Two of a Kind

Here is the proof...I really do have a daughter. She is just so precious and sweet. I can't believe she is almost 8 weeks old. Time is just flying by. It feels like she is almost twice the size she was when she was born...and that is saying something since she was 8 pounds 5 oz and born a week early! She is such a good little sleeper too. She wakes up once in the middle of the night, eats and goes back to sleep, and then again around 5 or 6 AM. So, that is great for me. Adding a second child to your family is just so interesting (I need a better word for that, but my mind is blank right now). For the first couple of weeks, we could NOT get our pronouns right. We kept saying "he and him" since we are so used to saying that for Cooper. Then, and I still do this sometimes, I'll call Brooklyn "Cooper". My poor baby girl is going to be SO confused if we can't get our act together soon. Anyways, one of my favorite times of the day is getting Brooklyn dressed. I LOVE playing dress up with her. If she gets just a tiny bit of something on her current outfit, I immediately change her because I like to dress her up in the cutest things. I already have a basket full of bows and barrets that I'm just dying to put in her hair when it gets a little longer. I should be banned from all baby departments in clothing stores because I cannot seem to stop myself from buying her things everytime I am shopping. It is like a disease or something. But so much fun. Brooklyn is a trooper too. At two weeks old, she went to SeaWorld with us. She did so good. And at six weeks old, she went to the Frio on the annual Stroud family vacation. That vacation was fun, but hot. I think it got up to like 106 degrees everyday. So, she and I stayed inside most of the time. So, my maternity leave has been fun, but sadly it is coming to an end. I get a lump in my throat everytime I think about it. I'll go back to work on July 27th. I wish I could stay home with my kids, but I just keep telling myself that I'm working for them. That makes me feel a little better. Anyways, I've uploaded a few random photos of the kids just to show how much they have grown. Cooper is in the middle of potty training right now, and let me just say this ranks as one of the NOT funnest things I have ever done. The progress is there, but gradual. He is talking up a storm now and counting (in English and Spanish...Thanks Dora and Diego!) and singing the ABC's and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. It is just amazing what they pick up. He can read a few words which blows my mind. I know I didn't read until the first grade. So, he is keeping us busy and surprised most of the time. The funniest thing he does is that he will put himself into Timeout without a fuss. All I have to do is mention it, and he goes to "the chair" and sits there until I say he can come out. On vacation, I said one time..."Do you want to go to Timeout", and he went and found an appropriate spot and sat there facing the wall. It was so funny. We all had a hard time keeping a straight face. So, before I digress again, here are some pictures from the past couple of months.

Cooper is a very good big brother. He is always loving on her and kissing her. It is just too sweet for words. However, we have found out that it is very hard to get both kids in the same picture...not to mention actually LOOKING at the camara and smiling. So far...this is the best we've got.

This is one of my favorites of Brooklyn. She is a month old in this picture. Check out that hair! It will not stay flat on her head. It has a mind of its own.

This is Cooper swimming in one of those big blow up slide thingies...

Fishing at Aunt Gee Gee's.

FINALLY got one of her smiling...

December and Everything After...

Well, it has been ages since I updated this thing. So I'll try to play catch-up. Cooper is growing and learning like crazy. He is counting past ten, spelling his name, and saying "nite-nite" to all the planets on his wall before bedtime. There is my little sci-fi kid in the making (yes!!!) Since my last post, the holidays have passed, we found out Cooper is going to have a little sister, and he has turned two. It has been pretty busy around here. I've had a blast painting and decorating the nursery. We are trading in the sports theme for a princess one. Cooper moved to the bigger room with his big boy bed. He is having a great time in there. We are still working on the nursery, but when we finish, I'll post a picture. We still have about 14 weeks before Brooklyn gets here. Time is going by so fast. She will be here before we know it. I'm so excited! I've posted several pictures of Cooper over the past couple of months to make up for all I've missed on the blog.

Here is our traditional family portrait in front of the Christmas tree. That one is getting harder and harder to make with the little wiggle worm.

Here is Cooper playing with his new tent that he got for Christmas. He loves playing hide and seek in it.



Here he is in time-out. Fortunately he is not here much, but we do visit from time to time.

This is when it snowed in early December. He was so excited. He is trying to eat the snowflakes. We played outside until our hands were numb. That was a fun night.

Here he is just playing outside on a cold day.

This is his birthday party. He wasn't in the best of moods. I had to schedule the party right in the middle of his naptime, so he was pretty sleepy. He didn't even want to open his presents, but fortunately he has plenty of cousins that were more than happy to do this for him. He eventually warmed up to the big moonwalk slide and had fun on that.

