Cooper is becoming sneaky in his old age. In the evenings before his dinner but while Ryan is cooking ours, he sometimes has what we call 'chill out time'. This is when we put him in his swing to hang out and listen to music while we do adult things in the kitchen. A couple weeks ago, I did just that and admired him from afar while he made singing type noises. I walked into the kitchen to get his food ready and noticed after what seemed like five minutes but was probably only seconds that the noises had stopped. Upon peeking around the corner... I see Cooper, out of his swing, standing up against the ottoman, throwing the blanket on the floor (he's a neat freak like his Dad so any area that he is standing by must be completely free of clutter/anything at all). This is all amazingly brilliant, of course. You may be asking yourself, how did the child who cannot walk somehow get/fall out of the swing and end up standing perfectly straight two feet away from the swing? Or at least, that's what I was asking myself.
Ever since that day, I've been watching, waiting, hoping for him to pull off such a feat again. This weekend was my chance. We had some friends over for dinner and I put him in his swing, it was time. A few minutes later, while we were talking to each other I was watching Cooper with one eyeball. I watched him roll onto his belly (in the tiny, tiny swing), scootch his mid section close to the edge of the swing, and casually drape his legs over the side until they hit bottom. Let me just interject here to point out that the swing is on full speed this whole time! I'm laughing as I write this, so I may have a typo... It was one of the funniest things EVER. We almost thought we should put him back in the swing just to watch him do it again, but thought some people wouldn't see the humor in that.
While I was doing laundry this weekend, I threw the clean clothes back into the laundry basket and put them on the floor so I could get the next load started. When I came back to the clothes, I saw this. Apparently Cooper wants his chores to include laundry. As soon as he has more control of his opposable thumbs, I'll look into teaching him about folding.
After work today, we took advantage of the nice weather and walked to the park. By park, I mean the ridiculously tiny 12x30 foot piece of grass that they threw in on the corner of two streets because they couldn't get the city to approve another house there. It's more of a grassy knoll, but good for children who are discovering grass for the first time... and for discovering LADYBUGS. There just so happened to be tons of them, so we found as many as we could and put them all over Cooper to see what he would do! He immediately took one between his forefinger and thumb and went straight for his mouth. I know, shocking. He seems to enjoy putting everything in his mouth except his actual dinner. It's like when Cooper's characteristics were being decided, my Dad got his two cents in and said, 'give Cooper the same eating habits as his mother, that will show her! HA! HA!' (Sorry Dad!) Needless to say, the last few days of meal time have been a battle and once again I'll blame it on teething. I mean really, the child is almost one, he must be close to a tooth by now?!?!?
~Ahna
