Carter - 21 months

I’m beyond sick of saying number of months.  I barely do it anymore.  When someone asks how old Carter is, I say he’ll be 2 in December.  I haven’t really updated much on how Carter’s been doing other than little tidbits here and there in other blogs, but I figured I’d do a post on just him.  I’m going to fill out the post using the bullet points I did when he was still in his first year.  This way I know I’m not missing anything :)  I will also sprinkle some random pictures throughout the post of the past couple of months.

 

Diapers

Size 4.  He’s OBSESSED with his diapers by they way.  Most of the pampers diapers have Sesame Street characters on them.  Oscar, Elmo and Cookie Monster.  Carter is obsessed with the Cookie Monster one.  He doesn’t refer to him as that though, he just says “cookie”.  It’s funny, people hear him saying this and they think he wants an actual cookie, but in reality, he just wants to play with his diaper.  Carter has this thing with carrying his diapers too.  If he sees 8 of them just laying around, he has to pick them all up.  If it’s too many for him to carry, well, he’s going to try anyway and get really frustrated in the process.  Case in point:

Shoe Size

Last time we went to Stride Rite to measure his foot, he was a 6.  I have a feeling he’s almost outgrown that though and that we’ve moved up to at least 6.5 if not 7.  I plan to get him sized again once it begins getting cooler and we buy him more shoes for winter.  Toddler shoes aren’t cheap!!

Clothes

He wears mostly 18 month clothes, but there are a few shirts and shorts that are 12 months that he can still wear.  However, I’m going to begin the process of packing up all his 12 month clothes, and even some of the 18 month ones that are too tight on him.  I’ve already gone to several church consignment sales in the area and racked up on winter clothes for him.  Most of what I got for him is 24 months, but I did get a few 18 month things.

Feeding

Carter’s eating schedule is much like ours now.  He wakes up and has a cup of milk followed by some sort of breakfast (waffles/pancakes and fruit of some kind-blueberries, oranges, pears, bananas, etc.).  A few hours later he’ll have some kind of snack, then lunch around 12 or 1 and then he goes down for a nap.  When he wakes up from his nap he gets another cup of milk along with some kind of snack.  He eats dinner around 6ish and has a 3rd cup of milk as we’re reading to him right before bed.  Once we begin potty training, we’ll move that milk to be with his dinner so that he isn’t drinking a bunch of fluid right before bed.  Meal times are also beginning to take much longer than they used to because I’ve been working with Carter on using utensils.  I’m trying to make him feed himself with a spoon and it makes lunch and dinner times take significantly longer and they become significantly messier!  He’s getting much better at it though.  He’s really good with foods that “stay on the spoon” (like veggies-if a veggie falls off the spoon, it doesn’t typically make a mess).  What he needs to work on are the messy foods and keeping them on the spoon.  Things like rice or Spaghetti O’s can be very messy if he doesn’t keep the spoon level when moving it from the food to his mouth.

Foods he loves:  All fruits and most veggies, preferably green beans, peas, corn or carrots.  He loves waffles and pancakes and most types of cookies (he finally started eating chocolate chip cookies).  He’s a huge fan of Ritz crackers, most types of chips, Teddy Grahams, Nutter Butters and Animal Crackers.  We’ve introduced him to chocolate milk and he loves it, but we’ve only given it to him a couple of times.  He still eats those Gerber Graduate meals and loves most of them.  When he’s not eating a Gerber Graduate meal, he eats grilled chicken, the Publix dinosaur chicken fingers, or ham for his meats.  I’m trying to get him to stop eating the Gerber Graduate meals, but it’s so easy and fast to heat them up and sometimes I’m just so busy.  On days I work, I don’t get home with him until 5:30 or 6 so there’s really just not enough time for me to cook anything.

