Nelson Family: 2014

I have been feeling the impression lately that I need to be writing down more of the nitty gritty details of each of the personalities of my kids at this phase in their lives. So, I decided to start with the one who I will have the most to say about.....which is Cooper of course.

Bless his little heart. What can I say except that he is NUTS. Totally and completely. And because of this, he also tends to be the most entertaining. He could run circles around any one of us. And he does. Just yesterday I spent my grocery shopping time running after the little squirt. When I got home, I put him in time out and asked him, "Now, why are you in time out?" He is a man of few words (if any), so usually he will "show" me what he did wrong.

This time, he pretended to be running by pumping his arms at his side and breathing heavily. Then he pointed at me and said, "Mommy. huh."

To which I replied, "that's exactly right Cooper. Because you were running around like a crazy person."

Despite his physical craziness, he is actually emotionally very even keel. He rarely cries, even when he biffs it on his bike going 100mph down the cement hill on our way to the park. He is very tender with Lynlee. In fact, he adores her. He wants to spend every waking moment of the day with her. He looks up to her and tries to do everything she does. Lynlee can't do her homework, play the piano or build legos without cooper literally on her lap destroying anything and everything within arms reach.

Jason and I have decided if he were thrown out in the wild "survivor" style, he would be just fine.
We would probably find him years later, eating the heads of rattlesnakes and building shelters with their snake skin. We have seriously considered this option.

We saw a huge spider in our yard the other day. We are talking tarantula size. I killed it with the scorpion spray, and left the carcass on the porch for Jason to check out when he got home. When I checked on the carcass an hour or so later it was gone. Different people have different opinions on what happened to the spider. Some say he was only stunned by the spray and just crawled away. Others say the carcass was eaten by a bird. My hypothesis is that Cooper bit its head off because it was taking up prime real estate on the porch where he wanted to drive his cars around. I guess we'll never know.

Who is scarier?

He is the King of Inconvenience. He's got it down to a science. If he were to kick a soccer ball, for example, he would line it up just perfectly so as to hit Jason where it counts. Whether the ball does the trick or his foot, its not going to work out in Jason's favor. I think the only thing he has ever done that was "convenient" happened the other day when he walked outside, threw up, then came back in as if nothing had happened. But I digress, here's a great example of his "inconvenience" that happened just a few days ago:

He does this thing where he puts any and all metal objects he can find into the pockets of his pants. Coins, screws, really important keys....etc. Well, naturally we couldn't find our mail key. I knew it had to be in one of his pockets or the laundry. I looked and looked and looked. Finally I told Jason that if I didn't find it that day, I would go get our mailbox re-keyed.....but we both knew the day we payed the $50 bucks to get it done, is the day cooper would nonchalantly hand over the key. and say in his own way, "here mom. sorry for the inconvenience. hehe." So of course, that's exactly what happened. Although, he didn't hand us the key like I thought he would. I found it. Here:

Wedged underneath the lint filter in the dryer. A very sly trick considering I had checked the lint filter, but I hadn't checked underneath the lint filter.

He is still getting into everything. Still destroying everything. No lipstick, marker, lego set, milk carton, cabinet or wall is safe. He will seek out and destroy. In whatever way is most inconvenient for the victim. Here is a picture of my newest lipstick put to use, Cooper style:

I took this picture because I was hoping to get a picture of Cooper that wasn't blurry:

Actually, why I really took this picture was because I know someday I will look back on this picture and think, I wish I had taken the time to "enjoy" these moments more. These kids don't stay little for very long. And as hard as it is, these are good times. I'm sure years down the road, I will look back and wish I could turn back the hands of time to experience these moments all over again.

......................but give me 10 years or so.