Why The Apartment Is Never Clean

Today I asked the question- WHY IS THE APARTMENT NEVER CLEAN??? So I paid attention to what was happening around me as I was busy cleaning. Here's what I noticed:

• Coop throwing all the folded laundry that is on the couch on the floor with glee.
• Bear tossing out little toy cubicles and joyfully clapping as the toys scatter across the living room floor.
• Coop taking used spoons out of the dishwasher and putting them away in the clean utensil drawer.
• Bear taking our Nalgene bottle straws out of the dishwasher and breaking them in half.
• Cooper taking all of our shoes out of the closet and hiding them.
• Bear opening the pots and pans cabinet and after beating on them for a while leaving them all around the apartment.
• Coop taking play-doh and strewing it around the apartment. Little pieces of it are now just a part of the carpet.
• Bear finding a contraband piece of chalk and marking up the fridge and deep freezer. Luckily I got to him before he found the walls.
• BOTH: bringing out every single train from their room and leaving them ALL OVER the apartment.

I can assure you I do try and keep and the apartment clean but they are conspiring against me I just know it!!

A Few Milestones

Last month I had one of those moments where I realized the boys are growing up again. I wrote down all the things they were doing to show me what big boys they are becoming.

• Bear is now going down the stairs by himself at the gym. We had that moment where he snatched his hand out of mine with that look of, "I can do it myself!" And he did!
• Bear has now started the gibberish talk. You hear a car, train, mama, dada or an oh oh but the rest just comes flying out of his mouth.
• It took us a month (and a box of ear plugs) but Bear is now night-weaned. We've had 2 nights of full sleep. You do realize that is the first time in three years I've slept the night through?!? This is huge news.
• Coop is now trying to give up his afternoon naps. He goes one day and then the next two we have to recover. But he really wants to give them up.
• Coop has become a parrot. He has learned, "Oh Crap and Oh Shoot!"
• Coop's new game is to say, "Count with me 1, 3, 4, 5, 6....." He will go up to 14 and then he just starts saying whatever number he feels like. He almost always will not say the #2. Not really sure why.
• Coop ate his first salad last month. Unfortunately I got excited and wrote it down but that was also his last salad. Couldn't repeat that little miracle but we at least had one time.

They are also now starting to play together. It's mostly teasing and stealing the other's train and running away but they will hug each other quite often and pat each others heads with such affection. I will never understand why it is we have 50 little trains but they will scream and holler over just one of them. Baffles me!

Bi-lingual

Cooper just yelled at Jim, "Come on Daddy!! Vamanose!"

I'm sorry but how cute is that!?! He also announces whenever he is going up or down anything. Up the stairs he says, "Arriba." Down a hill he is yelling, "Abajo!"for each step. No clue if I'm spelling it right, but I'm wondering if I should get something to teach him some real Spanish?

Cumberland Cove Playground Adventure

This little playground adventure was more about the leaves. Cooper still will bring me little handfuls of leaves to throw over his head.

Lake Lynn Playground Adventure