C-dawg

{Just found this written from March 2014 that didn't get published...must have been waiting to attach pics} 

This boy.

He aggravates me, but makes me so happy at the same time.

He tests my patience, but then gives me more hugs than I could ask for.

He is a charmer. He knows just when to flash that giant toothy grin, and give kisses and hugs to make everything better.  Rambunctious, full-of-energy, undo-er of anything clean, crazy, loveable, BOY.  

Cohen's personality has really started coming out the last couple months.  He is talking up a storm and repeating words left and right.

He is very helpful when it comes to throwing things away (ie diapers, wrappers, etc) and he likes to close the toilet seat lid and flush it (let's hope he keeps that up, that'd be at least one thing this mama did right!) 

He knows all his body parts and loves to point them out on himself and others.  Yesterday we went to visit a friend's newborn baby and he held her for a long time. He was surprising gentle with her and kept pointing out all her body parts. He kept patting her and giving her little hugs. It was ADORABLE. But no, I am not baby hungry yet...

He knows most animal sounds and  loves reading books with animals in them.

Whenever Cohen gets sick of sitting in his high chair at the table he always stands up and proclaims, "DONE!" If you don't act right away to get him down he says it over and over and over and over again.

His favorite show is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. He loves the hot dog song at the end and dances and "sings" it. He calls Mickey Mouse "dog dog" and always hands me the remote and says "dog dog".

If anyone is ever laying on the floor he takes it as an open invitation to jump on them and start wrestling. Most of the time no one gets hurt...

Speaking of hurting, he really likes to head-butt. He gets so excited and bonks people in the head.  It's an automatic response to give a hug immediately after said head-butt to say sorry.

He is very attached to his mother at the moment. By attached, I mean, he would follow me to the end of the earth right now. There is usually not more than a couple feet between us and he thinks we always have to be in the same room. Sometimes it gets frustrating when I can't leave for 2 seconds to grab this or that without a meltdown, but I'm trying to enjoy it because I know it's just a phase and pretty soon he'll be a teenager and not want his mom around. 

One last story. We like to play the game with Cohen asking him, "where's mom?" and he'd point to me, "where's daddy? where's addy?"  We were playing it last week during dinner and asked, "where's mom?" and he pointed to Addy. We all busted up laughing, including him. He got a taste of what it was like to be funny and the rest of the game he pointed to the wrong person on purpose so he'd make us laugh. He's a character.

There is so much more I could say about this little man, but I'll leave it at that for now. I love this little dude and wouldn't trade him or his messes for anything!

Try, Try Again.

I'm going to try this again. I enjoyed blogging about what's happening in our family and more than that, I enjoy looking back at all of our memories.  As I look back on old posts, there's a TON of things that I've forgotten about and I'm glad I documented. I feel bad and a tad guilty that I haven't written much the last couple years...I blame Cohen, haha...just kidding. Sort of.  Anyway, it's fun to look back, and there's a few very important things that have happened on the Gonzalez front that need to be written! So instead of making myself feel extremely guilty, I'll just have to skip ahead and try my best to keep up.

Basketball

Seth has been playing basketball on a Corporate League at work and last night was the first time that a game was early enough and close enough that we could take the kids to go watch.  Cohen sat, wide-eyed as he watched them warm up. He was mesmerized.  After a few minutes he decided that he needed to play too. He took a ball, dribbled, and tried to throw it in numerous times. He didn't care that the hoop was 10 feet up, he was determined.

 

He especially liked it when he got lifted up to put it in the hoop.

  

 

 I think Seth was having one of those "proud daddy moments". He can't wait until he can take Cohen to more of his games and to the church when he plays on Saturday mornings.  

 

Meanwhile, since we were in an Elementary school, Addy had fun walking across the balance beam, running around, and playing with doll houses.  

Too bad the other team didn't show up...ah well, we had fun anyway.

Handy Helpers

These are a bunch of random pictures from my phone from the last few months. I just had to share some of the most "helpful" moments.

 

 Our ward and stake hosted a Creche event (Nativity displays) at Christmas and I helped with set-up and take-down. Cohen was helpful too. He climbed right up on this dolly and figured out he could drive it like the Flinstone car.  Luckily, he didn't break anything.

 

 He is very helpful when he's all done eating. He removes his bib himself and stands up and proclaims "all done!" 

 

 Can't forget to add this little gem. My mom helped encourage this while Seth and I were gone for 8 days on a cruise to the Caribbean. 

Addy likes to dress up and play "princess", "family" and "school".  She asked me to play the wicked step-mother here and tell her to do chores.  Who says you can't get anything done when you're pretending?

  I think I'm going to need a new set of dishes and glasses soon. I think Cohen was trying to be helpful with the dishes again, or maybe just hinting to me that I needed to sweep the floor. It's always helpful when this happens as you are trying to rush out the door in the morning.

 

  When it comes to the vacuum, my kids could not be more opposite.  Addy has always been deathly afraid of the vacuum (and still is). Cohen on the other hand, thinks it's a game whenever I decide to vacuum. He runs to it, climbs on it, chases it, runs away from it laughing, and tries to take over with pushing it. 

 

  This girl likes to cook. At 4 years old she is a PRO at cracking eggs. I can always count on her to help me bake or cook something yummy. 

 

  She is also so great at unloading the dishwasher and sometimes loading it. She loves to climb up on the counter and put everything neatly away where it goes.

 

 

 

 

Cohen's job is the silverware. I make sure to remove all sharp objects first though. He can't see over the drawer so he just flings them in. Sometimes I fix them, sometimes I don't. Makes it more exciting that way.

  Cohen also likes to help with the microwave. Having it right at his level is very convenient. He likes to help cook socks, balls, papers, pens, etc etc. You name it, he has probably stuck it in.(sidenote: notice the shoes---inevitable when you have an older sister obsessed with all things princess)

All in all, I kinda like these little "helpers" of mine.  I guess I'll let them keep helping out.

