Merry Christmas!!!

We hope you each are having a wonderful holiday season full of lots of family, friends, food and maybe even a few good deals. As we look at 2009 right around the corner we sometimes wonder where 2008 went – maybe to sleepless nights? ;)
We spent the month of January getting ready for our baby and enjoy the last of our ‘baby free’ days (if one can call it that being 9 months pregnant!) We took in lots of dinners and movies and just enjoyed getting the nursery ready.
On February 12, 2008 @ 1:15pm our world forever changed for the better. After 17 hours of labor and 2.5 hours of pushing (and literally Kevin saying at one point during the delivery ‘wow this is really tiring!’ I could have hit him if I wasn’t so exhausted!) Cooper Cristion Drake entered the world perfectly and has remained that way since. He was 8lbs 14oz 21.5in. And has been growing everyday since!!! He is an amazing baby – full of such delight, smiles, giggles and curiosity. Everything he does is perfect. Each day we realized how blessed we are to have him in our lives. We often wonder what we did in our lives before he came into it (except maybe sleep a little more!) But even sleep he is good at – sleeping through the night by 7 weeks. Overall he has been healthy. When we were pregnant they saw on Ultrasound that he had fluid within one of his kidneys. When he was 5 weeks old and also again at 6 months old he underwent a series of test to access his kidneys. Overall the kidneys still have extra fluid on the left side but they are healthy and functioning great. We now continue to monitor the kidneys yearly.
At 10 months now he is already crawling and pulling himself up on everything. We caught him today trying to climb his dresser! He has 8 teeth and loves to eat!!! Especially bananas and his favorite MumMum Crackers. He babbles a lot but only real close to works are mama and dada. He loves his two kitties, Lucy and Gracie, and giggles everything they come near. They on the other hand just prefer to watch him from afar. We have been on lots of adventures together including his first airplane ride at 11 weeks to Orlando with Uncle Riley, Grandma Tamy and Grandpa John. We met my Godparents and their children there and enjoyed the beautiful Florida sunshine together! Coop is an angel in the car and he gets lots of experience as we make a lot of trips up to Brainerd to see both of our families and also ventured to WI to meet the Cullinane’s. Being the 1st boy grand/greatgrandchild he is definitely spoiled!!! J He loves the park, being outdoors, reading, swimming and bath time and exploring any and everything he can get himself close to! We really are so blessed and we love him even more then we ever thought was humanly possible. We didn’t even know the heart was able to love this much. There is a saying that we have found to be so true “A baby fills a void in your heart that you didn’t even know was missing…”
We still live in South Minneapolis and enjoy the area and people we live by.
I am still working as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner at the University of MN Children’s Hospital in Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant (BMT). I have the opportunity to work daily beside children and their families as they literally fight to live. No one decides to have a BMT for the heck of it but you’d never know by looking in the faces of the children I take care of daily. I am so blessed to be able to work beside such amazing families. I never really understood what it maybe like to be a parent in that situation until I am a parent myself. I am humbled daily by my job and also realize how blessed we are to Cooper. The little bumps in the road with his kidneys and an ear infection are nothing compared to the families I work beside each day.
Kevin took a new position in a Chiropractic Personal Injury clinic right outside of downtown Minneapolis. He has really enjoyed the position and the opportunity to work with a wide range of patients from all economic and cultural background. He is also close to home so that makes his commute great! He was able to spend a few weeks this summer being ‘Mr. Mom’ before this job started. Both he and Cooper loved it! He is also able to spend many mornings having ‘papa/Coopie’ time before work. He also has become quite the hunter with my dad and brother. Kevin did get his 1st 8 point buck this season (and the antlers are hanging from our back porch to prove it!)
Kevin and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary this December (12 years together counting dating!) Being with your best friend makes these last five years of life fly right past and we look forward to fifty-five more! Besides being parents we have also been able to enjoy time together with our friends and families. We continue to have fun making our house into a home. We worked hard and had a lot of on our perennial and vegetable gardens this summer. Ofcourse the not so fun parts of homeownership we have also experience like our sink and oven breaking. . We hope to do a little traveling and do plan to take our first baby-less trip in May out east for a wedding. Coop probably won’t even realize we are gone because he’ll get so much grandma/grandpa/auntie/uncle/cousin time and attention! J
We pray that 2009 will bring you love, peace and happiness. Take the time to step back and remember all of the Reasons for the Seasons. We thank you for your love and friendship in our family’s life!

