Pumpkin Pickin'

A couple weeks ago we celebrated Karl's dad's birthday at one of my most favorite places: Old Baker Farm.  When I was teaching, we went there every fall on a field trip.  I looked forward to it all year!  They were having a "Western Weekend" that particular weekend, which was perfect for my western born husband and in-laws!  While we were there, we got to watch an old fashioned shoot out, play on a hay mountain, go on a tractor ride, pick pumpkins, and pet some goats.  Needless to say, Little Man was in his element and had a blast!  

 

      

When we got home, we put our pumpkins by the front of the house where my mums and a bail of hay were.  Cooper loves to go to each pumpkin and tell you who picked it.  Amazingly enough, he has not forgotten who picked each one!  Of course, "Coop-Coop's" is his favorite! :)

It Feels Like a Monday

Today definitely feels like a Monday.  We're coming off a rough weekend, and our week hasn't started out much better.  We were all pretty grumpy this weekend.  Cooper is cutting three molars and decided to turn off the charm and just act like a two year old-defiant, uncooperative, and whiny.  Karl was tired and a little snappy towards me because I was being "extra critical."  I was feeling unappreciated and frustrated with constantly cleaning up everyone else's messes that are left on every surface of this house. So, in other words, he and I bickered...a lot.
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!

Conversing

Little Man and I had our first somewhat-real conversation this morning. We were in the car, and the top to his snack cup had come off. He called my name and showed it to me when I looked back at him, so I took it, fixed it, and handed it back to him. As he took it,  he said, "Thank you," in his sweet little way that sounds like, "Conk coo," and completely melts your heart. Then I said, "Oh Cooper, that was so sweet!!! I love you so much!" He replied, "Too Mama," (that's how he says, "I love you, mama") and I felt like I was in Heaven!!  It was just as sweet as his first cry and his first word.

Finishing Up

I'm really trying hard to finish getting caught up!  Here is just a hodge-podge of our end of summer/beginning of fall happenings!

Game Day! Roll Tide!

We went to the park one morning, and I got this picture of Cooper on the swing.  It's my favorite picture of him in a long time!

This sweet boy loves to share!  One day while I was driving, I looked in the rear view mirror and saw him holding his cup upside down.  I turned around to tell him to turn it the other way or it would spill, but that's when I saw that he was feeding it to his Mickey!  A few minutes later, he started feeding Mickey some of his crackers!  Mickey was a mess when we got home, but the whole thing was so sweet!

My boys make quite a team doing yard work together!

Karl snapped this picture of Coop and me on one of our popsicle dates.  Every afternoon we sit on the porch together and eat popsicles.  Although the picture isn't great, it captures my favorite part of this stage in Cooper's life.

Coop and I play with tools together a lot... go figure!  He's a smart boy and knows that you're supposed to wear eye protection when you weed eat and chainsaw, so he makes sure we both have on our eye protection before we work!

Funny Story: One day Cooper wanted us to go outside to do "yard work."  He had his chainsaw and gave me the weed eater.  Of course, we put on our goggles before we went out.  I didn't want to put mine on since we were going outside, but Little Man threw a fit, and I didn't see anyone outside, so I put on the dang, miserably uncomfortable goggles.  Then Coop insisted I "weed eat" around the edge of the grass like Karl does when he for-real weed eats.  So, with my children's size goggles on and children's size weed eater in hand, I pretended to edge the grass while Coop pretended to cut down the only tree we have in our front yard.  As I went along the sidewalk, I stood up straight to allow my back a little break.  I happened to look a few doors down where a house is being built, and there stood three construction workers staring right at me.  Cooper was not in their view, so I'm sure they thought I was out of my mind!  It was funny, embarrassing, but funny! :)

Weekend Adventures

We love our weekends and try to incorporate as much quality family time as we can during those two days.  Karl's work schedule is rough during the week, but that makes us cherish our weekends even more!

A couple weekends ago, we went to the zoo.  It's definitely a family favorite place to visit on a pretty day!  As I've mentioned in the past, my favorite spot is the butterfly garden and Karl's is the lorikeet enclosure (Cooper's is the bobcat-we can't figure that one out).  We went by the butterfly garden first, and I thought it would be closed by now.  Luckily it wasn't, and it had more butterflies than I have ever seen in it.  Both Coop and Karl got one to sit on their fingers.  Cooper walked around for a while trying to get one on his hand, and the whole time he had one sitting on his booty!  

We timed our visit so that we could feed the giraffes.  Last time we went, Karl held Cooper while he fed them, so I got to this time.  The child is fearless and did so good feeding them!  

One of our last stops was to the lorikeet enclosure.  The boys love feeding the birds.  I am not particularly fond of this though.  I know they're pretty and little and harmless, but I don't like things flying at me!

The following weekend we went to a petting zoo.  With the way Cooper loves animals, I knew this would be a hit.  There weren't as many animals as I was expecting, but Little Man didn't mind.

How sweet is that face?!

There were a lot of goats and sheep for him to pet.  He loved it and was very gentle.

 

He was snorting to the pig!

We told him not to pet the goose because she might bite, so he stayed close to his daddy for protection!

My little boy sure is getting big!

Being a Mother to a Son

Being a mother to a son is a special thing.  You get to experience little pieces of life through a boy's eyes.  Sometimes I have to remind myself this is a good thing.  For instance, the other day, Little Man found a worm on the sidewalk.  It was still alive.  As a girl, wiggly worms are not appealing to me.  As the mother to a son, I knew I had to share my son's enthusiasm for his new little pet.  Our neighbor had told me a while back that when he and his brothers were little, they would bring bugs and gross stuff to show their mom all the time.  Instead of freaking out, she would kindly admire their find.  That way the boys weren't scared of things they didn't need to be scared of, and it made them feel kind of special.  I decided that was a good approach with a little boy-I was going to embrace and encourage Cooper's curiosity and sense of adventure as long as it was safe and not too gross.  However, I questioned this decision when Coop started trying to pick up the worm.  It was all I could do to say, "Wow, Buddy, you got a worm!" And not, "EWWWW, gross, put that thing down!"  Boys need to play with bugs and dirt; it's in their DNA.  I know this because then our neighbor's son came out (in his shirt and underwear because that's also what boys do...well, actually it's because he's potty training and had had an accident a few minutes before...but boys do love to walk around in their underwear), and he saw the worm.  Then the boys started fighting over who got to hold the worm.  I never thought I would lecture my child over sharing a worm.

Also, in a boy's DNA is the use of a bathroom as a library.  We got Cooper a potty for his birthday.  He uses it about 3-4 times a day, which is good, but I think he only does it when he wants a piece of candy.  The other day, Karl called for me to hurry and come see what our son was doing.  He had gotten one of Karl's magazines out from the vanity in the bathroom and was reading while pottying.  

And to think I thought I would never get the child to show an interest in literacy!