Dreary Winter

I gotta say, snow is great for Christmas and maybe even a little bit in January, but I don't remember ever having Spring fever like I do this year! We got hit with several big snow and ice storms the last few weeks and it makes me really miss the Las Vegas winters we used to enjoy! I've lost count of how many snow days off from school Addy has had, I think we are at 7 or 8.

Watch out if you come to our front door! With a house facing North we have an ice skating rink. And heaven forbid if an icicle fell on your head...or you walked into one (yes, they are THAT long)

The ice storms do make for some cool pictures. It was so nice to see the sun, even if it was in the negative digits.

We have spent so many hours outside shoveling. Seth has dreams about using a snow-blower on our 200+ foot driveway.  I told him he's lucky he has a wife who helps him shovel it ;) It has been a great workout! This is after one of the big storms, I never thought I'd have to bend down to check our mail.

 Boy, was I in for an awakening when the next 14 inches of snow came! We had to dig out our mailbox! Living on a pretty busy road means our road is plowed before most, however, the snow plows are constantly pushing more snow into our driveway and we are forever doing extra work to dig ourselves out again. I think we dug through 3 to 4 feet that was piled up after the last storm.

The daunting driveway.  The snow piles are so big, we ran out of places to put it.

 

 

Seth scraping away a giant snow pile so we could put more on. Driving on the roads is crazy, all the snow makes the lanes very narrow and it feels like driving through tunnels everywhere because it is piled so high.

 

Did I say 14 inches? I wasn't exaggerating. Here's proof. 14 inches of NEW snow. Did I mention we already had at least a foot and a half of other snow from earlier in the week? 

Buried car

I wish I had a picture handy of what our patio looked like in the fall for comparison, but this gives an idea of the snow on top of snow on top of rain on top of snow, etc...  

 

 

 

I have to give a shout out to my awesome husband. After spending the day working from home, then shoveling and being completely exhausted, he built a snowman with Addy just before it got dark. She loved it even though it didn't look like "olaf" because she has been obsessed with all things "Frozen" after she's seen the movie countless times. (She's told me a few times that "the cold never bothered me anyway.") Since Seth is the newly called Edler's Quorum president at church he found out that they are in charge of clearing the walks after all the snowstorms. Thus, after spending countless hours shoveling our own snow, he makes the 15 minute trek to the church to do the same thing there. (Luckily, there is a snowblower--although it broke for the 14 inch snowstorm!)

 

No, Cohen did not play in the snow in his pjs. He just went out for the photo. He couldn't take his eyes off the snowman.

This is just a glimpse of our winter.  It's hard getting so much unwanted snow and rain when people in Utah are fasting and praying for it. Boy, do I wish I could send some over! I am grateful for having 4 seasons, but it seems like winter is taking over right now...

Back on the blogwagon

I was told many times by many people that some of the things I did for the first child, I wouldn't be able to live up to for my other children.  That's only partially true so far. I have indeed taken many pictures of the second-born, I did newborn, 3 month, 6 month, 9 month and 12 month photo sessions. We have videos and proof he exists, just not on this blog.

It's funny, my mind is drifting and forgetting things (maybe due to 2 kiddos) and I find myself referring back to this little blog for details of happenings, pictures, when we did something, etc.  So for selfish reasons, and partially guilty reasons for not recording some very huge events for our family, I am setting a goal to start blogging again.

Maybe that year of pictures and photo sessions will make it after all...

Flashback Friday...Waiting for Baby

We kept ourselves busy before Cohen was born.Since Seth didn't start his job right away we had some great family time this summer.  Here is a ton of pictures of some of the things we did.

We visited Krispy Kreme a couple times.  Addy liked seeing the donuts being made. Even better, was that her uncle Scott was making them!

It's nice that he gave us the family discount too! {FREE}

Seth was able to live out a life long dream of being an extra in a movie.  He was an orc in an indy film.

That's my man!

We read lots of books

We walked in to Macy's one day and Addy started laughing. She walked right over to these mannequins and said "Take a picture of me!" She thought they were hilarious!

One day when we went to get groceries at Macey's they were having breakfast and some sort of celebration

We went to Hogle Zoo 5 days before Cohen was born.  I thought all the walking around would be good for me and possibly put me into labor. In retrospect it was one of the worst days ever.  We invited Aunt Cassie and Cousin Anthony and uncle Stockton with us.  We wanted to get there early in the morning and leave by afternoon when it got crowded.  We ended up not getting there until afternoon.  It was hot, muggy, and crowded.  I was huge pregnant lady and I swear everyone was looking and pointing at me and how large I was, probably feeling sorry for me as well.  Anyway, I didn't go into labor. And I learned that Cassie didn't have working air conditioning in her van on the way home when it was sweltering hot. I thought I was going to die. Anyway, the kids had fun! Stockton and Addy are good buddies.

Gotta get a drink from the lion's mouth!

We loved the elephants! The baby was playing in water and Addy thought it was so funny

Addy, Stockton, Anthony

Brothers

They got tired at the zoo too!

 We got to hang out with family a lot during the summer too.  We had so much fun with them and wish we were still close!

Splash Pad

Buddies

First time at the dentist! No cavities! Plus she got to watch a movie on the ceiling!

Got a token at the dentist to ride the horse

Since I was tired and sick so much of my pregnancy, I was so grateful for an awesome daughter who let me rest. When she would wake up from her bed in the morning she would quietly just come in my room and read to herself or play until I woke up. 

Sweet girl

We went swimming with our friends at the Spanish Fork Pool

Braxton and Addy

Sad, but I think this is Addy's first ice cream cone

She loved it!