Summer Snippets

Summer is here, and we love these long days and warm temperatures!  Here is just a little randomness of what's going on in our home these days...

• Cooper now dresses himself...completely correctly.  Shirt's not inside out or backwards.  Two feet aren't in one leg of his underwear.  Shoes aren't on the wrong feet.  He does better than me some days!  As this was becoming our normal routine, one day we picked up a kid's meal from Zaxby's on the way home from running errands.  When we got out of the car, I gave him his bag and told him to go start eating while I changed and fed Jake.  (Jake is now very easily distracted while nursing, so we stay in his room with his sound machine on while he eats.)  When I was done with Jake, I went to check on Cooper, and my big boy who had already dressed himself that morning was at the table, and had laid out his chicken fingers and french fries, opened his sauce (without spilling), opened his juice box (without spilling), had a napkin, and was eating away!  I was so proud!  He tells me all the time he's a "big boy" now, and it's starting to seem true.  One of the perks of being a "big boy" is chewing gum.  We bought him some Bubble Tape, and a neighbor gave him a huge tube of big gum balls.  He is so cute chewing his gum and trying to figure out how to blow bubbles! 

• The million dollar question he asks a million times a day now is, "Cuz why?"  All day long.  Constantly.  And every answer warrants asking it again.  Sometimes I run out of answers and pull the grand explanation of, "Just because."  I love his curiosity, but good grief, I'm not as smart as I would like to be, and sometimes I honestly forget what we were even originally talking about!  

• We've been spending our summer days doing lots of playing.  The boys love to play together, and Cooper can get Jake laughing better than anybody.  Jake will laugh so hard that I sometimes have to intervene because I'm afraid he's going to pass out!  It's adorable.  I love when Cooper makes Jake laugh but the way Jake is laughing gets Cooper laughing too.  Karl and I will look at each other and smile, and life is so, so, so good at those moments.

• Now that the bebe is sitting sturdy on his own, I tried giving the boys a bath together one night.  They both loved it, and the splashing got a little out of control.  However, I don't think we're quite ready for that yet.  Jake kept sliding, and Cooper really wanted him to play, and it got a little too crazy for me.  

• One of my favorite times of day, and one of the most frustrating depending on the day, is bedtime.  We all sit on Cooper's bed, read stories, say prayers, talk, play a little, and then give hugs and kisses.  Normally Coop gets in trouble at some point as he does all he can to stall going to bed, but there are really sweet moments in that time.  I think Jake knows it's a big deal to be on his big brother's bed, and he gets pretty squealy and excited.  Cooper can be majorly protective of his bed, and it stresses him out some nights when we're all on there.  Especially when the little one spits up on his sheets.  Heaven help us then!

• Speaking of the baby, he's been doing lots of growing up too.  He wants to crawl.  Oh how he wants to crawl!  He's not there yet, but if practice makes perfect, he will be the perfect crawler very soon.  He reaches, sometimes flips himself over, and mostly just ends up flat on his belly flailing his arms and legs around.  If he could fly, this technique might work.  

• He also sits in the grocery cart now.  The first time I put him in there to sit was hilarious because the whole time, he kept tilting his head way back and was staring at the lights.  I guess he's used to being able to see the lights at the store, and he didn't want to give that up!  He'd look at me kind of confused, and then tilt his head back again, and then look around with a concerned look on his face!  

• We have lots of big plans for this summer, but thankfully we won't be nearly as busy as last summer.  Coop is in swim lessons for two weeks, and then in July he'll attend "Summer Fun" at his MDO.  It's a cross between MDO and a super awesome vacation bible school.  His main teacher from this past year is his teacher this summer too, and several children from his class will be there too.  He's excited, and I am too!  It's hard getting out too much and too far during the day since Jake is still nursing, and plus, it gets expensive, so this will be something fun for him to do and give me a chance to clean the house and do that boring stuff that is hard to do with both boys here.  

• Our garden is starting to grow as well.  We have two tomato plants, an okra plant, three different kinds of bell pepper, lots of strawberries, and jalapenos.  We also have basil and mint growing in pots.  It's been rainy so far this summer, but hopefully it won't rain as much as last year.  

• We had to get a new grill.  Karl had been wanting one, and long story short, a mouse nested in our old grill, so now we have a new grill.  And the mouse went to Heaven for trying to eat the peanut butter off the mouse trap a few days later.  We have been doing lots of grilling lately, and our new favorite is this recipe for grilled shrimp .  We've found it's great leftover the next day on salad as well.  We also learned a couple weeks ago that picking up take-out and sitting in the driveway eating dinner on paper plates with our neighbors is one of the best ways to eat dinner.  Hopefully there will be a lot more of those dinners this summer!