Birthday Boys!

March 1st is an important day in our home, being the anniversary of both Joseph and Caleb's births.  This year it was pretty low-key because there was so much church stuff going on that weekend, but we had fun as a family. To kick it off, Caleb opened a present early in the morning before Emily left for school.

 I'm not sure who was more excited - Caleb or Emily.

The kids love Duplos and Thomas trains, so this gift was lots of fun.
It was actually a bonus present from me and Joseph found at Saver's for $7.

Caleb spent the day playing Mama Thomas and Baby Thomas.
They are cuddling in this picture.

A friend gave me a recipe for dirt cake. Caleb is a big fan of dirt, so I thought he would like it.

This is a half recipe, which was perfect for our family.

Aww... the two birthday boys.

Caleb was not sure at all about eating dirt. He wouldn't touch it until he saw the rest of us eating.

This girl eats dirt regularly. She had no problem with the cake.

Emily would eat only after I explained to her how I had made it.

My handsome husband. He's maturing in his old age.

Later that evening the boys opened a few more presents.

Rollerskates from Grandma Cooper = so much fun and no added toy clutter!

From Grandma Oba and Mom and Dad...

... a Strider bike! Wahoo!

 

A neat hanging easel for Joseph plus graduation regalia and BYU jacket later.

 So, all in all a fun day...

Wow. Can you tell by my writing today that I am exhausted? It has been sort of a hectic week with Joseph handling bedtime duties solo every day since Sunday, since I have had meetings and other obligations keeping me away every evening from about 6:30 until 9:30. He has had a lot going on at school too, being in the midst of coordinating five professors' schedules for his dissertation proposal.
Speaking of goings on at school, Emily's school nurse called me today. I was immediately worried about my little four-year-old, out there alone at school. The nurse reassured me that everything was fine, but Emily had managed to staple clean through a fingernail in her adventures making a paper purse. The staple had hooked behind her nail, which must have been painful to remove. She now has a really sad looking cut behind the fingernail of her index finger on her left hand. But, she was happy to return to class with a band-aid and an ice pack and was pretty excited to show off her wound to anyone who would look.

I feel like I am dragging anyone reading this down with my weariness, so I will head to bed now. Look for a more upbeat post in a couple of days!

Artist in the making

Emily is our little artist. It started with this picture. Since then, she has loved to draw. She sits happily through church if she has enough paper and a good set of crayons. This little lap desk she got for Christmas has gotten a lot of use.

Today she spent her time creating art work for me and Joseph's bedroom door, since a picture we had stuck up there earlier had fallen down and never been put back up.

The girl with the crazy hair is the (beautiful) princess in her castle. I think the little blue guy is an alligator in a moat, and the green is foliage for camouflage.

After putting that picture up, Emily noticed how bare Caleb's door looked and made one for him.

I don't know why she writes backwards sometimes. It's pretty weird. Cool dragon though.

This is on Emily and Elinor's door.

Caleb really believes that those two kids are him and Emily. Close enough.

Bead It

So, sometimes Emily and I just need a girl's day out. She's the oldest and I worry that I place too much responsibility on her, even though she's still just four. When my mom came to visit (oops, I didn't take any pictures of that!), I decided it was time to do something special for Emily. So the three of us went to Bead It, a local bead store, and I pretty much let her go crazy. She chose a crazy conglomerate of "beautiful" beads from the hundreds of little glass bowls set out throughout the store. Yes, I have taken all three kiddos into the store before and it is definitely an adventure.
This is the masterpiece we ended up with.

 It is a proud addition to her collection; definitely the most expensive piece.

It was a really fun time to spend with Emily as the center of attention. I definitely need to make a bigger effort to spend more one-on-one time with her.

