Quarantine with Cooper

I wanted to take a picture to document the first time I was wearing normal jeans again. They were always way to big for me.... but it counts right? Lol I was really happy that weight was coming off on its own at first but now it’s been staying the same lately. So I still have 15 pounds to get back to my normal. I’m able to exercise in a few days but with it being so crazy hot and gyms are closed because of the virus, I will have to work out at home. I am not notorious for being motivated at home and we don’t have any equipment, but what choice do I have? I still feel ugly fat and gross, but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel at least. Dallin tells me I’m beautiful every day and “be nice to yourself.” I am so lucky I have him ❤️ He Is so patient he never complained but just recently said something about how glad he is that the pregnant part is over because I don’t snore anymore and my snoring was so bad before he said it would wake him up. We are both so glad that part is over. It was so much anxiety and grossness and fear and just being weirded out all the time that there was something living and growing in there. Now it’s awesome because we get to enjoy him and not worry anymore! I just can’t wait to look like myself again after Gaining 45 pounds before. I don’t have any clothes that fit... lol good thing we can’t go out anyway!

I haven’t been emotional or crazy or anything. I have had about 3 times where I get overwhelmed and freak out a little bit, but no where near the weird hormonal/depression stories I’ve heard some people get. I was feeling a little guilty that I didn’t feel this immediate connection to him like most people do. But I think it’s just my personality that I had to get to know him first? It sounds weird to say that about a newborn baby I know.... or maybe it was that so much was happening in those first 2 weeks and it was such a big change that I was still just kind of surviving in shock and not really letting it sink in. I was also feeling guilty that I don’t like all of it. But Dallin and Shelly both were really supportive and sweet about it and reminded me that no one likes every single part of every job. Like there is a down side to teaching and parts about dallins job he doesn’t like and there isn’t going to be anything that is 100% perfect all the time so it’s okay to admit that you’re not loving it when he is screaming or pooping all over you hahaha so I was glad we talked because they talked some sense into me. Dallin is still way better at most things than me. But that doesn’t bother me. I think he would be an awesome stay at home dad. But I’m getting the hang of most things by now, and Coop is a pretty easy going guy so he is okay with the struggle of me trying to get him into a onesie. Lol

I love all of his facial expressions and pet of the reason I think we’re able to feel more connected to him now is that he is showing a little bit more of a personality. I think my favorite thing that he does is sneeze. It’s the funniest cutest thing. And it’s also so funny and so him when he raises his eyebrows with his eyes still closed. It’s the best. 

Shayle and Ryan did tie dye on a few onesies with their kids and sent them to us. I thought they turned out so cute!

We always have a hard time resisting pictures at bath times cuz he is so cute in his towel lol

Family photo shoot in the back yard

He has baby acne now. One morning he peed up his own nose and in his own eyes and ear while I was changing him. Then he sneezed and blew a huge green booger into dallins hand. Then he threw up all over dallin, and finished it off with pooping on my lap and in my hand. I stood up and it felt different and I said “dallin be honest with me... is that poop in my hand?” And he started laughing and said “I’m sorry I would love to say it isn’t but that is absolutely feces and you’re covered in it.”  haha
He got me. Coop 1 Me 0
He has now pooped and peed on everyone he has met except my dad. My dad didn’t really give himself a chance though because he only changed one diaper and he put it on backwards and ended up covered in the butt cream stuff lol

His nails were so sharp he scratched the crap out of me when he was in the carrier. 

When dallin sent this pic to his family they said he looks like him, and when I sent it to my friends they said he looks like me.

We go for walks or drives to stay sane and try and get out of the house. On one of our walks we ran into Melissa and it was nice to talk to her and get at least some social contact besides face time lol

This is Shelly dancing with Cooper in my bedroom. He is clearly a future ballroom dancer lol

Dallin has been a champion dad. Seriously I never could have anticipated this. He could be upstairs gaming and hear him cry and drop it and come running down even if I’m right there. Lol He is constantly reading on development, sleep schedules, feeding, ways to play, he wants to always be holding him, etc. He is better at all of this than me in every single aspect. He has been heavily involved in everything so I would say we are actually splitting it 50-50 which was my hope all along. And I think that’s a really hard thing to accomplish. I was always worried about having kids because so many people say all the work falls on the mom, and I didn’t want to have a life like that.
Shelly and I make fun of him because he is already becoming “dad-like” in that he has the same sayings that he will say over and over again. If I had a dollar for every time he says to him “ we talked about this” I would be rich!

