Cooper's 1st Birthday!

Cooper turned 1 yesterday!

I still can't believe it's been a whole year already

*sigh* I could go on and on about how it feels like just yesterday when we were bringing him home from the hospital, but I'm sure any mom out there feels the same way

So I'll just share a few pictures of his John Deere party we had for him out at the farm

His invitations

Cooper's birthday cake Grandma Barb made

Centrepiece for the table

The Mason jars I painted to drink out of

Birthday banner

The birthday boy's chair

The food table

Homemade napkin rings. Have I ever mentioned how much I love my Cricut?

Cooper's smash cake

Daddy helping him open presents

Looking like such a big boy in his new camping chair

Loving his new rocking horse!

This is how Cooper started out eating his cake.....

And this is how he ended up!

It was a long night and somehow I never ended up getting a family picture!

So here's our very first family picture instead.

It's hard to believe he used to be this small! 

A big Thank-You to everyone that helped out for his party!

I didn't end up doing much besides the decorations...

Let's just say Grandmas are a wonderful thing!

And thank you to everyone who came out to help us celebrate Cooper's big day!

Valentine's Day

Happy (late) Valentine's Day!

We had a great Valentine's Day this year!

My boys each got me a dozen roses

Cooper got to play at Grandma and Grandpas while Matt and I went out for dinner

We went to Moxie's for dinner and brought home dessert from Firestone

It was delish!

I didn't get anything for Cooper for Valentine's Day :S

Luckily he got a giant marshmallow sucker from his grandparents

As you can see he thoroughly enjoyed it

Matt surprised me with a sewing machine the day before Valentine's!

A much better present than the Raspberry Miniwheats and gum that I got him...

I love it! I've always wanted to learn to sew!

This week I made some onesies for my friend Neechel's baby Roczen

Just don't look too close because I definitely have some improving to do

I've also started a quilt

It's a lot more work than I thought it would be

I also realized that I don't own an ironing board

No wonder Matt's Sunday shirts are always wrinkly haha

I guess I know what's going on my wish list for Mother's Day

Just to end on a cute note here's some pics of the cutest boy I know

I can't believe he's almost 1!!!

Happy Pre-Valentine's Day!

Ok one day I'll get back in the habit of regular posts

So this is going to be a major catch up

Which means tons of pictures

Lucky you!

First up on the list of course is Cooper!

He is a crawling machine!!!

I 100% regret the day I wished he was crawling

I'm amazed at how fast he moves now

And he can practically climb onto anything

The other day he crawled right across his highchair tray onto the table

Luckily he didn't fall but I've since learned to buckle him in

He loves to jabber too!

Sometimes I think he tries really hard to talk to us because he'll wait for us to ask him something before he jabbers away an answer

I about die every time he smiles cause he now has 4 teeth!

He's also started to scrunch his nose, show his teeth, and breath really fast through his nose all at the same time.

I know it's a weird combination, but unfortunately he inherited it from me of course

I was an odd child

He loves giving Mommy kisses but I'm always worried about those razor sharp teeth of his

I just know one of these days I'm going to get a quick chomp on accident

He loves his sleep!

He's been sleeping through the night for a long time except the odd night here and there when he's sick

He also loves his naps.

He still takes 2 sometimes 3 naps a day depending on when he wakes up so this Momma can't complain!

Now for the promised pictures!

In his Bruins hoodie from Grandma and Grandpa!

It's a good thing it was a Christmas present instead of for his birthday.
Already most of his 12 month clothes are too tight for him!

ORR #4

Waiting for Sunday dinner with his Grandpa and some of his uncles.
He missed his Uncle Wayne!

Trying on Grandpa Russell's birthday present with Torger

Grandpa with all his grandsons. He finally gets his house full of boys!

Cooper playing with Morgan and Tacie. He loves playing with those kids especially now that he can move around!

As for me I've been working of a few projects

I made a goal in January to make more of the things that I see on Pinterest

As many projects as I finish I still have a ton more to do but I love working on little projects!

The dresser before. In my craft room/basement hallway filled with spiders.

The dresser after! It's now sitting empty in my closet....one day I'll get around to filling it with my sweaters

The Valentine's Day craft Morgan helped me with one afternoon

Valentine's treats for Activity Days. Even though being in Primary and Activity Days it super busy I love that I get to use all my Pinterest ideas!

