Is Cooper really potty trained? I thought this day would never come. For the last week or so Cooper has been wearing underwear all day with zero accidents. Last night he wore underwear to bed and stayed dry all night. We seem to have gotten out of buying him the $100 Lego fire station set and talked him into a new fireman costume since he’s outgrown last year’s. It was a much cheaper potty training gift and Aunt Starla and Uncle Aaron got it for him since our Costco sold out of them. Our little boy is growing up.

Yes I know, it’s been forever! I’m now a year older….no longer the big three o, but three one. Ugh…. I really shouldn’t be complaining. I have a great family, amazing husband and two of the cutest little boys I know.

Cooper turned 3 on April 5th. We celebrated at Pappy’s Pizza for his 3rd birthday party. He chose to have a fireman theme. Right now he’s really into firemen and dinosaurs. He’s either playing with his firetruck legos, watching fireman sam, playing with his dinosaurs or watching land before time. Or….reading one of his fireman or dinosaur books. It’s pretty cute when he runs around the house saying “oh no, it’s T-Rex….Rarrrr”.

Dawson is now 8 months old and has his two bottom front teeth. He’s not as good through the teething as Cooper was. But I’m not surprised, they are complete opposites. Dawson is crawling all over the place and gets into everything. Again, complete opposite of Cooper. I love that they have completely different personalities and it’s so fun to watch them grow.

We’ve been busy working and with life in general. Enjoying all of it but time is flying by. I thought Cooper’s 1st year went by fast…….Dawson’s has gone by even faster.

Here are a couple of recent pics…..

2010 was a great year for our family. In 2010 I spent most of the year as a stay at home mom, pregnant, then a mother of two boys. Then November 29th I started my new job as a Supervisor at Navis. Having been there a month now I am loving the team, company and having a job. The boys are enjoying time at Mema and Papa’s 3 days a week.

Today we went out to Sisters because Brian, Laurie, Brady and Denae came for a visit. We spent the day hanging out with family and sledding down the driveways around Mema and Papa’s house. Our niece Denae is very outgoing and managed to pull Cooper out of his shell. He had a really good time with his older cousins and it was so cute to watch them sit around playing together. Here are a couple pictures from the day.

Yep, that’s me. Not real sure why I’ve been slacking so much on the blog, maybe because I’ve been busy with two kids, sewing and getting a new job. That’s right, I’m goin’ back to work. Although I’ll miss spending my days with my boys I’m excited to be working again. I start November 29th at Navis Technologies. My manager from Edge/AT&T is now the call center manager there so I’m really happy to be working with him again. I’m also working with three others I used to work with at Cellular One/Unicel. I think it’s going to be a new and exciting adventure. Plus the paychecks will be nice.

Dawson is now 12 weeks old. He’s super smiley and coo’ing like crazy. I just love to see his smiles and listen to him coo. At 8 weeks he was 11lbs 11oz and he’s grown quite a bit since then. Not real sure how much he weighs but I’m sure he’s around 13lbs. Definitely lighter than the 20lb bag of potatoes we bought at Costco today. We’re getting ready to hold Thanksgiving at our house this year. With a lot more space it’s fun to have family dinners at our house now.

Cooper is now 2 1/2 years old and showing us how smart he is every day. It’s amazing the things he remembers and he surprises us every day. Two nights ago Mema stopped by and he took her back into the guest bedroom to play with his toys. Shortly after he came running to me asking for sticks. I didn’t get what he was asking at first but then put it together that he was wanting the Pringles Sticks. He remembered that in May Mema had bought a box and shared them with him then. So I guess it was his turn to share his “sticks” with her.

Stay tuned for lots of pictures soon…..my camera died so I am trading it in for a new one. Just waiting for it to arrive. Crossing my fingers it’ll be here no later than Tuesday. Come on Canon….don’t you know I’m impatient?

Thought I would update everyone on how life has been since our new addition has joined our family. Dawson is now 5 1/2 weeks old (wow, how did that happen?) and finally into some 0-3 mth outfits. He is so long and skinny usually you can pull out several inches around his waist when you put anything other than newborn clothes on him. He’s up to eating 4 ounces every 3-4 hours and unfortunately we’re still working on getting rid of his thrush. Dawson has turned up being pretty opposite of Cooper. Tod and I remember Cooper being pretty easy….although this could be just because we had one kid, not two. With Cooper we didn’t experience blowouts, thrush, puking or colic and with Dawson I think we’ve experienced a little bit of all of them. We’re fortunate he’s a good sleeper and only wakes up once or twice a night to eat. He still has a pretty bad case of baby acne that has lasted almost 4 weeks now. We’re hoping it goes away within the next couple weeks. We remember Cooper getting it but not as bad or for as long. Dawson is quite a strong little bugger. He holds his head up, will stand on his legs really well when you hold him up and rolls over when you put him on his stomach.

