Birthday Boy Photos

I took the day off to spend it with my little man. I figured that it was more important to hang out and celebrate his second birthday than be a government loser for a day. It was basically awesome.

Yeah he is two no more telling people his age in ridiculous amounts of months.

2. Yeah you heard me right. 2.

Thursday night strawberry milkshake. We forgot to take photos of the cupcakes he had at daycare earlier that day. We also forgot to take photos of the lemon meringue pie that Cissie brought over. He basically ate sugar for one entire day. Yes!
Daddy is my hero. 100% teeth smile. Gets it from Nanny.

He was pretty scared of the bear at first, but then we worked out that it was a statue.

This bear was better. It even got a little hug and mooch.

LOVED the Mountain Goat. Demanded to go see him twice. Then cried all of the way to Coney Island because he wanted to be with the Mountain Goat.

Fish!

He was "driving" the trolley.

Coney Island carousel of terror. Just try to peel a 2 year old off of it. Just you try. . .

Corn dog-lishious!

Opening MIL and FIL's gifts.

R.C. dog whose barks sound like farts.

That is one chalky ass baby - er I mean chalky ass big boy.

Party is tomorrow. Enjoy the video.

Almost Two Years Old (guest blogger Ed Sr)

A while back, I had to write something about what defines me. Below is what I came up with and I think is somewhat entertaining in a reflective way...




About a year and a half ago, I came to the realization that I had spent my entire life being incredibly selfish. Strangely enough, it was that exact same time when my wife and I had our first child. WE named him Ed Jr, although my wife accuses me of having picked out that name in the second grade. Shortly after the birth, we received phone calls and letters of congratulations from all of our friends and close family, except one.

That one person is my good friend Mike, who at the time had a one year old daughter. Instead of calling to wish me congratulations, or anything relatively appropriate, his statement was, don’t worry man, “it gets better.”
Being that I had just become a proud father, I was stunned and appalled at his statement. Considering that Mike and I have been friends for long time, I took several minutes to use my exceptional vocabulary of swear words to tell him how much I appreciated his support. After I got done venting, Mike calmly explained that I soon would forgive him and very soon I would understand exactly what he is talking about.

To provide you a little background about myself, I have spent the better part of my life recreating and having fun. The rest of my waking hours I have spent working so that I could afford to have fun. I’m also the youngest of three boys, so prior to the birth of my son, I had never changed a diaper nor held a baby that couldn’t hold its head up. To be honest, I was a little afraid of babies. For 34 years, I had successfully managed to avoid being responsible for one, even for a short period of time.

It wasn’t just babies themselves that I feared, but also the dreaded PEEPOOP. The combination of pee and poop.

Anyhow, I knew that I could overcome my fears. What choice did I have? Being a guy, I also have a tremendous ability to rationalize things by disillusioning myself. I figured that the bobblehead would only last a few weeks since I knew that Jr. and I would be throwing the football around and going fishing by 6 months. Heck, he’d probably be able to go rafting as early as three months. A raft is just an inflatable playpen, right?

As for the PEEPOOP, how many times a day can an 8 plus pound baby go to the bathroom?

Now I had heard from a lot of people about the lack of sleep associated with raising a child. They were just wimps, I concluded. I can drink beer until midnight and wake up at 5 in the morning to go hunting. Both days of the weekend, no less.
We brought Jr. home from the hospital and it was truly a happy day. My wife and I were certain that we were prepared. We had the nursery painted and child appropriate art in place. The crib and changing table were set up. We were stocked up on diapers and wipes, had a baby first aid kit, and had more toys, clothes, and random things that we could ever need.

Additionally, we had read a bunch of books, which were very informative and truly disturbing in that they mostly explained all of the things that can go wrong with your child before and after birth. Good stuff to know, except when you are a brand new parent and now have enough information to become an obsessive compulsive hypochondriac on behalf of your child.

I still remember Jr’s first night at home. We were getting him ready for bed, we changed his diaper, zipped him in his amoeba-like blanket sack, and laid him down in the co-sleeper. And that’s when the crying really started. For the next several hours we tried everything we could think of to get him to sleep. Finally, at about 2 AM, he was sound asleep in his aluminum framed rocking swing that was placed in the dead center of our bed.

I only had about six inches of space to sleep on, but I didn’t care. There was no chance that I was going to move the swing or the baby. Sleep was what I needed and even though my wife and I were fully exhausted, I think we both woke up every fifteen minutes or so to make sure that Jr. was OK. That was until about 5:30, when the crying started again.

