Cooper showed his 'Calm.'

There are many times throughout the day when I will look at Cooper and think ‘what the heck is going on in that little brain of yours?’ Last night was not one of those nights. This kid let his smarts show.

A little backstory. Everything Cooper does is AMPED up. If he wants something he shrieks and whines and points and jumps up and down. He goes from zero to one million plus one in under a second. If his train falls off the track he takes the freaking house down. If I don’t put enough cheerios in his bowl heads will roll. And it goes on. Honestly, the kid is half acrobat. He can launch his body across the room out of frustration in a microsecond.

So, when it comes to signing and communication, Cooper RARELY does it calmly. His most commonly used signs are ‘help’, ‘please’, and ‘more.’ And he uses ‘please’ as his version of yes. So, 9 times out of 10 when he is making these signs he is also screaming bloody murder out of excitement, anger or frustration. I bet I say, “Calm down young grasshopper,’ 50 times a day.

Last night, I was sitting in the living room playing with Sawyer and relaxing right around bedtime. Cooper walked up to me, put his hand on my arm and smiled the sweetest smile I have ever seen. Pure angel. (First thought through my head…what the hell did you do now?) He looked at me and calmly brought all of his fingers together in a point and started tapping his mouth. As I stared at him the sign evolved into tapping his tongue. The whole time he was CALM and smiling and making little sweet sounds.

I burst out laughing because this little stinker was trying to sweetly ‘ask’ me for his Nuk. We don’t have a sign for Nuk so he made up his own. And he was calm and controlled. And he UNDERSTOOD that he needed me to get what he wanted. AWWWWWWHHHHH! Such a smartie pants.

Well played Cooper. I like it. And I may be worn down to the point of exhaustion but hell is going to have to freeze over before you get that Nuk.