Foods he doesn’t like:  Bread.  Period.  I think he’s going to be Paleo.  For real.  He won’t eat any kind of bread, which is unfortunate because we’re trying to get him to like PBJs.  We found out when he started school again, however, that PBJ's aren’t allowed due to so many kids having peanut allergies.  Regardless, we still want him to eat a sandwich and he won’t.  He won’t even touch a grilled cheese which is odd because he used to like them.  When he got croup back in April, I seriously think it changed his tastes for things because he used to like a lot of things that he won’t touch now.  We have just started giving him fish sticks but he doesn’t like them yet.  We’re going to keep trying with it though.  He used to not like any kind of spaghetti-type food.  I think he hated the red sauce (which is funny because his momma hates red sauce too).  But lately he’s actually been eating the spaghetti O’s Gerber Graduates meals, so maybe he’s coming around.  He also used to not like macaroni and cheese and I’ve been working on him with that, too.  He likes the Gerber Graduates Mac and Cheese meal now, but not so much the Kraft kind that you make on the stove.  I’m going to keep working on that though.

Bottom line with food-Carter really is a GREAT eater, we just need to keep trying to get him to open up his tastes for certain things.  People comment all the time on how much the kid eats.  They don’t understand how he’s so skinny and yet he eats as much as he does.  Debbie (my mother-in-law that keeps him while I work) and I have two answers for that:

1. He is moving non-stop, literally the kid rarely sits down
2. He poops around the clock

Sleep

No huge things to discuss here.  He still goes into the crib at 7:30 every night (though most of the time he doesn’t actually fall asleep until 8) and wakes up around 7-8am, depending on the day.  He has one nap a day that lasts anywhere from 2-3 hours, usually about 2.5 hours.  He goes down around 1:30pm, but on days that he has school, it may not be until 2 since his school doesn’t get out until 1.   We’ve noticed that his naps tend to be shorter on days that he goes to school.  You’d think it would be the opposite…he gets worn out at school with all the playing so it would make sense that he’d sleep longer those days.  But the truth is, if you wait too long to put a baby down for nap, he won’t sleep as long.  That idea was introduced in the first Babywise book and I’ve found it to be very true for nighttime sleep and naps.  Carter needs to go to sleep around 1 to have a good 3 hour nap (maybe even a little before 1).  So when he doesn’t get a nap until 2, he will usually only sleep 1-1.5 hours.

Waketime

I haven’t used this word in a long time.  It’s a Babywise term and Carter’s is kind of out of the Babywise now.  I’m currently reading Toddlerwise and I’m about to start reading Pottywise.  This book series is really excellent for those of you that are about to have children.  Waketime is just what they do during the periods of the day that they’re awake.  Since Carter only has one nap now, he’s awake for the majority of the day! 

He loves golf cart rides still.  And his new thing is playing in the backyard.  It’s finally starting to get cooler (and by cooler, I mean the high is still in the low 80s, but at least it’s not the 90s!) so now I don’t mind going out there and sitting on the porch and reading a book while he runs around aimlessly in the backyard.  He has gotten into cars and trucks now.  He has an ambulance, fire truck and police car that make noise and he plays with those a lot.  And he also has some alphabet cards that he loves.  They have a letter on the front and a picture of an animal that begins with that letter on the back.  I’m trying to work with him on the alphabet so we play with these cards a lot.  He loves to play with his books.  I’m about to start doing “roomtime” with him.  Basically I will take him to his room and leave him in there with the door closed for about 20 minutes.  He can play with his books or stuffed animals, but he will have to stay in his room and entertain himself.  This helps them develop self-control.  They say 20 months is when you should introduce this so I’m a month behind.  Oh well.

Mother’s Day Out

Carter started school again at the end of August.  He’s now in the toddler room at our church with two new teachers.  This time, he’s not in the same class as the girls (his twin cousins).  They’re in the 2 year old room.  When the three of them were in the baby room together last year, they were the only ones in their class.  Now, Carter is in a class of 8 kids (6 boys, 2 girls) and he’s the 2nd oldest in the class.  He’s brought home tons of artwork already and I am loving his teachers too!  One of them frequently emails me to let me know how his day was since I don’t typically drop him off or pick him up from school.  School is 9am-1pm two days a week and since I’m already at work by then, Nana or Daddy, depending on the week, picks him up and drops him off.  He’s been in school now for about a month and from what I’ve been told, he still cries when he’s dropped off in the morning, but it’s only for a minute and then he’s distracted when he sees all the toys and the other kids.

  Statistics

No stats to discuss…we won’t have another appointment until he’s two.  The last appointment we had was when he was 18 months.  At that time (his appointment was July 8th), his stats were:

• 32 inches tall – 30th percentile
• 24lbs, 7 oz – 30th percentile

  

Abilities

Good lord…the better question is “what CAN’T he do”??!? 

