S.E.V.E.N.

Okay, so technically speaking we are now 7 months and 15 days!  But really, who's counting??  These days we are having so much fun with our little man and are constantly amazed by how quickly he is growing and how much our lives have changed!  He is quite the little love bug!  He LOVES to laugh and squeal and when tickled, you can really get him going!! He has the biggest smile and loves to flirt with anyone passing by. Cooper is still proving to be my pretty content little guy, except he now knows exactly what he wants.  And if you do not give it to him, he will throw a pretty big temper tantrum!  How quicky they learn!  Right now he is loving remotes, mum mums and, as always, his Big Sister Caroline!!  He demands 3 meals a day of baby food and is still nursing quite a bit  He takes 2-3 naps per day and sleeps through most nights with out waking up!  Although he is doing really well sleeping, it is still nothing like Caroline.  His naps are quite a bit shorter and he cries every time we take him to his room.  He just knows that we are about to put him down.  Cooper got his first official haircut {not by mom or dad} the weekend he turned 6 months.  It made such a difference and he looks like a little man!  I can not believe it!  He is sitting SO well and this has made things so much easier around the house and has given him a whole new point of view!

People are always making remarks about how big our little guy is!  And yes he is!  Just ask me after he has been crying and I have had to carry him around the entire mall while also pushing the stroller.  Or when he doesn't feel like sitting in the shopping cart and requires that I carry him while also grabbing groceries.  Well, we are guessing Cooper is now somewhere around 20 pounds and still so cute!  I pulled out Josh's baby book the other day and was pretty surprised to find that his weight at each major milestone was pretty similar to Cooper's.  This boy is built just like his daddy!! 

Although I have not had as much time to write about it, we have been having SO much fun lately!  Cooper's personality has woken up and we have been so busy!  The month of October has been full of fall and Halloween fun and we can't believe time is flying by so quickly!  However we are so excited for the upcoming holidays and everything that is entailed!

celebrating 4 wonderful years

What an amazing journey we have had!! 4 years and 2 kids later... here we are! My absolute best friend and husband is the man of my dreams! I could never have imagied someone more perfect to be alongside me for this adventure!! We celebrated each other by taking some time for ourselves. Grandpa and Grandma came up for the weekend and stayed with Caroline and Cooper while we relaxed with massages, a wonderful dinne at Five Sixty in Reunion Tower and a night's stay at the Crescent! Who could have asked for more? Well we had a wonderful time!! We both caught something and got pretty sick in the middle of the night so we were not able to enjoy sleeping in. We came home and just did not feel well at all. It helped having people here for the weekend and we would not have made it with out them! THANK YOU GRANDPA DOUG AND GRANDMA KARLA!!

Caroline had these two wrapped around her finger!

the von Goertz' visit Texas!!

Our COUSINS came to visit!  We hadn't seen the von Goertz' {my sister and her family} since May and the time was just too much!  They came to visit in September and we had such a wonderful time!  We were quite busy with four kids under three and didn't get a ton of pictures that I had hoped for, but we tried!  We were able to get a lot of shopping in and the boys spent most of the weekend revolving around football!!

Our first activity of the weekend was a TCU game!  This was the first home game that we were able to make it to so we loaded up two cars and headed to Fort Worth.  Paul and Josh went to the game while Missy and I took the kids home after hanging out on campus.  We had a fun time dressing everyone up in purple and playing out on the front lawn.

For some reason there was a longhorn there which you could take pictures with.  Josh almost refused to take one because we are TCU of course... not UT!  But Caroline hopped right up and loved sitting on the cow! 

My little man all decked out in his purple.  Josh bought everyone new outfits at the start of the season and made sure we all had enough purple to support our Frogs!

We even got Uncle Paul to sport his purple!!  The boys and their babies... yes they got a lot of looks!  :)

Miss Amanda even came out to say hi!

Our drive home is definitely something that needs to be documented, however I'm not sure I can quite do it justice!!  We do have video to prove it and I am going to have to get it from my sister.  We left Fort Worth - me, my sister and four kids!  Emma and Caroline were in the third row, Ellie and Cooper in the middle and my sister and I up front.  Yes we did fit 4 carseats in there, but it was tight!  It was about 2 o'clock and no kids had taken naps for the day.  Ellie was just not loving the car ride and was upset when Cooper started getting fussy as well.  Well, we couldn't get them to stop and the noise was just too much for Emma.  She started crying because it was too loud for her ears.  Caroline lasted a little longer, but then dropped her bunny and also started crying because she was too far back and we couldn't get it!  All of this happened as we came to stopped traffic!!  There was nothing we could do so we exited the highway and stopped at Target.  To make a long story {somewhat} short, we spent time walking around with sweaty, upset kids all dressed alike.  We shopped a little, drank juice boxes and nursed kids all while in the store.  It was quite a hilarious sight!  Once everyone had settled down we made it back to the car, buckled all kids in and took a deep breath.  Before we even started the car my phone rang and it was Josh saying they were on their way home?!  WHAT?  We still had at least 25 minutes left to go.  Well at least traffic was flowing when we got back on the highway.  :)  Needless to say the guys got home and Missy and I left and spent the evening shopping!  

