The Gooches: Forever Family

This is it for us... we are done, we are a forever family of 5; and looking at my family I want to take a minute to shout from the rooftops how lucky I am.

I will start from littlest to biggest...

Nicole, Lulu, Lulu Bean, The Bean, Princess Bean, Beanie, Beanie Baby, Pinto... And so much more... She is now 4 months old. And she is amazing!!! We all love her! She looks so much like the boys, but she is so different in attitude! She is a happy baby, she is always smiling and for a few weeks now she has been laughing quite a bit as well. But she does not have the normal chortle of a baby, it is... different:)

She is an active baby! She is always kicking and moving, at 3months and almost 2 weeks she rolled over from back to tummy, she had been trying for a few weeks but had never been able to get her hand moved out from under her to be able to do so. The worst part about it is that I did not get to see it. I had her on her play mat on her back and left for a few minutes, when I came back she was on her tummy! So excited and disappointed at the same time:) And now she is rolling from tummy to back, standing (with help), pushing up with tummy time, playing with toys, sits in her bumbo and exersaucer, and loves to grab/eat her toes! She also loves swimming! She is a water baby through and through! She could be crying and screaming and as soon as you put her in the bath or swimming pool she stops. It is amazing!

She is growing up too fast! Her bottom two front teeth just came through last week, and she is growing like a weed, tall and chubby. I think she has 4 rolls on each thigh! At her dr appointment she was 26.5 inches tall (97%) weighed 15.8lbs (90%) and her head is 16 in (60%).

As far as sleeping goes, she was doing really well, about 4-6 hours in a row, but then vacation happened, and now teething... we hope she will get back on schedule soon!!!

Cohen, my sweet mama's boy! I LOVE him! The problem with Cohen is that he is a stinker! A lovable stinker, but a stinker none the less. He has learned to survive with an older brother, so he needs to be tough. He will not take being teased he hits and bites and pushes and scratches like a feral animal. He has also been my baby for the last 3.5 years and has had a hard time with the transition of sharing mommy with Lulu and has tried evening the score with a whole bunch of whining. It drives me bonkers! But, he is my boy that does not question my hugs and kisses, he just gives them right back twice as much! We have started a battle between us that starts with "i love you", the next person says "I love you more" then "I love you the most!" But it does not end there, the winning statement is "I LOVE YOU THE FASTEST!" That is more than all the other i love you's combined! And when he first started this I would ask, "How fast?" and he would show me by either running around the room as fast as he can or by moving his hand back and forth as fast as he can. (because, if you did not know already, Cohen is the fastest kid alive!) But the person who says "I love you the fastest" is the winner of the battle and they love the other person the most. Up until a few weeks ago, that was Cohen who always won... that is until one day I started to fake cry and tell him that I was so sad that he always won and I wanted to win because I loved him more. Since that day, my sweet boy, has let me win every single time! And if it turns out that he was going to win he says, let's start over, and he will start so I can win. If that is not true love I do not know what is!

Cohen also has this brain that never turns off. I would like to say it is a one-track mind, but it is not. It is a typical man brain that is only focused on what he wants it to be focused on, or what he finds most important. He is always singing/playing/talking/moving. When I say always i mean ALWAYS! The kid is always so far off in lala land he has no idea what is going on in the world around him. It does not matter what we are doing, playing a game, saying prayer, talking after he gets in trouble... he is never paying attention because he is somewhere else in that brain of his. The other day when Arlo was getting his tooth pulled out Cohen's head (ear down) was on the side walk. When I looked at him he asked "what do ants say?" When I glanced at where his head had been on the ground and saw there was a little ant walking around. His head was not on the ground, it was on the ant to listen to what it was saying!

He comes up with cute sayings all the time. When we were watching a Living Testaments movie, there was a lady singing the song in the background and he asked his dad, "Is that an angel singing?" Or after eating carrots for dinner one night he asked me to push on his eyeballs. When I told him no because I could hurt him he replied, "no mom, my eyes are strong because I have been eating carrots!" The other night I caught him singing, Katy Perry's Roar, in the mirror while he was making faces. And, the other day when Arlo apologized for teasing him he said "I forget your apology brother." Here is an example of our conversations: C: My Bad, ME: My Bad? What's my bad? C: You don't know what my bad is? Me: No, do you know what it means? C: YES! It means my boobies in Spanish! And that is only half of them. He is such a funny, smart and amazing kid! I love him the Fastest!!!

Arlo, my first child, my responsible child, my love bug! I do not know what I would do without him. Today he actually changed Lulu's diaper for me! He knows how to manipulate his little brother into doing anything he wants him to do and he tries to barter his way out of everything and anything. He is now a kindergartener who does fine when I take him to the bus but will still cry, wanting to stay with me when I take him to school. He tries so hard to be grown up and yet is still such a kid at heart! The other day before we started school we started talking about kindergarten and how exciting school will be and that conversation turned into a conversation about the milestones in life and whenI got to the part about how after high school he will move away from me, he started to cry and tell me he never wanted to go on a mission or go to college if he had to leave me. We compromised and now when he moves out he will buy a house next to a racetrack where he will race cars and I will have to buy the house next door to him so we can be next door neighbors:) With these stories, it sounds like he is a crier, but that could not be further from the truth. Arlo does get sentimental when it comes to his mom (Which I LOVE) but he is a daredevil and a man's man! He loves roller coasters, jumping off swings, skiing, riding his bike, roller blading, playing ice hockey and everything else that will make me nervous! And he loves everything related to guns. In fact he is now an owner of a bb gun, 2 air soft guns (one is an automatic machine gun) and a blow dart gun. He loves hunting and camping and all things related.

But, Arlo is smart! He is lucky, learning comes easy to him! He loves to learn new things and not just at school. He has made me teach him how to make snacks and other things in the kitchen so he can be self sufficient at feeding himself, he helps with his sister and brother ALL THE TIME! He even likes to read to them even though he does not know how. He is great with chores (most of the time), and he remembers everything you have ever done with him or said to him.