Do the right thing, people

Cooper is the kid that if something is going around, he gets it.  And it's always worse for him than for other kids; a cold in a typical kid is RSV to Cooper.  So it drives me crazy when parents send their sick kids to school, takes them to an event/activity, or just in general gets them out and about when they have a fever.

Monday night, Semmes had a fever with a barking cough that made it pretty obvious he had croup.  So I informed all the moms that we had been around that day and cancelled our plans for Tuesday.  Early Tuesday morning, he woke up and was still warm and struggling a little with breathing, so we gave him an oral steroid and put him back in bed.  When he woke back up for the day, he was GREAT.  I mean, running around, full of energy, no fever, great.  But I did the right thing and kept him home.  Because one day of him being a little stir crazy at the house is worth not spreading nasty croup to everyone we come into contact with.  He's totally fine today, and we ventured out into the world this morning, confident that we weren't going to be spreading germs everywhere we went.

Yesterday was the first day of fall.  Along with pumpkins, gorgeous orange and red vistas, scarves, and boots comes colds, runny noses, and upper respiratory infections.  Brad says the ER is already full of kids with croup, so do the right thing!  Keep your sick kid home (and if you're sick, stay home).

Does this look like a sick kid (or for that matter, a BABY) to you?

Cooper's birthday party...only a month late

We had a really fun 4th birthday party for Cooper last month (I am so far behind on blogging).  It was a beach/summer theme party.

This is the super cute invitation.  We had it on the Friday of Cooper's "summer break" from school.  They get two days off between school years, so the teachers can do inservice and the kids can get new classrooms.  We invited Cooper's class and a few of the kids came!  We also had most of Semmes' toddler group, plus a few kids from church.  It was a good time! 

I got Cooper the cutest little beach shirt with his name on it.

We did beachy muffins (muffins since it was in the morning).  They turned out so well!

Goldfish and Swedish fish in beach buckets.

The water was in an inflatable pool.

First, we played outside on the playground.  Semmes ran around like crazy and Cooper liked the swing.

Then we came inside to sing happy birthday and eat some yummy snacks!

Semmes liked the snacks (go figure)

Cooper ate some frosting.

We loved getting to see all of our friends on a weekday! 

We did it in the youth hall of our church.  It was perfect for Cooper because we could put him in his pony and let him go!

He had so much fun!

Our attempt at a family picture:

We had such a good time celebrating our big four-year-old!! 

Cooper and the pool

All summer, Cooper has hated, HATED, the pool. This is strange for him, because he's liked the pool every other year. I don't know what it was about this year-the unusual coolness of the water maybe-but he was having none if it.

So when we got to the beach, we just continued to avoid the pool. Instead, he sat next to the pool while everyone else swam.  Finally on Wednesday, I couldn't handle it anymore. It was late in the day, and if he got super mad it would be ok if we had to head back to the condo. Much to our surprise, he LOVED it. We put him in the water and he just laughed and laughed. He laughed like he was being ticked, uncontrollably. At one point, Brad actually thought I was ticking him-he was laughing that hard  It was awesome.

So after that we ended our day at the pool. Cooper was already loving vacation and this just made it even better. The last day, we got pictures: