Playgroup Mondays

We found a new playgroup. They meet on Mondays. They have a gym full of toys that their preschool plays with.

This is THE ONLY thing these two want to do:

This little boy followed us around for quite a while. Every time I told Carter that I wanted him to come to me, or go to there, this boy did it. Turns out, his name is Carter too. I just started calling my Carter "baby". It worked, and "Carter" went to play with something else.

I FINALLY got them to go do other things. This is what they did. Lydia went on to find new friends. This is Adam, she is pulling his hair and patting him on the head:

Carter went on to explore the other cars:



There were others I didn't get his pictures in front of, like the truck and the other two cars that are exactly the same as the ones pictured here. Thank goodness they have so many, otherwise there would be fights. I am also glad for a place to use them. It is not often that you can play with an outside toy outside here in Washington.



We also started swim class again. The first time he loved it. Now, he actually cried. He didn't want to be free in the water. He didn't want his legs to float. He clung to me like a baby Glider Monkey hangs to his momma in flight. I thought he was going to rip my bathing suit top right off.



Three new things he can do this week:
cluck his tongue
nose kisses - or Eskimo kisses
Mimic Sighing



His nose kisses are quite scary. He opens his mouth wide and shakes his head violently back and forth. The open mouth thing is how he gives normal kisses - so it makes sense how he came to that conclusion. The clucking sounded like gagging at first. I was worried he was choking on something. I took a deep breath in and let it out the other day because I was frustrated, and he did it right back. It was super cute. He has been mimicking me doing it ever since. I'll have to get video.

The amazing internet

Today Carter had a video chat with Uncle Jordan & Aunt Caroline. That Internet thing is AMAZING!! Brings to mind a video that I have posted at the very end. But this is about Carter. He was engrossed in the laptop image of Caroline & Jordan dancing around the screen.

Getting ready for church today. He had just had a major melt down about this sweater. He was playing with it, and DID NOT want to wear it. It has sweet peek-a-boo properties when it is off. I enticed him out of the tantrum with options of autonomous movement. He thought that was pretty cool.

P.S. I tried looking at other stuff done by this comedian and none of it is clean, just in case you were going to - I'll save your ears.

It's only a harmless mouse right?

What is so special about this mouse? The light? The color? We are unsure. However, it has captivated our little swiffer (since we don't have rugs, we can't call him a "rug-rat", and "pergo-rat" didn't flow - he is essencially a swiffer when he sweeps across the floor). He is so determined to get to it. This is the first thing he thinks about when he gets up from his nap, and the last thing he thinks about before bed. He can play by himself just fine, and the first opportunity he has to get out on his own accord - it is straight to the mouse he goes. He will grab your hands and make you help him walk down the hallway to the office so he can reach the mouse. He screams when he can't have it. I have tried giving him mouse alternatives to no avail. What to do, what to do!?!

Snow Angel

We got dumped on last night. The snow didn't stop until this morning. Crazy. David was sent home early yesterday, off all day today and tomorrow. He doesn't have to go back to school until Monday. It is not that we are snow whimps. This kind of thing happens so infrequently that we just don't have the equipment to deal with it. The road crews are not prepared to deal with snow like this. If you live in a place where you get frequent cold spells you know how to drive in it, and you know that the roads will be cleared in time for people to leave for work. That just doesn't happen here. So I am glad that they close schools and shut the city down so that more people aren't in danger from themselves.

We took Carter out in the snow. Our neighbors had a Carter size sled that they let us borrow. He just sat there. No movement. All the sled pictures I have, he is in the EXACT same position. No smiles in the snow.

David wanted him to experience snow angels. No go. Next year, he will look back on these pictures and wonder what was wrong with himself. We will pull him out of the snow kicking and screaming to go back out.

Not this year.

