Cooper met another one of her many peers :) Jennifer IdaMay was born June 4th, at 8:22 am. She was 7 pounds 9 ounces and 19.5 inches long. Jennifer is the daughter of Luke and Kate, a couple of our best friends! I'm sure these girls will be spending a lot of time together in the future. :)
Life has proven to be entirely too stressful for me with two kids and I have to admit that I came extremely close to completely forgetting Father's Day this year. I distinctly remember having several conversations with people about Father's Day...I just didn't make the connection in my brain that I do, in fact, have dependents who are unable to put a gift together themselves, who have a father, my husband...Someone very deserving of a holiday held in his honor!
Axl and I did remember, though, just in time and picked up a fun activity for Axl and Daddy to do together. Cooper can watch. ;)
Two water guns!After church we went to Tyler's parents' house to have lunch. We tried to take a picture of the family to document Cooper's first Sunday at church, but by the time we got everyone together, both kids had pooped all over their special outfits and Tyler had given up and changed...ha. So this is what we got. Maybe I'll recreate it another time. :)
Axl, having a little fun during wardrobe change...That evening we headed to Paris to meet up with my family. We had a great dinner and the kids had a great time (between fighting over toys) playing together :)
And...I got to wish MY DAD a HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!
It was a great day...one of those days that is pretty stressful dragging around kids everywhere, but totally worth it to spend time with those you love!
It was brought to my attention this past Sunday that a lot of people are seeing this mohawk and think that we are styling it this way. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE all this hair. But, probably like her in the future, I don't particularly "like" the part and cowlick that form this phenomenon. :)
A month has passed and it feels just like yesterday that I was hating pregnant life. I'm most definitely glad that I'm not pregnant anymore, but a newborn has its own set of stresses.
We love little Cooper to death, but she sure is a handful. As a newborn, Axl didn't cry real tears. I remember asking people, "When do babies start crying real tears??". I don't think I actually wrote down when he started but it was well into his first year. I knew I was in trouble when I saw those first tears roll from this little drama queen's eyes IN THE HOSPITAL.
Don't get me wrong, she really does have a lot to cry about. She has been diagnosed with reflux and put on Zantac (1.5 mL twice daily) due to projectile vomiting and pretty constant discomfort. All the crying leads to gas and more gas so she gets several doses of Mylicon a day which doesn't seem to make a lick of difference. She has a definite "fussy" period each night, usually lasting about 2 hours starting at 7 or 8. This consists of inconsolable crying which breaks my heart/drives me entirely insane. :(
In the past couple of days though, we have seen our first smiles. The Zantac has brought us atleast a little bit of pleasant waketime throughout the day. She nurses about every 3 hours. A couple of nights during this first month she tricked us into thinking she would sleep five hour stretches...but it was just a tease. :) Dad will often bring her downstairs after a middle of the night feeding when she is confused and wants some waketime/screamtime. (btw Tyler is being very helpful! Much more helpful than with Axl, which is saving my sanity.) We're pressing on with Babywise (a different experience for me since I didn't start it with Axl until he was like 2 or 3 months old). She hasn't gotten the hang of it yet, but I'm hoping things will work themselves out in the next couple of weeks.
Axl and Cooper have a love/hate relationship. One second he wants to kiss her, and the next he is in attack mode; charging across the room, hand raised, ready to smack her. I'll take an opportunity here to check in with our little man. Boy, did he have a rough first week. The first two days he was totally enamored...crouching down beside wherever the baby was and talking in a high pitched little squeal. Then it was a like switch was flipped. He started acting out, trying to hit her at times, and just generally sour. Tantrums galore and really worrying us. The weeks since though he has made leaps and bounds of improvements. I don't feel as guilty as I did at first; I spent many nights crying. Feeling as if I'd taken his "babyhood" away before we could really sit down and reason with him what was going on. All he knew was that every time he looked over I was holding this new thing and unable to hold his hand and let him take me somewhere (his favorite thing to do). Each day seems to go a little smoother and I'm extremely grateful for that. I know in years to follow, they will both be happy they have a sibling so close in age.
Of course, before Cooper was born, Daddy and I went and made a "Cooper Bear" in order to continue with the same monthly pictures. :) And Axl's gift to Cooper in the hospital was her own pink "bunny bear".One Month Old 6/21/2010We love you, little girl, and hope we can help you to feel better soon! :)
My sister-in-law, Brooke, had her baby, Lola Glow Hamilton on June 4th, 2010 at 11:01 pm. She was 8 pounds 1 ounce and has beautiful red hair :)
So, speaking of red heads... we were able to have the other three over to our house for a fun-filled cousin sleepover the night that Jay, Brooke, and Lola came home from the hospital. We all had such a good time, especially Axl...I think he gets bored around here with two adults with lots of stuff to do and a baby slug that can't move around anywhere...and his cousins are SOOO good to him! :)
During our Shrek marathon Ava and Asha had TONS of fun with the blocks. This is one of the countless awesome giraffes Asha built because Axl the Destructor kept attacking them!
Uncle Tyler and I tried to move it to the top of the shelves so that he couldn't get to it, but we ended up destroying one of them as well...So sorry, Ash...
Ava's castleBecause of the new baby, I couldn't be very hands-on in keeping the kids entertained. I was surprised (but shouldn't have been) at how great Tyler was. He jumped right in there and had a blast with them playing dodge ball. I loved watching them play!
