January iPhone Rewind

I haven't done one of these in a while, but this month was full of lots of everyday moments so I thought this was a good way to wrap up January.

I thought this Goodreads summary of 2018 was interesting!

Piper turned 4 at the beginning of the month and we had so much fun at her party.

In fact this guy still asks to go to "Chase Piper Party" almost every day.  And sometimes is not too happy when I tell him there is no party that day.

I got to help with a shower for my sweet friend Laura.  Her daughter is a few weeks younger than Cooper and one of his favorite playmates-- looking forward to meeting her baby boy in March!

Because sometimes sending parenting Memes to other moms of toddlers is how you laugh your way through the crazy days.

We had some beautiful days this month and did well going on walks at the beginning of the month (and then it all kind of fell apart).  After our walks Cooper likes to play in the front yard and bring me his rock collection.

He "made a snowman" out of an old spice bottle and marshmallows.  He loved this a lot and has even asked for it a few times weeks later when he sees it on the counter.

Sometimes you just gotta go down the slide on your way to the car--even with your backpack on and water in hand.

Snowman bowling (with Styrofoam cups and our snowballs that we use for Christmas decor) was a big hit

We are all about the free things around here.  One of the Chick-fil-A's near us has been doing buy one get one free items every Saturday in January-- I took this picture to send to David and get it on our schedule :)

A family walk to the playground

Cooper thought it was hilarious to run around in my coat, even if it meant he fell down a lot.

I tried out some homemade yogurt in the instant pot and Cooper liked it, so I made him some yogurt pouches and they were great snacks.

Testing out the wagon he got for Christmas.  Gotta bring at least a few balls along for the ride, of course.

Cooper is very into reading the same books over and over.  This picture is actually part of a video I took where he's reciting the last word of almost every sentence of this book he got for Christmas.

A friend of mine helped out in Cooper's Bible Study class one week and sent me some pictures.  He loves Bible Study a lot and I'm grateful for all he's learning there.

Friday morning playing at the Galleria.

Our ceiling fan in our bedroom stopped working so we took it down to try to rewire it.  We snapped this picture to try to figure out what was going on with all the wires!  

Cooper has been loving time in his bedroom lately.  He usually asks us to go "with me" but there are also times I'll find him in there reading a book in the rocking chair (with a paci he found somewhere)

We made some homemade snow with baking soda and conditioner a couple weeks ago and I brought it back out for a distraction while I wasn't feeling well.  It's a big hit-- and a big mess, but most of it stayed on the tablecloth.

 Cooper got this Daniel Tiger for Christmas and just started taking it to bed with him.  And he insisted on bringing him from his bed to our Thursday morning breakfast date.  He held it almost the whole time he ate.  

Date Night Jar: Up Date Night

We actually ended up drawing 2 orange sticks this month (for planned at home date nights).  The first one we drew was 24 hours technology free.  And we had actually just done that the day after Christmas.  And while we could always benefit from doing it again, we decided to leave it out and grab another one.  The second one we picked was an Up Date Night (based on the movie Up).  When looking for date night ideas on Pinterest I had seen a few ideas for an Up Themed date night and since we have that movie and both like it I put it on our list.

One of the ideas I saw a few places was to make our own Adventure Book (like they have in the movie) to look at places you've been and want to go.  At first I got out just our chatbooks I've made for our recent trips, but then I decided that some of our biggest "adventures" together just have to do with living life together.  So I got out all of our photo books that I've made and laid them out.  I make a digital photobook every year that goes July to July (our anniversary) and I also made one for our wedding and a scrapbook before our wedding of memories from dating and engagement.  And we also have a few small books from our vacations.

I laid it all out on a blanket so we could have our own picnic while we watched the movie.  After we put Cooper to bed we started with the photobooks before the movie.  We actually spent about an hour going through them all and reminiscing about things we had forgotten.  It was a fun way to look back at our adventures together.

Then we settled in with some dessert and started the movie.  David had a paradise pie from Chili's and I enjoyed an Enlightened Ice Cream Bar.