He was wearing shoes. They are just covered in snow.

~~~I have updated my recipe on Pasta Stars. Everything needs to be waaaaaay overdone in order for the small mouth to be able to process it. Also, I have to mix it with Yams to thicken it up. Hope that helps if you try to use this recipe.~~~

Costume Pictures Finally!!

Carter was just too wiggly to get real good pictures. Lydia, on the other hand was amazingly well posed. She was compliant in all the pictures. My child needed a prop to keep in in one place. This bowl is a favorite at Lydia's house - filling it and emptying it over and over.

This time it is a spoon:

He is about to yell at us for taking away his distraction.

Davidisms for the day:

We were looking through the new Toys-R-Us catalogue and saw the cars and trucks. David says "Look at this dump truck. I say "That is not a dump truck, it is a garbage truck." David replies "But it goes to the dump." What am I going to do with him??

I was frantically looking for an under onsie for Carter. I told David "I cannot find a single white onsie!!" David asks "Isn't that a band? . . . . No, that's Plain White Ts"

Watch your fingers!!

A coworker of mine gave us some wooden puzzles. They are great. My dogs are great too. They have never bothered anything of ours, or the baby's. EXCEPT. They love wood. They are regular little wood-chucks. When David cuts wood in the yard for the house, they pick up the pieces and gnaw on them for hours. Well, we have not been very careful with the puzzles - apparently. The nice thing to know, however, is that my dogs only find the even numbered fingers tasty. Odd fingers must have an odd taste. We lost our last even numbered finger today.

Rest in peace finger #6

Here are a couple sleeping pictures of Carter. What would a blog about the baby be, without some pictures of him in each post right?

Sprawled out:

International Auto Show 2010

Here we are again at the auto show this year. Carter was a little bigger, and again we had him sit in the Subaru.

This was last year:

And back to present:

He did really well, considering we were there for almost 6 hours. I ran out of diapers (I had 4 when I left in the morning!). I actually had to bum a diaper off someone because he

filled it for the 4th time since noon!!

We "linked" a water bottle to his stroller to keep him occupied for a few hours. It worked great until he got it stuck on his shoe. How he did this, I'll never know. The link is hooked in that little loop on the back of his shoe!

Leaps and Bounds

Yesterday I was taking Carter down the hallway and he saw the dogs. He immediately began saying dog. It sounds like Dad, but with a little struggle at the end as he tries to pronounce the G sound. He was very excited to see them. It was the first time he addressed them without any prompting.

He has shown a very strong preference on parent. He loves his daddy. He shows his love for someone by head-butting them.

The next picture in this sequence was one with Carters mouth wrapped completely around David's nose. I was not quick enough with the camera and only got the string of spit that ran from David's nose to Carter's mouth. Yuck.

He does love his daddy.

He took a banana from one of David's coworkers and very gingerly gnawed on it for lunch the other day. I have been unsuccessful at getting him to take bananas in other than mush form. So we tried again. He tried to shove the whole thing in his mouth!!

I had to dig this golf ball size piece out of his mouth to keep him from choking:

My good friend Erik bought me this outfit while I was pregnant. I loved it!! It says "Chicks Dig Scars"

He has also started crawling on his knees. He is not very consistent yet - he'll go about 4 or 5 paces and then fall on his belly.

He started clapping on Thursday - just out of the blue. We were in the store and he turned to me and clapped his hands together. To get him to do it I sometimes have to put his hands together for him, then he continues. He knows what to do, but he has to concentrate on what muscles to move to achieve his goal. And we have been working on high five. I didn't think he was getting it until yesterday he grabbed my hand and held it up for his other hand to smack against. He just kind of held our hands together. I was a little slow to figure out what he was trying to do.

What these kids learn now a days

My favorite part of David's assignments is where they have to list something they learned that day. It is AMAZING what some of these kids learn. This week two kids actually wrote that they learned "Nothing". One child even put a smiley face afterwards. I fought back the urge to put a smiley face after her zero for that day.

One kid learned: "after cutting a bolt, don't touch it with your hand because its hot"

Another: "Coolant tastes really bad" I wanted to mark him down just for tasting the coolant.

There was an accident at the school, and the main reason I know this is because I read it in all their papers. Two of the kids learned: "Don't hold on to trash cans when riding in the back of a truck." I was really glad that one kid learned: "always double check the bed of a truck for people"

Under the section to list what they did that day most of them just wrote the name of the student who had the accident. Some of them even wrote that he fell out of a truck. "That is nice to know what he did, but what did YOU do?" I'd like to ask them.

My favorite answer to this question has to be: "Ate Cinamen then worked on car"

A different part of the assignment consists of vocab. I will let you in on a little secret. You don't get credit when you write "Self Explanatory" in answer to a vocabulary word.

There is another part where they have to list "Facts" that they learned through reading that day. Many of the answers come straight out of advertisements. I try to mark off for things that aren't actually facts like: "Jeep is the number 1 offroading type of truck" and "Nissan Skyline is a car you can trick out and upgrade the most on. or at least one of the top cars." The Skyline is not sold in the US.

Happy Halloween

Carter was a Monkey. We went to the church "Truck-or-Treat" party. We passed out popcorn balls from the trunk of our car after the carnival inside the building was over. It was a lot of fun.

He is not really standing on his own, he is leaning on David. He was pretty cranky. He didn't nap, and it was waaaaaay past his bedtime.

Somebody had orange lights hanging on the back of their van - most people decorate their trunks. We, sadly, did not. David thought it was a great photo opportunity. He was right.

Then, David set him in the leaves in the wet grass and we took some pictures.