what a weekend for coop.

so, after much consideration, coop asked matt to take the training wheels off his bike. he even got the wrench and tried to do it himself. he was pretty inspired. about one month ago we took off the trainers and it was a disaster. matt was less than patient and i was probably a little too sympathetic. anyway, we gave up pretty quick. understandably our hopes were not sky high. and then . . . on the second, yes, the second try, he did it! he just took off. and then he did it again and again and about five minutes into it, he was cruising and matt didn't even bother running after him. i am not ashamed to admit that i cried a little. he's my firstborn. cut me some slack. as i watched him race by i thought to myself, "i have literally seen him reach every major milestone in his life up to this point." and i cried again. i have been so blessed to stay home with our kids and i relish these fantastic moments, however simple they may be. all of this is not to say that he did not fall. he did. a lot. and he always got back up and tried again. his shins are just torn up. when we went inside he told me that he wanted to take a bath after he took a shower so that he could get all the dirt out of his cuts. and he scrubbed them hard. who is this kid?

jump the train. last week matt came home with three indy 500 tickets. an alumni gave them to the ortho department and hill billy matt called them. as it is tough to find a sitter on sunday, i opted to stay with ains and becks. so matt took coop and a friend. we packed his backpack full of gummy worms, pretzels, gatorade, headphones, and sunblock and he was ready to go. matt said he was awesome. this is the same kid who covers his ears when ains yells at him because it's so loud that it hurts his tender eardrums. at dinner coop told me that he wasn't hungry because he ate french fries and soft pretzels and ice cream at the track. matt didn't deny it. they sat in the third turn and matt had to carry coop on his shoulders all the way back to the car. he said coop complained because his sweat was getting on coop's tank top. they came home smiling and smelly and thoroughly exhausted.