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.

Headshots

"Here Mama. Take a picture of the bulldozer."

Winking

The comedian

Uncle Toban does stand-up comedy. Looks like Cooper may be following his footsteps.

Here, he plays the straight man, using physical humor and a dead pan delivery to get a laugh.

And here, the more traditional joke rendition:

(I promise, if he does become a comedian, I won't be a stage mom who stands in the back to make sure everyone's laughing at her shining star. But since it's sometimes hard to understand a toddler unless you are proficient in 2-year-old speak, let me clarify that the punch line is (supposed to be) "Don't cry. It's only a joke!")

Mascots

At Baker's "welcome back" picnic, Cooper followed Wowzer around the entire time:

Mini-Vacation, Part III (and final)

We spent one morning at Cabela's. Cooper loved anything that looked like Grandma Joan's gator.


Looking at the taxidermied animals. (Frankly, we should have just come here instead of the zoo. We saw about 30 times more animals here, and to be honest, they moved around about as much as the ones at the zoo did.)

Trying out a tent:

We went to The Legend's shopping area and spent probably 30 minutes running circles around this big fountain.

And we ate lunch at the T-Rex Cafe, a dinosaur themed restaurant that charged exhorbitant prices for cutesy named things like Layer of the Earth Lasagna and Chicken Ceasarsaurus Salad.

Cooper had these cute little mini hot dogs. Which I'm sure were really called Paleozoic Bones on Buns or something.

Saying hi to one of the big dinosaurs.

I was actually quite impressed that he wasn't more hestitant and scared. It was fairly loud. And the giant dinosaurs were all moving (their heads and arms, not like wandering around the restaurant). But he seemed to enjoy it.

Not enough to justify spending that kind of money for lunch on any regular basis. But it was fun as a special end-of-vacation treat!