After watching the movie for a little while, we spent some time dreaming of the future while the movie played in the background.  We talked about places we wanted to visit and things that might be on our "bucket lists."  Then we made some lists of places we want to travel in the next 1, 5, and 10 years as well as places we want to visit in our lifetime.  This was a fun thing to talk about and dream about together.  We're already dreaming up and planning our next family vacation-- hopefully we'll take one in the early Fall.

Because we spent so long looking through the photobooks, we actually didn't end up finishing the movie that night.  But it was still such a fun night together reminiscing and dreaming and talking about life.

We have also done one or two spontaneous at home date nights this month including this one: 

Neither David or I are really big dancers, so we don't really dance together often.  But it was fun to put on some music and do something a little different after Cooper's bedtime one night.  It's been to do some different things together through this date night jar!

Date Night Jar: Eat Out

We've kind of had a break from our date night jar-- our November dates ended up not panning out as well due to the weather and we didn't draw any in December since we already had so much holiday stuff planned.  But we wanted to get back to it with the New Year, so we drew our sticks at the beginning of January and got it planned.

When we drew this we started talking through fancy restaurant options and trying to figure out how exactly we wanted to define that.  We actually went to a pretty nice restaurant last month when we had our overnight date, so we didn't feel too much pressure to go somewhere super nice.  And we happened to have a gift card for Outback, so we decided that was out of the ordinary enough for us!

Nights with this guy are some of my favorites!  Cooper stayed home with Grandma and when we were telling him we were going out, I told him that I was going out with my favorite guy which was Daddy ;)

We enjoyed delicious steak and sides.  I always get the sirloin there, but tried something new with the filet medallions with roasted garlic butter and it was delicious!  We enjoyed a slower paced dinner and some good conversation.

After dinner we headed to Barnes and Noble for a bookstore date.  We had discussed seeing a movie, but there was nothing out that we were dying to see (or spend money on) so we decided to save our movie money for later in the year and do something free.  I'd seen the idea of doing a bookstore scavenger hunt and had saved it on one of my Pinterest boards, so we decided to try it out.  We followed this list, but decided to go through it together instead of competing.  We walked around and found several items on the list together.

The first item David spotted on the list was a book about Robots, and he found one sitting on one of the main tables, so he grabbed it and read me the inside cover.

Then we headed to the children's section and found some books we enjoyed as kids.  These were the two we pulled out, but we had good conversation about other books and series we had enjoyed.

While we were looking for books by authors that had the same first name as our middle names, David came across these two books where Laura and David were next to each other so we grabbed a picture and even though it didn't quite fit the rules, we called it good for that item!

Towards the end we split up to each find 1. A self-help book we thought we could use 2. A book about a place we wanted to travel and 3. A book we thought the other person would enjoy.  We met back in the cafe after about 10-15 minutes and shared what we had found.

I found David a book about John McCain and a Marvel book and he found me a book called Neverthless We Persisted with a variety of stories about people overcoming obstacles.  He picked a couple of books by Matt Chandler and Max Lucado for his "self-help books" and I chose Strong Mothers, Strong Sons.  Neither of us could find the travel section, so I gave up and David found a Chinese language book since we'd someday love to travel to China and see all of the places our friends are from!  After we went through these, we found the travel section together (on the opposite side of the store) and talked about some of the places we'd love to go.

This bookstore date was actually a lot of fun and the fact that it was free was perfect.  We did end up buying a book for Cooper with a gift card I had and then called it a night.  It also would have been perfect to get dessert or coffee at the cafe while going through some of the books, but neither of us were hungry after our yummy dinner!

We finished up at Barnes and Noble a little after 8:00 (we'd had an early dinner).  I joked with David about going to a movie since we could still catch one, but we ultimately decided to stop by Redbox and watch a movie at home.

So we had a great night out and were home and in pajamas and glasses before 9:00, which to me is perfect!  Such a fun night dating my hubby and trying something a little new.

Rubber Duck Day

This past week we've been celebrating Rubber Ducky Day.  When I was looking at the calendar of all the different holidays, this one stuck out to me because I liked the idea of having a few that weren't completely about food and Cooper has always really loved ducks.  He has now broadened his scope and has an appreciation for all animals, but around his first birthday he loved ducks.  So I thought it would be fun to celebrate Rubber Duck Day.  Rubber Duck Day was on January 13-- I read that the Sesame Street Calendar once had January 13 listed as Rubber Ducky's birthday, so that's how the holiday came to be about.

