The Daniels: Day in the Life: 13 month old Cooper

When I did my last Day in the Life post, I mentioned trying to do it again when Cooper was 12 months old. With his birthday and party and our vacation, the month of April slipped away, but I still wanted to do it. This week is pretty low key getting back from vacation and with Cooper being sick, so I decided to document our Tuesday. So here we are the day Cooper turned 13 months old.

6:45 am

My wake up time varies pretty greatly still. Before vacation and on vacation I was only sleeping about 5-6 hours a night. So this week I think I'm catching up a little and getting more like the 7-8 hours. So today I woke up around 6:45. I checked emails and read a little bit. Then I got up and put away dishes and tried to pick up the living room a little before getting Cooper up.

7:30 am

Cooper is usually awake before now, but we leave him in bed until 7:30 and he lays or plays happily. I get him up and change his diaper and then we head to get breakfast. Almost every day I scramble some eggs for he and I to share. Some weeks I do egg muffins that I make ahead and can reheat, but usually I just cook the eggs that day. Then he'll have some fruit/cereal/yogurt/oatmeal with his eggs. This morning he had eggs, Cheerios, and a banana with some milk. This year we've been listening to the Chronological Bible over breakfast (thanks for the idea, Erin!) and today we listened to the whole book of Ruth. We'd made it halfway through before he told me he was done eating, so I cleaned him up and brushed his teeth and then I listened to the rest while he started playing.

8:00 am

Playtime! I usually do the breakfast dishes while he plays. Some mornings he's content to play while I do that, others not so much. Today required a few breaks from dishes to comfort him and pay attention to him. Then we just play in the living room/dining room/kitchen. A few days we might have something going on, but usually we are just at home this stretch of the day. Above is a glimpse of an hour of Cooper's morning-- all the smiles and tears and toys and puppies and random spoons that it encompasses. The variety of emotions a 1 year old displays in the span of a few minutes can be mind boggling. But usually he's pretty content to play with only a few meltdowns in the mix!

9:30 am

Around 9:30 we usually head to his room to look at books. Today he picked out Llama Llama Red Pajama and I read it to him. We also read some farm animal books.

10:00 am

Nap time! Before our vacation, it seemed like Cooper was about ready to drop to 1 nap a day and I was worried being on a different schedule and not in his bed would do it for us, but he took 2 naps a day in Taos and seems to be holding on to his morning nap for now. Today he was reaching for his sleepsack at 9:55, so I put it on him and sang a few songs and then put him down. He went right to sleep. Some mornings he stays awake a little longer, but I think he's pretty tired from being sick. Random fact: Cooper's morning nap time has been the same since he was 4 months old. When he was little it seemed like he could go longer than normal between morning wake up and his first nap, now it almost seems to be shorter than normal. But 10:00 still seems to be his sweet spot. While he napped, I got dressed for the day and then worked on a few things on the computer.

11:00 am

Cooper actually woke up around 10:45, but I was finishing a few things up so I got him up at 11 and then we had some lunch. I quickly made some chicken salad from leftover chicken that I cooked yesterday and I had that with some lettuce and cheese. Cooper had chicken salad, crackers, and blueberries. While he finished up lunch, I checked the mail. When we went on vacation I had put a hold on our mail and it was supposed to be delivered to our house when we returned Saturday. Well we've gotten mail since Saturday but still haven't gotten our held mail, so I decided to call about it. After going through the automated system it said my wait time would be 50-60 minutes, so instead of waiting on hold we got ready and headed out for some errands.

12:00 pm

First stop was the post office. We actually have 2 post offices within a couple miles of us, so I wasn't sure which one was the best one to talk to, but I decided to try the one in that seems to be the main one and success! The guy was able to find our held mail and apologized that it hadn't been delivered--I was just glad it wasn't lost and we were in and out pretty quickly.

Then we headed to Hobby Lobby. I am working on a project and had messed it up and sewed on the wrong side when I tried yesterday--I was able to salvage the fabric but not the zipper so we needed another one. Since Cooper is recovering from Hand Foot and Mouth I'm trying not to take him out too much, so we skipped the cart and I just held him in the store. We played with the camera a little while we waited to check out.

1:00 pm

With my attempts to quarantine Cooper this week, I decided to give Walmart pick up another try. I blogged last summer about our first experience with Walmart pick up and how it was so-so for us. We actually did it another time or two and had not great experiences with it, so I hadn't done it again. But I noticed a couple weeks ago that a different Walmart kind of close to me (the 2 Walmarts closest to us still don't have it) now had pickup and thought I should check it out. And it was like night and day from my past experiences. They were so quick, very kind and helpful, and we were in and out in less than 5 minutes! Success. We went home and unloaded groceries and my observation after reminiscing about our last grocery pickup is that unloading groceries with a walking 1 year old is not much easier than unloading groceries with an overtired screaming 2 month old :) Today he just wanted to go out the front door while I was trying to bring all of the groceries in and then he took apart the kitchen while I put everything away. But at least he was happy!

2:30 pm

Time for another nap. Once again, Cooper went down easily and I got to work on my project that I messed up yesterday. I definitely love getting to be at my sewing machine.

4:00 pm

Cooper woke up a little before 4, so I got him up and got him a snack. Then we headed out for a walk. I've been trying to go on a walk every afternoon--helps me get a little exercise and gets us out of the house to pass some of the time in the crazy hours before dinner. Sometimes we stop and play at the park a little, but today we just did a long walk through the neighborhood.

5:30 pm

As we were on our street coming back from our walk, David texted to say he was heading home. So when we got back home I worked on prepping a few things for dinner. Luckily dinner wasn't too complicated-- we had Chicken Caesar Salads and I used more of the leftover chicken I'd cooked last night. So I just had to cut up and wash the lettuce for the salad. Cooper kept me company in the kitchen.

Then we played until David got home. This is just a small glimpse of how much of a mess the living room becomes each day. I really did pick everything up that morning, but I usually just let it be during the day since Cooper will just get it all out again if I pick up. We're trying to get into a habit of picking up before bed each night so it's at least clean some of the time.

6:15 pm

We are all excited when Daddy gets home from work! He and Cooper (and Lily) played a little while I finished assembling dinner. Then we sat down to eat together. The rest of the hour was spent playing a little more and then picking up.

7:30 pm

Cooper goes to bed anywhere between 7 and 8 depending on when his naps fell during the day. We used to read to him when he was really little, but then he got to the point where he was just too tired to sit for a story or would get upset if David was holding him instead of me, etc. But recently he's seemed not as out of sorts at bedtime (most nights) so we've started trying to read a little more. Tonight David read to him. Then I rock him and sing to him. In addition to JJ Heller's I Dream of You, which we've been singing at all naps and bedtime for at least the last 9 months, we also sing a different hymn or worship song each week. We liked our Advent calendar of songs, so we decided to do a regular rotation of songs during the year and we incorporate them into a family devotional each week. So this week we're singing It is Well. I sing, rock and snuggle him and then put him down. He went to sleep pretty easily.

8:15 pm

I took a shower after Cooper went down and then David and I settled on the couch for a Netflix show. We had started The Crown several months ago but never finished it, so we watched another episode tonight.

10:30 pm