Snow Day, Snow Day, SNOW DAY!!!

Well, it's another snow day here at the Cooper's.  It was a good day for it because Maleah has a cold and this gives her another day to feel better before she goes back to school.  She hasn't missed any school this year and she really wants to get a perfect attendance award at school at the end of the year.  I know what you're thinking.  "This is Beth's child??"  She gets it from her Dad is all I can say.

Carissa is still doing great with going to the potty.  She has even went at the Mexican restaurant, Grandma's office, church, and several other places.  She is so awesome!  She's even waking up in the morning dry.  I can tell she is really proud of herself too.  Her pants are all a little baggy around the waist now.  Her little butt can't hardly hold them up without a diaper on. 

So on Thursday of last week I started tearing off the wallpaper in our kitchen, laundry room, and the little room by our back door.  I worked on it late that night and started again early on Friday.  I finished on Saturday.  It took me a total of 23 hours of work to get all of that wallpaper off.  My Mom and Jason both helped me out.  It was a really big job!  So then we started painting.  And that was another really big job.  But now my kitchen looks a lot better and I am happy.  The problem is that I worked so hard for so many days straight that now I am completely lacking motivation to do anything.  I would like to clean out all of my cabinets, scrub all of the dust off of everything and clean the baseboards.  But I just can't get out of my recliner.  I think snow days make me lazy. 

Other than a whole lot of work there really hasn't been much else going on around here.  This could quite possibly be the shortest blog post ever.  Maleah is asking for some maraschino cherries and a cup of chocolate milk so I've got to go.

I Want To Be a Craft Girl When I Grow Up

Well, it is official.  Carissa is potty-trained.  It has been over a week now and she is doing great!  I am so so so proud of her.  I am doing a happy dance right now.  On my roof.  Shouting out "I'm not buying diapers!  I'm not buying diapers!"  Okay, not really on my roof since it's covered with four inches of snow but on the inside I am definitely singing. 

Maleah has had two snow days off from school this week.  She was excited about that.  Who doesn't love a snow day??  It is an unexpected and beautiful interruption in your routine.  Maleah has been loving it.  We all went sledding at Charley Brown Park on Tuesday morning.  It took us forever to get all four of us ready to go.  We were all bundled up.  I made Carissa wear a diaper for this even though she didn't want to.  There are no bathrooms open at the park and who wants to squat in snow?  Not me.  Although I did make Maleah squat there two years ago in the snow behind a bush.  She would've been three and wouldn't you know it, as soon as we got there she had to pee.  She had just went before we left the house.  It never fails though, if you're all bundled up in lots of layers, plus super-duper excited about something, you just have to pee.  She couldn't hold it long enough for me to drive out of the park and all of the park bathrooms were closed for the winter.  (Which, by the way, I think is ridiculous!  There are still people out there even though it is cold and I know that they don't turn the water off or anything.  The park staff still uses the bathroom.  So why not just leave it unlocked?  Huh?  Huh?)  So, anyway, Maleah had to squat behind some bushes in front of the swimming pool.  She didn't really mind.  She's cool like that.  But I didn't want to traumatize poor little Rissy who is just learning so she had to wear a diaper.  She also didn't want to wear mittens.  So she cried and screamed "NO!!!!!!" every time we tried to put them on her.  It was freezing out and there was no way she was going to sled without them so she and I sat in the car.   She screamed and I programmed my car to quit telling me that I needed to change the oil when I didn't need to.  She screamed for 30 minutes.  She really really wanted to sled with her sister and her Dad.  She would've loved it too.  She's such a little risk taker and isn't scared of anything.  But, oh well.  I couldn't calm her down so I just had to listen to her scream.  Jason and Maleah had a ball.  I took my camera with us but since I had my hands full with Little Miss Cold Hands/Loud Mouth in the backseat I didn't actually take any pictures.  I think she learned her lesson though because when we got ready to leave the house on Wednesday morning she went and put on a hat and her mittens without even having been asked.  I don't think she wanted to miss out again.  I love it when I win. 

Maleah has been doing more crafts this week.  The one she worked on today was a sand art kit given to her by Uncle Craig and Aunt LuAnn.  I was a little leery about this one, to be honest.  I pictured colored sand all over my kitchen instead of in the the cute little jars where it was supposed to be layered.  It actually turned out great and there was virtually no mess.  So thank you Craig and LuAnn for today's entertainment.  It was a wonderful way to spend a snow day.  Maleah loved it.  She is so artsy craftsy.  If you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up she says "Umm.  I'd like to be a designer.  Or a craft girl.  Or a sew-er.  Or a basketball player.  And I'd really like to have my own closet full of ribbon, just like my Mom."  It all sort of fits together, except for the basketball player part.  I have no idea where that comes from.  She gets her coordination from me so I don't really see that working out for her.  We're going to focus on the "craft girl" part for now.  That seems to be working. 

