day I walked into his room, and he was playing with his "laptop" (an old broken portable DVD player), my 10-key, and a little computer mouse.  He had on his tie that Nate has donated to the Cooper toy bin, and when asked what he was playing, he said, "Work.  Like Daddy."

 Cooper often begs and begs to take a bath in our master bathtub, so one night I relented.  He was ecstatic.

 Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Cooper posed in a field of clover to celebrate the day.

 That day we also bought him his first tricycle.  He exclaimed, "I a big boy now!" as he climbed onto it for the first time.  The pedals are something entirely new, but after just a week, he's getting pretty good.

 This child would live outside if we let him, so we spend a lot of time outside.  With the beautiful spring weather we've been having, we spend at least an hour a night on weeknights, and most of the weekend outside.  One day we decided to go find some ducks to feed.  Cooper LOVED it, and just giggled and giggled when they would go bottoms up, eating food off the bottom of the pond.

 Cooper is OBSESSED with tractors, and I don't mean that lightly.  The kid talks about tractors, trucks, and big rigs ALL THE TIME.  At first it was adorable.  Now, it's getting a bit old.  But we can't help but feed his obsession now and then, especially since there are some old tractors just down the street.  Oh, excuse me, as my all-things-tractor-expert son would tell me, this is not a tractor at all, but a tracked front loader.  Tracked because "it doesn't have wheels, it has tracks."  One night for family home evening, we walked down the street and let him explore.

 He thought it was the BEST family night activity ever, and one we've repeated a few times because of the joy it brings him.  I never tire of hearing him giggle and play.

 This was funny.  I was trying to take a picture, and couldn't see his mouth (in the picture above). I said, "Coop, move over a little.  I can't see your mouth."  So this is what he did...

 It amazes me how many different kids of trucks/transportation he knows.  He can identify loaders, excavators, scrapers, dump trucks, bulldozers, skid steers, backhoes, freight trucks, fuel trucks, different kinds of fire trucks, tractors, combine harvesters, forage harvesters, all different kinds of train cars, etc., etc.  You get the point.  But he can only identify the letters "O, A, C, and sometimes P" in the alphabet.  That strikes me funny.  We gotta work on ABC's.

 Wanted to take a picture of our street.  Our house is the gray one down the road, around the slight bend, on the far left.  Because our neighborhood has many empty lots, and there's a lot of green space surrounding our development, we really get a nice country feel.  That's Nathan and our dog, Brody, in the background.  You can see how close the tractors are to our house, and why Coop begs to go see them.

 Speaking of tractors, this weekend we went to the Palmetto Sportsman's Classic Expo in Columbia, SC.  Nate's Aunt Denise works for the SC Dept of Natural Resources, and is director of the whole thing, which is pretty ironic, if you know Denise.  She's about as far from the SC outdoorsman (and by that I mean redneck) that you can get, which is also why this vanity license plate suits her so well. 

 We love going to the event each year, not only to support Denise, but also because there's lots of hunting and fishing stuff that Nate loves to check out (I can usually find him a bday present), and for Cooper, there are...

TRACTORS!

 Well, that's one of the reasons Coop loves to go.  We spent several hours just letting him climb on all the tractors, ATVs, boats, etc.  He loves it.

He also got to go fishing...

 and caught three fish!

 He went digging for dinosaur bones, well, dinosaurs anyway.

 We all had a great time, all got a little sunburned, and just totally enjoyed the day.

A few more things about Cooper this month...

• Cooper sings and sings all the time.  His favorite song is the primary song (from church) "I Love to See the Temple."  He knows it word for word, and asks for it every night.  The other song he asks for at night is a home-rendition of "Goodnight Ladies" from the Music Man (I think).  My Dad used to sing it to me as a kid, and I sing it to him.  Basically you go through the family's names, singing: "Good night, Cooper. Good night, Cooper.  Good night, Cooper; it's time to go to sleep."  He calls it "the goodnight moon song."  I catch him singing that tune and many others with made-up words all the time.  He sings around the house, while he plays, and mostly in the car.  I never tire of hearing his sweet little singing voice.  Hopefully he'll eventually cooperate and let me get some of his singing on video.
• A few weeks ago I made a pasta recipe, and substituted macaroni noodles for rigatoni, thinking Cooper would eat it better.  He took one bite, spit it out, and said, "Mommy, I don't like this fake mac and cheese."  I about died laughing.
• That brings me to another point; his vocabulary astounds me!  A couple times a week uses a word I didn't realize he knew, like "fake" in the comment above.  He speaks really well for his age, but still says cute Cooper things, like "hold yous" if he wants to be held/snuggled.  He also says the word "my" in place of "I," which I'm trying to correct, but it's so stinking cute, I almost don't want to.  And then the one that is so endearing to me is that he still pronounces his name "Pooper."  It's so adorable.  But I'm afraid that he's getting to the age where kids will start to tease him, so we're working on it.  I was trying to get him to say "C-ooper" the other day, and he said, "Cuh..Pooper."  I gave him a thumbs up, and a better luck next time.  It's just so cute.
• One night Nate was out of town, Cooper was sick, and I was filling the humidifier with water before bed.  I set the tank on the toilet seat as I leaned over to turn off the bath faucet.  Right then Coop knocked the humidifier tank off the toilet seat, onto the floor, spilling nearly the entire 2 gal of water.  I was overtired, and responded with a yelled, "Get ooooouuuuuttttt!!!  Didn't I tell you to go to your room and pick up your toys?!  GO!!!!"  He burst into tears, and I was fuming but felt so bad, and then I about died when he came back to the door, sobbing, as I was sopping up the water with towels, and he said, "Mommy...[sob, sob, sob]...you rude!"  And then stood there and cried until I calmed down enough to apologize and give him a hug.  Not my best mommy moment, but one I'll never forget.
• One day we were playing outside, and Coop started complaining about a scratch on his wrist.  I couldn't see anything, and thought he had a splinter or something, until he started complaining about his other wrist.  So I asked him to point to the scratch, and he pointed to his vein on the underside of his wrist.  I told him that was a vein, and explained what veins are.  He seemed to accept my explanation, except that a few minutes later he said, "My vein, my vein!"  Nate gave him some ice to put on it, and that was the end of the complaining.  What a comedian.
• Cooper likes to dip everything in his milk, and thinks it tastes better that way.  A few things he's dipped recently that I find a little gross are cucumbers, celery, and carrots.  Hey, whatever gets him to eat vegetables...
• Coop weighs about 30 lbs.  Not sure how tall he is, but he still has an extremely large head, and big feet for his age.  He's already wearing a size 8 shoe.  But the kid is skinnier than ever.  I am starting to get a bit worried, and trying to make sure he eats a little more healthy fat.  Having a dairy allergy kinda dampens things. His 18 month shorts still fit him, many of the 2T shorts are ok, but some still slide right off. But his tops he's right in the average 2T size.

I could go on and on about my little "Bug," "Buggy," or "Boo" as I call him.  He's so much of my world, and I wouldn't change it for anything.  Happy half birthday, Buggy!