His lips 👄

He loves music!

He could be super fussy and u put him on his stomach with some music and he calms right down. Doesn’t matter the genre he likes it all! 

I was really happy when I was able to do this with him too because dallin always lays with him like this and for some reason it never worked with me and he would just cry. 

Me and the boys :) Jake is using my phone

Shelly’s friend made us this cow blanket and it’s mini sized for a lil person like coop

Look how big his feet were when he was born!

He is officially on the birthday board!

He got his first piece of mail!

 Happy Easter!
We had a nice dinner Shelly made for us and we played games. Our Easter present was cooper so it was a good one. We FaceTimed with family and took some cute pics of the lil guy.

 Grampa "Pook" & Baby Coop

He was on pins and needles waiting the 2 weeks alone to make sure he was clear from the virus and then he came up as soon as he could. It drove him crazy to wait because he couldn’t wait to come meet him and be with him. Which I thought was funny because he doesn’t typically strike people as a baby person lol

My dad has always been really into reading to kids. He believes you’re never too young or old to read every single night. So he read to him while he was here- although he changes the books to be a little funnier. 

 

 I miss getting my nails done!

That’s what I miss most from this quarantine. That and seeing my friends and going out and doing things. We just having painting our own nails to entertain us

Coop's balding

Like father like son.... he got dallins hair line I guess lol we scrubbed his head in the bath and all the hair came off except the back so now he is sporting a mullet.

We put a silk pillow case on his mattress thing to hopefully stop the hair loss lol there was a lot of hair we found that was falling out on his regular sheet. It’s coming back in on the top and it looks like he is going to have dark hair.

This is him milk drunk and bald hahaha

 Playing Cards

Playing card games is the other thing we’ve resorted to since we can’t leave. We play at least 2 a day lol

I always win when I play Shelly I don’t know why!

Coop just lays by us. You can kinda see my tummy brace it helps a lot and I love it

This kid!

Every single time he poops you can hear it from across the house. There is so much pressure behind those craps that I kid you not- he shot it 9 feet! I am not exaggerating. Poor Dallin around 3 am was changing his diaper and when he was diaper free he shot that poop 9 feet. He did his best to clean it up but he couldn't see that well since it was night time and the next morning shelly measured and it seriously traveled 9 feet. I am kind of impressed/proud! 

This is dallin doing the blue steel pose from zoolander. He’s a dad model

Dallin made fun fetti cake to celebrate Coopers monthaversary

 Our cute J dogs

They are so sweet to the little man. Josie will sit by him when I leave the room lol like she is babysitting. I have been worried about Josie lately because she is more lethargic and still does the coughing thing.

Jake brought in a dead baby bird and was just staring at it between his paw like “I’ve wanted a bird my whole life and now that I finally got one it won’t play with me.” Lol it was gross. Dallin didn’t get a picture. He has been sleeping in the powder room lately which is weird for him. I think he doesn’t like getting woken up in the night cuz of the kid 😂

This is Dallin trying to clean up Jake after he was outside digging and chasing lizards for an entire day. He was covered in dirt sticks and leaves

True love. It really is just like the book “a puppy who wanted a boy” because jakey protects him and kisses him and lays by him. He comes over and sniffs when he cries. He can’t wait for coop to be able to play with him. Lol look at coopers weird hair line 😂

This was Shelly reading Josie and cooper a book lol Josie just always wants to be involved in anything we’re doing because she is still jealous and needy for attention. She still tries to push your hand off of coop and onto her lol but cooper doesn’t mind the dogs at all. They have never made him cry even when they’re running around or suddenly bark really loud. My dad surprised us and sent those books 📚 😀

Josie wanting attention

Josie had a birthday!! She is officially 7 years old now. I can’t believe it. In some ways it seems like ages ago when we got her and in some ways it feels like just yesterday. I felt so bad we couldn’t take her to Petsmart because of the virus and trying to stay home. We still tried to make her day great by giving her and Jake a birthday feast and we cuddled and petted her all day. We spoiled her with treats and kisses so she didn’t have to be jealous of cooper for a day, and we played fetch with her favorite toy.

 RIP to Katherine crane. 