Lovely Pants

So, I whipped together some baby pants out of fabric that I already had for a neighbor who had a baby a couple of weeks ago. I thought they were pretty funky looking at first and I called them my crazypants, but now I think I love them.

front

back

Emily helped by assuring me that she liked them. Caleb helped by sitting on my lap at the machine while I sewed.  The fabric helped because it is lovely organic cotton with both prints by a local designer. Local is always better, of course. :)  They're way better in real life, really.  I kind of hate to part with them. I love how they feel in my hands - like a good quality garment. And I love the panel on the back because I always have trouble telling front from back in home made pants. I just really like them, I guess.

Also, here are some pictures of those kids, whom I also really like.

Outside, the day we took our Valentine's pictures.

Yesterday after church, in a TV daze watching Living Scriptures.

I'm not really sure what to say about this one,
except that I'm sure Emily had something to do with it.

Virtual fun

A while ago the family took a trip to Joseph's lab to see what he's been up to. While I've been to his lab many times, and seen others try the program out, I have never personally looked at his work. This time I put on the mask and swung the racquet. Joseph has told me a lot about what he's been working on - a virtual-reality racquetball court - but I was very surprised by how cool it was. I was fully immersed in this racquetball world, trying to hit the ball at a target.

 Caleb was a little afraid of a mama with no awareness of his whereabouts.

I was happy to keep playing the racquetball game for a while. Luckily, Joseph had activities to keep the kids busy. Emily loved these Hoberman spheres and spent a while figuring them out.

Elinor worked on putting some sunglasses on and climbing this exercise ball that Joseph's coworker uses for a chair.

Caleb snuck a quick workout in. You know how two-year-olds are. Exercise fanatics.

Actually he was pretty freaked out by the treadmill and got off as soon as he could.

It's super cool stuff going on in this lab, and I am excited by how much progress Joseph has made. Hopefully we'll see even more progress this year! ... like enough to graduate?

Happy Valentine's Day!

idea found here.

Children's Park

Yesterday I read about a children's park in San Marcos here, so we decided to check it out today. It did not disappoint! It was a little chilly, but the kids had a great time.

This place was crazy big - how did we not know about it before?

I liked the dragon head and tongue slide.

Hee hee! Elinor's little hair spike just poking up above the train!

All three taking off in the rocket.

 

This was a super neat little music activity that all three kids liked.

 

I challenged Emily to wiggle through this tiny tunnel.

Elinor saw her and crawled through no problem. Can you see her red jacket in there?

They came out here, at this cute little house.

I liked that there were all these little passages for the kids to explore.

Lots of climbing.

I think this was their first time on a tire swing. Elinor loved being able to swing with the big kids.

Check out Caleb's tongue!

 I have a list of things we are hoping to go see before we leave Austin. Even though we just learned about this place, it was a nice kick-off to our efforts to get out a little bit more.

Accident prone

So, I know I have discussed this previously here, but I just want to re-emphasize how exciting it is to have a little boy of Caleb's uh, caliber living in our home.
So, he did fall and scrape a circle of skin off his forehead about a week ago, as shown in this lovely picture:

And another random picture that I'll throw in just because I like it:

Anyway, a couple of days later after the forehead incident, Caleb tripped over a lego truck and hit the side of his bed. I walked into the room to find him crying with blood pouring out of his mouth. He seemed unaware of that though, and was mostly worried about his cheek. That mark showed up later.

And finally, just a couple of days ago, he stepped on a fire ant pile with bare feet. He now has at least fifteen bites on his feet that wake him every hour or so throughout the night because they itch so badly.

I guess it's hard to see, but his feet and toes are pretty swollen. Kind of a gross picture anyway.

So, that has been Caleb's traumatic week -- at least, those were the accidents that left marks. He has had many others, mostly involving head bonking. Sometimes I worry about his mental development being affected by all this. Even for a little boy, he seems especially accident-prone, but he keeps life exciting for all of us.

Happy Groundhog Day!

A long-held tradition in this little family of ours is to watch Groundhog Day on (or close to) Groundhog day every year. Yes, we Coopers like to help the little holidays feel appreciated - Black Friday, Pi Day, St. Patrick's Day, and Groundhog Day are a few of our favorites.

I hope your Groundhog Day found you and your loved ones gathered together enjoying special moments... like ours did. :)