The sweetest thing

What devilishness is this?

EASTER!

Anyone who has had kids will tell you that at some point you have that moment. The one where you are irretreivably in love with your kid. Where you have lost yourself completely and you wish you could hold onto that moment forever. I had one of those tonight getting Cooper ready for his bath. I was holding him, getting a towel out of the closet, when we were the victims of a towel avalanche. I made a squawking sound, which made Cooper laugh. A big fat belly laugh. The avalanche would not be denied, and as more towels fell to the floor, and I made more squawking noises, he laughed and laughed. I was laughing too, and he thought that was funny too. We had about 30 seconds of total, belly busting laughter. And it was magical.

If one can take a snapshot of a moment, and keep it in your heart and soul forever, that is one of those moments. I hope I never forget it.


Since I don't have any pictures of that moment to put here, I will put some from this weekend. Cooper had his first encounter with Peeps, and he was not impressed.

Stream of consciousness warning...

Today's posting has almost nothing to do with my darling offspring. Except in that some day, through the wonders of technology, he may be interested in reading what his cracked in the head mother had to say about certain topics. In which case, I apologize now for any embarrassment he may experience upon reading any of the posts.

So I am home for part of the day today because Cooper was sent home with a mild fever from school/daycare. He is now banned from going back for at least 24 hours. Bob and I are splitting the day so that I can go to a meeting at work in the afternoon. So while taking my time getting ready, because I am not on a time schedule to get me and Cooper ready, I decided to whiten my teeth.

I have spent a lot of time with my dentist lately. It started as just my 6 month cleaning, which turned into a "we should replace that old nasty probably poisoning you with mercury silver filling" which was followed up by the need for my first ever crown. Well, temporary crown for the moment. Topics for several other blogs: the ravaging effects of being over 40 on the female body, dentists, Dancing with the Stars (my not so secret obsession) and how funny I think Adam Corolla is. Back to my teeth - during the first visit my dentist suggested, mandated in fact, that I whiten my teeth. Apparently drinking my own body weight each day in coffee and/or tea has a staining affect on my teeth. Who knew. To her credit she suggested I try one of the over the counter products first, since having her do it would cost close to one months worth of daycare.

Which brings me to the primary thought for this blog - units of measurement. If you think about it, we all have our own personal units of measurement we apply to a variety of situations that have nothing to do with minutes, hours, inches, feet, or cubits. Since having had Cooper I use two that I can think of. The first is what the cost of ____ is in daycare hours. We live in the Boston area, and both my husband and I work full time. This means we pay out the equivalent of what could be a mortgage on a very nice vacation home on the Cape, in Maine or possibly a mansion in the Pochonos. Consequently, when we had to have the circuit breaker box replaced because water was getting into it, I did the math and realized that was costing us, at that time, two months worth of daycare. Cooper was only going three days a week then. Because it is a non negotiable expense in our lives, any OTHER expense is then weighed in relation to how big a sacrifice it represents in comparison to daycare.

I also employ the "how much of my precious free and mostly conscious time am I willing to invest in ____ activity" measurement. Since post-baby I have fewer free moments that are spent in a state of mostly consciousness, I have to choose carefully how I spend them. I told Bob last night I was not willing to invest 2 hours of that time watching "I am Legend" that Will Smith movie with viral infected zombies in it. It is a depressing story from what I can tell - everyone, including Will Smith's family, dies from some virus, except for him. Then he discovers there are some other people who survived, but they were turned into zombies by the virus. In the end he dies. I am willing to invest time in a movie that doesn't have a story book happy ending, but not when it involves zombies and whole civilizations being wiped out by viruses. Zombies freak me out and viral epidemics even more. I don't even like the Thriller video.

But I digress. My point is it has come to my attention that children change your life in ways you don't even realize will happen. Sure everyone expects the sleepless nights, the crying that seems to have no cause or solution, the yakking and explosive poop episodes, but I don't think we realize how our priorities will change in such subtle ways. It is very eye opening.

Hey, I guess this did end up being about Cooper after all.

Puppypuppypuppy

I have decided that this weekend, my son established beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is a super genius. He knows a variety of words, and even uses them appropriately. One of those words is "puppy". At first we thought he was using it to indicate one of the three dogs that cohabitate with us. But my husband noticed that while saying "puppy puppy puppy" Cooper was sqatting and grunting, the usual signs that a biological process was taking place in his shorts. So he asked Cooper "are you pooping" to which Cooper nodded. "Do you need to get your diaper changed" Another nod and a toddle in the direction of the stairs, because all diaper changes happen on the changing table in his room upstairs.

SUPER GENIUS - he knows what pooping is, and he has a word for it. It might not be the exact correct word for it, but it is a word none the less.