I couldn’t believe it but a girl I knew in high school that I played lacrosse with was shot in the middle of the night in her house. They caught the guy which I am happy about but the saddest thing is that he broke in and shot both her and her husband leaving their young 3 kids with no parents. The youngest is only 6 months. She was so nice and fun I can’t think of any reason why anyone would ever do this. I cried reading about it because it is crazy thinking about how you never know your life could just stop just like that in the blink of an eye. If you can donate it would help them they deserve all the help because she was such a good person and what that guy did was despicable. https://www.gofundme.com/f/tony-amp-katherine-butterfield-family-memorial-fund?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&fbclid=IwAR0QoXxtmW3r8kCc8ULnoTEHB5t5M6nZVGdubPAogxhUgW69PyosjA8auGg

It’s so sad that so many from my high school have already died. People that I knew and are my same age. Kara my other friend died because of cancer and Geremy. I think at the reunion there were like 15 pictures on the memorial table and we have only been graduated 10 years. It’s things like that that really put life in perspective for you. I hope I don’t take anything for granted because it could end at any second. 

 one month doc appt

At his one month check up Shelly went with but they would only let one person inside and you have to call when you get there and they walk u in so that they only have one at a time and you’re not waiting in the waiting room with other people. Then on top of that you have to wear a mask the whole time. It’s so crazy and I wish things would get back to normal. Anyway he was eighty something percentile in weight and fifty or sixty something percentile in height. I don’t remember. But he got a shot and the nurse said he was cute and everything is healthy! Of course right when we pulled into the parking lot he promptly filled his diaper and outfit with poop. And then all the diapers I had with me were broken on the side. Lol 

He did really good though he didn’t cry at all!

 Scorpion in the sink

We need pest control. It’s a little guy on the black part

More pictures from the photo shoot in the back yard. I am finding that we have to do little things like this to feel productive and not lose our minds since we can’t leave. It was a lot easier when Shelly and my dad we’re here because we felt occupied because we had company and we would go on walks, cook, do a house project, organize something, play a game, clean, etc. But after they left I found out the hard way that I need to avoid the tv and make lists for myself. If I spend all day in front of the tv and only watch tv and take care of coop all day I start to feel so stir crazy and down I can’t even describe it. This is certainly going to make us more grateful for the little things we used to take for granted like seeing our friends and going to sporting events or restaurants.

 

This one is my favorite because we caught him with a smile!

Shelly is literally an angel. She stayed for 5 weeks doing the night shift, cleaning, cooking every meal, holding and feeding him, changing his diapers, painting baseboards, she cleaned out the garage,    Did laundry, etc. I felt sooooo lucky and grateful and I felt kinda bad too because here we are just going to the bathroom right after she scrubbed the toilets lol and she would tell us to go take a nap and she takes care of cooper. She was so hard working, supportive, never judge mental, helpful, and so so sweet to baby cooper. She was sooo obsessed with him haha
My dad was also there for a week too and he fixed our dryer and helped us clean out the garage. They both did so much to help with cooper idk what we would have done without them. It would have been very very stressful and we had it so good we didn’t have to feel the stress or worry. I am forever indebted!
She cried when she had to leave and it was hard for us too. We have missed her the last week or so but it has also been good to feel proud of ourselves that we’re doing it all on our own. It hits us in tiny spurts every once in a while something will happen and we go “holy cow we’re parents- and that’s our kid!” Haha

Because of what he is wearing it looks like he is camouflaged on the blanket Shelly made him!

This is our current set up. I’m so glad that we figured out a good way, since we have him outside our bedroom we can not wake up the other person and take shifts so that we both get enough sleep. The snoo has been the best purchase that we’ve made so far. It works so well. They’re have been multiple times that he has been fussy in the bassinet and it automatically turns up the setting and calms him right down so we don’t even have to get up. Or he will be a tiny bit fussy but when we put him in that it really calms him down. So even though it’s kind of a lot of money it’s totally worth it. It’s so funny how Hardly anything has ended up like I thought it would or like other people say it is. I have decided to stop listening to Pinterest because everything I read on there what you should do to make things easier is not what ended up working for me. I tried the schedules, set ups, bought the must have products, listened to what ppl had to say about what isn’t necessary and what is, and I think it’s all a bunch of baloney because everyone’s situation is different. We ended up buying a wipe warmer even though some people say it’s a stupid waste of money and we actually love it. I read Pinterest posts on the best way to store and make bottles and figured out my own way that’s way easier for me after trying that. Also I don’t like nursing pillows and so many people say it’s a “must have”. And most people have the kid set up in their room and that didn’t work for us. And I bought the number of diapers they said you’d need but he has already grown out of newborn size and now he needs size 1.

