Friday, February 13, 2015

Carter Update

On Valentine's Day Carter will hit another month birthday.  He will be 2 years and 2 months old.  I was thinking about it too much and decided he is 2 and 1/6 years old, haha!  I feel like at some point I'll probably go a few months in between updates, but we will see.  For now I want to get down some things he's doing, some ways he's changing, and get myself to pull out the good camera and take some photos of my handsome, little guy!

Jake is still coming twice a week and Carter loves to take care of him.  When Harper gets too close, he'll wave her off, saying "Go way, Harper." or "Bad girl, Harper." or "No, no, Harper Lee".  He gets pretty insistent about it when Harper tries to lick Jake.  He is all about getting her away.  This will come in handy when little sister arrives!  He also wants to feed Jake and loves making him laugh.  His favorite is when Jake is still strapped in his high chair at lunch.  He'll go over and make faces and run around the high chair to get Jake to laugh.  When Jake arrives in the morning, he jumps around with excitement and yells "Jakey, Jakey here!"  It's crazy but I swear he knows which days Jake comes and has a feel for around what time he arrives.  On Monday or Tuesday if we are nearing 10:00 am and Jake isn't here yet, Carter will start looking at me with a quizzical look and say, "Jakers?"  It's adorable.  Jake is now walking and Carter squeals and claps for him when he does.  He'll even tell me, "Jakers walk, Caca walk, big boy!" although sometimes he says, good girl!

Carter loves finding clouds in the sky.  He also loves finding the moon.  When the moon is out when it's still light outside he will excitedly exclaim, "moon!" and point it out for me.  When we meet Ty at the trails to run it gets dark by the end of our run and Carter gets so excited to find the moon.  He has a few books where there's a moon on every page and he is always thrilled to point it out in the picture.

My favorite thing he's picked up this month is saying come here please.  It sounds more like "c'mere please" and it's just down right adorable.  He'll yell it out to Harper when we're in the backyard.  He'll say it to daddy as he is walking out the door.  One afternoon he was stalling at naptime which is really unusual for him and kept saying "Mommy, c'mere please" so I'd come in and tell him night night again.  He also says it to Jake, but that doesn't get him very far.  For the longest time he's called a rooster a loodle loo and that's the sound he makes for a rooster.  I keep forgetting to put it in writing so I wanted to make sure to do that!  We were at the library and someone had forgotten to put their phone on silent.  Their ringtone was a rooster crowing and after that Carter kept saying, "Loodle loo?  Loodle loo go?"  I was cracking up!  He also says oh no a lot, mostly when he hears a loud noise.  Like when the phone rang he said, "Oh no, oh no, loodle loo!"  Just recently he's become fascinated with monsters.  When he hears a loud noise he'll say "Oh no, monser?"  When Ty was in the garage working and using the band saw Carter kept saying, "Daddy monser".  Then the other night after dinner he kept clapping his hands and calling for monster.  The only thing I can figure is he was calling for Skippy.  He sometimes calls Skippy "kitty monser".  I'm not sure why but it's pretty funny!

Little mister loves to dance.  When I turn on music he always starts grooving.  He then asks for everyone to start dancing with him and I mean everyone.  He'll look at you and say your name followed by dance, for example "Daddy dins" until you start dancing.  Harper and Skippy are included.  He's constantly trying to get them to dance.  He has a couple of songs he dances to the moment he hears them start.  Favorites include All About That Bass by Meghan Trainor and Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson.  Anytime Blank Space by Taylor Swift comes on the radio Carter says, "Oh no!" and he definitely won't dance to that song.  If I try to sing along to the radio he tells me, "No, no mommy."  But he loves it when I sing any other time.  I've been obsessed with Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran and play it multiple times a day on my phone.  One morning I had it on and Carter ran into the room, slammed the door shut, and started dancing for me right in front of the door.  I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants (not that it's difficult for me to get to that point these days!).

He picks things up so fast and really thrives with our weekly learning themes.  I'm amazed with everything he's absorbed at the end of the week.  It's also so much fun to see how he's progressing on our main objectives from week to week.  We've been practicing with shapes for a while now and he can identify a star, square, triangle, rhombus, and heart on his own.  He knows circle most of the time, but sometimes needs help getting started by hearing the first sound of the word when he sees it.  He'll even point at objects and tell me what shape they are.  We've also been working on counting to 3 and occasionally throw in higher numbers.  He does really well counting to 3 and will even tell me how many objects there are without counting with 1 and 2, with 3 he usually needs to count.  We'll see someone walking 2 dogs when we're out running and he'll tell me, "Mommy two dogs!"  He'll also tell me how many items of food he has on his plate.  When we count over 3 he usually says "1, 2, 3, 8!!!!!!"  I don't know where his fascination with 8 came from.  If I'm helping him count when we get to the last item and we're done counting he'll yell out 8.  But if I ask him how many there are, he'll tell me the last number we counted, not 8.  We haven't worked with letters very much other than every once in a while in the bathtub.  He'll show me a letter and I'll tell him it's name, sound, and a word that starts with it.  For example, "T for taco, /t/ /t/ /t/"  Now if he sees a Dd he'll say "D for daddy" and if he sees a Cc he'll say "C for Carcar".  It's very cute!

He used to just suck on his toothbrush, but now he's an expert tooth brusher.  It's so cute because he'll really watch me and do exactly what I do when I brush my teeth.  Every morning when I brush my teeth he brushes his teeth  with me.  He'll grab the step stool and pull it over to the sink declaring, "Elmo teef!"  Meaning he wants to brush his teeth using his Elmo toothpaste.  Sometimes he sits on the counter so he can reach the faucet to turn it on and off.  I've taught him we have to let all the water run down before turning the faucet on again so the sink doesn't get too full and he does a great job.

Something that still amazes me is how much he loves to sleep.  He'll straight up ask to take a nap or ask to go night night if he gets too tired.  One day he was sitting on the floor, started crying, looked at me and said, "Caca nap!" between his tears.  We're capitalizing on his love for sleep.  At night I'll tell him it's time to go to bed.  He'll go around and give out night night kisses and then he walks himself into his room and climbs in bed.  I'll give him Big Al, Buddy, and Elmo.  If one of them is missing I leave his door open and head out to find them.  When I bring the missing stuffed animal into his room he's still in bed and hasn't moved at all.  He's always just waiting for his buddy.  It's amazing!

At his 2 year check-up our doctor gave us the go ahead to start eating eggs.  Carter had been eating eggs in food for a while because I'd tried it out a little at a time with no throwing up.  After the doctor said it was okay we tried giving him straight eggs.  He wasn't too fond of it at first but has since eaten plain eggs.  One morning we went grocery shopping and when I was putting the eggs in the fridge Carter asked for one.  So I scrambled up 1 egg with a little bit of cheese and he gobbled it up!

In January we celebrated Oma, Opa, and Uncie J's birthdays.  Carter is now so obsessed with birthdays.  I'll randomly catch him singing Happy Birthday and using something as a pretend cake or present.  He'll sing Happy Birthday and clap.  Then he'll hold out the pretend cake and blow out the candles.  It's absolutely adorable!  We're one month closer to his next birthday and I know he'd be excited about that if he understood!

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