Cooper is in a major daddy-phase right now. At first, I thought it was sweet, but more and more, it has started to hurt my feelings a little (yes, I realize how ridiculous this sounds) because more and more he has wanted less and less to do with me, especially if Karl is home. I feel left out sometimes--that is until someone needs a refill or a tissue or is hungry. I try to plan something fun for us to do as a family every weekend. While I'm sure the boys do have a lot of fun, I feel like I always get stuck on the opposite side of the booth at a restaurant or pushing the empty stroller as Karl and Coop are off together or taking all the pictures and never being in one. Nothing in the world means more to me than my boys being happy and having fun, but I feel like it doesn't even matter that I'm there (but then again, who would hold all the stuff or wait in line if I wasn't!). Cooper prefers Karl right now, and it makes me kind of sad even though I know it's good that he is so close to his daddy. Karl is really busy with work and tries to spend as much time as he can with Cooper and me when he gets home, but after Cooper goes to bed, he is back to work on the computer. There's never any time for us. Thus I feel unimportant and was a little extra sensitive this weekend.
So when you take all that and then throw in a little extra exhaustion for all three of us, you get a lousy, grumpy weekend with all of us being cross with each other. It was not what I had planned!
Despite all of our bad moods, we tried to make the best of this weekend. On Saturday, we were all pretty sluggish, but we were planning on going to "Boo at the Zoo" that night, so we just took it easy all day. Later that afternoon, we got Cooper dressed in his costume, went to a little pizza place for dinner, and then bundled up and went to the zoo!
Cooper is going as a farmer this Halloween. I have several reasons for this: 1) At his school, they are supposed to dress up as a farmer or animal this week to celebrate their fall/farm theme; 2) We already have overalls and cowboy boots and a red bandana; 3) Cooper despises wearing clothes and getting him dressed is a battle. He prefers to be naked. I decided that him going as a streaker wasn't appropriate, but I wasn't going to invest any amount of money whatsoever in a costume that he may or may not even wear. So a farmer it is. We have the attire, he has to dress up like this for school anyway, and I have not spent a penny extra on this "costume," so if he doesn't want to wear it on Wednesday, that's fine!
Pictures from dinner-we sat next to a mirror, which greatly kept our little boy entertained!
The lighting in this picture is bad, but it's a sweet picture of Cooper loving on his daddy.
As we all know, we visit the zoo quite frequently. We thought Cooper would love seeing it all lit up and decorated. I don't know if it was his mood, but he really didn't seem to care too much and kept looking everywhere for the animals, which were mostly all put up. The best part was the trick-or-treating though. We've been practicing at home, but this was our first experience of the year. He went to each tent, held up his bucket, and said, "Tee-teet," and "Conk coo," ("thank you"). The first tent gave him a Dum-Dum sucker, which is his favorite thing in the world! He immediately went to town on that thing and was ready for his next one! He loved seeing the candy in his bucket, but after 3 or 4 or 5 suckers and a Tootsie Roll, we had to hide the bucket! We also rode the train, which was fun, and he loved hearing the "choo-choo" bell. It was our first cold night of the year, and it was really cold, so we moved pretty fast through and got home to watch our Tide play.
Cooper with his sucker after his first trick-or-treat stop.
Our best attempt of a family picture on the train
I wanted our fall "fun" to continue today, so I got stuff together for Cooper to paint a pumpkin. In my mind, I thought this was going to be so fun and that Little Man would love it. But today is definitely a Monday, and things just aren't going smoothly. The grumpiness from this weekend is still hanging around too. However, with paint, paintbrushes, and a pumpkin all neatly laid out, we tried.
Coop was very excited when I told him what we were going to do, but then he pitched a fit over having to put on his little Home Depot apron to keep the paint off his clothes. I probably should have nixed the project at that point. Or just nixed the apron. After nicely and patiently saying, "You have to wear your apron or we can't paint," several times, I snapped and yelled, "Cooper, you're wearing this apron because Mommy told you to wear it!" Trophy mom moment. After a few tears, we started painting, and all went well for like 3 minutes. Then he was done and just wanted to push his pumpkin around and smear the (washable) paint on the chair. Then I was done. I threw away the paint, cleaned the brushes, and moved the pumpkin to higher ground where it was safe from his reach. He pitched more fits over cleaning the paint off his hands and taking off his apron that he had not wanted on about 10 minutes before and not being able to find a "sassy" (paci) even though he had one in his mouth. I'm ready for his precious "sassies" to go in the trash because I'm so tired of the endless whining over not being able to find one and the frustration over them constantly being lost!
Can you tell it's a Monday in this house? Let's hope for a better week and better attitudes!
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