Cooper has been a great big brother. He’s very gentle with Dawson and likes to help but not to the point where if we turned our back for a second we’d find him trying to pick him up on his own. Cooper seems to have grown so much since right before Dawson was born. He is talking a ton, loves every kind of truck you can imagine and continues to be the most loving little boy we could ask for. (Minus the fit he threw tonight for not being able to go back outside). He is now a binky free toddler. Breaking him of his bink was easier then we anticipated. We decided to take it away one day and when he asked for it when it was time for bed we just told him “nope, we don’t use a bink anymore” and he would whine for a second then let it go. He also has no desire to use Dawson’s bink either. One day Dawson’s binky went missing and I suspected Cooper may have taken it but later found it had fallen underneath Dawson’s papason chair.  Cooper has had a little bit of a rough week. He spent his first night out with Papa Chris and Grandma Guindon last weekend and the morning he was coming home he climbed up on the dining room chair to grab something off the table and fell. He must have fallen on his arm because his shoulder has been bothering him since. We took him to the doctor and had him x-rayed which thankfully there was no fracture. We assume it’s just bruised and will continue to see how he does the rest of the week. A couple days later he was playing with Bailey and they had a little head butt. Bailey won and Cooper ended up with his first bloody nose. I guess we’re going to have to get used to these little injuries….we do have 2 boys.

Tod and I are doing good getting used to life with two boys. We wouldn’t trade it for anything and feel blessed to have such a wonderful family.

He has arrived and he’s perfect! From my last update you know that I was scheduled to be induced on Monday 8/23/10 at 6am. Well, Dawson thought that was definitely a good day and decide to start the process on his own. I went to bed Sunday night excited that I was going to meet my little boy that next day. I took a Unisom at about 7:30pm thinking it would help me sleep and kick in early so I could hit the hay. Well, I was wrong. I didn’t go to bed until after 10:00 and had started feeling some contractions. I laid in bed wondering if these were more braxton hicks or the real thing. After falling asleep for 15-30 minutes at a time I finally woke up at 1:00am and thought “I better start timing these things”. So I laid in bed staring at the ceiling (which our clock projects the time onto the ceiling) and timing my contractions for the next hour. They were consistently 3-5 minutes apart for the next hour so I decided to get out of bed and do my hair and make-up. Yes, I got prettied up to head to the hospital in the middle of the night. It was better than laying in bed in pain. After an hour had gone by I called the on call doctor to let him know I had been having contractions for the last hour, 3-5 minutes apart and was scheduled to come in at 6am for an induction anyway. He let me know I was doing the best thing by going into labor on my own since they have been so busy my induction probably would have been pushed back and I would have been sent home. You can imagine how relieved I was to sit there in pain after hearing that. The doctor let me know to head on in and he’d let them know I was on my way. I then went to wake up Tod and told him it was time to go to the hospital. He replied “it’s only 2 o’clock”. I let him know I’d been up all night having contractions and we needed to go to the hospital. Tod got out of bed and headed to the bathroom to get ready. We then were all packed, ready to go and woke my mom up to have her head upstairs to our room so Cooper wasn’t left up there by himself. As we headed down Reed Mkt Rd on our way to the hospital we looked at the clock (2:45am) and realized it was the same road, same time in the middle of the night that it was when we headed to the hospital when my water broke and I was in labor with Cooper. Heading down 27th St there was road construction so we couldn’t go through the stop light on hwy 20 and had to take a nice detour out hwy 20 a ways to come back and take a different road to the hospital. Go figure! We arrived at the hospital around 3:00am and they were all ready for us. Off to room 151 we went, two doors down from the room Cooper was born in. Once the iv was in and they monitored Dawson’s heartbeat and contractions for a bit it was off to walk the halls we went. They were hoping that I would be able to labor on my own without the help of Pitocin. Tod and I did several laps around the labor and delivery ward until I couldn’t walk through my contractions any longer. My contractions were about 5 minutes apart and I was dilated to 3cm’s by the time I was back in the room and the nurses were happy with the progress I had made so into bed I went to labor the rest of the way. I was then checked about every 2 hours and went from 3 to 5cm’s before Dr. Davis arrived. She was happy to see I had beat her to the hospital and to my 6am induction. I was happy to see her so she could officially order my epidural. The anesthesiologist then arrived to give me my epidural and off to comfy comfy land I went. I was feeling good until about 7cm’s and the epidural wasn’t completely numbing all the pressure/pain anymore. We decided to stick it out since I was so close to getting to 10cm’s and were afraid if the anesthesiologist numbed me up again I’d be too numb when it was time to push. Next check I was 8cm’s and not loving all that I was feeling. The nurse had just left the room and told me I was handling the pain really well and if I couldn’t take it anymore to let her know and she’d get the anesthesiologist back in there. It wasn’t more than 5 seconds after she left the room that I felt a lot of pain and hit the nurse call button to have her come right back in. She walked in and I said “it hurts, it hurts, it hurts”. She had me turn onto my back and checked me, sure enough I was 10cm’s and it was time to push. At this time it was about 12:15pm and I started pushing. She called Dr. Davis to let her know I was 10cm’s so she could head over to my room. Once Dr. Davis walked in the room it was about 3 pushes and Dawson had arrived at 12:41pm weighing in at 7lb 8oz and 22 inches long. He came out with lots of dark hair, a good set of lungs and as perfect as can be. Immediately I could see the resemblance between his and my own baby pictures and the differences between him and his big brother Cooper. We are so blessed to have two beautiful boys and are now a happy family of four.

