13 Month Update

Don’t be confused.  This is NOT going to be as detailed as Carter’s normal monthly posts the first 12 months of his life.  I just wanted to share a few pictures from the last month and document the things he’s doing now.  I feel like this last month held a lot of milestones that made me feel like my kid was officially a toddler and I wanted to write them down.

This month, we got Carter’s first ever art work from school:

Obviously the teachers made the clouds :)  We got this on a Tuesday and then on Thursday we got another one.  We thought it was weird we got two in one week, but then we realized that it appeared to be art week at church because all of a sudden, the hallways where the classrooms are were FULL of artwork on the walls!

Carter started talking A LOT.  He’s still babbling in a language that only he understands, but he truly thinks he’s talking like we do.  He’s all into pointing at things now.  He points at something, looks at me and then says a bunch of jibber jabber as if he is telling me what he’s pointing at.  It’s so cute!  Like I’ve mentioned before, he knows how to wave hello and bye bye.  I think he’s so used to us waving at someone that is leaving and saying “say bye bye Carter” that he now even says it.  Yep.  He says “bye bye” now. 

Yesterday, while we were all getting ready for church, I was in the laundry room folding laundry from the dryer.  Carter was playing in my closet (which is connected to the laundry room) and he walked into the laundry room, looked at me, looked at the dryer, then walked over to the dryer, shut the door and said “bye bye” and then walked away.  This was an interesting moment for me.  It literally stopped me dead in my tracks because 1) I just realized my son can say a new word and 2) he knows the context of that word.  I don’t know if he was saying “bye bye” to me as he walked away, or if he was saying “bye bye” to the clothes that were in the dryer when he shut the door (afterwards, he came back in the laundry room and put his sippy cup in the dryer).  Either way, it was hilarious.  He loves watching the clothes get tossed around in the dryer!

I’ve been putting some pictures on Instagram and have had a lot of comments from people regarding said pictures.  See, when Carter gets sleepy, he will literally just go up to something soft and lay down on it and just lay there for a little bit to see if we come get him to take him to bed.  He’s not actually asleep, but his eyes are usually closed, like he’s pretending to be asleep or something.  It’s so weird.  See pictures:

See?  Strange, strange child.  But I love him :)

This month, Justin and another couple from our Sunday School class ran the Krispy Kreme run.  This is new to Birmingham.  Basically, you run 2 miles to Railroad Park, eat a dozen glazed donuts, and then run the 2 miles back.  I would have vomited.  Justin finished and so did Bryan, but Bryan’s wife Stacey only made it halfway through the box of donuts and couldn’t do it anymore.  I can imagine it has to be extremely difficult shoveling that much sugar into your body.  Barf.

On the left is the night before the race.  Daddy put his Krispy Kreme hat that came with the race packet on Carter during bath time.  On the right is Justin and Bryan after finishing the race.  You only get that medal if you finish all of your donuts and finish the race within 1 hour.  Way to go boys!!

As far as eating goes….

He eats a lot!  He still eats pureed veggies and some pureed fruits.  Adult breakfast foods he eats include bananas, waffles, yogurt, and oatmeal (still on baby oatmeal though-I kept giving him this because there’s a lot of iron in it).  For dinner and lunches, he usually eats grilled cheese, grilled chicken, fried chicken, or turkey.  He eats these with a mix of pureed veggies.  The things I’m still working on trying to get him to eat are eggs and sandwiches.  He doesn’t like the texture of eggs nor of the turkey meat in a sandwich.  I tried to give him a small bite of my hamburger the other night but he didn’t like the texture of that either.  He does LOVE rice and chicken from the Mexican restaurant though!  What I have learned with him is that his preferences change and nothing is permanent.  He used to not like grilled chicken, but after some persistence, he likes it now.  He used to love fried chicken, but just the other night, he refused to eat any of it.  What is his favorite food one day may be the least favorite the next. 

But what I’m most happy about….

Yes, he is for good off the bottle and they have all been packed up!  Justin managed to wean him of the bottle all by himself, I literally did nothing!  It took a couple of days but we pretty much just took away bottles.  It was basically “drink from the sippy cup or don’t drink at all”.  That first day he barely drank any milk and the next day he drank about half of what he should have and then the next day he was drinking like normal.  Bye bye bottles!

Onto the next topic.  Henry.

Henry is the lovable and cuddly giraffe that our neighbors, Blake and Whitney Prime, gave to him when I was still pregnant.  Carter didn’t pay this little giraffe any attention until about 2 months ago and now they are inseparable. 

You can also see Henry in the above picture of Carter pretending to sleep on Gizmo’s dog bed AND in the bedroom floor.  Like I said, he goes everywhere Carter goes!  We now have Henry I and Henry II.  I wonder if we’ll get to Henry VIII?  HA….a little British history humor.  But we did purchase a second Henry just in case anything ever happens to the first.

A few other randomly adorable photos from this month:

Only other thing worthy to note is that Carter had to go to the doctor this month for a sick visit.  He was coughing extremely badly and had a runny nose that just never quit.  Both of his twin cousins, Cynthia and Celia, were coming off ear infections, so we all thought it best to take Carter to see if he had an ear infection.  If he did, then the cough medicine we were giving him wasn’t going to do any good and we needed antibiotics.  Luckily, there was no ear infection, just an upper respiratory infection.  Doc even suggested us to give him honey.  Honey.  Never would have thought of that.  We started giving him about a tablespoon a day of honey and honestly, I’ve noticed a difference!  He is still coming off the sickness now, but he acts completely normal and never ran a fever.  KNOCK ON WOOD - y’all, my child is 13 months old and has never once had an ear infection.  I hope I didn’t just curse myself.