Here’s Mud in Your Eye
Dear Cooper:
I wish I could eat like this and still be as adorable as you are. This has to be a girl-magnetizing technique at day care. The girls at your birthday party certainly found you fetching. Big ones. Middle-sized ones. Tiny ones. None of us could get enough of you.
I held you for the first time since August. Of course, you have changed. You’re bigger. And squirmier. You try to say things. Nothing gets past you. Yet, in some ways, you were still the same. That ancient, knowing look. Fighting sleep to its death. Your happy baby smile.
Seeing you on your birthday was a gift to me. To know that you’re still the same, even as you’re changing. You observe your surroundings with something akin to wisdom…….and then you drop your cupcake in the pool. Hone those tactics, Cooper. It’s the thing that keeps people guessing, wondering what makes you tick. Reveal just enough to keep them interested, and you will travel through life with people eating out of your hand.
I love you, Cooper. Happy Birthday.
Andra
It is adorable to all women – who don’t have to clean him up afterwards. Very cute. Who was the wise person who took him out of his good birthday clothes _before_ giving him the cake?
His mother put his swimming trunks on him when he started gnawing on watermelon.
Oh – right up until the end every serious thing is paired with something silly, and then the love just sweeps in and overwhelms everything. That’s great. He looks so adorable.
I didn’t want to hold him right then, no matter how much the love swept in.
He’s definitely a cutie!
He was a lot of fun. It was good to see him again.
Beautiful picture, Andra: whadda guy. Happy Birthday, Coop!
He had quite a day yesterday.
Pure love, does my own heart good to read what you’ve written and remember…and feel.
Happy Birthday Cooper! You are so very loved.
Cooper was so good on Saturday. It was good to see him.
That is one of the most adorable birthday pictures, in his birthday suit, no less, that I have seen, Andra – and I’ve seen a lot in my time. Darling!
It was a good thing he had no shirt on given the mess he made.
He ate four slices of watermelon and then part of a cupcake, and I thanked heaven I did not have diaper duty. 
Just look at that precious messy face! What a joy! Debra
I know his mother bemoans how big he’s getting, but I can’t wait until he starts talking and stuff. That’s really when kids start to interest me. They’re so much easier to talk with than adults are.
You’re giving him some good life lessons, Andra. I must have gotten the same advice – I never throw my cupcake in the pool any more.
So glad you got to be there for his birthday.
That was a priceless moment. His grandfather fished it out of the pool.