I had my 38 week appointment on Tuesday and am happy to report there has been some progress. I am now dilated to 2-2 1/2cm’s and Dawson has dropped….some. I have been having a rough time sleeping lately, the anticipation of Dawson’s arrival is getting the best of me….mostly around 4am. So, while venting to my doctor she offered to induce me on Monday August 23rd if he hasn’t arrived on his own by then….and I quickly took her up on her offer. So here’s to hoping Dawson arrives not too long after my induction on Monday…if not before then.

Why does it feel like now that we are so close time has stopped? I am trying my hardest to be patient but it’s not working very well. The last couple days I’ve been having quite a few braxton hicks contractions and I’m hoping they mean Dawson is getting ready to meet us. I will be quite surprised on Tuesday if there hasn’t been some progress this past week from my last appointment. Tod’s really hoping we go into labor tonight so he doesn’t have to reset an end cap at work tomorrow and will get out of his 8pm-10pm meeting on Sunday which ruins his day off.

How do you drive a pregnant woman with no patience crazy? Make her wait 40 weeks to meet her son. I am now 37 weeks and can’t wait to meet Dawson. Knowing that I am full term, the cooking is done and I can have him anytime is just about enough to drive me insane. I’m not in pain, well not in terrible pain so it’s not going to kill me to be pregnant much longer but I really would like to meet this little man. My next appointment is Tuesday and I’m hoping there have been some type of change. Last appointment I was dilated to 1cm and 0% effaced. I’m hoping he’s dropped even though it really doesn’t mean much. According to everyone I talk to and everything I read it can happen overnight. Dawson’s room is ready, his diaper bag is packed with everything he’ll need at the hospital, video baby monitor has arrived, bassinet is all set up in our room, he has plenty of clothes, blankets, diapers, burp cloths (all washed and ready to use) and everything else you can possibly think of. All that’s missing is him.

So I guess I’ll patiently await his arrival….oh who am I kidding…they’ll be no patience in this wait.

I went in for my 35 week appointment today expecting to be weighed, measured and to hear Dawson’s heartbeat only to see the nice little strep B swab sitting on the counter and the nurse to tell me “It’s an exciting day, you get your strep B test today”. I replied “really? I thought that was next week at my 36 week appointment”. She then talked to another nurse and said it was up to me, I could have it today or my appointment on Monday. It really didn’t matter to me and I thought it would be nice to see if I’m dilated, effaced or if Dawson has turned and is now head down. So we decided to go ahead and get it out of the way today.

Dr. Davis came in, did the measurements, listened to Dawson’s heartbeat and let me know I’m dilated 1cm, 0% effaced and she was going to go get the ultrasound machine because she wasn’t sure if Dawson was head down or not. I thought “sweet! I get to see Dawson again and confirm if he’s head down or breach!”.  Sure enough, he’s head down! What a relief to see he is no longer breach and turned on his own like his big brother did.
Now here’s hoping he arrives in the next couple weeks! We’re ready and his diaper bag is packed!