It's hard to believe that a year ago I was pregnant and driving back and forth to St. Louis twice a month to keep little Baby Cooper cooking longer than her sister did. The positive side to all of those trips was getting to eat out at all of the yummy restaurants over there.
By February I was even more pregnant and more miserable. I was now making a trip to St. Louis every week. I celebrated my 30th birthday. And by the end of the month I was on bedrest at home and was dealing with blood pressure through the roof and low amniotic fluid. I was drinking tons of water and trying to keep from going into labor. For my birthday, my mom paid for a lady to come and clean my house for me. Best gift EVER!!! With me on bedrest and Jason still having to work it was much needed.
I made it to March and was pretty sure that this baby would not make it to her due date of April 8th. I was actually wishing that she wouldn't. I was ready!
By now, I was going to St. Louis twice, sometime three times, a week. It is a really long drive when you are nine months pregnant. I now know every clean restroom between here and there. I can tell you where to stop and where not to stop. I can tell you which restaurants are good and which aren't and which ones have drug deals going on behind the cash register. I had a couple short hospital stays for my blood pressure but got sent home each time with a baby still in my belly. I was beginning to think that I was going to have two daughters born on the same date. Luckily, that didn't happen. Carissa Faith Cooper was born on March 26th, four days after Maleah's fourth birthday. She weighed 6 lb. 11 oz. and was exactly 2 pounds bigger than her sister was. She was here and healthy and we were so thankful! 
We made it to April and finally had time to have Maleah's first "friend" party. We hated to send out invitations to one in March, only to have to cancel it because I was either in the hospital or in labor, so we waited until April. It was at Charley Brown Park and it was lots of fun.
Maleah had a blast. She has since been planning her next birthday party. She enjoys planning her party more than her actual party I think. We next celebrated Easter and Carissa turned a month old. She became a good little eater and a good sleeper almost right away. Thank God for that!
In May Jason's brother, Craig, and his fiancee LuAnn, got married. They make a wonderful couple and we were thrilled to welcome LuAnn into the family. Maleah was the flower girl. She did a great job at the rehearsal and a not-so-great job at the wedding. But oh well. Hopefully, her behavior won't serve as a big ol' dose of birth control to her aunt and uncle and one day she will have some cousins. June and July flew by. My brother and his friends started a bike club and I joined. By the end of the summer I was able to ride about 12 miles on my bike and started to get in shape again. In June, the girls got a swingset in the backyard. Carissa has yet to enjoy it but we made sure that Maleah understood that it is not solely hers. Thanks to Daddy, Craig, Matt, Brad, and anyone else that might've helped when putting it together.
Maleah started pre-k in August. She loves it! She was so excited on her first day.
It's hard to believe she's old enough to be going to school. She loves her teacher and has already learned lots since school started. When I ask her "what did you learn today?", she almost always says "to be quiet". Thank goodness for school! It's amazing how much work I can get gone when she's out of the house for 2 hours and 15 minutes.
September was pretty non-eventful. Carissa turned 6 months old. Jason and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary.
The girls and I got into our school-year routine and the month flew by. October brought the Miley Concert and Halloween. Maleah was the cutest little cowgirl and Carissa made an adorable little snowman. She was all bundled up for a cold Halloween which turned out to be pretty mild. In Illinois you never know whether to buy a warm costume or a lightweight one!
In November I started Weight Watchers in order to lose some of this baby weight I'm still carrying around. So far I've lost 15 pounds and I'm pretty proud of that. Still have more to go though. Thanksgiving was here before we knew it and we got to see all of our families and have several fun get-togethers. Carissa discovered chocolate. Maleah and I started decorating for Christmas.
December was a whirlwind. Maleah had her first school Christmas program and Carissa turned 9 months old. She started to "creep" around on her belly but wasn't techically crawling. I went to Nashville on a 2 night shopping trip with my friends and had a blast. I met Gretchen Wilson and Cowboy Troy while I was there. Pretty exciting! Soon Christmas was here and gone. We celebrated with family and the girls got lots and lots of presents. We all did, actually.
So now it's the first week of January. Maleah's Christmas break is drawing to a close and she couldn't be more happy about it. The break has about killed her. She asks me every day if she has school that day. She can't wait to go back on Tuesday.
We celebrated New Year's Eve at Tim and RaeAnn's for a little bit and then ended up at our friends' house. We had a lot of fun celebrating with the DuQuaine's and the Kopacz's. Maleah actually made it to midnight for the second year in a row. Towards the end of the evening I started to get a sore throat. By the next morning I had laryngitis and have spent most of the last few days talking in a whisper, feeling good, but no voice.
On Friday night, Nikki and I took Maleah, Sophia, Madison, and Chloey skating in Fairfield. We got there at about seven o'clock and didn't leave until 11 o'clock. It was so much fun! I hadn't skated since I was in junior high but by the end of the evening I was doing pretty good.
Luckily, I never did fall but I was a little timid at first. We all can't wait to go back. They not only have skating but they also have games where you win tickets and then buy prizes with those tickets (kind of like Chuck E. Cheese's), glow-in-the-dark mini golf, and a big indoor slide/climbing thingie. The kids loved it! It was definitely worth the drive to Fairfield. Maleah desperately wanted this pink and brown stuffed butterfly in the prize counter. She needed 125 tickets to get it. She had 25 tickets. I had 4 more quarters in my pocket and I said that I would try to win her some more tickets. I spent 75 cents and hit the jackpot on the spinning light game. It spit out 300 tickets at us. We drew a crowd and were the envy of all of the kids. In their eyes, we had just won the lottery.
So Maleah got her butterfly and the other girls all got to pick out a stuffed animal too. And we still had tickets left! So needless to say, we came home with quite a bit of junk and less money than we started out with but we had a great time!
In other news, Carissa is OFFICIALLY crawling now. She has it figured out and is all over the place much faster now. You can just tell that she is so proud of herself! She also has a new tooth on top. I think I forgot to mention that last week. She has a couple that are on the verge of popping through but still haven't yet. She has had a cold but it is getting better. Poor baby! It's the first time that she's ever been sick for longer than a day.
2009 was a great year for us and I hope 2010 will be great for us and for you too. Here's to 2010!!!
Sorry if this was the longest blog ever. : )
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