Things to do in hotels

Play with the mini-fridge:

Spend two hours in the basement (the real basement with boxes of paperwork, old mop buckets, and spare plumbing parts) waiting for a tornado to pass.

Open:

Shut:

Sleep:

Alan always says he wants to put masking tape around Cooper when he's sleeping so it looks like a chalk outline. I vetoed the idea. But if he ever was going to do it, this is perfect pose:

More hotel swimming

Our version of water basketball:

With Daddy and Grandma Carol:

First swimming escapades

Things started off poorly when Cooper realized that I had accidentally purchased pink Little Mermaid swim diapers instead of blue Elmo ones.

He recovered and seemed to enjoy the Denver hotel swimming pools.

I'm not precisely sure what this face means, but I love it!

Things we liked on our trip to Denver

Big fish in the aquarium in a mall along the way:

Cozy napping seat:

Roadside parks:

Flowers in the Denver Botanic Gardens

And here's a video of a little game we like to call "Oh, Cooper!"

Now might be a good time to talk about why we named him something that rhymes with Pooper. Or super-duper paratrooper party-pooper pooper scooper. Oh, well. Could be worse.

Guess who came for a visit?!

Sweet Baby J and his brother Toddler J came over to play last Friday!!

(Here are BabyJ's first blog pictures, and here are the last ones we took before he went to live with his family.)

BabyJ is now 4 months old, and check out his cute smile:

ToddlerJ is 2 1/2 years old. He liked reading with Alan and Cooper:

Naptime:

I'm not sure why he looks so terrified:

ToddlerJ and Cooper playing with the barn. And yes, they're both holding cellphones, which proved to be way more exciting than plastic cows and horses.

P.S. Cooper says Happy Father's Day!

Blocks

Alan and I like to play with Cooper's blocks.

Cooper doesn't particularly seem to care:

But we can usually talk him into knocking down whatever we've built:

And sometimes we scream "Noooo!" like a village full of tiny people begging the giant not to destroy their home. And then he mimics us in a way that sounds like he's mocking the people of the town he's about to crush. It could get him into serious trouble in school as he knocks over someone's creation with a fake, high-pitched, whiny "Noooo!"

Cooper likes...

(He's putting on his own bib. Very helpful.)

Blogging Backlog

I have probably 40+ pictures in my "Put on the Blog" folder, especially after our trip to Denver and our swimming pool escapades. But all that is going to have to wait. Check this out:

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Cooper knows the word "bottle," and it's not because he drinks out of one. It's because I do.

And he knows what to do with a coffee cup too:

In another effort to be like us, Cooper has finally (finally!) started bringing in income for the family. When we were at the art museum on Mother's Day, the museum photographer saw us playing in the grass and he stopped to take a few pictures of Cooper. And then he gave us each a certificate for $1 that we could redeem at the information counter in the museum.

The pictures turned out cute, and Cooper earned $3!

(I think I'm going to frame one of the dollars!)

There's a MasterCard commercial in here somewhere...

A new wardrobe every three months: $300

16 months of diapers: $IDon'tEvenWantToCalculateIt

Enough Cheerios to keep you occupied at any given time: $47.50
Being so cute that the museum photographer takes your picture: Priceless (which I guess in this situation is roughly equal to $3).