Cooper has a cold

I'm bummed.

The little dude has a pretty bad head cold, and he is the king of snot-covered yuckiness. This is on the tails of a two and a half day hunger strike that he executed while I was in Michigan. Needless to say, I think the two may be related.

I'm frustrated that he did not eat well while I was away. Yes, I can expect he'll be grumpy while I'm not around. He hates the bottle, is used to having me here, and generally is a creature of habit. But to eat about 1/5th his normal amount of food, and probably less than that of milk, while I was out of town is really pretty bad. Matt fears he got dehydrated, despite his love for drinking water out of a cup. The dehydration of course led to some issues with constipation. Which made Cooper even grumpier, which compounded the whole thing.

The good news is that when I got home on Friday, and for all of Saturday, Cooper was as happy, bouncy, and giggly as ever. He was able to fix his constipation issues (lots of yucky diapers as my "welcome home" gift) and ate a ton both days. Around midnight last night (Saturday) he woke up with a really congested nose and a pitiful little sneezy cough thing, and since then he's been running a low fever for part of the day and generally kinda sick. His mood is OK, so I know he's not totally miserable, but all three of us had a horrible night of 45 minute spans of sleep and lots of snot covered blankets.

I feel so bad for the little guy. I hope he gets better soon. The last time this happened he was much better in only a day or two, so I am really hoping for that kind of rapid turn around. If not, I'm going to be alone on a plane with a sniffly, snotty, sneezy, and grumpy baby. I'll be the most popular person there!

704

It is official.

Cooper has gone through his first megabox of wipes that we bought from Costco. This means that he's had 704 wipes used upon him in just under eight months. That comes to 2.93 wipes per day, in case you were interested.

Also of interest is that today while I was on the phone with my father, Cooper decided to climb the stairs. He's been thinking about it for a few days now, but this morning was the first time that he actually executed the maneuver of getting all the way onto the first step and then standing up on it. He immediately almost fell down that one step. This evening he climbed up that same step and started trying to tackle the next one... uh oh!

Today is the day

Here is a thought.

I know lots, and lots, of people with little kids, babies, and/or pregnant bellies. Missoula is a great place to raise a family. But Montana doesn't have the greatest economy, and jobs are kind of limited here unless you are in real estate. Wait- scratch that. Even real estate has tanked.

I know a few stay at home moms. Maybe... hmmm... five? And you know what? They are all on some form of public assistance (WIC, s-CHIP, whatever). These are college educated women, with supportive and employed husbands.

That was the state of the economy BEFORE the crash this fall.

So yeah- it is a big day today.