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).

Sylvester and Kelly Brandon

(Yes, that's Sly's ring Kelly's dropping!)

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Fun times this week

Mr. Green Jeans Overalls

Socks on hands -- much funner than socks on feet:

Waiting for Mommy to finish getting ready:

It's amazing how quickly he can pull all 80 kleenexes out of the box:

Last weekend, we went to a fabulous parade in Lawrence. I believe the only rule for parade entries was that they had to be on wheels. (My friend Karen has great pictures of several of the entries, if you're interested.)

Sorting through his parade loot:

Water water everywhere

Combing his hair:

Playing in a fountain in Lawrence:

As you'll notice from the video below, we bought a camcorder. A fancy one with sound and everything! Also, just to explain what's off-camera, Kristen is sitting to Cooper's right making raspberries at him, and Parker is over there with a toy that plays music (Yankee Doodle and Hickory Dickory Dock, I believe).

Did you catch this face from the video?

Ha!

At play

Watching the cows, although Cooper's "moo" has turned into "mee" lately.

Coop's been trying to learn how to pour or dump things out of a container. So far, he's managed an over-the-shoulder pitch. It works, but can get a little dicey with golf balls raining down on his head.

I've learned to pick my "No mouth" battles. Dimes, small rocks, sharp things: No mouth! Dirt, carpet fuzz, cat hair, kleenex: Meh. It's yucky, but eat it if you want.

This made me cry:

Let me explain. First, ignore the empty Diet Coke bottle. It's one of Cooper's fancy toys. Second, the aluminum can lid isn't sharp. We used one of those magic can openers that doesn't leave any sharp edges.

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Anyway, there's a sticker of a dump truck on the back of the can lid. The other day, he picked that one up (out of the 25 different pictures) and rolled it across the floor making a car engine sound. Where do they learn these things?! Seriously, most of the time I am just in awe of Cooper.

Mother's Day at the Nelson

We spent Sunday afternoon at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. It has a very nice grassy sculpture park area where we crawled around and ate grass and played with sticks.

And we strolled around inside admiring the contemporary art:

In case you're wondering what Cooper's shirt says, it's in honor of Patrick Swayze's famous Dirty Dancing line:

I love it!