 

This is our makeshift changing table in the middle of the entry way kitchen living room area by the stairs. It’s not permanent obviously, but I’ve already figured out what we will do to make a changing station that is discreet in the future. When life goes back to normal and we can have people over it’s important to me that my house doesn’t look like kid land and it’s still clean and decorated cute. So I’m finding little places here and there to hide the stuff we use away so that it can be functional and cute. But for now this has been so incredibly convenient 

We have had our bad nights for sure. There were a few nights he was waking up every hour and half. But we have been so lucky to have help during those times and since Shelly left we have only had one night feeding basically around 2 or 3 am. From what we’ve been told he is a really easy baby.

 Going on walks

Walk pictures. Shelly and I basically have the whole neighborhood memorized. Who has what wreath, car, etc. haha

 On one of the walks he was freaking out and we did serpentine crazily back and forth with the stroller really fast and that made him calm down. I’m sure we looked really funny walking down the street like that

 He's so squishy!

We both love that he’s big. The bigger he gets the more obsessed we become because there is nothing cuter than chubby baby rolls

 First Date night

I thought it was so sweet that Dallin asked me on a date. He asked Shelly to watch the kids so that we can go out on the town! LOL there’s not much that we can go do right now with the whole world shut down, but we went and got Chili’s to go, and then went up into the mountains and ate it in the car with a beautiful view. The plan was to watch a movie in the car, but I didn’t download it right LOL so it wouldn’t work we still had a good time and it was nice to be alone. It’s little things like that that make dallin the best husband on the planet. He has gone above and beyond to make sure this kid experience has been a good one for me and any tiny thing that could be better he jumps to get it done for me. I am so incredibly lucky. We are also so grateful Shelly was so willing to babysit so we could get out.

We watched a beautiful sunset and talked. It was Perfect.

I saw this on Facebook and wanted to save it. It is parenting tips and I thought it was good.

We had our first day in the pool today for the season! We are so happy to get back to swimming again! Jake and Josie both swam with us and they were both so happy they ran around playing and digging after. We loved it too! We swam, came in and napped, and then went to kneaders for dinner it was glorious! Check out Jojo in my sunglasses lol

 We both tried to start up the tan process too. Josie is already in the water before we made it in haha but So convenient to have your own pool and be able to swim whenever you want and it doesn’t have to be a big production getting in the car and going to a public pool, and it’s more relaxing because u don’t have teenagers cannonball in right next to you. And it’s awesome that we are able to swim in April! And the water was 78°!

Just the fam hanging out. I love these guys. We go back and forth with feeling sick of this quarantine and feeling like it’s the best thing ever. There are definitely cons to it but who better spend the time with than the ones u love most? We are both feeling so lucky and so happy lately- I wish it could last forever. When the world gets back to normal and we are back to the hustle and bustle of busy life we will look back to the simplicity of these months and miss it I am sure. 

I am on a text group with all the other girls that were in our classes we used to go to. They’ve all had their babies now too and they send pictures and ask questions, get advice, etc. (There is another baby named Cooper in the group!) That’s another reason I’ve been feeling lucky. When the other girls are describing what they’re going through right now I know that I have an easy baby. It’s also really nice to talk to them because we’re all experiencing the same thing. I found this video on Pinterest and it has actually really helped us and so I sent it along to them. I thought it was really interesting that you can understand what the baby wants like right away and so you can skip the process of it escalating them screaming and trying to figure out what’s going on. So after I watched this I realized how often he says “eh”. He is a very burpy kid! He needs to burp so much! It could be hours after he’s eaten and he comes out with a burp that sounds like it came from a full-grown man! Anyway If you haven’t seen this watch it it’s super interesting!

I will try to leave u with something inspiring... I hope you’re all doing as well as we are. In these tough times when people are losing loved ones, their jobs, toilet paper, missing friends, I hope we can all remember that ”gratitude makes what we have enough.” (I am writing this to remind myself of it too because I have my days where I am a huge pessimist.) The school asked all the teachers to send in a picture with an encouraging sign to make a video to send all the kids. This was the pic I sent in because I was thinking Coop the kid is our “light” in all the darkness. (Also all the students were dying to see him) Here is a link to the video https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=885390031976644&id=145134086002246&anchor_composer=false

-syd and cooper the kid