We kicked it off with a bath with all of our rubber ducks.  Cooper has a lot of rubber ducks and usually gets one or two at bathtime, but we had a rubber duck party and an extended bath for Rubber Duck Day.

I also put together a playlist of duck songs to listen to just for fun.  I love Amazon Music and all of the free songs we get there!

I also extended the duck fun through the week.  This year I'm doing a few more structured activities throughout the day with Cooper, just to add a little learning in and to save my sanity some with some extra things to pull out and a little fun for me to plan out some specific activities.  So far we're doing a different "theme" each week and we have a playlist to go along with it, some activities, and a lesson about God related to it.  Last week was snow and this week was ducks!  We'll see how long we keep it up :)  But here's some of our "duck" activities:

We focused on the color yellow this week, so I had a game for him to sort yellow and green craft sticks into cups.  I had this out when he got up Monday morning so he could work on it during breakfast.  I showed him a few times and then he actually got the idea right away and sorted the rest of the sticks!  And he came back and wanted to do it again after lunch on Monday.

Tuesday we used these printouts to sing along to 5 Little ducks.  We had them run away one at a time and then counted them after each verse.  Cooper is starting to do a little counting along with me, although he always skips the number 2.  Usually if you ask "how many are there?" He says "one" really drawn out like he's going to count and then that's it.  But it's been something new to introduce lately.  This is also where our "God" theme came in-- we talked about how we listen to God's voice and know it just like the ducks know Mama Duck's voice ;)

Then we got out the rubber ducks for counting and scooping.  We also had checked out a few board books about ducks from the library so he could look at them.  He likes putting the rubber ducks in a cup so I had that laid out with it.  He had pretty much no interest in the ducks and just wanted the cup this day.

Wednesday we had a bit of a rough afternoon.  Cooper's getting some teeth this week and has a lot of congestion with it and has just been whiny so we were both a little over it.  While I was making dinner I put the ducks in a bowl with water and gave him his net and put an empty bin next to it so he could scoop the ducks out and put them in the bin.  He did really enjoy this.  For about 5 minutes.  Once he scooped all the ducks out and splashed for a few minutes he was done.

When we got out the craft sticks for sorting, it reminded Cooper of his turkey from the Thanksgiving car ride, so we pulled that out again.  I loaded it up with just yellow "feathers" (sticks) and called it a duck ;)  He enjoyed pushing the sticks in and taking them back out.

We loaded up another sensory bin with blue shredded paper to represent water and filled it with ducks.  He liked throwing the ducks in the box.

Last up were these printables for a 5 Little Ducks gross motor game.  Cooper wanted to color, so he colored them while I made breakfast today.

And then I just laid them out on the floor and showed him how to jump from one to the other.  He was excited to try it.

And then he did it once and was done.  Which has pretty much been the theme of the week.  Pretty much every activity he gets really into and will even pay attention to for a while, but then when he's over it he just throws everything.

Which is how we ended up spending 45 minutes in a standoff about picking up these sticks.  I had already picked them up several times and was helping but he refused to pick them up.  So I just waited and kept prompting him.  Finally he did it, but it took a looooooooong time.  And then we repeated that with the blue filler from the sensory bin later in the week.  And the yellow sticks from tin can push.  We're still figuring it out together.  He asks to do the activities again, but he doesn't really want to do them and then he just throws it.  Usually I'm okay with a mess from him, but he knows how to pick up toys and he really just throws them for the sake of throwing it, so we're trying to teach him that it's fine to throw it all on the ground but he also has to pick it up.  I share that just in case it seems like we have so many great activities and it all goes so smoothly-- this week has been fun but has also led to some impatience on my part with how short some of the activities last and getting him to pick things up.  All a part of our toddler life.

Okay, back to the topic at hand... we had a lot of fun celebrating Rubber Ducky Day.  Cooper loves all the songs that go along with it and I had fun trying out a few new activities during the week.