Another cousin for Cooper!!

Vada Mae Zolman
was born yesterday, October 28:

Everyone's doing well, albeit a little tired. Carmen and Toban say she has fuzzy red hair!

Possible professions

After a visit to Dr. Chris, our family dentist:

After an afternoon watching the high school marching band competition:

(Snare drum above, bass drum below. And again with no pants.)

Washing the windows:(If he pays us an extra $5, we let him whitewash our fence, too.)

A nanny?

Either these photos mean our kid has many talents and can be any number of things. Or it means he's easily influenced by whatever he saw last. Let's try to keep him away from watching America's Most Wanted, ok?

A new kitty!

Since Mikey died back in June, we've been contemplating getting a new kitty. We finally bit the bullet when the perfect opportunity presented itself (or herself, I guess I should say!) this weekend.

This is Adelaide, but we call her Addie.

A friend rescued her on a county rode a month or so ago. We think she's about 10 weeks old.

Cooper playing string.
(Note: I realize that an ever-increasing number of my posts involve me saying something like "I don't know why Cooper's not wearing a shirt" or "I have no idea why Cooper's naked." That probably doesn't bode well, does it?)

Getting a treat:

Meeting Sydney:

The relationship between the two cats isn't exactly friendly, but it's not violent either, which I count as a success for now.

(Also note the Australian-cities name theme we've got going -- Sydney and Adelaide! At least we didn't choose Perth!)

A new fun kitty toy:

Cooper's attempt to fit into the cat carrier:

Fairs and festivals

Coop and I joined Kristen and Parker for a couple of chilly hours at the Renaissance Festival.

Last year, we tried to ride the elephant, but cried giant tears before we ever got moving. This year, we loved it!

Parker rode a camel:

Playing hide and seek:

The following weekend, we went to the Maple Leaf Festival. Also chilly.

Although the blanket was keeping the boys warm, it was primarily placed there to stop them from shoving and kicking each other.


Ready for the parade:

Violin virtuoso

We picked up this little guitar/violin at a garage sale for $3. Mostly Coop has used it as a guitar (you can lengthen the neck to make it a guitar), and it plays ABC from the Jackson 5, which is kind of fun.

But you can also shorten the neck, get out the little purple bow, and play violin. It took a while to figure out the position:

But he can finally hold it in place by himself:

And here's a duet he and Daddy played. (I don't know, by the way, why Cooper's not wearing any clothes. We built a fire in our fireplace this morning, and maybe he was not used to the warmth, so he had to strip down? I'm not entirely sure...)

Sleeping and playing

I'm not sure precisely which synapses were firing in Cooper's head, but he decided he needed to grab Alan's bathroom towel and go lay down in the kitty bed for a while.

How adorable is this:

Despite having a Big Boy Bed, Cooper's been sleeping on the floor lately. With his crocodile as a pillow. And with a giant t-shirt quilt. And with two bears, three puzzles, two cars, one plastic pig, a stack of books, and his workbench (with tools). So far, it seems to be working, though I can't imagine he's terribly comfortable on the floor.

Riding a stick horse. With no pants.

One of the Dr. Suess books we read mentions pink underpants. It just so happens that someone in this house (not Alan) owns pink underpants. Which Cooper thought was hysterical last time we folded laundry.

Trust me, kiddo. I'm dragging those pictures back at for your 16th birthday.

Just fair warning -- Cooper's getting to the point where he says the funniest things. I've started a notebook to keep track. But chances are good, many will make it to the blog.

For example, last week, we had dinner at the Chinese restaurant in town. Cooper ate like we hadn't fed him for days; it was truly impressive. And then, out of the blue, in the middle of dinner, he says "Somebody farted. Who farted?" And although I contemplated teaching him "He who smelt it, dealt it," I instead just asked if he wanted more mandarin oranges. Thankfully, he did.

(And to answer what's bound to be the first question posted in the comments, I don't think anyone farted. At least not that I noticed.)

But the following picture goes with another cute Cooper-ism: Just after finishing a frozen yogurt smoothie, Cooper said that his tummy was cold, and then he proceeded to look it at to figure out why.


This is bound to bite me in the butt some day, but here is Cooper pretending to cut my hair with fake plastic scissors.

Playing with leaves:

Reading:

Now with wheels:

The State Fair

Riding the train around the grounds

Grandpa Cecil teaching Coop how to milk a cow.

Driving in a combine:

Sunflowers:

Interactive video-watching

A video Cooper and I took of Daddy roaring:

Cooper watching the video of Daddy roaring (I'm holding the video camera and we're playing the video back on the little screen):

We love garage sales.

Mr. PotatoHead (and Mrs. PotatoHead, not pictured) and a bucket of accessories: $1.00

Boomtown + 7 cars: $1.00
Boomtown opens up from a country-scape to a city-scape (complete with highrises and a viaduct) and it comes with 7 little tiny cars to maneuver around the town. Cooper slept with it in his bed for a couple of days after we brought it home.



Cardboard construction site cut-out: $1.00

Wooden cube with beads on all sides (strategically purchased the morning of a long car trip): $1.00

Show me your guns.

New things

This little gizmo kept Cooper occupied for quite a long time.

It's a syringe (not the needle kind) that the doctor gave us for taking medicine.

Cooper figured out that it comes apart (into 5 easy-to-lose pieces), and he spent lots of time tinkering with it, putting it together, taking it back apart, losing the tiniest piece, crying until I found it, and putting it together again.

Unrelated, but also new -- a forklift came to our house!!

It was used to lift the hottub out of our deck (we passed the hottub along to someone who would use it more). And Cooper got to sit in the forklift!

With no pants on, of course.

The boy just being himself...

Cooper spent one Saturday morning taking all the clothes out of his dresser drawers. He peeked out over the gate with a pajama shirt (I think) on his head:

When I told him he needed to put everything back before he came down, I found this:

Chatting with Sydney:

Corn dogs!!! WOW! Hot dogs! On a stick!! With ketchup!!

Perfect.