More treats for Activity Days

Ok this isn't really a craft but Pinterest has the best recipes!

Those are homemade Two Bite brownies.

Perfectly portioned

Best invention ever right!?!?

Oh yeah and they're topped with Strawberry Marshmallow icing and Nutella icing!

Not sure who invented Nutella icing but it was probably that 300 lb lady you just saw walking down the street cause that stuff is AMAZING!

Oh and by the way did you notice the sweet dishes those are on?

My mother in law got them for me for Christmas and I just LOVE them!

Here's a close up of our first dinner with them

Matt was so great to get dinner all set out while I was Visiting Teaching!

He even took a close up of the dishes cause he knew I'd want one. He's pretty much the greatest.

Now onto Matt

He's been super busy with work lately

But on Saturdays he's been able to go trucking for his Dad

He loves it and takes Cooper out to the farm to play with Grandma and gives me the day off which I definitely can't complain about :D

This weekend was the dirt bike races in Lethbridge

Even though Matt raced last year since he hadn't ridden since he broke his leg we decided it wasn't going to work this year

He got to go practice on the track on Thursday though and watched both Friday and Saturday

Cooper and I even went for a bit

Excuse the lazy eye. I caught him in the middle of blinking and my phone died as soon as I took this picture so this is the best we got. 

We took my Grandpa with us to watch and he loved it!

He even lasted longer than Cooper and I did!

Seeing as this is a Pre-Valentine's Day post I have to say some gushy stuff now so feel free to stop reading if that's not your thing.

I love my two Valentines so much!

I couldn't ask for a better little boy

Cooper makes me smile and laugh every single day

He's growing up so fast and I'm so proud of how much he's learning

I can't imagine what we'd do without him

It seems like life before Cooper didn't even exist!

I can't believe he's going to be 1 NEXT MONTH!!

He has the cutest little grin and such a fun personality, something I think he got from his dad

Matt is such a great dad

Cooper gets so excited everyday when his Daddy gets home from work

I love seeing those two together

I couldn't ask for a better husband

Matt's always making me laugh!

Ex. Watching the Superbowl together Matt turns to me and says "WOW they're thrower isn't doing so good!"

My reply "Yeah that's their Quarterback...."

In his defence he's not all that into football and I'd probably say something similar if we were watch Rugby but I love when those kinds of things happen

Mostly because he has the confidence to laugh at himself about it which is something I really admire in him

I love how hard of a worker he is so that I can stay at home with our sweet boy

We're so blessed to have such great family around us who are always willing to help out

And an amazing Ward family too!

We love Welling and the people in it

I know our life isn't perfect right now, but I'd say it's pretty close

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy 2013!

So I just realized it's been 2 months since I last posted! 

I'm not off to a very good start for 2013....

Here are a few pictures of what we've been up to

We got family pictures done

I love when he sticks his tongue out!

And she even made us Christmas cards!

This isn't the one we sent out so I thought I'd share it on here.

Next we had my birthday!

It was so much fun and Matt and Cooper spoiled me!

They got me a camera since my phone doesn't take the best pictures.

This is the only picture I ended up taking that day haha

And finally came Christmas!!!

Luckily we don't live too far from anyone so we got to spend a lot of time with our families this Christmas.

We did Christmas morning at our house though and it was GREAT!

Matt and Cooper on Christmas morning

Cooper's present from Santa. He can't walk with it yet but he sure loved pushing the buttons

Cooper also got his two front teeth for Christmas! 

Which probably explains the look on his face in this picture.

Then came the New Year.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures (I'm still getting used to having a camera)

We went over to my parents for fondue in the afternoon and played a little Wipeout on the X box

Even my grandparents played!

Then we went to a couple's house in Welling for that night

They had floating lanterns that we sent off at midnight

We ate a lot of food, set off a lot of fireworks, and had a great time!

I've been pretty busy so far in 2013 babysitting a few extra kids during the week

Everyday I have 3 kids at my house all under the age of 3.

It gets pretty busy having a 2 1/2, 1 1/2 and 10 month old all here at once, but I'm so grateful that I'm able to stay home with my little Cooper.

