Ry and Coop Dot Com

I’ve often thought that Father’s Day was one of those strange sort of inventions that really only existed because there was a Mother’s Day.  Mother’s Day’s I can see… it makes sense to give one day where a mom can sit back and relax, enjoy the day without too much trouble.  For Dad’s, I think Father’s Day is every Sunday during NFL season and the Super Bowl, and any MLB series that goes five or more games, NBA as long as a polarizing figure is in the match up (Thanks LeBron.)  Throw in the Olympics, NHL and horse racing and you’ve found your Father’s Day.  They should at least do mother’s a favor and pick one of those days to combine with Father’s Day.

With all that said, my wife put together a great Father’s Day weekend and we had a little help from our family and the boys.  Coop decided he’d sleep a lot this weekend and Ryan was so busy celebrating his “three years old” that things were pretty relaxing.  Jenn got me whale watching tickets for our July trip to Cape Cod which is awesome!  With the amount of running I’ve done lately though I suspect she qualified for the “bring your own whale discount.”  Oh well.. I’ve always enjoyed being the center of attention and today was no different.

It was three years ago today that I paced the floors of the St. Peter’s NICU with a four pound bundle of joy.  Now, as we celebrate by making campfire cupcakes (credit to Jenn on that one because we all know I’m not that creative) we’re so thankful for our oldest little man.  Looking back, whether it was counting hundreds of little beads of medicine to control his seizures, or worrying for days on end why he wouldn’t eat anything ,it’s all sooo worth it.  So, here’s a big Happy Birthday to our first little man.  Love you bud!

Okay so it’s been a month and I haven’t posted a picture of our littlest little man alone without his brother so I thought I’d take this opportunity to shine the spotlight of attention on Mr. Cooper.

Coop has been an angel baby.  Seriously, I caught Cooper the other day with a bottle of milk and the Wall Street Journal reading the stock charts.

With all that said, our little guy is drinking hundreds of gallons of milk daily so that he can quickly gain weight and catch up to his older brother.  I can sense urgency in his every effort as if he’s saying, “Wait Ryan, I can help terrorize Mom and Dad.. just give me a month.”  We’ll be ready!

It’s been said that children “bounce” more than they fall and for the past three years I’ve seen this to be true, to a point.  Yesterday though was my first real proof that they do indeed bounce.

We decided to hit up Jumpin’ Jacks for the second weekend in a row.  As a quick aside, this place is your typical great ice cream, burgers and fries that are okay but not so great a few hours later while lying in bed.

Anyway, as I was feeding our littlest dude, mommy and Ryan decided to go get ice cream.  As they were walking, our bigger little dude tripped and fell on his face.  Now, when I say fell, I mean he really fell.  When Jenn picked him up he looked like he’d gone three rounds with Kimbo Slice.  By the way, google Kimbo Slice if you don’t know who he is… crazy dude.  So there was blood everywhere and, for a second, it looked like we had a real issue on our hands.  After a few minutes of cleaning up and assessing the damage (all done by Jenn with Cooper and I looking on in amazement, fear and curiosity… okay well Cooper was probably just looking on with a bit of hunger pain and a feeling that his pants were wet)  we decided that Ryan had bit through his lip!  You could see the tooth mark on the top of his lip.

I thought it was over.  How could a kid bite through his lip and survive!  Then, literally five minutes later the bleeding had stopped and he was back to wanting ice cream.  What?  Did he realize he’d just gone through major Grey’s Anatomy type trauma!  In all, after fifteen minutes of ice and hugs, he was back to eating a chocolate ice cream cone.  If you look closely in this picture you can see the big fat lip he’s got.  Amazing, chocolate really does cure everything!

Jenn’s latest doctor has stopped by to make sure that Mr. Cooper is doing fine.  While I’m a bit suspect on this doctor’s advice, he did seem to have great bedside manners.

For close to three years I’ve been updating readers of this blog on the many musings of one Ryan T. Austin.  From his visits with Dr. Bow Tie to trips to Disney World, we’ve been following his big events and memorializing them here.  Now, as I sit here tonight, we begin the next chapter in this blog as Ryan Timothy, Jenn and I welcome Cooper Jared Austin into the world.  I can’t wait to begin this next chapter. Much love to all who’ve wished us well over the last few months….

 It’s been a little while since my last update and I regret to inform you that young little monster #2 has not arrived in the household yet.  Ryan is ready and willing to share space on this blog with his new baby brother and has even found it in his heart to pick out some toys to donate to the entertainment cause.

Jenn is, well, Jenn is doing fine.  She really is a remarkable trooper who deserves all the credit and love in the world.  While it’s still not clear to me how she’s been able to survive these past nine months, the last few weeks has been particularly challenging.  It appears as though Mr. Cooper (spoiler alert to those who didn’t know we’d decided on a name) has decided to position himself in such a way as to appear as though he were standing on Jenn’s spine with his head straight out…. apparently this child has not learned the space saving ways of the fetal position.

For the boys part in this whole process, Ryan and I have managed to complicate things by contracting some sort of rare airborne virus that eats your sinuses out of your head and leaves you violently coughing until you die.  What’s worse, I’m 87.3% sure that Ryan gave this to Jenn.  We’re already going to be ordered to wear surgical masks when this young child decides to enter the world… surgical masks!  How scary is that?  If the first thing I saw when I entered the world is a man in a surgical mask I’m pretty certain I’d call it a life right there at age 0…..

So anyway, I tell you all this to setup what should be a busy next week.  If Mr. Cooper decides he’d like to hang with us, we’re ready.  If he decides to remain difficult and seclusive, we’re going to go in after him on Monday.  While I’m still hopeful we won’t have to do that, knowing how stubborn some of the other young children in our household are, I’m fairly convinced we will be.  Either way, the next entry you read will be the introduction to Cooper Austin.