The girls' fort
Rock's fort
I am so glad that my kids have so many cousins that live so close since we live pretty close to both of our families. He already loves all of them so much...two of the very few people he calls by name are Rockwell and Gabi (...and Gabi refers to both Gabi and Elena...I guess they are a package deal!)
Anyway, you readheads better be ready for another sleepover soon because we had too much fun with our Shrek marathon, block building, dodgeball, cereal and popsicle dinner and early morning dodgeball to wait too long for another! :)
We finally got a sizeable pool! (The one we had before was about a foot in diameter...not exaggerating.) Axl, willingly, stayed outside for more than 20 minutes today... and it was GREAT!
As posted previously, our little Cooper Jay was born on May 21, 2010 at 7:33 am. She weighed 8 pounds 7.8 ounces and was 20 1/2 inches long.
While in the hospital, Daddy would get Cooper to sleep for the first stretch of the night and hold her. I cannot, for the life of me, sleep with a baby, it makes me extremely nervous, so this gave me a little rest to start off the night. :)With Axl, I didn't bring in my own blanket and regretted it when looking at those drab, ugly, uncomfortable hospital blankets. A couple days before going into labor I made this blanket to take with me to the hospital to match a pillowcase my mother-in-law, Bonnie, made me for my birthday last year. The room was quite bright...and very...pink. :)Axl came in on the 21st to meet his new sister. We didn't get many good pictures, but we did catch a really great video of him meeting her. He wore his BIG BROTHER shirt and brought in a pink bunny bear and placed it right on her ear like he does with his- adorable. The second picture makes me laugh as he was completely enamored with her the first couple days and his expression foreshadows the little bit of trouble we would have in the future... :)
By Sunday we were ready so ready to bring Cooper home and be with our little man.
We met my parents at the house and they brought Axl. He walked the entire way into the house refusing to let go of the car seat. He helped me get her out and hasn't stopped giving her her yummy since...which is quite unfortunate since she won't really take it, ha.Axl has never been all that into blankets...he has his "bunny bear" which kind of serves as his "blankie". But since we brought Cooper home and she is always covered in a blanket, he has been obsessed with having a blanket. We brought out the blanket Tyler's Aunt Naomi made for Axl before she passed and there has been no turning back--he LOVES it!For the first few days, Axl went on a pretty serious fast. :/ I was really worried about him until Grandma brought over some leftovers and he cleaned his plate! I have never seen him eat this much...those were some really good pork chops! :) I just think this is adorable. I got out of the shower one morning and found them like this.
This is our first Family (of four) Home Evening. We took a walk around the block. Cooper had her first sponge bath on May 25th. She hated it until we started rinsing her hair and then she went comatose...
Her hair gets REALLY curly when it's wet.She had her first appointment with Doctor Boarman when she was four days old. She weighed in at 8 pounds 5 ounces- 75th percentile(which was good since we went home in the high sevens). Her length, 20.5 inches was in the 90th percentile and her head circumference was 34 cm- 25th percentile.Axl doing some coloring...this lasted about 4 seconds...long enough to capture a picture. Tyler found the exact double stroller I wanted on Craig's list. This was our first walk!Axl, watching Shrek, slowly turning into his daddy...And the day o' the fence! Boy was I excited to have a fence in the backyard...it just so happened that Axl has pretty much refused to go outside since it's been up...quite a change from the perpetual "asiiiiiiiiide, asiiiiiiiiiiide, asiiiiiiiiide" we had been hearing...Axl asked to lie beside her...he loves to give her hugs and kisses...sometimes.On Memorial Day we went to spend the day at the Hamilton's. Axl carried his own swim stuff in this backpack; it was adorable. The day was great--Axl had so much fun in the water and Coop pretty much napped all day with Uncle Lyman. (I even snuck in a trip to Gymboree for an awesome sale with Liz and Brooke!)We tried giving Cooper her first pumped bottle on May 31st. It was an epic failure.Cooper had her first real bath on June 3rd. She had it so early because her cord ended up getting pulled almost off prematurely. We had to go to the Twilight Clinic, after a TERRIBLE smell ensued, where they went ahead and took it all the way off and cauterized an umbilical granuloma. All is well with the little button now. :)
I will be the first to admit that Axl is a pretty terrible eater. He loves to snack and you never know what he will eat on any given day. He has especially had an aversion to certain textures which makes it hard for us to get healthy things in him. I think it's because his teeth came in so late he doesn't really quite know how to use them. Anyway...the only fruit he will eat (sometimes) is grapes, so I was so excited when he asked for a "biiiie" of my banana that I surrendered the entire thing. He has eaten one every day since!
We tried another bottle on the 4th and it was a success-we will be able to get a babysitter at some point in time! ...something tells me it will be a while though... Cooper's two week check-up was on the 7th and it was definitely a success. Tyler and I have pretty much been on the brink of insanity because of constant screaming, inconsolable crying, projectile vomiting, and obvious stomach trouble our little girl is having. I got out about half of my schpeel before the doctor cut me off and said he was prescribing Zantac. I was extremely relieved considering it took me about 2 months to convince Axl's doctor that there was something wrong and he was pretty much diagnosed with reflux on accident. Anyway...we have high hopes that things will calm down a bit.
We were married on July 21st, 2007. Our son, Axl, was born on September 19th, 2008, our daughter, Cooper, was born on May 21st, 2010, and our 2nd daughter, Naomi, was born October 22nd, 2012. We're loving every minute of life! --that we're not getting pooped, puked, or peed on :)