Movember

Happy Movember

Shelby sent this to me the other day

All I can say is I think Matt would be a little jealous if Cooper ends up growing that great of a stache

Cooper's Birth Story

What? Your baby is 8 months old and you're just now writing his birth story?

 Yep that's me. 

I had thoughts about it a long time ago because Matt is so good at telling the story that I wanted to record it and use that......

But every time I ask him to tell it he won't let me record it

So I'll just have to settle for writing it out here for Cooper to hear about one day

This is going to be a long post! 

So if you have no interest in hearing a birth story

Or have already heard it you're welcome to skip to the end and just look at the pictures instead

I was going to warn that it might be graphic but I'll try to steer clear of all that

I'll bet Cooper's first accident will be more graphic than this story so if you could handle that I'm sure you'll be fine.

So without further adieu I'll get started

My whole pregnancy was going great. I was almost 39 weeks along and was super excited that I didn't have any stretch marks! I had just finished telling Matt that I didn't think I would get any stretch marks at all and BAM! I got some. It really happened that quick..... They were super itchy so I tried Gold Bond. Luckily I finished working that week because it seemed like I couldn't go 5 minutes without scratching them. 

I went to my Dr.'s appointment on Friday and mentioned to the nurse how lucky I was that I didn't have stretch marks the whole time because they were so itchy! She took a look and kindly informed me that the big red welts on my stomach were indeed not stretch marks at all. Needless to say I felt a little stupid. What kind of pregnant woman doesn't know what stretch marks are? I just kind of figured they were so red from being scratched. The Dr. came in and took a look and said I had a PUPPS rash. My first reaction was: What?

Basically it's a rash that pregnant women get that spreads really quick and is incredibly itchy. My Dr. told me it wasn't very common at all and that he'd only seen one case of it before. Lucky me. I actually do consider myself incredibly lucky because I didn't get it until the last few weeks of my pregnancy and it's possible to get it right at the beginning which I don't know how some women can handle since it only goes away once the baby is born. At that point the rash was only on my stomach so I was sure I could handle it for the next three weeks. Regardless my Dr. said he would be working at the hospital in the delivery room that weekend so if it got worse to give him a call there. 

I woke up the next morning and the rash had spread to my legs and the itching was unbearable. I looked up anything and everything the internet said to try. I bought pine tar soap, slathered on lotion, and soaked in an oatmeal bath for the majority of the day. Nothing was working but I was determined to wait. Some women had to put up with that for 6 months I could surely last longer than a day. 

Sunday March 11th came around and it was now covering my arms and starting to show up on my face. My Grandma was having a family dinner at her house in Lethbridge so Matt and I went in. 

*Side Note* Matt knew I was uncomfortable so he tried to cheer me up by saying how nice the weather was and that we could drive his red truck in. In hindsight we should have just taken the car because that's where all the hospital bags were but we'll get to that in a minute.

We had a great dinner with my family but I knew I needed to give Dr. Stewart a call by the end of it. He told us to meet him at the hospital and he'd take a look at things. When we got there around 7:30 PM they hooked me up to start monitoring things and said I was actually having some pretty impressive contractions about 4 minutes apart and that I was already 2 cm dilated. I couldn't feel anything except the itching so when Dr. Stewart explained that I was close enough to my due date and the rash was spreading too quick so he wanted to induce me I agreed. Yep I caved. Matt was more hesitant but after seeing my welts again he said he was fine with it.

So they started things going and told me it was going to take a while and that I should just sleep through the night and in the morning I'd probably be going into labor. We called our parents and had my mom bring out stuff in from our car and Matt's parents came so I could have a blessing and I settled into what I thought would be a relaxing night. I started feeling some contractions but since I came in having "impressive contractions" according to them, I figured I could handle it. Boy was I wrong.

Within a couple hours things had gotten much worse. They came in and offered me some morphine so I could get some sleep but not even that gave me enough relief to get some sleep. Pretty soon I was in hard labor and I asked for an epidural. Seriously I'm a baby. They wouldn't give me one because I hand't dilated any more and I needed to be at least at a 4 to get one. A few nurses came in to monitor the baby's heartbeat. It seemed like they were taking forever! They would watch for a while then leave and someone else would come in who would watch and leave. We could tell something wasn't right and we were pretty worried when Dr. Stewart came in. He explained that the baby's heartbeat was getting stressed because my body was having a hard contraction, then a mild one, then a hard one and back and forth with no breaks in-between for the baby to rest. 

