Sometimes I feel like a genius

Cooper's overly earnest and overly specific way of talking makes me laugh. He sounds almost like a Dr. Seuss character. I swear this is almost exactly verbatim- he really does talk like this-

Me: It's cold out today. Let's get you some pants. How about these blue ones?
Cooper: I don't want to wear pants.
Me: These brown ones?
Cooper: I don't want to wear blue pants. I don't want to wear brown pants. I want to wear fish shorts.
Me: You could wear the fish shorts under your pants! That could be fun!
Cooper: No. I don't want to wear pants. I don't want to wear fish shorts under pants. I want to wear no pants.

And then here is where I had a genius parenting move.

Me: OK, let's get those fish shorts on you. (brief interlude) Now, can you please go outside and stand on the deck tell me if it is cold out? (opening the front door, blast of cold morning air pours in)
Cooper: No! I don't want to stand on the deck! It is pretty chilly out! I want to wear my brown pants!

Ha HAAAA!!!!! And that is how I got Cooper to wear brown pants today. And fish shorts. And puppy print undies.

Also, he really says "pretty chilly out" as a phrase. He picked it up from me, apparently.

Attack of the munchies

Grant is growing fast, nearly walking (yes, really), and pretty much determined to eat anything that crosses his path. I'm all for the slow and steady approach to kids learning to eat- start with some baby oatmeal powder, progress into pureed peaches, applesauce, carrots, you know, the usual. Grant has a very different agenda. He wants to eat it NOW and he doesn't care what I think. In the last week or so, this has taken on a fairly extreme degree. A few examples;

I gave Grant a large, sturdy carrot to nibble on while I was getting dinner ready. He was in my arms so I could see and hear his every move. I assumed he'd sort of suck on it, perhaps scrape at it a bit with his teeth and maybe gum it, too. Nope. He carefully used his 6 thick fat little teeth to actually bite off tiny pieces (about the size of rice grains) and eat them. He managed to eat quite a bit before getting frustrated. I then fed him 10 ounces of steamed and pureed carrots, which for his body weight and age is a really obscene quantity. That boy loves carrots.

Today I was cleaning the kitchen as Grant crawled around. He was happily banging on things with a wooden spoon and generally just being a cute little fellow. I was engrossed in scrubbing something when I noticed Grant had gotten awfully quiet. I looked down to find that Grant had somehow opened my large cardboard box full of ripe tomatoes (an achievement unto itself), swiped two large Roma (sauce variety) tomatoes, and was fully eating one of them while clutching the other one in his hand. He was covered in tomato seeds and juice, and absolutely thrilled with his achievement. I was dumbfounded as I watched him efficiently bite off appropriately sized nibbles of tomato (with the skin on!), gum them thoroughly in his mouth, swallow them, and bite off a new nibble. Unreal. I took the second tomato away from him because I was concerned he'd get indigestion, having never eaten something that acidic before. Needless to say, he wailed at me quite angrily.

I've begun to let go of my assumptions of how the kid should eat. I'm buying him things that just make no sense for his age- like cottage cheese (he loves the curds) and regular tofu (fun experiment for tomorrow!). I think we might just need to say farewell to the purees way before I had anticipated. And that is OK.

I'm not

I love the way Cooper speaks. It amuses me to no end. He and I sometimes play this game in the car where I ask him if he's certain animals, and he denies it, until he decides he wants to be one of the animals. Sometimes he gets off on tangents, and that's where the fun is.

Me: Cooper, are you a shark?
C: No I'm not.
Me: Are you a bear?
C: I'm not!
Me: Are you a donkey?
C: I'm not!
Me: Are you a bird?
C: Yeeeessss!
Me: What kind of bird?
C: I a little bird that sleeps in trees with a birdie blankey.
Me: Oh I didn't know that birdies sleep with blankets!
C: Yeeess. In trees. With blankies. Little birds.

Cooper also replaces words that he doesn't know with funny phrases. My favorite right now is that he doesn't seem to know the word "barefoot" so instead, he's saying "in toes." As in...

Me: Cooper, I don't want your feet to get cold. Let's find socks for you.
C: Noooo!
Me: I want you to sleep in socks, buddy.
C: No! I sleep in my toes! No socks! In toes!

You never know until you try

Cooper's self initiated sleeping location testing program took an unexpected turn last night. In the last week, he has tested and rejected the following locations; his bed, smack dab in the middle of his area rug, and inside his cardboard box fort. The latest location? Deep underneath his tiny, low bed, on the rock hard and cold hardwood floor.

I really would not have guessed this was a spot he would have tried out, but then again, I'm not a creative toddler (anymore). Last night he went to sleep OK in his room and then fell out of his bed at 11pm. That alone isn't odd- he does it about once every two weeks and it is usually around when I go to bed. I think that's because my rustling around the house to lock up tends to make him half-awake, which is when he probably rolls over and accidentally falls out. No big deal, I gave him a hug and helped him get back into bed clutching doggie and blankey. He was asleep in less than a minute.

Then at 2am I heard some nervous whiney yelling from his room for a minute or two. I was about to open his door when it stopped, so I decided to leave well enough alone and go back to bed. I figured he'd had a bad dream. In retrospect, I think that was not the case.

At 4am I woke up to more nervous whiney yelling, this time a little more insistent. I went into his room- pitch black- to presumably help him get back into bed, or maybe pat his back from a bad dream. But he wasn't in his room... it seemed. Not in the bed. Not in the fort. Not on the rug. Not behind the door or hiding behind his craft table (he tends to stumble around confusedly after falling out of his bed, so you can't quite predict where he'll be). He was... invisible? Nah, that made no sense. So I turned on the light. And that's when he got really upset. "MAMA COOPER STUCK MAMA HELP STUCK STUUUUUCK!!"

My first reaction was, unfortunately, to burst out laughing. How on EARTH did he get so far under his tiny low slung bed? Unbelievable. So I lifted his toddler bed (it is very light and very small) and he crawled out, looking dazed. I did my best to stop laughing as I gave him a hug and put him back in bed, but he definitely was mad at me. Why was I laughing at him for getting stuck under the bed! Geez... parents are so rude.

But I am left with this- why under the bed? WHY? and for that matter- why the sleep location testing?

Who knows.

Mr. Demanding

Lately, Cooper has been very bossy and demanding. I've had to start telling him I won't do what he asks unless he uses his "happy voice" i.e. isn't bossing us around, and also we've gotten much more insistent about saying please.

But sometimes, I have to laugh at what he sternly instructs me (or Matt) to do.

He's been fighting his nap today, and he keeps hopping out of bed and using the potty. A few rounds ago, he came out of his room and saw I was using the computer. He stopped dead in his tracks, stared at me, then pointed right at the computer and said, "Momma! Watch bike videos on the peter!" in a very authoritarian voice.

About ten minutes ago, when I thought he was actually asleep, I went outside to help Matt with a gate he's installing. Unknown to me, Cooper then snuck out of his room to use the potty again, and in the process he could have clearly seen Matt and I working on the gate together. Much to my surprise, when I quietly came back into the house, I was greeted not by silence but by a loud yet squeaky command piping up from in the bathroom, "MOMMA! Go back outside and play with Daddy!"