I am not anticipating that he will be potty trained tomorrow, but the clock is ticking. His grandmother, my husband's mother, otherwise known as Meme in the French Canadian culture that spawned Bob and explains my child's blonde hair and blue eyes, has informed me that her super genius son, father of my super genius, (it apparently runs in the family like the hair and eyes) was potty trained by 18 months of age. I have informed Cooper of this bench mark, however I have also made sure he understands that he has nothing to prove to me. I will love him and adore him and celebrate all of his milestones no matter when he leaves those diapers behind. But I have also informed him that there is an outside time limit - the school he attends requires children be potty trained before they can enroll in the Toddler II class. That is a year and 5 months away. So tick tock....

Growing up sooooooooo fast

Kickin' it old school... My two computer nerds
New kicks!

It is so bizarre that my child is 16 months old. He is a little person now, not a baby. He is communicating with purpose. Not just crying, but interactively. It is amazing quite frankly. I was so proud when each of our dogs was officially house trained (Poncho so totally out did Gus in the genius-house-training department). The pride that I feel with each milestone Cooper reaches is something in the gagillion times more area. He is learning words we haven't even taught him. That happens with kids who spend a giant bulk of time with other people, i.e. teachers at school, I suppose. He is obsessed with steps, as all kids at this age are. And he knows exactly what to do on them. He boldly marches toward them in his tiny little red high top Converse sneakers, grabs that railing (at school they have one at his height and ours) and pulls his little self right up those stairs. I don't even have words to describe what I will probably feel the first day he gets on a school bus. Pride/fear/wooziness with a side of panic.

Cooper's father is a software engineer, consequently we have three working computers, and the desktop PC has two monitors. It might not be surprising that Cooper is obsessed with keyboards too. I took the picture you see with this blog of the Coop and the Bob doing their computer nerd thing.

And finally why will my child wear a baseball cap backwards, but not forward? Why does anyone for that matter? Isn't the point of the baseball cap to use the brim to keep the sun out of your eyes? When worn backwards the only thing it does effectively is give you a funky mark on your forhead from the band on the back of the hat.

Maybe some day someone will take a half decent picture of me and the Coop, and I will post that here. It might help if I learn photoshop so I can suck 20lbs off of me in any picture too. Having a baby over the age of 40 is a freaking miracle, but it has had its drawbacks. Combine that with being part hippopotomus apparently, and you get the idea.

If a 16 month old could write....

What I imagine a journal entry would look like if Cooper could write:

7am...woke up hungry and with a very full diaper, but Dad resolved both issues without too much prodding from me. Plan for the day - in the ongoing effort to get a handle on the whole cause and effect relationship thing, I will implement several experiments today to determine the possible outcomes of various behaviors. These include but are not limited to making it as hard as possible for Mommy to put my coat on at the end of the day in day care, grab Mommy's arm with my legs when she is trying to put my clean diaper on and drop my sippy cup from the high chair 7ooo times in one meal.

6pm...had a good day at day care. Read 346 books, played with every toy 12 times, each, got to go to the big gym to run around with the toddlers. Outcomes on experiments - sippy cup dropping - no one likes it except for me. Hit one of the dogs on the head, that was an accident but may try to aim for him next time. Diaper/arm wrapping thing - makes Mommy very cranky and apparently makes it very hard to put the diaper on. May come in handy later. Won't utilize often. Coat experiment - very interesting results. First Mommy laughed, then she got a bit cranky, then she used her angry Mommy voice and ultimately used the fact that she outweighs me by a considerable amount to pin me to the ground and wrestle the coat on me. Side observation, Mommy does NOT like it when I whack her in the face with my hand. May try it again under different circumstances to determine if time and place make any difference.

Oh that funny face...

It used to be that Cooper would make faces, or change his facial expression, pretty much randomly, or in response to some stimulus, like me smiling at him or being startled by something. But he has discovered he can make faces ON PURPOSE and that they will illicit a response from those around him. An example is the face he is making in the picture above. He has just begun making these funny faces. He seems to really like it. He will raise his eyebrows and squint his eyes, or get very serious and shake his head as if to say "that would be a VERY bad idea". It is vastly entertaining to me. At this point he will reliably say about three words. I don't think it would matter to me he if never learned to talk more if he and I could sit and make faces at each other all day long. There are cultures where that is the only form of communication, body language, or other forms of non verbal communication. I think it is GREAT fun.

Of course that would make being a functional member of American society just a bit challenging, so I expect we will continue to encourage verbal communication. But for now we having a good time, making faces at each other and giggling along the way.

Norm!

So you know that line in the Cheers theme song about "Where everybody knows your naaaaame"? And how whenever Norm entered the bar everyone would yell "NORM"? Picking up my son at daycare has become like that. It is gratifying beyond description how happy he is to see me. It is the kind of happy that says "Thank GOD you are here, get me out of here". It is a happy that seems to say "There you are, where have you been, I am SO HAPPY to see you". He seems to truly LOVE me and is overjoyed to see me.

Now it is probably slightly pathetic how much I love to see his face when he recognizes it is me as I get to the bottom of the stairs and can see into the infant room. But it is better than being greeted by your dog. Dogs have that way of greeting you that is so unconditional, joyful and depending on how long they have been home alone, desperate to get outside to their business. It is so fun to be greeted by a dog. But seeing Cooper's face at the end of the day is BETTER.