Updates, Happy Birthday America and Happy 9 months Cohen

I need to work on getting better at this blog thing :-) First things first, I took Cohen to the pediatrician on Thursday because I was worried he might have had an ear infection. He had been pulling at his right ear for a few days. I didn't think anything of it at first because he rubs his ears (and eyes) when he's tired but Thursday morning he was rubbing it a lot. I figured better safe than sorry especially with a 3 day weekend approaching. Luckily, no infection. She thinks it is related to teething and agrees with me that his other 2 top teeth will be coming in soon. He weighed exactly 18lbs and we have his 9 month check up Friday so we will see his other measurements. We had discussed his weight at his 6 month check up because he is definitely on the smaller side. When he was born, he was in the 95th percentile for weight and has since dropped to the 10-20th percentile. She said she isn't concerned as he's been consistently in that percentile and said he is just small. They won't be concerned until he falls off the chart altogether but he looks healthy, is happy and is meeting his developmental milestones so all is good.

Onto other news, as predicted, Cohen had another tooth come in on Friday! So his mouth looks like this:
III
II
The other top one should be in *very* soon. He has been really good about "chewing" his food but is getting a lot better with his new teeth. He is constantly playing with them and likes to play with Mommy's too!

Also on Friday, we took Braedon to see Transformers. He was absolutely in heaven! As he says "Optimus Prime rocks!". He loved the first one and we've seen it at home at least 100x but I was nervous about taking him to the new one. I had read online that it was pretty sexually graffic with some language-foul words and sexual inuendo's mixed in with a brief drug inuendo scene-but we decided we would take him. We figured we would cover his eyes if we needed to and hoped that stuff would go over the top of his head. My mom let me watch Pretty Woman and Dirty Dancing when I was a little older than Braedon is now and -no joke- didn't know what they were *really* about until years later when I watched them once I was versed in the world and knew what sex and prostitution was. Anyway-as we thought, it just flew over his head and when we came out, he just talked about the basic story line and how the autobots defeated the decepticons once again. It was 2.5 hours and both boys did really well. Chris and I tag teamed Cohen because we had to walk out of the theater twice when he was cranky. We went later at night close to his bed time hoping he would sleep through it. We just had a problem in the beginning because it was too loud for him to get to sleep but once he was, we were fine the rest of the movie.

Friday was a busy day LOL! Chris had the day off in observance of the holiday so I took the opportunity to go visit Amy, Addison and Riley -by myself :-) She goes back to work on Monday and we haven't gotten together in 4 weeks! Man how the time flies especially when you are dealing with newborn twins! I can only imagine the lack of sleep her house is getting. We had a great visit and I was able to love on the twins since my baby was at home with Daddy. He got really jealous when they came to visit us and *his* Mommy was holding another baby. The girls are getting so big compared to where they were but are still smaller than both my babies were at birth.

Chris was having adventures of his own at home with both kids. I enjoyed my time away from the boys. I love them very much but I am with them all day and all night plus it's good for Chris to be reminded what I do all day-he tends to forget :-) Cohen is of course crawling and getting very good at it. He pulls himself up onto everything and is getting the whole cruising thing down. His recent development is giving his lungs a workout. He randomly yells because he can and then laughs that he can. He will also yell-a much different yell-when you take something away from him that he wants. Chris said he was crawling into the dining area and somehow put his right hand on top of his left hand and got "stuck" because he couldn't move the hand that was supposed to move next. Chris watched him for a minute and he said he kept trying to get his hand out until he got frustrated enough. He yelled for a second while Daddy laughed then he brought himself to a seated position and started, in Chris' words "examining his hand like there was something wrong with it" LOL! He flipped it front to back and poked at it with his other hand and apparently decided nothing was wrong with it so back to crawling he went. These are the events you tend to forget so thank goodness for blogging :-)

Now onto yesterday-Happy Birthday America! Chris let me sleep in yesterday morning and it was great! We lounged around the house-Chris and Braedon played video games, Mommy played on the computer a little bit and Cohen played with his many toys around the house and napped. At 5, we headed to the stadium for an all American tradition-baseball! Rangers vs. Cubs. They also had a kidzone and Braedon had fun jumping from slide to slide and bounce houses. Cohen chilled in his stroller taking in all the kids and wanting so desperately to be able to play with all of them. We ate peanuts, sno cones, and hot dogs. We danced to Michael Jackson, showed Braedon how to YMCA and watched fireworks. All in all, it was a good night. It was Cohen's first fireworks show and he did well. I was worried about the bangs but he was in love with the lights as was Braedon but I knew he loved them. Braedon was scared of them all but his first year and last year. He does NOT like loud noises of ANY kind and freaked out every year. Last year, we were in Pine for the 4th. We drove down to Payson for the fireworks display and we were far enough away from them that he was able to see but not hear them. Last night he heard them but wasn't scared of them anymore!

As of today, Cohen is officially 9 months old! He's getting so big and I can't believe that in just 3 months he will be 1! We are going to get pictures taken today to commemorate the milestone :-) For Braedon, I got pictures done at 1 week (didn't like the hossy pic), 1 month (him and I), 3 months (Christmas), 6 months, 9 months (him and I in our Navy getup after getting home from Colby's boot camp graduation), 12 months, 15 months, 18 months and 2 years. With Cohen, we liked the hospital pic so we got that one, 2 weeks (both boys), 1 month (family pic), 3 months (Christmas), 6 month, 9 month (family pic-we are doing a patriotic theme to coordinate with Braedon's 9month), 12 months, 15 months, etc.

We also received information about a sort of Kindergarten preview for Braedon. It is 2 weeks of half days so he can see what school is going to be like. It is also their way of making sure all the incoming kiddo's are up to speed on writing their names and identifying letters and numbers. I'm nervous for him but excited as he enters this next stage in his life. I know he'll do great but I am also nervous about his behavior. He doesn't sit still and is very hyperactive. He also has *selective* hearing which gets him in trouble at home. Everyone says your kids act better away from home than at home so lets hope this holds true.