Needless to say, it took only ONE night for reality to set in. The reality being that we had no idea what we were doing, that we had a lot to learn, and that life as we knew it had just changed forever. It was at that point when I realized that I had spent the first 34 years of my life being incredibly selfish. The even harsher reality was that I needed to change overnight. From that point forward, I had to put the baby’s needs first, my wife’s needs second, and MY needs came just slightly before the dogs.

Day after day, as we gained more experience and learned more, we became better parents. I overcame my fear of peepoop after several occasions where I was pooped and peed upon while changing an uncountable number of diapers. As far as sleep, there was a long time when there wasn’t a whole lot of it, but as of recently, Jr. is sleeping through the night. Just last night, I actually got about seven hours of solid, uninterrupted, and joyous sleep.

My recreational habits have changed quite a bit as well. As opposed to running big whitewater and going on death march hikes, we bought a camper and spend a lot of weekends camping. We take short hikes, and do some fishing, but mostly we just enjoy watching Jr. experience all kinds of new things.

We also took Jr. rafting on a calm stretch of the Blackfoot this summer. The first 20 minutes were pure happiness and the last hour was filled with anger and discontent.

Every time we go on family adventures, we gain a little more experience, and learn some tricks that make each trip a little better. My buddy Mike was right, it gets better.

Now Jr is almost two and we have #2 on the way. Sleep is a crutch :o)

Weekend Injury Report

Just as the scab on his nose and lip healed up and fell off, Ed Jr. took a serious digger and hit his head on his toy airplane.

Oh dear god all I heard from the other side of the door was a huge smack/bang/kapow and when I finally got the door open his dad was holding him up and he wouldn't uncover his eye with his hand. My heart officially stopped. I mean it. I thought for one brief second that we would have a baby with a glass eye. Luckily as we calmed him down the eye was just fine, but the forehead had a bruise with a lump on it and in the middle of the lump was a pretty severe gouge. Not enough of one to bleed, but damn near.

Ed was so upset he threw the airplane in the garbage can and I felt like I was going to pass out for about a half hour after the whole event. The two of us had better get some thicker skin if we are going to survive this kid. Nothing in the universe can prepare you for the sight of your first born screaming and holding his hand up to his eye. Nothing.

He is none the worse for ware. He was done crying in about 2 minutes and has moved on to sustain other injuries. He did cry and insist that I dig the airplane out of the garbage. He kept telling me "Mommy get airplane from garbage!" "Daddy put airplane in garbage. Daddy soooo upset!"

After all it really wasn't the airplane's fault. It is nobody's fault.

With that, we had a pretty arduous weekend of house hunting *again*. This time I think it is actually going to happen. Now whether it happens before little baby hot house cucumber is born remains to be seen.

Jr. kept busy playing with Faith and Uncle Bean and inventing airplanes, sailboats, ladders and big fish with his blocks. It is ridiculously cute how amazing his imagination is.

Holy Crap It Is April!

Such a busy month it is going to be.


Jr. got out *iceboarding* despite our many attempts to explain. . . His daddy is still pretty good at iceboarding.

So far, we took a digger down the back stairs and seriously banged up our nose and upper lip. Scared the living daylights out of his mom and daddy. We immediately checked to see if all of the teeth were loose, none were.

"Oh god, we are going to have one of *those* kids aren't we?" - Ed

"Um yeah, we already do." - Auto


Finished our fence AKA baby keeper inner. Thanks to Uncle Bean, it looks fabulous! Jr. had a wonderful week having his uncle around every morning and afternoon. He LOVES his Uncle Bean.

Nanny and Treyson came over to celebrate Easter with us. We were supposed to go to GF but this sinus infection I have keeps coming back and I was too ill to travel. They brought Easter to us. Jr. fared quite well in the Easter egg hunt. He loved the M&Ms.




We had a second easter egg hunt tonight at papa and nona's house. With zero competition he made short work of the finding, even scored one golden egg.





I think we have landed on a name. Rutabaga. Rutabaga Coleman, has quite the ring to it - don't you think? Or maybe it is too femenine? Now for a middle name. . . Jr. is partial to Walker.

I realize that posting a video every time I post a blog is setting the bar quite high, but this video is too good not to share. I call it Ed Jr. Hardhat Diaper Marching Song.

Baby Walker

I don't know why, but one day Jr. decided to name baby brother Baby Walker.


Not the name we would choose. All that comes to mind is Walker Texas Ranger, and I know Chuck Norris jokes are funny, but his terrible TV show is too much stigma to attach to a baby.