These boys were destined to be brothers in law!  For some strange reason God made Paul {a native Minnesotan} a HUGE Cowboys fan!  He has rooted for them since he was young and it just so happened that we live in Dallas!  Josh and Paul made a goal to see the Cowboys play in every stadium in the US.  So, they have already checked Denver, Philadelphia and the old Cowboys' stadium off of their list, so they decided this year they would come and visit us AND see a game in the new stadium!!  It worked out perfectly!  They first took a tour of the stadium on Sunday and took both "big" girls with them.  They were in complete awe!  We hear that the cheerleaders were their favorite part... however we're not sure who's favorite part!! :)

2 loving cousins!

We were so busy that this was one of the only pictures we got of Cooper and Ellie together.  They did enjoy each other and will be so fun when they both start moving!

We spent a great morning at the park with great weather!

Miss Ellie was definitely on the move!  She is SO close to walking and such a wiggle worm!  We just loved seeing how much she has changed and how big she has gotten!

The one thing Emma wanted to do was go swimming!!  She had Grami send her water wings to her from Florida just so she could bring them to Texas.  We had such a long stretch of over 100 degree weather and then the week before they arrived, temperatures dropped a little.  I would definitely have said that the water was too cold to swim, but nothing was stopping Emma!  She probably got in the pool at least 3 different times.  Caroline and Emma started out playing on the step in their shorts and somehow ended up drenched!

We had some fun play time!

We love our Aunt MiMi!!

6 MONTHS!!

Somewhere along the way my baby has grown up!!  I know I say it every day...week... and month, but where does the time go?  I had a huge realization this week that Cooper is not a baby!  I'm not sure when it happened and I think I was in denial for a while, but my eyes were opened this week. We had lunch with a friend who has a 2 month old baby.  Well, I scheduled the lunch on one of Caroline's school days so it would just be Cooper and me.  He's my easy one right?!  This has been what I've fooled myself into thinking!  He had taken a great nap early in the morning so when we got there, I thought I would just feed him some baby food in his seat and he would sit quietly and play.  I even linked some links together and hung from his carseat thinking this would be just the thing to keep him entertained!!  Well, while Erika's baby slept in his seat the entire time, I was holding Cooper and doing anything I could to keep him quiet.  It was then that I realized that 6 months old was the time when I stopped going out to lunch with friends with Caroline.  Cooper is always the baby wherever we go and he just goes with the flow, usually doing whatever activity we have planned for Caroline.  I still usually take him in his carseat with the snap and go stroller and just expect him to sit there.  He is definitely proving me wrong!  He's a big "little" boy and probably looks ridiculous in that thing!  However to me, he seems like he was just born! 

With all of that being said, Cooper seriously is getting to be so much fun!  He can sit up on his own now! He is rolling over much more now and always wants to be touching something and putting it in his mouth.  He still loves his sister and loves it when she rolls on top of him.  Just when I think she might have hurt him, I hear HUGE belly laughs coming from him.  He has also started noticing Beca and his eyes light up when she walks into the room.  She loves him just as much and will lick his face any chance she gets!  He loves to giggle and laugh and is the most ticklish kid I know!

We had our 6 month doctor's appointment last week and found out where Cooper stands:

weight: 19 lbs. 3 ounces (78th percentile)

height: 26.75 inches  (60th percentile)

head circumference: 46 cm  (97th percentile)

Cooper is one healthy boy and still loves to eat!!  He's had just about every kind of baby food and is eating food for breakfast, lunch and dinner and still nursing quite a bit.  We have no problem in that category at all!  :)  However, we did have a slight hiccup while we were at the doctor's.  As you can see his head size has jumped up to the 97th percentile!  We've always known he has had a big head.  Just by looking at him you can see that!  Our doctor was somewhat concerned and had us go to the hospital to have an ultrasound of his head to look at his brain.  Because our doctor did not make a huge deal about this, I wasn't that worried.  That was until I scheduled the appointment.  I spoke with the scheduling lady of the hospital and had to tell her our reason for coming and diagnosis.  Then she gave me all of the details of the procedure and it just seemed like more of an ordeal than I had thought.  It didn't help that this was all on a Friday and we had to wait until Monday to actually go in.  Josh was gone for the entire weekend at a work retreat and so this left me home by myself.  Well, of course I did some research of my own on the internet to try and figure out what was wrong with my little boy.  I know that googling things just makes you worry more and gives you so many more problems than answers, but I just had to know.  Macrocephaly {having too big of a head} could be caused by severeal things.  There could be fluid on the spinal cord, his brain could be too small, the ventricles could not be working correctly... and the list goes on and on OR he could just simply have a big head.  I cannot tell you how humbling of an experience this whole thing was.  I had several moments where I just looked at my baby and couldn't help but be concerned.  He looks so perfect and we had laughed about his head size quite a few times.  Although it was only for a couple days, the feeling of being completely out of control of the situation is huge and something you have to deal with as a parent.  I know this will not be the last time.  There are going to be things out of my control and I can not tell you how many times I got on my knees and prayed for this little guy!  God is bigger than all things and has a plan for each one of my children.  I was reminded of this over and over again throughout the weekend and really it is because of Him that I was able to let go of that control.  God showed us He is bigger than ALL things.  We had the ultrasound performed on Monday and although it was a little scary having to hold Cooper so still, the ultrasound technician said from what she could tell everything looked good and she wouldn't be worried.  That was a relief!  We got the final word from our doctor later that day and could not be happier for Cooper to just have a big head!!  It is one cute noggin and one I cherish more and more!