Weekend Roundup

We celebrated Father's Day a little bit today, although we had also celebrated it last Sunday since that's when I thought it was this year! One of the things Cooper gave Ben was some salsa made with the 'ghost chili' (bhut jolokia)-- the hottest pepper in the world. The salsa also has habanero and jalepeno peppers in the mix... Ben likes spicy food. We watch Man vs. Food now and then, and usually the challenges for spicy food involve this chili in some way, so it will be interesting to see what Ben thinks when he tries it.

I don't want to jinx anything, but Cooper has slept until 7 both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. I would love for this streak to continue, but I am not going to hold my breath on that one.

Cooper's behavior chart is working well-- he is very motivated to earn his stickers on his chart and to avoid the "no's" for bad behavior. He's doing a great job, particularly when he, Abby, and I have to get out of the house to run errands. He is a great helper and always concerned about how Abby is doing, whether she needs a bottle or a paci or if she's asleep or awake. His adjustment issues don't seem to be about her so much as the loss of one on one time with me and/or Ben and he reacts by being overly needy and whiny. So far, the behavior chart is helping with that too. One other area where we are benefitting is his food pickiness. One of the categories is to try one new food per week. All it takes is just one bite of something new and he gets a yes for the whole week on that one. This week it was green pepper. You would think we were trying to poison him the way he acted, but he finally took one bite and.... liked it. His reward for earning enough "yes" and few enough "no's" was that I took him to see Toy Story 3 on Saturday. This was also his first trip to the movie theater. I was nervous he would not want to sit through the whole thing since the theater is dark, and the volume is loud, but he did make it through the whole movie. He ended up sitting on my lap, but he made it. He screamed and was upset during a few parts **spoiler alert** like when the toys were going into the garbage chopper/fire. I told him we could leave, but he wanted to stay and see what happened. He also could not understand why Lotso did not hit the emergency stop button when he said he would. He must have asked me about that 100 times when we were home. He also said Lotso needed a behavior chart! It was pretty cute to see how he thought about a solution for Lotso. And, I am not much of a movie crier, but I cried at the end of Toy Story 3. It was a really fun outing, and we had a great time together just the two of us. Abby and Ben had fun on their own too. The two of them went to Tiffany's and got a silver heart locket for me as a gift for Abby being born. It was such a nice surprise! Now I just need to go to their website to upload and order pictures of Cooper and Abby to put in it!

The only picture I got over the weekend worth sharing is below. This morning I was working with Cooper on his printing skills. He has a few workbooks I picked up recently to work on over the summer for printing, math, and reading. He's really into math these days and loves Team Umizoomi. He has some math flashcards that we were working on for addition and subtraction, and he was surprisingly good at it. The picture below was while he was working on printing his A, B, Cs. He did not want me taking his picture, and was telling me so when this was taken...

As for Abby, she is doing well too. Last night she slept for about a 4 1/2 hour stretch between about 11:30 and 4! She is so easygoing and makes the cutest cooing noises when she sleeps. She also has been laughing (or what looks and sounds like laughing) in her sleep.

Happy Father's Day!