Happy Holidays!
Kevin, Erica and Cooper

when cooper met santa...

Santa's little helper Cooper stopped by and we had to take a little photo session. As you can see the photos started out so dang cute... then the shirt came unbutton... then off completely

until we had the meltdown! I DONT WANT TO BE SANTA'S LITTLE HELPER ANYMORE!!!

(this is probably my favorite though!)

We took Cooper to meet Santa last night - tradition for his first christmas. We were a little unsure of how he'd do because older men sometimes make him a little nervous. But he loved him!!!! He was in awe of Santa's beard (real too!) and he loved the buttons on Santa's shirt - as you can tell since he has a grip on it in the picture. Can you believe the smile he gave us?!?

We are looking forward to our 1st christmas together as a family. Cooper is at a great age for his 1st Christmas. He is walking along the furniture, standing great with help, chats up a storm and boy can he eat!!! his new favorite thing is soup - we give him all the noodles and veggies and he goes to town. The other night we weren't feeding him fast enough and he was licking it off the tray! It was sooo funny!!! Here is a gross story for you... read at your own will. He spit up the other day on the wood floors and then started to lick it! Gross i know - i warned you!

Happy Holidays!!!!

fall thoughts

here are some more few pics of all of the adventures we did with cooper this fall. He is a ham for the camera as you can tell... and yes that smile he shares in most of his photos is real and we get the blessing of seeing it everyday!!!!

He had lots of fun raking the leaves with us (more like eating the leaves with us!) and ofcourse being with papa, grandma and uncle getting ready for hunting. Papa got his first buck - 8 pointer - so maybe coop will even try vension for the first time! it won't be because his mama gave it to him though! ;)

new things everyday...

each day we wake up and it is like cooper discovered and learned something new while he was sleeping in his crib (or sometimes lack there of...) He stands in his crib and throws things and begs to be picked up. when you go in you can't help but smile at his cute face greeting you. He rolls all over that crib when he sleeps it is amazing... so much for swaddling!!! He now can pull himself up on every and anything - my favorite is when he tries to pull himself up on my pants while i am doing the dishes.

He can make himself sit (sitting has been a bit of a struggle for cooper as he would rather move around then sit by himself - he really didn't master the art of sitting when placed that way until about 7 months cause he'd rather crawl everywhere.) He now has given away the army crawl and is full fours crawling everywhere! :) He is getting really good at eating and feeding himself. he favorites include peas, puff, bananas and pancakes. He is a pain to change his diaper because he rolls every which way but the way you want him to be while changing his diaper. So we have had a few more 'showers' then we'd desire!!! :)

he is the best when he poos - because he crawls into the kitchen most times to do this and grunts while he is doing it... too funny! (we know you love that detail and we are sure he'll love that we shared that one day.) And he can make a mess of his toys - he love his toys and exploring everything they can do. he also can crawl right into the basket and pull out EVERY toy he owns and trash the living room with it. isn't he too young to make a mess? guess not. he is up to 7 teeth with the next on the horizon. when i step back and think 9 months ago he was just born and so helpless i am in total awe of the beauty of human life and all the development he achieves. at his 9m ck up he was 20.4 lb (45%) and 29in (75%) and head 47cm (90%) he gets his big head from his papa right? tall skinny man!!!

all we know is we are so blessed to be cooper's parents - we love him so!!!

Coop the magic dragon

Happy Halloween to you all!!! Thought we'd share a few pics of the ever so cute cooper. He was the most adorable dragon one has ever seen. he wasn't too sure what to think of the costume though... kinda cramped his style i think. We just spent time here around the house - pasted out candy to the kids and then enjoyed a bonfire with our great neighbors. We did take Coop trick or treating around the block -we couldn't help but show him off.

poor little man must of ate too much candy though... he woke up early saturday am with a fever of 102. We ended up taking him in that morning and all was fine. we were a bit worried given he had just finished a round of abx for an ear infection and given his kidney status we wanted to be safe. within 36 hours his fever was gone and he just now has a little runny nose.

enjoy!

fall adventures!!!

