2 months

It's cruel how fast time goes. You need to slow this growing up thing down. You hear me?

Coop you are two months old. You are weighing in at 12 pounds 6 ounces (I know right?!) and 23 inches long. You are solidly in - and 3 month clothes. Even your newborn pants are too short now. You have gotten long!

You are a smiley little guy. It may have taken you a while to start giving us those smiles but at 7 weeks it just kind of clicked with you and you've been smiling ever since. We can't get enough. It's the cutest little thing ever.

You've also laughed out loud once on January 12th. Just once though and it was at something your sister was doing. You haven't done it since though.

You've also rolled over once from tummy to back. You were bound and determined you weren't going to do tummy time! You do tolerate tummy time sometimes, but you definitely don't love it.

You are a pro at straightening and standing on those little legs of yours when we hold you up. You still prefer to be facing out when being held and sitting facing out. You just like to see the world.

You have such good head control. You just seem so big already!

You are doing much better with your sleeping. You still aren't a great schedule per se but you've started sleeping around 5-6 hours straight, sometimes seven, most nights so I'll take it. You still have a few nights where you wake at about 2:30 but you just nurse for about 15-20 minutes and then you are right back to sleep. I prefer the mornings you sleep til about 4. Just saying...

You still aren't a great napper. I'm not super strict with you. Maybe I should be, but you aren't unhappy and you aren't screaming so... we shall see. Maybe next month I'll crack down more. Right now? well you can do no wrong.

You are definitely a Mama's boy. You much prefer me to anyone else. I secretly love this. Though it would be nice to have more than 10 minutes to get things done. I need my arms buddy!

You still have the most calm, laid back demeanor. You cry when hungry and when tired. As soon as you start whining that you're tired, we stick a paci in your mouth, swaddle you up, and you are out in minutes. You are really good at putting yourself to sleep as well. I kind of miss having to rock you to sleep but I am glad you can self soothe.

Cooper you've rocked our worlds in the best possible way. It's only been two months but it feels like you were always a part of us. We love you little buddy.

the last few weeks...

So somehow my maternity leave is already over. I literally blinked and 6 weeks were gone. I had all these big plans on what I would get done while I was on "break". Ask me how many I got dome. That's right; zero. But I really don't care. Because I spent my break cuddling a baby. A baby that is already 8 weeks old. I don't even know how that happened.

I keep swearing I'm going to blog more. Blog his everyday like I did with Ella. But I have to be honest, life is busy right now. There's work, church, play, dogs, cat, kids; someone always needs something. And this blog comes last. It kind of has too. But I do really want to have a record for him like I do for Ella. So I'm going to try.

My maternity leave flew by. Coop and I spent a lot of time watching Netflix and cuddling. It was all kinds of awesome. We celebrated Thanksgiving and then Christmas and before I knew it, his first month was up.

There wasn't a lot of time for crazy postpartum hormones. With so many people here, it was hard to just sit around and cry. I did sneak away a few times for a good cry, but overall, the whole postpartum thing was much better this time around. I felt good. Even the crazy nights with him were good. I was tired, but I felt good.

With a four year old sister, there wasn't a lot of time to sit around and do nothing. When she was home, we were busy. So C got dragged to all kinds of Christmas activities. We did Christmasville and Santa visits and ice-skating. We traveled down to Florence and met C's other grandparents and introduced C to one of my best friends. We left C with a sitter for a night while Ella was at a lock in at school and Mr. P and I got a little date night to enjoy dinner and Christmas shopping.

It flew by. I hope to blog more about Christmas soon. It was so fun. E is at such a fun age and C is just a doll.

Cooper is the sweetest baby ever. He was sucking at sleeping, but even that's gotten better the last few nights. I'll talk more about him in his two month post, which somehow is right around the corner. This time around has been so different from E. I don't know why but this baby has me wrapped. I was a schedule nazi with Ella, but with C, I'm letting him do things on his own time. The thought his crying it out breaks my heart and I haven't been able to do it at all. Fortunately he hasn't had too as he's figuring things out pretty well on his own.

I'm so in love with this baby. So in love. I pretty much think the sun and moon rises because of him. I knew I would love him but I couldn't even fathom a love like this. I guess it's true; there really is something special about a Mom and her son. He stole my heart.

Ella has been a rockstar but she honestly deserves her own post full of all the brags. Let's just say that Coop definitely lucked up in the big sister department. He got the best one ever.

So that's where we are. We're trying to figure things out and navigate our new normal. Life is good. It's really good.

it's only a season....

You'll sleep again one day..

This is the mantra I'm repeating to myself over and over these days. I am tired.

There is so much I want to catch up on. So much I want to blog. Cooper's First Christmas, Ella and Cooper meeting for the first time, what we're up to these days... But that requires time. And two hands. Neither of which I have very often these days.

The first couple of weeks with C were amazing. I was tired, of course, but the every three hours was working for us and even when he was awake, he was so darn pleasant that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I remarked on more than one occasion how different this was than with Ella. With her, the nights were full of screaming and tears from both of us and the exhaustion couple with that was more than I could take. I can't tell you how many times I ran to B and handed him her with the words "I can't take it anymore!".

Cooper has been so different. I haven't felt that. I haven't woken B up any as I've been handling the nights pretty well. He was napping pretty decent during the day as well so I was able to occasionally get some rest.

The last week or so has completely changed. I don't believe you can "spoil" a newborn, but this one certainly acts like it. He is only happy when held and his sleeping has gone to pot. I've tried to start following some sort of schedule lately and I'm pretty sure I can actually hear him laughing at me when I try to make him do something on my timetable. He's been staying up til midnight these days even pushing it to 1 am last night only to wake up again at 4 and stay awake for two hours.

He's still not crying in the night; as long as you hold him. When you put him down? all bets are off and I'm just not to the crying it out stage yet. I may be my own worst enemy but....

My girl is being awesome. She is far and away the best big sister EVER. She's so helpful and lights up when given the opportunity to hold or feed her brother. She's had a few more tantrums than usual but even that is calming down as she gets a bit more used to him. I do feel like she gets the shaft a lot because C does take a lot of my time, but she's rolling with it. Currently she's singing along to "Part of Your World" from the Little Mermaid and giving me five seconds of peace and quiet while Cooper takes what is sure to be a ten minute nap.

Life is different with two. I feel like sometimes I can barely keep my head up as I juggle work (yes, I worked through my maternity leave which is up on Monday), Ella, Cooper, B, and the house. I'll let you guess which of those are getting the short end of the stick. I did spend a good deal of my maternity just cuddling my boy which I am so glad of, but I'm still beyond devastated that that time is over.

I don't even know what I'm saying. And now Cooper is awake again. Called it. His naps suck.

I'll leave you with this; my boys first smile caught on camera at 6 1/2 weeks. He better be glad he's so darn cute. And that I know this is just a season and we will get through this..

I'll sleep eventually.