The balloons from his party were his favorite thing. He carried those around the house for days.

On his real birthday, we took him to the zoo.

Here he is playing peek-a-boo with a blanket. Just being silly...




And finally, here is Brooklyn. She is 26 weeks right now. We get to go back in three weeks to do the 3D ultrasound again because she kept her little hands in front of her face most of the time. So we will get to see how much she grows.

The Water Bug

OK. I admit. I've been a huge slacker concerning the blog, but I'm back. As you can see from the pictures, we have been pretty busy this summer. We've taken two vacations...one was our annual trip to the Frio, and the other was a camping trip to Fredericksburg. We found out from these trips that Cooper is a little water bug. He absolutely LOVED the Frio. He practically dragged Mamo and me across the river. I had the scrapes to prove it. He wasn't afraid at all. He kept putting his face to the water and laughing. That was so much fun. A vast improvement from last year...

Really the only other newsworthy thing was that we had our 18 month checkup... and we are at the 75th percentile on height and weight (33 in, 27 lbs) which is good. No more shots for 6 months! Whoo-hoo! He is crawling on EVERYTHING, and his repertoire of words is slowly starting to increase. Right now he is stuck on "b" words like ball, bubble, bird, and he calls rainbows "bo-bo's". Ra-Ra is rocket (courtesy of Little Einsteins on Disney) and da is duck. He is starting to understand what you are saying. You can tell him to go get something and he does it. It is amazing what they learn, and you are like "where did that come from?" He has learned a few bad habits too. When he doesn't want to be picked up he will just go limp and lay on the ground. Yeah, this is especially fun in parking lots and restaurants. Other than that, he just keeps growing into a little boy everyday. He plays with trucks and makes engine noises and plays in the dirt. It's crazy!

Here he is loving the Frio.

This is at Luckenbach which was part of our Fredericksburg vacation.

This is Cooper at Enchanted Rock.

Here we were just playing around our campsite in Fredericksburg.

Here is the little water bug in action. Of course, Rocket is always nearby.

This was taken at the Guadalupe. He didn't take to it like he did the Frio. But, the day we went it was overcast and like 77 degrees, so it was a bit chilly.

Having a "ba" at the zoo!

This past weekend, Cooper, Greg, Mamo, and I went to the zoo. Aside from a slight parking fiasco, we had a great time! This is Cooper at the petting zoo. He really didn't care much about the goats, but he sure was drawn to the goat poo. He thought that was a fun game...to run and step on it! I think he enjoyed being outside, but it was like he took it all in with a kind of nonchalance. He is very hard to impress at times! It was so funny because the thing he got most excited about was a monkey feeder that was in the shape of a ball. After he spotted that, he just kept shouting "Ba! Ba!" over and over again. So if you were to ask Cooper what his favorite thing at the zoo was, he wouldn't say the bears, elephants, or tigers...Not my son. He is going to say the ball! I think Greg and I overdid it on all the sports stuff that he has got in his room. Anyways, out of all the actual animal exhibits, he liked the aquarium the best. This next picture is him looking at the giant fish in the aquarium. By the way...forgive the socks and sandals. He had a huge blister on his pinky toe from his tennis shoes so we had to improvise.

Here he is looking at something, probably in the middle of saying his favorite word "wooooowwww!"

You can tell he was just super-excited about the elephants...

He rode the carousel with his daddy and Mamo.

Here are some random photos...

Here is my baby genius practicing to be the future CEO of some big-time corporation.

Here he is just being cute. You can tell he just woke up from a nap with that fly-away hair!


Here is my little Han Solo in his Star Wars shirt! You gotta love it!!!!


He just looks so precious when he is sleeping...with his green blanket of course!

Happy Easter

Well, there must be pigs flying around somewhere, because we actually got Cooper to smile (sort of) for his Easter bunny picture. Maybe it is because I'm in the bunny suit...who knows. I was worried though because as soon as I started putting the costume on he started wimpering. But it ended up turning out OK. Thank goodness!



We had a really good Easter this year. Saturday we went to a huge Easter egg hunt early in the morning. Cooper wasn't much on actually hunting the eggs, but he enjoyed playing with them afterwards. So here we are posing with his basket and the eggs I grabbed for him.

Here he is with all his Easter goodies. Lesson learned this year though....Don't waste time dying real eggs with a 14 month old. They throw them around just like the plastic ones!!!!

And finally, here he is just looking darn cute playing in the backyard.

