Snowed in and working hard!

It's snowing like crazy here today!  Thankfully I am off work, and hubby isn't going in today either.  So we are getting some things done around here today!  

Husband has a thing for sports memorabilia, which I can totally appreciate.

  Who doesn't like a signed baseball by that traitor Albert Pujols?  

And he has A LOT of it.  He plans on displaying it all in our finished basement someday.  However, our basement is not finished right now, and who knows when we will actually get it done.  In the meantime, I was a good wife and told him he could put some of it in our home office.  But lately it's been giving me the willies!  Baseballs and footballs and Larry Bird- oh my!  I want a pretty Pinterest home office please!

 We decided to make him a mini man cave upstairs in a spare bedroom, so he is upstairs painting it, happy as can be to be getting his own little space!  Baby #2 will go in here someday and the man cave will move to the basement then once it's finished.

 

Cooper and I are hanging out downstairs and I am dreaming of my pretty new office!  With any luck it will be done by the end of the year, haha.

Valentine's Day and 8 months old!

Cooper had his first Valentine's Day!  I attempted to make him one of those cute onesies with a red tie on it, but somehow I messed it up and, get this, never had time to go back and fix it properly.  So, I glued the tie on his onesie and took a few pictures of my little valentine.

This idea was way cuter on Pinterest.  Oh well!

No smiles for Valentine's Day!

Too busy learning to move to pay attention to his present!

He's cutting his two top teeth- new teething toy mom! 

 

Cooper is eight months old (exactly 35 weeks!) today!  He started saying DADA last week and can now sit himself up from laying down. He thinks me and husband are the funniest people on earth, and is still taking crawling lessons from my dad on a weekly basis.  He is such a happy baby and such a little charmer.  He loves smiling at people he doesn't know.  My heart just explodes every time I look at him. 

 Happy eight months to my little milk boy!  We're already planning for St. Paddy's Day and Easter, and the big first birthday party is on the horizon!  We can't wait for some warmer days to take you to the park so we can go swinging!  You are so loved!

  

Wait? It's February?!?

Bad blogger!  Another month has gone by without posting.  I promise I haven't been leisurely hanging out around the house sipping martinis... this girl has been B.U.S.Y.  

As if signing up for online classes at SLU to complete my BSN wasn't crazy enough (hey, my work is paying for it!) I signed up for an extra twelve hour shift every week for the month of February.  I must be asking for a mental breakdown.

I have to remind myself that I actually enjoy blogging in my spare time.  It's so fun to read old posts.  It's like the coolest diary I've ever had.  So what if no one ever reads it.  I'm not even sure my dear husband knows how to find it.

Little Cooper is doing crazy things.  Like every day!  Last week he randomly started chatting 

"DADADADADA"

and has learned how to sit up from laying down.  This makes putting him in his crib interesting.  I'm pretty sure he may just crawl on out of there.  Speaking of crawling, he has been rocking back and forth for weeks now.  He gets around with a combo of rolling and leaning forward, then sitting back a different direction.  My dad has been giving him "crawling lessons" every weekend.  Cooper loves it!

  

Well, Valentine's Day is this week!  I am hoping to post more soon!

So Fresh and So Clean, Clean

This baby LOVES his bath time.  That's one of the things that surprised me most about him- his favorite things to do are taking baths and getting his diaper changed.  Can't say I blame him!  One of the last baths I took involved me flopping around like a whale one day past my due date, trying to stop "false labor" at 5 am on Father's Day.  Cooper arrived that night :) 

 First bath

I blast the Pitbull station on Pandora and we make it a dance party.  

No lullabies around here!

 

 I'm enjoying this as much as possible.  I have a feeling he'll never love them as much as he does right now!

Cooper and Braden, NYE

One of my girlfriends had her second child, Braden, in August.  Jenny and her cute little family came over on New Year's Eve for a relaxing evening- we weren't even sure we'd make it until midnight!  Ha, how times have changed.  We were excited to get the boys together to see how they'd react to each other...

 Face to face

 Quite possibly the best picture ever!

 Coop attempts to eat Braden to get him back

Don't you love their manly ties?!?

That was it.  Tears soon followed.  I can't wait to see them really play together this summer!  Thanks again Jenny and family for ringing in the New Year with us!

 

New Year's Eve and First Snow!

Having had a new baby join our little family in the middle of the year certainly made it fly by!  It's snowing here, so of course I had to grab the camera to capture another one of Cooper's "firsts." 

First snowfall

And don't worry, he was outside for about 10 seconds total.  If you know me, you know mama does not like to be cold.  Cooper didn't seem to mind though in his super sweet snowsuit he received from his GiGi.

 

 

Me and Cooper's First Iowa Christmas

We've been married three years now, and I still had never made it up to Iowa for Christmas- partially because of my nursing career that requires I work every other holiday, and partially because of my paranoia of snow and driving in it.  Iowa gets ALOT of snow.  Not where I live.  Half an inch falls and the entire city turns into a shitshow.  Nevertheless, it did not snow, I did not have to work, so we made the drive without any problems.  I was so happy that we were able to make it up there to spend some time with our family.  Baby Cooper slept the entire way, giving me and dear husband some quality time to talk.

 Seconds before he fell into the tree

 A gift from Intelligent Life Toys- best toy store ever!

 Three generations

 He looks so precious and tiny from the back

 Coop sat up for 45 minutes all by himself, taking it all in

He loves his overalls!

Adorable hat

As usual, our visit went by too fast and we hope to see our family again soon!