September's Ten Things

I love September.  The weather starts to cool off, the produce is amazing, I can get away with making pumpkin bread.  This month has flown by, as usual.  And I have lots to smile about from September:

1.  My baby turned one!  His birthday was so much fun.  And now that he's a big boy, he decided he won't drink from bottles anymore.  Cups only for this kid, preferably with a straw!

 2.  Madeline started ballet again.  And jazz too.  She has enjoyed dancing each Tuesday, and I enjoy the times when I'm invited to watch.

 3.  Ethan is still loving piano.  Practicing is really a bright spot in his day (even when he has a little helper!).  He is very patient with Cooper, though I try to keep him away.  I love watching Ethan play the piano.  His concentration.  His bouncing body to the rhythm.  He always does an audible breath during rests.  I love that!  So cute.

 4.  Playing with Cooper and just enjoying his little facial expressions always makes me smile.

 5.  Painting Madeline's fingernails!  Bright pink with sparkles on top.  Imagine that...

 6.  Watching Ethan swim.  I already blogged about that, but thought it would be good to mention that he did indeed pass off level three!

7.  Fall evenings spent outside in the perfect weather:

playing Horse

 Playing baseball

 Exploring (hee hee, I love his stink bug crawl!)  This is totally number 8!  Cooper's bum in the air crawl!  Though, I've noticed that the more he wears pants instead of shorts, the more he's been crawling normal even on the hard floor.  The days of his cute crawl are numbered...

9.  PUMPKINS!  Our porch is decorated with pumpkins from Grandpa's pumpkin patch and it seriously makes me happy!

10.  The way Cooper loves his blankie.  It's the one I crocheted for him when I was pregnant.  He was wrapped in it on his blessing day.  And now he grins and beams and holds it tight when he sleeps.  In the end, I'm glad he chose to love his blankie instead of his bottle.

This and That

The kids had fun playing with cornstarch and water.  I added a couple of drops of food coloring to it and called it Oobleck, and they really thought it was cool!

 I loved Madeline's morning hair this particular morning...

 Just for fun:

 Cooper thought he was extra neat for discovering how to open the closet and pull out the clothes.  Doors can't be mostly closed anymore, they have to be latched or he'll get in!

 And of course, what would my evenings be like without my little dinner helper?!?

Family Fun Evenings

There was something so fun about having Dad decide the family needed to go on an impromptu evening trip to Snowbird.  I grabbed tons of random picnic food and stuffed it into a bag for dinner and off we went.

 We were a little chilly, but the only thing you could hear the kids saying was, "lets come back again!"

 We walked along a paved trail and Todd read the little signs along the way.  We learned about flowers and snowfall and all sorts of things!  And on the way back, look what we got to see:

 Cooper LOVED riding on Dad's shoulders.

 Pointing at the deer:

 It was a fun evening.  We ate our picnic in the van before we headed home.  It was a bit cold to eat outside, but everyone was as happy as a clam.

Then the very next day, we went to Grandpa and Nana's to pick pumpkins!  Nothing better than your own personal pumpkin patch.

 It was fun to watch the kids trying to decide which one was best.

 Cooper patted and loved this little pumpkin, but in the end Ethan and Madeline each selected ones for him that were even cute and tinier!

 We even got a couple cute gourds too!

 I really like going places in the evening as a family.  Good memories.

My Fish

One of the highlights of being off-track for Ethan is swimming lessons.  He is really turning into a good little swimmer.  And he loves being in the water.  He is currently in level 3 and it's pushing him and teaching him in ways the previous levels didn't.  

Yesterday, he passed off treading water for one minute.  Along with diving into the ten feet deep water and several different strokes.  His dives aren't pretty, but he is one of the only kids in the class who actually goes in head first instead of belly flops!  I'm impressed!

 I love watching Ethan swim.

Let Him Eat Cake! (Just not as much next time...)

I had fun making Cooper's birthday cake!

A triple layer cake with blue and green frosting in the middle, and homemade sprinkles!  I thought after piping the first 400 sprinkles I might go permanently cross-eyed, but they actually turned out to be really fun to make and tasted so good!

 We sang quietly and all contained ourselves when we finished singing - no cheering or clapping - and that was just perfect for Cooper.

 He was pretty surprised to see such a huge slice get put onto his tray...

 but it didn't take him long to give it a try

 He LOVED the cake.  My other kids did too!  But not when they were 1, they mostly just poked at theirs.

 Cooper devoured the whole piece before I could even realize that that would be a bad idea!  The poor thing had a major stomach ache after that for a good 45 minutes.

He pretty much just moaned and cried every few minutes, his little lip would quiver, and he made a few burpy sounds that made us all fear he'd never be able to keep it all down!  Luckily, he recovered fairly quickly and was back to playing with his new toys.

And that concludes the birthday blogging extravaganza.  Who ever said the third child gets gipped out of being in pictures or being written about???  I think it's my oldest who is getting gipped!  Maybe next week I'll blog about my older kids...

Everything But the Birthday Cake

Cooper loved reaching for the balloons hanging down from the ceiling fan

 Especially when we turned the fan on and they went whooshing by

 Ethan and Madeline had fun collecting toys from their rooms that they don't play with anymore and then wrapping them up for Cooper.  Ethan was disappointed that Cooper didn't care about opening presents and was quite surprised to find out he didn't care when he was one either!

 The kids also wanted to duplicate the photo shoot of the three of them when Cooper was 2 weeks old. Pictures of them lying in a row.  I knew it wouldn't work, but decided to humor the kids:

 Well, I thought it was humorous...

 Entirely too many presents...

 Yep, the balloons are still up there

 Well, he liked the gift tags...

 and patting the presents.

 And eventually, he decided the xylophone was his favorite gift of the night!

Cake pictures tomorrow.

And in other Cooper news, he had is one year check-up today only to find out he has an ear infection!  He hasn't been sick or acted fussy at all.  Poor thing.  Now we have to do antibiotics for 10 days...

He's 20 lbs. 12 oz. which is 20th percentile.  And 31.5 inches, 94th percentile.  Ethan was about two pounds heavier and two inches longer!  But one thing I found interesting was that Cooper has been going up on the height chart each visit.  He started at 50th percentile, then jumped to 70th, then 90th, and now 94th.  He's definitely mine.  :)

Cooper's Birthday Morning

Cooper started out his birthday morning by watching his cake bake in the oven

Then a little playing in the crib...

And of course, breakfast

Cheerios and toast!

Then he got to play with his new giant ball.  He loves this thing!

Just the beginning of a day of fun!