Tonight I was laying on the floor while he played in his room and the baby started to kick, so I put his hand on my belly and the baby kicked for him. He did not care for this. He did, however lift up his shirt, place my hand on his belly and make me feel his baby kick.

Jr. is in a whole new phase of life, bossy but cute, stubborn but fun, super chatty and I WILL FREAK OUT IN YOUR FACE IF YOU DARE TRY TO DRAG OR TRICK ME INTO COMING INSIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU THINK CRYING FOR 30 MINUTES STRAIGHT IS TOO MUCH, WELL JUST TRY ME!!!!!!!!!! I AM A RACE CAR IN THE RED PEOPLE!!!!!! I AM HERE TO MAKE YOU REGRET THE DAY YOU WERE BORN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS A BIG FING DEAL!!!!!!!!!!! (sorry FIL, couldn't help myself.)

Nothing works. Not candy, not sheer exhaustion, not the cold, nor wind, nor rain will make that little man come in the house. No, Grandma, not even Elmo can bring him inside.


Please don't misunderstand, on the whole he is such a fun amazing little man. So wicked smart, but the terrible twos are here - at least that is what I think is here. God help us if these aren't the terrible twos. Along with the terrible twos is the terrific twos. The little guy who stood for an hour at the kitchen sink tonight and washed dishes. The little guy who helped me rake out my flower gardens with his golf club. That perfect little man who kept throwing his football into his basketball hoop and yelling "JUNIOR TOUCHDOWN!"



The countdown to #2 birthday is on! He is getting a swingset and a front fence from his parents. Maybe a Jr. sized gardening set. Maybe even his own fishing setup. If you are wondering he wears size 3T. Maye a visit from his Nanny and auntie Liesel would be a nice birthday present. . .

Here I am at 24 weeks. I am a little nervous about how big my belly is at 24 weeks, I still have 3 and a half months to go, or 16 weeks. How big can this thing get without tearing my skin and falling off of my body. I think I was this big around 30 weeks with Jr. Maybe Baby Walker is a GIANT! And no, there is only one in there, we saw it. I don't know if anyone is checking but little baby ear of corn/$5 footlong is cooking right along. I like to think about him in there sleeping peacefully while I go about my day and then waiting until I am in the middle of a meeting to Blammo! jump right on my bladder. Sweet little baby.



Oh and P.S. THANK YOU MIL and FIL for the wonderful early Easter present. Jr. loves "Baby Brother" and he makes a perfect pair with "Baby Sister". Although Baby Brother has yet to be invited into Cribby, he is starting to go a lot of places in the house and occasionally has to sit in the booster seat. We also LOVED the books, very cool. Thank you!

Ock

Happy 40th Birthday Uncle Ock!

You may ask yourself, Uncle Ock? Yes, short for Buttock. As in John Jr. referred to his brother's head looking like a Butt-Ock and it stuck.

Anyway, we hope your birthday is a smash! I hope this works in-lieu of a birthday card. We are basically living by the seat of our pants these days - forget planning ahead.

Swinger Baby - Yeah!

After months of our wintery indoor prison (minus the trip to Florida) we are getting out. Jr. loves going to the park and apparently loves swinging. Loved it for at least 30 minutes straight.







Adrienne and Carter met us at the park for a little chilly fun in the sun. We played outside a lot - it was lovely. We also celebrated with our friend Sara on her 30th birthday. He told me Sara was pretty and nice.

He was in a fantastic mood all weekend, maybe it was the fresh air or the supreme naps, but he was a sugar baby all weekend. At night when I put him to bed now not only do we have to mooch, but we have to high five and fist bump. He speaks so clearly.



The other morning he told me that there was a baby in Junior's belly. He is going to name it "Baby Sister" and that the baby is SO BIG - SO BIG!

Speaking of the big baby, Carrot boy is kicking me right now thanks to the ice cream I just ate. My stomach is getting really heavy and I can hardly cross my legs anymore.

P.S. Happy Birthday Uncle Jon! We are really excited for this weekend!

Half Way There!

Banana Boy is at 20 weeks. That is half way to 40 weeks. That is half way to mid July. Half way to our next huge life changing event. Half way to falling head over heels in love with a new baby boy.

Speaking of baby boys. Friday night Carter came over to play. Janeen and I couldn't help ourselves and put the boys into the bath together. Carter lasted for about 10 seconds and then was OUT. Janeeen and I then dressed the boys in identical outfits and swooned over their adorableness.



