Cohen's 2ND birthday...

June was a busy month for us with packing, moving and unpacking, Father's Day, mine and Spencer's 6 year wedding anniversary, my parents flew up to visit us for a weekend, meeting new neighbors, Noah started playing on a real baseball league and Cohen turned two!!!  Yes, that's right, my little guy who had a rough start at life and I feared a time or two wasn't going to make it (click here to refresh your memory) is growing up and suddenly turned two!  Where the time has gone, I don't know.  It seriously feels like yesterday that Spencer and I were bringing him home from the NICU with that darn apnea monitoring device hooked up to him.  There have been a few times recently in which I look at him and no longer see "the baby" in him... he's actually starting to look like a little boy!

He's such a well natured kid and pretty low maintenance.  He's happy practically all the time, unless of course when he's been bonked in the head by one of his older brothers or had a toy wrongfully taken from him.  He's small in size, which surprises all of our family, because he was my biggest baby (9 pounds even) but he makes up for his small stature with how LOUD he is!  The kid is LOUD LOUD LOUD!  And his voice is so deep; that's what really makes strangers and family members alike laugh... how can a kid so small have such a loud DEEP voice?!  It's beyond us.  It's next to impossible to get him to use his quiet voice during church or in other reverent settings... his quiet voice doesn't exist.


He's so handsome and he's such a charmer.  I recall all the nurses in the NICU wanting to hold him constantly.  Some of the nurses would even come in while they were off their shifts to hold him; in fact, they were all so sad to see him leave when it was time for him to go home with us.  Two of the nurses wept.  He has the most beautiful blue/gray eyes, with a hint of green in them.  He's always had brown hair, never been blond like the rest of my boys. Most of our extended family members and friends tell us he looks like he belongs to my sister Tricia's family; perhaps that's why he favors Tricia, sometimes even over me; he must feel right at home being around her and her family. He's small and has darker features like some of her kids; he looks just like what her twins, Luke and Jake, look like.  However my mother in law, Linda, is convinced Cohen looks like herself when she was a younger child.  Yes, it's true... kind of...  I've also thought he looks like how Spencer looked as a kid.  Isn't it funny how a child can inherit SO many peoples looks when he just has two parents??? His skin tone is even a tad bit darker than the rest of our families so any time he gets the slightest bit of sun he gets cute little tan lines.  My favorite is when he has tan lines on his chubby little feet from wearing flip flops all day long.  I call him my "baby Kelly Slater" (Kelly Slater is a professional surfer just by the way, in case you didn't know; he's been ranked among the best in the world for years), but ironically, Cohen doesn't LOVE the water like Kelly, or any surfer, swimmer and most other kids his age for that matter.  He tolerates it just fine and more recently he's discovered he likes to jump in it and make a big splash, but he doesn't LOVE it how like I thought it would be ingrained in his DNA because I LOVE it so much.  When we head to the pool, the kid normally just likes to lay out. 

Oh, I can go on and on about Coey, that's the nickname I've given him by the way... I began calling him Coey before he was one and over the last year it seems to be that more and more people have heard me call him Coey so they've started doing it themselves.  It sounds cute for now, but hopefully by the time he's in Junior High we'll have all stopped calling him it.  He has such a strong, masculine name, Cohen Phoenix, I'd hate for the name Coey to stick with him all through out his life.

I'm over the moon in love with this kid and I'm so happy he's mine... I mean ours.  He belongs to our family.  He brings so much joy to us. We LOVE LOVE LOVE him!

Cohen's birthday was on Saturday June 19TH... the day before Father's Day.  My sisters (those who live here in Utah) and I invited my dad and mom to fly up and visit with us over Father's Day weekend, so since they were in town, we decided to have a little family gathering at our new home with my family and Spencer's family to celebrate the little dude's birthday.

We told all of our guests to bring their swimsuits and towels for swimming... my boys also geared up with water guns.. they had a blast playing in the water with all of those cousins who could come!

The birthday boy was a little reluctant at first to actually get in the water, 

but after persuading him some,

he decided to take a dip...

... immediately followed with sunbathing.

" O sol faz bem pelos ossos". 

(I think I spelled that right). 

It was a phrase I heard in Portuguese during my mission in Portugal,  

over and over again. 

The Portuguese L.O.V.E. the sun!!! 

I'll never understand this kid.  While his brothers, and I myself included, all worship the water, he worships the sun! He cracks me up.

After swimming, we all headed back to the house to eat.  

Originally, I wanted to have a barbecue, but since our grill was STOLEN, yes stolen, (during the move from our old place to our new house- somebody stole it right off our back patio at our old house.  The thing was HUGE and weighed a ton!... ewww, it STILL makes my blood boil just thinking about it! Seriously the nerve some people have!!!) it was no longer even an option, so we opted for fine dining instead and picked up pizzas for the party.

I think it's safe to assume that the birthday boy didn't mind pizza in place of hamburgers.

We all gathered round to sing him "Happy Birthday!" but of course, he was clueless as to why all eyes were on him...

... then instead of eating cake, we made and ate banana splits.

After the birthday boy was finished eating his dessert he opened his presents.  He received all kinds of cool things for his birthday, but what he loved the most were his Toy Story toys!

All my boys like Toy Story, but Cohen is cRaZy about Toy Story!!!  In that case, it seemed suiting that the third movie, Toy Story 3, came out the day before his birthday.  After Cohen was done opening his gifts, we hurried off with our guests to catch the afternoon showing of it playing down at"Grandma's theater" (otherwise known as The Scera).

Oh, by the way, don't you just love how beat up Cohen looks???  The poor thing was a mess.  He had bumps and bruises all over, from running into boxes during our move, falling down the concrete steps face first at Grandma Campbell's house just days before his big day and dancing recklessly to a Hannah Montana concert aired on television one evening and running into the corner of our entertainment center face first. OUCH! Bumps and bruises, cuts and scrapes alike, he's a cute kid!

Cohen's birthday may have been over at midnight, but our festivities continued.  The following morning, we ate a special birthday waffle breakfast and that afternoon, we drove up to Kaysville to visit with my parents and my sisters families.  We ate the "Truesdell family favorite" dinner, Taco salad, and cooled off with soda and ice cream (we probably could have made a fortune if we collected all the empty cans afterward to recycle!!!).  The boys all enjoyed their time playing at the park with their cousins.  It would be the last time they'd see a lot of them for a while since Tricia moved later that week to Texas with her fam.  It was also good to just spend some time and talk with my parents, especially my dad since it was Father's Day.  We hardly visit with them enough.  We love them and miss them a lot!