That's when he had Dr.      come in. She said she was going to take a look to see how things were progressing. Out of nowhere she said she was going to break my water and that's when things seemed unbearable. They monitored his heartbeat for another little while and since I had only progressed to a 3 in the past 10 hours they said they were going to have to do an emergency C-section. Dr. Stewart asked if I knew the procedure. I said no I hadn't read anything about it and he offered to explain to to me. I told him I'd rather just go into things without knowing because I didn't want to freak out.

Things happened so quickly after that. They started prepping me for surgery and the nurses started getting their gowns on. One nurse came in with an extra gown and asked who was going in with me. That's when I looked over to see Matt kneeling on the ground beside my bed white as a ghost. 

I've kind of left Matt out of the entire story but he was amazing the whole time! He never left me once and was so good about letting me squeeze his hand as hard as I needed him to. It was about 5:30 AM by the time they decided they needed to do a C-section so he'd been in there for 10 hours without any sleep, or anything for him to eat and drink. Combine that with how worried he was about Cooper and the fact that everything was happening so quickly and I can't blame him. 

The first thing he said to me was "Baby, I'm not doing so good."

My response "You're not doing good?!?! Will you look at me!?!" Granted I could have been a lot kinder to him but I feel like I had a decent excuse for a little freak out. 

When I told the nurse Matt was coming in with me she looked pretty skeptical but handed him the scrubs to go get changed. He ran to the bathroom and in his words "stuffed as much food down his throat as he could while he was changing". When it came to the pants Matt ran into a bit of a problem. See he's a pretty slim guy and the pants just wouldn't tighten enough for him but he knew they were about ready to take us to the OR so he just ran out anyways trying to hold up his pants. He got there just in time to grab my hand while they wheeled me to the OR, all the while still holding his pants up with the other. 

When we got to the OR I was still trying to breath through contractions while the anesthesiologist prepped me for the spinal. He asked me to arch my back so he could put the needle in. I thought I did but I'm pretty sure he asked me 3 times to arch it more. I was about ready to rip his head off. I mean come on. My belly is the size of a large watermelon and I'm having constant contractions while sitting up so you can put that giant needle in my spine and you're really asking me to arch my back even more? Don't you think I'm trying? Just stick it in!

Seriously instant relief! I'm sure I would have been more nervous for the needle if I wasn't having contractions but with the pain I was in I didn't feel a thing. I probably could have fallen asleep at that point. The Dr. asked if I could feel something and when my response was "Feel what?" they knew they were ready to start. From that point on I really had no idea what happened. No I still haven't read up on what exactly goes on with a C-section. My reasoning is if I have to have another on I'd rather not know. Ignorance is bliss.

Soon enough we were being handed our little Cooper! Now I don't want to seem like a bad mother but at this point I really did feel like one. I'd always heard about how women had this instant love for their babies the second they saw them and I didn't feel that. I felt terrible! A few weeks later we got to talking about it with a bunch of other young mothers from our ward and luckily a ton of them had similar feelings. I mean don't get me wrong I definitely love him now and couldn't imagine life without him but those feelings weren't instantaneous and I realize now that's ok! Let's just say it was a huge relief to find out I wasn't alone. Anyways back to the story.

I was brought to the recovery room where I had to wait for an hour before they took me back to my room so this portion of the story is from Matt. He went with Cooper to the NICU so the nurses could check him out, literally. Matt was just standing there staring at our sweet little boy so mesmerized by him that he forgot the trouble he'd been having earlier with his pants. Out of nowhere he hears a nurse from across the room yell "Sir, can you pull your pants up!" He was so distracted he forgot to hold his pants up and they were down to his ankles! So there he was just standing in his underwear with all these nurses looking at him wondering what to say. He figured out pretty quick how to tie them tight enough so they wouldn't fall down anymore.

We feel so blessed everything worked out with the delivery and that Cooper was so healthy. We can't imagine our lives without him.