I've started working on some genealogy and learning about my ancestors.  Here's a neat story for ya.  Years ago, back in the early 80s this guy from Highland, Illinois wrote a book about our family descendents.  Even I am listed in the book.  My Mom had a copy of it and so did my Grandma.  But now neither one of them can find it.  They each think that they let someone borrow it and never got it back.  (Shout out to the Oestreichs:  Do one of you have this book???)  Anyway, Mom and I were talking about the book and she googled the guy's name who wrote it because I thought we could just write to him and ask to buy another copy.  She googled him and found out he had died a few years ago.  I googled the name of the book the next day and found out that there was one used copy of it for sale on Amazon.com from some small bookstore in Illinois.  Well, guess who is now the proud owner of this Descendents book?  ME!!!  Yep, I bought that puppy pretty darn quick.  It is a very interesting book and I found out that I am even more German than I thought I was.  (And I thought I was very German to begin with.)  So now I just need to learn more about my Dad's side of the family.

It really is amazing what you can find on the Internet, isn't it?

Have a great week everybody!

Wii Are Loving 2011!!

Happy New Year everybody!  Can you believe it is 2011?  I sure can't.  That means that I will soon have a six year old and a two year old.  Wow! 

On New Year's Eve we bought a Wii game console and several Wii games.  It is something that I really did not think we would ever buy or ever even want.  Maleah had been at friends' houses before when the Wii was being played and she had absolutely zero interest in playing.  Jason and I neither one are video game type people so I really thought that our house would be a video-game-free-zone forever.  I'm not sure if there are any of those zones left in the USA anyway.  We all played Wii with Craig and LuAnn last week and suddenly we were all itching to have a Wii at home (well, probably not Carissa).  So we bought one.  And we have been having a blast.  We have discovered that Maleah is really good at bowling.  She can actually beat both Jason and me and we are not letting her win.  I have found out that I really like Wii golf and I sure wish I had someone to play against every day.  Jason is not really into the golf as much as I am.  But my favorite game is called Just Dance 2.  It's a game where you dance along with a dancer on-screen and try to do the same moves that she is doing at the same time as her.  It is not easy and it is super fun.  I look ridiculous when I do it.  I close the blinds every time.  Maleah and Jason enjoy it too.  It is a really good workout, that's for sure.  Who knows, maybe I'll be bustin' out some new moves at the next wedding reception we go to...

Maleah has two loose teeth right now.  She is excited about that.  She is back to school this week and is starting to get back into her routine.  She told me tonight to not set her alarm for the morning because "that thing drives me nuts!"  She would rather me just wake her up.  I don't blame her.  I hate alarm clocks too.  I wish my Mom would come tell me it's time to wake up every day.  Maleah's Girl Scout meeting this evening was cancelled at the last minute because the leader was sick.  Maleah was so disappointed!  She had really been looking forward to it.  She did not want to stay home this evening because "I have nothing to do!  It's so boring!"  I replied with "You have a million new toys and crafts at home.  Please do not tell me it is boring."  So she decided to paint some suncatchers.  She had gotten a set of paint and a few suncatchers for Christmas and hadn't worked on them yet.  She did a great job and I thought she was very creative with them.  She even added a few polka dots to some of them.  She asked me if I thought she was an artist and I said "absolutely."  If you give that girl some art supplies and a work space there is no telling what she will create.

In Carissa news, she is (drumroll please!) starting to potty-train!  Woo-hoo!!!  I am so excited!  She is not completely there but she is oh so close.  It has been her idea from the beginning to do this.  (I mean really, if it had been my idea it would have never gone over.  She is way too independent for that!)  So it was her idea to start sitting on the potty chair and I went and bought her some Dora panties.  She loves them but she would rather not wear anything - no diaper, no panties, no pants, nada.  I set the oven timer for 15 minutes and every time it goes off she sits down and pees.  And every time she pees she gets one M&M.  And that is all the bribery she needs.  One M&M is equal to a million dollars to her I think.  I hope she doesn't grow up with an involuntary reflex causing her to have to pee every time she hears a buzzing noise.  We don't need a situation like Pavlov and his dogs.  She has had a few accidents but she is successful about 90% of the time and for 21 months old I think that is awesome!  She also tells me when she has to take care of things other than peeing and sits down and does that too.  She is so easy to potty-train that it just seems to good to be true.  I know I like to tell funny stories about how wild and out-of-control she can be but she is also very smart and she very much wants to be just like her big sister.  Way to go Carissa!  We are so proud of you!!

Here are some other funny quotes from the week:

Me (talking to Maleah about a book I had read):  "It was fiction.  Do you know what fiction is?"
Maleah:  "Of course, Mom.  I'm not dumb, you know.  It means fake, not real, made-up."
Me:  "Yes, exactly.  I should've known you knew that."
Maleah:  "Yes.  You should've.

Me:  "Carissa, don't hit your sister with that spoon.  She doesn't like it.  I said stop it.  Do you want to get in trouble?"
Carissa:  "NO!"
Me:  "Then stop.  Don't hit.  Be nice to sissy."
Carissa smiles and looks directly at me.  Then starts lovingly running the spoon through Maleah's hair, as if saying "Look Mom, I am merely brushing her hair, not harassing her."  Maleah giggles and then Carissa giggles. 

Jason:  "Carissa, what is your name?"
Carissa:  "Baby"
Jason:  "No it's not.  What's your real name?"
Carissa:  "Baby"
This conversation can go on for twenty minutes.  She insists her name is Baby.  It worked for Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing, maybe it will work for Carissa too.  We sat in the corner booth at Applebee's the other night and we made a joke about "Nobody puts Baby in a corner."  It was pretty funny.

Have a great week everybody!