Been looking for one of these for months...

All Mondays should be this good

Aiden had his first dentist appointment yesterday. It was scheduled for an awkward time, so I decided to take the whole day off and spend it with just him. Best decision I've made in awhile, despite having to get hopped up on cold medicine to leave the house. I had been pretty apprehensive about taking him to the dentist since he won't let ANYONE near his mouth. So, true to form, what did Aiden do when the dentist asked him to open up? Well, he just opened that mouth as wide as it would go. He continually impresses me, that kid. And we had nothing but good news, too; Aiden's teeth & bite look great; it's obviously pretty early, but based on the shape of things now, the chances are good he won't need braces (like Mommy did).

The best part of the visit, though, was when we left; we had just said good-bye to Dr. Soult, and I was getting used to the idea that we might get out of there without some embarrassing 3-year-old comment, when Aiden looked at him quizzically and said, "Why did you take all the hair off your head?"

[insert my horrified giggling]

Dr. Soult was extremely amused, though, and answered that he took it off for the summer.

Whew.

After that little episode, Aiden & I headed down to COSI to check out the dinosaur exhibit. Aiden LOVED it; I almost think I might have a future paleontologist on my hands. :) It was a wonderful afternoon spent with my guy, despite the summer head cold from hell.

Daddy Day

"Any man can be a father,
but it takes someone special to be a dad."
--Anne Geddes

Happy Father's Day to my awesome Mikey--all the more awesome since he had to deal with a sick Mommy on his special day. I love you, honey :)

Eight Months Old

Nolan jumped on a rocket ship at the end of May, and has been blasting towards the Big Boy Planet ever since.

I wish I could say I was kidding.

He's just been on a tear this past month with milestones, hitting things a quite a bit earlier than Aiden in some cases. While this wasn't unexpected (we've heard countless times about how Baby #2 does things faster), it's still a little tough to swallow. My baby doesn't seem to want to be a baby anymore. Which is also NOT to say I'm completely melancholy about the whole thing; yeah, it makes me a bit teary when he does something new, but I'm also ridiculously proud of him at the same time. Weird dichotomy.

Anyways, at eight months, Nolan:

--by my guess is around 18ish lbs (we don't go to the pediatrician for an official weigh-in until next month).
--popped out his first tooth Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, and promptly popped the second one out two days later.
--CRAWLED. He freakin' crawled this week. As I entered it into his baby book, I peaked into Aiden's for a comparison, and discovered he's crawling a full three months before his brother.
--apparently decided the crawling wasn't enough, because the same evening, he went from a hands-and-knees position to sitting. Sheesh.
--fits comfortably in 9-month clothes.
--LOVES to clap, especially if you tell him "Clappa, clappa!" Sweetheart. :)
--tried eating a puff the other day. Not a fan. Guess we'll wait a little while longer on that.
--gets VERY angry at us if he's still hungry after we've emptied his food container. This kid puts it away.
--thinks that to stand or walk, he needs to be on his tippy-toes. Looks ouchy.
--is moving around so well that I had to lower his crib. YIKES.
--is slobbery & putting everything in his mouth again, so it looks like more teeth are eminent.
--is sans-smiles for his monthly photo shoot (as I'm sure you can tell) because the whole Cotter house has been fighting some cold symptoms.

I don't even want to think about what might be next; with the speed at which he decided to develop this month, I'm hoping that he's not asking Norah to their prom by the end of July. Sheesh.

"Singing"

I *Heart* Cleveland

Mike & I decided late last year that we didn't want to do anything too extravagant for our fifth wedding anniversary, but that we did want to mark the occasion by getting away for a little bit. I was really pushing to go to a cabin in Hocking Hills, but I just couldn't get him on board. So I settled for something I knew we'd both enjoy--a Cleveland Indians game. And luckily, they had a home series on the appropriate weekend! So I had us all booked & paid for by the end of December, and we had to endure a 6-month wait.

Finally, the fourth of June arrived, and we dropped the boys with PooPoo for the afternoon & overnight. I was a bit worried when we could see Aiden through the front screen door collapse on the floor in full meltdown mode as we drove away, but we pressed on. We arrived in Cleveland & checked into our hotel. I wasn't too excited about us being on the 12th floor, but the view was pretty sweet. Then we headed to Panini Bar & Grille just outside of Jacobs Field. Mike had a sandwich complete with french fries on it, and I enjoyed a big ole piece of pizza. We both had very large beers, reminiscent of OSU tailgaiting. :)

Then it was on to the Jake, where we met up with my sister & dad who had tickets to the same game. We took some goofy pictures while trying to stay cool in the 93-degree heat, and before we knew it, the gates were opened.

This is where things started to get interesting; as soon as we passed through the turnstiles, an promotional staff member asked if I wanted to be involved in one of their promotions. I said sure, what the hey? So he took down all my information, and told me that if the Tribe struck out 8 Texas batters, I would win a gift card to Circle K. In return, all we (me, Mike, Abby, and Dad) had to do was dance around and look excited for 40 seconds so they had a clip to play on the scoreboard when they announced the promotion. So we did the dance, and felt absolutely ridiculous. After we'd been sitting in our seats for awhile, and as it was getting closer to game time, suddenly there we all were on the GIANT screen, dancing like idiots while the announcer said my name over the speaker. SURREAL EMBARASSMENT doesn't begin to cover it. Oh well.

So to fast forward a bit, we didn't get 8 strikeouts, so no $100 gift card for me. And the Indians lost the game, which was a bummer. But we had GREAT seats (we could even put our feet up!), and the post-game fireworks were great.

I just want to stop for a minute and say how much I enjoy Cleveland. The city has so much character; we're used to the tidy gridded layout of Columbus, so the messy, winding roads of Cleveland's downtown are a mess and make no sense--and are completely awesome. I just love the feel of the city in general.

So we had a great anniversary weekend, but it was nice to get back to the boys, too. Maybe for our ten-year, we'll do a second honeymoon in the Bahamas--or maybe we'll just head back up north :)

Five Years Ago Today...

...Mike & I said "I do." :)



I'll save you the mushy stuff, other than you know when they say it gets better everyday?

Totally true. :)