Cooper just loves his fall pumpkin that our neighbor grew for him in her garden. ofcourse he wants to eat it but what doesn't go into the mouth!?!

believe it or not our little coop is already 8 months where did the days go....

at the beginning of the month we met up with some of our friends for a great fall day at the apple orchard and pumpin patch. Cooper loved the time there. he wanted to crawl over all of the pumpkins and didn't quite get why he was smaller then they were. he liked to beat on them. He loved the apples - one of his favorite treats to eat!!! It was fun to get out and enjoy the beautiful colors and time with our friends!

We are so proud of our little man! i think we have to be the happiest parents. Its hard to even imagine life without Cooper - we went to these same places last year when we were expecting him. I remember looking at the children running around and the little babies thinking 'what will this little person be like? will we be able to handle this? will he like us?' so many questions and here we are a year later so blessed with the best boy in the world. Everything he does is so amazing and we cherish it so much! He is such an easy going child - so laid back and loves to go everywhere. We just LOVE him!!! :)

1st famous debut!

So even though the article is stupid and completely doesn't display the great time we had on friday evening with our neighbors Cooper made his first debut as a local celebrity in the Star Tribune. Our neighbor noticed the star tribune was looking for people that were going to use their bonfire pits over the weekend as they wanted to do a story on it. So she replyed saying we were going to be using our firepit and actually had planned our fall block party. We blocked of the street and had about 75+ people come out for the potluck and had 5 bonfire pits out to enjoy the beautiful fall evening and fellowship with neighbors. We had a wonderful time and no one complained - though the story made it seem different... even still fun to get Cooper on the front page of the paper!!! I am now just waiting for the baby model agencies to call - how couldn't they with that face!!!

here is the link to the dumb story: http://www.startribune.com/local/30870774.html

always on the move

Crazy to believe Cooper is
already 7 months - well almost 8! He is on the move everywhere these days. He is very into his toys and can figure out what to do with each. He loves his Wood beads that wind through the metal. He knows just how to push the bead through. He also loves his ABC ball and Baseball tee. He has figured out to how crawl - well army crawl that is - his way over to his toy basket and pull out the toys he wants to play with. He also loves to go the the park and swing on the swings. He just laughs and laughs and laughs as we keep pushing him. He is such a sight to see when he is on the swing!!! As you can see from this picture below he crawls up onto the basket but then doesn't know how to get down. He ofcourse breaks into tears and we can't help but laugh at him. We know we know how mean are we...

Cooper loves to help out in
our garden or more so he loves to eat the leaves and grass around the area. Our big project last fall and this spring/summer has been redoing our flower box out front. It has turned out great! We also did veggie garden too. We are excited to teach cooper all about gardening and growing in the seasons ahead!
Coop still love his bathtime .

Auntie Ashley spotted a great bath chair (a circle thing he sits in and it keeps him upright) at a garage sale. This is his new favorite way to take a bath... he bring his rubber duckie and floating books and plays away. He was in there over a half hour the other night - we had to drag him out. He has also figured out how to take of his socks and leave them everywhere - just like his papa! He is 'talking' more and more every day - he says mama and dada - often in a babbling way but that is okay right!?!

Taking in the great outdoors

We got an outdoors man on our hands! Cooper has loved being outside since the weather was warm enough to be! We went on our first walk when the snow was just melting - pushing the stroller through puddles and all.

As you can see he loves the water. We have a little pool for him that he has enjoyed while being in his bumbo chair (since he can sit up but would rather not since moving around is much more fun.) When we were in florida in May he didn't want much to do with floating in the water but now he loves it! we got a great float that works perfect for him. He didn't want us to be hold onto him at all - as you can tell by the pic he just loves floating around!!! Such a big man!!!

HE loves to lay on the grass ofcourse to eat it too!!! We lay him down on a blanket though we always wonder why because he just crawls his way to the grass and eats it. It's hard to keep him out of it!

We think one of his favorite past time is swinging. He loves to walk to the park and swing in the swing - just like he is in the pic below. He laughs and laughs and laughs!!! and drolls everywhere too!! It is soo fun!

and ofcourse he loves to be "nakey coopie" and crawl all over the place!