Learning New Tricks

Cooper's world is just opening up to new things on a daily basis. One of the more obvious events is that he is learning to smile a whole lot more. For a while there, I thought I had the most serious little one-year-old on the planet! We've even managed to catch some of those rare smiles on camara a couple of times. He giggles, and makes the sounds of the swoosh of an airplane, and he loves to fake cough to get attention! It is hilarious. Everytime he walks into a room he goes, "WOOOOOOWWWWW"! Although this is not one of Greg's favorite tricks, Cooper calls me Mama, but he seems to be confused because he calls Greg, Mama, too! I try to reassure my husband that Cooper probably just thinks it's like a joint word for both parental units, but that doesn't seem to make him feel better. Cooper also doesn't walk around anymore, he RUNS! He has the bumps and bruises to prove it. And he can't stay still for a second. If he standing, he is constantly moving his feet or going in circles. He makes me tired just watching him! If you are reading him a book he will stand and gaze at the book from afar...all the way across the living room while shuffling those feet! No wonder he crashes at 7:30 every night! Oh, and that is another thing he just started doing last week...he has started going to bed on his own. All of a sudden he didn't want to be rocked anymore for bedtime. I just laid him in his bed and he rolled and flopped around on his own until he went to sleep. That was definitely a milestone for Cooper. We were so proud of him! It just had to be on his timing.

And finally, last week while Greg was out of the country on a business trip, Cooper fell out of his crib in the middle of the night. I knew something was wrong when I heard a loud "BAM" on the monitor and then that really scary "I'm hurt" cry. Of course I run down the hallway, and he met me at his bedroom door. Talk about a weird and scary feeling. Cooper doesn't have carpet in his room either. It is that laminate floor, so I know it had to hurt. I checked him for bumps, but couldn't find any, and he slept with me for the rest of the night. It scared me pretty bad. Needless to say, I lowered the crib down to the lowest setting the next day. I still don't know how he did that. I have never seen any signs of him crawling on it, or I would have lowered it a long time ago! But he is all right, and I learned a thing or two about crib structure.

So, anyways, that is Cooper's world for now. Here are a few pictures. Enjoy!

Here is one with his new lawn mower that his Nonny bought him. He loves it! I just wish it really worked so Greg and I wouldn't have to mow. That would be GREAT!






Here he is playing peek-a-boo from behind a tree. Sorry about the off-centeredness. I was trying to watch him and take a picture at the same time. Not a good idea...





Here is one with him carrying his ever-present green blanket all over the house. We never leave without it. He is always walking around with it covering his face, so he is constantly bumping into things. He also loves to play peek-a-boo with it.




And here is one with all his cousins at a family get-together. Of course Cooper is the only one not having a good time in this picture.

Cooper's One Fun

So much has happened in the last month, I don't even know where to start. Since Christmas, Cooper has had his first haircut, first birthday, and has started walking all over the place! I cannot keep up with him! He is so fast! Before I get ahead of myself, I should probably start this chronologically. That is what I get for waiting so long to catch up on my blogging. We went to get his haircut right after Christmas. It was no big deal really, but he did go into Sportclips looking like a baby and came out looking like a little boy. I have to admit, I did get a little choked up. Greg thought I was absolutely insane. Cooper did really good through it though...as long as he could hold the girl's comb. Here is a picture just after he was finished with his haircut.

After that, came his actual birthday. Since it fell on a Wednesday this year, Greg and I took off of work and took Cooper to Galveston to the Rainforest Cafe and to the aquarium at Moody Gardens. It was such a fun day. It was extremely cold, but fun. We took several pictures, but the lighting was so dark they didn't come out really well. Cooper loved the aquarium. He kept leaning on the tanks and watching the seals and penguins. We just had so much fun with him that day. Here is a picture of him standing beside a painting of a macaroni penguin. We had to take this picture because Cooper loves the "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" book series. And in one of them it says "Macaroni penguin, Macaroni penguin, what do you see? "

And then, the following Saturday was his birthday party. Of course we woke up to several rain showers that morning. I was starting to panic because we rented one of those giant moonwalks for the older kids to play in. I would go outside and in between rains I would dry the entire moonwalk off with towels until I was soaked. But it FINALLY stopped raining just as the party started so the kids eventually got to play. I think the party went really well. Cooper had fun visiting with all his cousins and friends. He even ate his birthday cake! It was a really good day. And from the bottom picture you can see that Cooper was one pooped little boy. He actually fell asleep in mid-bite in his high chair! It was hilarious!

And finally, just this past week, Cooper has started walking everywhere! He has been taking a few steps here and there for a while now. But all the sudden he just decided that it was time to walk permanently. He even gets up by himself without pulling up on anything. It is just amazing! One minute he was crawling and the next he was walking! He is so proud of himself. If he takes a particularly long stroll across the living room, he expects applause whenever he gets to his destination. This kid just makes my world go 'round!