Jr. had a fantastic weekend with his Nanny, Uncle Bean and Faith in town. There was a fantastic trip to the park and tons of Nanny snuggles.








Jr. and Faith are nearly the same size, she has maybe one or two inches on him in height, but not an ounce in weight. Since they are the same size you sort of expect them to be the same age. Two years difference. It is crazy.

Boy Part Deuce

So there you have it, Heirloom Tomato Coleman is a boy. I will spare you the uber creepy ultrasound pics. The tech this time was kind of odd. I mean this one wanted to chit chat about illegal immigrants and health care reform, which don't get me wrong is SO much better than the last time where the ultrasould place gave up people's ultrasound photos for pro-life propaganda. . . but that is different story. She printed out two photos for us, one the skeleton face baby and the other is the feet. I think Ed wanted the one of his "turtle".

It was such a HUGE relief to see that everything looked good.

Junior got to see photos of his baby brother which he still insists is baby sister. He was less than impressed. He has also been sick, which I am convinced has turned him from sweetface monkey boy to "Nasty Baby".

All day today he was a total a-hole. Except for the time spent at Target. Whiney, crying, up at 6:15 AM not eating, hitting, falling down, abusing the dog a-hole. Afterall, I am not sure you were aware of this but, toddlers are a$$holes.

I even took him out to see his daddy ice fishing. Junior screamed the whole drive out there "Junior Fishing!" "Daddy fishing" "Erik fishing!" "Mommy Sleeping!" "Milllkkk mommy!" He is learning to say please which offers one moment of redemption in a cloud of otherwise total a-holeness. On a rare occasion he will say thank you. Last night during our marathon 1+ hour bedtime ritual he kept standing up in my lap and saying "huggy hug" and "smoochy smooch". Then he would hug and kiss me. It was hard to tell him to quit it and close his eyes and GO TO SLEEP!

No New Photos

Sorry in advance. I have been a major slacker on the camera as of late. You will have to put up with some old photos.

Big news for daddy. He has a new job too! Big promotion to bureau chief. He beat out two guys with tons of program experience. It is the next step up in the state food chain. We are all so very proud of him. He starts next week.




As for baby news, I made them move my due date back. I know when bell pepper was made and I can do the math. The bonus of moving the due date back is that if I go overdue again I will have 8 extra days of overdueness - you may notice we are repeating week 18. I would very much like to have a different birth than we had last time.

I didn't feel the baby move at all until Friday, now I feel that little sea monkey moving all of the time. Friday is the ultrasound and yes we will find out the sex, but that isn't what is important. It is important to make sure that bell pepper has all of the pieces and parts and after that, we will find out what bell pepper will be.

What do I think it is? Girl? Maybe. Ed is SURE it is a boy. He says that there is a lot of testosterone going on inside me making me want to wrestle him and push him down sometimes. Couldn't be that he does things that are irritating. No. Baby's fault.

My new job is going well. It was a little boring at first, but is starting to pick up. I need to be busy, I need it to be worth those extra 8 hours a week I am giving up with my baby boy. I need to know that being a Soil Scientist is worth it. My job would be perfect if I could work 3/4 time again. Maybe. . . someday. . . If I was still at my old job, I would have quit when little bell pepper was born. My old job didn't mean enough to me. That is why I need this one to be worth it.



And now after a lot of blah blah blah, lets get to Jr. We went to spend Valentines Day with Jr.'s most beloved Auntie Liesel (Lee-sow as he says it). He enjoyed spending some time running around her house chasing beagles and the cutest terrier ever. He was a champ of a boy. He was great on Saturday night when we took him to Hooters. Yes. You read that right, we took him to Hooters. He adored our waitress ate a hot dog and left with some Hooters crayons.

He was great at the carousel, park and out to lunch on Sunday. He was very excited to play on the Ebola train at the mall and didn't even notice that his mom had left him with Liesel to run and buy some maternity pants. All and all, I would say he gets the MVP of babies for the weekend. It was nice to have three straight days with him.

He is really talking like crazy. I don't know how better to put it. He can count to 10. He repeats sentences in context. He sings sweet little songs. He knows his first name "Junior" and sometimes even knows his last name. He is getting very loving and didn't hesitate with Liesel at all, he is starting to remember people and pick up where he left off with them. His development is amazing.

Oh and he loves pickles, tomatoes, bananas, apples, grapes, berries and oranges over ice cream or cookies. Weirdo.

Janeen and I were joking that we should name our new babies after the food that we craved while we were pregnant. She said that her little girl would be named DQ Blizzard. Mine might be strawberry ice cream or pizza crust.