10 month update

Cooper continues to change us, surprise us, and amaze us with each passing day.  Ten months has gone by in the blink of an eye.

Here's what Month 10 brought for Cooper:

• More crawling!! He loves his new independence and is now opening drawers and doors all over the house (we are still behind on baby proofing... eek!)
• He pulls up onto his knees, and loves to bounce and rock on them, but still doesn't show interest in pulling up to his feet or 'walking' with our fingers... soon enough, right?!?
• He is obsessed with two picture books: "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" and "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed."  He will actually cry until we read them to him at night before bed.  He still loves all his other books, just has a crazy love for those two.
• He is the little bulldozer, turning our house into an endless mess.  I am slowly accepting that our house will never be clean for more than five minutes for the rest of my life.  Maybe five minutes is even an exaggeration!
• Since returning from the waterpark last weekend, bath time has taken on a whole new meaning... splashing in the tub now consists of needing a new shirt for myself once he's out and dry.
• He continues to eat like a champ.  For every new food he tries, he looks at first like he hates it, and then his hesitant second bite comes, and then he gobbles it down like he's been eating it forever.  We do have to hide the finger foods now until he's done with his main meals of mushy stuff :)  He eats three solid meals a day, along with plenty of milk throughout the day.
• Baby jibberish is the new language at our place.  Cooper is totally exploring all the different sounds he can make.  I know once those first words come, they are going to keep pouring out!
• Two lonely teeth.  We think he's showing signs of a couple more coming in, but who knows how long that could take!
• He's wearing nearly all 12-month clothing now, and is starting to tolerate wearing shoes more regularly, too!  It'll be interesting to see how he likes being bundled up like a marshmallow this winter!

10 months old!

Having fun with Grandpa Gary!

And, we had a GREAT Halloween, even though Cooper took a while to warm up to his costume.  I'll update with Halloween pics this week ;)

Water Park!

The Wilderness Resort was good to us this weekend :)  We needed to get out of town, so Jeremy snagged a great Craig's List deal for a weekend in Wisconsin Dells.

Grandma and Grandpa Kalal joined us, as well as Auntie Jackie.  The resort is very family-friendly, and I know we'll be going back there in the future.  We got to experience three different indoor water parks (although we spent about five minutes in the third one before it was shut down because of a little kid running around with no diaper on... I'll bet those parents were embarrassed!)  The highlight of the weekend was watching Cooper squeal and laugh with excitement in the wave pool.  One of us would hold him in a "Superman" hold and let the waves hit him.  He absolutely loved the waves splashing up on him.  He also liked the water shooting up from the floor.  There was so much for him to watch--all the water everywhere and tons and tons of kids.  There's a chance they had to add some water back to the pools after Cooper left... he swallowed plenty of chlorine water in two days.

It was a very memorable weekend.  Relaxing and restful, not so much.  Add a cranky long car ride, an unfamiliar new 'home,' and tons of action, and you get a high-maintenance little boy who doesn't want to sleep.  Hopefully this phase of not sleeping anywhere but his crib doesn't last forever.  We'll be heading to bed early tonight to catch up on the sleep we didn't get on our long weekend off of work!

Here are a few pictures from the weekend.  The pictures will make you think I didn't get to play in the water at all... we realize now that we're home we didn't get one single family photo or one single picture with Cooper and me.  Oh well, I'm glad we got the cute pictures that we did.

"YAH!  I love this big bathtub!"

Taking a little snooze with Grandma... funny, he'll sleep at the waterpark, but not back in our room...

Too bad you can't see his little legs going like crazy under the water, too!

Finally Healthy and Happy Once Again

It's been a while since the last update... but our house was in a bit of chaos mode dealing with Cooper's first REAL sickness... a fever that lasted six days :(  The doctor decided it was his body's reaction to the flu shot.  He was not himself in any way--sleeping terribly, eating poorly, and very moody.  And of course, the fever that just wouldn't go away.  Being the rookie parents that we are, of course we worried like crazy about how serious this illness could be.  We took turns staying home from work for a few days to snuggle with the little guy.  We realized how thankful we are to be out of the colicky phase with Cooper--a whole day of whining gets pretty frustrating.  It made us wonder how we went three months with a cranky baby! 

Thank goodness we have our happy Cooper back!  He is 100% back to himself, and our house couldn't be happier!  Jeremy's thrilled to have Cooper playing along with the 'pillow fight' again...

Happy Ed MN break to all you educators out there... our first long break of the school year couldn't have come at a better time :) 

Cooper's eating more and more table foods these days... including his first Tootsie Pop!  What have we done?!?!?

 

 

 

Apple Orchard

This past weekend, we visited the local apple orchard.  It was a gorgeous day, and we just HAD to take advantage of it. 

Waiting for the tractor

Those two little teeth sure helped Cooper dive into his first whole apple!

Jeremy showing Cooper how to pick the perfect apple.

He's a quick learner!!!

"Don't even THINK about taking away my apple!"

Auntie Amanda joined us at the Orchard.

Cooper loved playing with the long grass... never mind those big shiny apples all over.

The Kalal Family

We had a great time getting out and about... maybe this weekend will be the pumpkin patch :)