Team Cooper

Together we ran a marathon

On May 5th, Sarah (my sister), Gloria (aunt), Linda (mom), Erin (cousin) and I ran the Pittsburgh Marathon Relay.  Since I am the only one from Pittsburgh, we had to do a bit of explaining and coordinating to figure out how everyone was going to get to their relay exchanges.  We had dinner in the back yard to discuss.  Tim got me the giant white board we keep around for these kinds of activities and Attison was along for the ride. 

carrot face

Eating books

The changing table

This make-shift changing table is a hanging closet that we took the doors off and put on the floor.  Since the boy is getting more and more wiggly, I decided that it was time to secure the changing pad to the top of the table, lest we loose the baby over the edge with the pad that slid around with every movement.  

In Tim's magical basement of everything, I found some screws and washers to secure the base to the top:

The ingenious design of this changing pad is that it has removable sides, so the washers were hidden behind these padded sides.

We don't have a changing table cover, which is fine, I don't think we could use one now that the pad is secured to the shelves.  Instead we use this rag quit I made in college, my first attempt at making a quilt on my own. I try to keep a waterproof cover on top of the quilt in case it gets dirty.  Since the quit is frayed to begin with (as part of the design), in addition to being crafted by an amateur that was maybe focused too much on watching the OC than her sewing machine, I'm afraid to wash it to often.

Attison likes to reach for the leaves on the trees sometimes while getting his diaper changed.

Anyone need a pest inspector?

This isn't about Attison.  It's about Tim.  And his fascination with wood destroying insects.

I'll let him tell the story himself - I happened to be transcribing already when he burst into the kitchen to tell us of his adventures, so I just kept typing.  He was stomping and running excitedly around the house, which made us all wonder what was going on.

"I saw these today on an inspection and I put them in this pill bottle. I thought they might be dead because I crammed them in there with this moist mulch.  But they are real small and I guess there was enough oxygen in there for them to live all day.  So I brought them home and dumped them onto the graph paper on my desk and they were still alive!  They started to crawl around and I thought..."
"I"m not going to be able to identify these bitches?" Katy interrupted.
"Yeah! I'm not going to be able to identify those bitches, not that they might infest my house."
"So that is when you ran downstairs to get a jar?" said Christine.
"Yeah!  I had to dump out all of my allergy medicine into my cup holder, but damn it, I needed to bring these home."

"I was going to put flax in that jar, but you can go ahead and recycle it now." - Christine

After Tim mentioned he "thinks he only lost 3."
"Well you only need 4 termites to create a colony, so good thing you only lost 3." - Katy

When Tim gets really excited about things, he gets hilarious.  Tim is generally very funny and witty, but when he is excited, he is HILARIOUS.  Here are some other things Tim said:

Termites are very rare to find live.

I had doubts about whether or not these were winged termites or winged ants, but they are definitely termites.

How many antennae do they have?  Two?  Yeah, two!  And they are straight!  Ants have crooked antennae, termites have straight ones.

I think I have got all of the information I need to have about these.

some of the silly ones

Happy 1/2 birthday Attison!

Laughing out of focus

I made this video and then "made" an awesome video between this one and the one I posted yesterday.  But that middle time it wasn't actually recording.

Dang.

So this video is out of focus, but you can hear him just shouting with joy.  One time he laughed so hard he stopped breathing for a second.  I was sure he was going to slap his knee and say "did you guys just SEE HER???"  He thinks Jenny the dog is the most hilarious thing that ever happened.

6 months old!

Attison celebrates being 6 months with a ride on the swing!

Here he is watching the dogs play in the park, which he likes doing more than actually swinging.

Squealing with delight

This is a 7 minute video, which is long.  But you have to watch the first 45 seconds.

Other things we grew out of...

After we found Attison completely out of the safety straps (that we had bucked him into!) and standing up in the Rock n Play, we decided it was time to say goodbye to this amazing, life saving, baby rocker.  

It has been a great ride Rock n Play. Thanks for being my 2nd set of arms, the only place the baby would nap, our travel crib, etc. for these 6 months.  

Here is Attison when he was so very small in the same Rock n Play:http://attisonjames.blogspot.com/2012/12/mr-baby-smiles.html

Too big for the swing

After this day of swinging, we decided to go dig out the safety straps that come with this swing, which I had previously thought we weren't going to need.  

Back in December, I never imagined that this kid would be able to wiggle his way out of a swing, while it was swinging.
http://attisonjames.blogspot.com/2012/12/eyes-part-2.html

Moving and grooving

Sorry we've been slacking on the blog for awhile.  To make up for missing posts, I've gone back in time and added posts for the month of May!  Keep scrolling down to see three weeks of Attison pictures!

While I was working in his bedroom, Attison started here: 

And wiggled to here:

Moved back to the same starting position, I next turned around to see him here: 

We're not moving forward yet, but trying really really hard!!!