He loves to clean up.  I’ve worked with him so that he knows that we don’t go to take a nap or to bed for the night without cleaning up our mess.  Sometimes I will help him, but most of the time, I make him do it himself.  He’s also figured out that when he’s done using a cup or dish, he has to put it in the sink.  In the mornings when I give him his milk for breakfast, he usually sits on my lap watching cartoons.  When he’s done with the milk, he slides down from my lap and says “all done” and then runs to the kitchen and throws the cup in the sink.  I don’t even ask him to do it…I have no idea where this trait came from.  I worked with him on the cleaning before sleeping, but I didn’t work with him on this.  He just started doing it.  I think he sees me putting me and Justin’s dishes in there and he’s copying me. 

 

He also copies pretty much every word we say, therefore his verbal dictionary is insane!  He can say way more words than average for his age.  He frequently has conversations with himself that I overhear, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.  This happens a lot right now.  Sometimes it takes me days of him saying something over and over for me to finally have the lightbulb turn on and figure out what he’s trying to say.  What I’ve been working on him with lately is the alphabet and counting.  He doesn’t seem to be interested in it yet though.  He’s recited A, B, C, D, E before, but that’s it.  Counting-wise, he knows 1, 2, 3, but nothing beyond that.  I’m trying to focus on the alphabet first.

He’s got this new found desire to color.  I don’t know if he’s been copying kids at school or copying his twin cousins or what, but Nana bought a table for their playroom and some pads and pens (those color pens that don’t show up on anything except paper…so as to not ruin your furniture and walls!).  He loves it.  I’m going to ask for a table and chairs for his birthday so that we can start coloring at our house and also just to have a table specifically for him.

Also, he LOVES, and I mean LOVES his lunchbox and backpack.  He does NOT want you carrying it, he wants to carry it himself:

 

Teething

Carter has all of his teeth with exception to the 2nd year molars and I think he’s in the process of getting them now.  He’s been drooling INSANELY for weeks and lately he’s been reaching his fingers back in the very back of his mouth on both sides.  I don’t see any buds yet, but I imagine they’ll pop through soon.  Once he gets these molars, he’ll officially have all of his teeth.  WOW.  The weekend before he turned 21 months, the teeth were hurting him bad.  I gave him some Ibuprofen several times over that couple of days.  He was fussy all weekend long and he also stopped eating most things.  That’s Carter’s MO for when his teeth hurts.  He doesn’t eat.  I tried to not stress over it too much and after a couple of days he went back to eating ok.  Still not teeth yet, but the pain appears to be gone, for now.

Personality

Carter’s little personality is starting to shape and become evident.  He gets some traits from me and some from daddy.  His inability to sit still comes from both me and Justin.  We are both always going non-stop and always have something to do.  He’s the same way in that regard.  He gets his cleanliness from me.  I’ve worked with him on cleaning up, but most of the time, he cleans things on his own (like the cup in the sink thing mentioned above).  He gets a lot of his eating habits from Justin.  The kid doesn’t really like chocolate and neither does Justin.  Both of them prefer things that are sweet, like fruits, over anything chocolate. 

Temper Tantrums

I have never had a child in “terrible twos” and I hate calling it terrible at all (lets face it, children at this age aren’t terrible, they’re just trying to figure out what life is all about and what their limits are).  I have experienced some issues with Carter where I will tell him no to something and his response is to immediately sit down in the floor and pout.  It’s one thing if we’re in the living room since it’s not a strange place to sit in the floor, but it’s a whole other ballgame to do it in the middle of Publix….or church.  I’m sure this is just a taste of what I will experience over the next year.  I’m trying to keep my cool as much as I can though.  In my mind, Carter’s being irrational…but I have to remind myself that he’s not even 2 yet.  He shouldn’t be expected to be rational.  So really, I just  need to lower my expectations of him just a bit during this phase.  Overall, he’s still mostly obedient when he’s given instructions.  Toddlerwise says to expect obedience 60% of the time at this age.  I think, in all honesty, I get about 75% from Carter right now.  That’s not to say that will change.  I’m sure as we get further into the 2nd year that percentage may go down, but for now…he really does a good job of doing what we tell him.

Discipline

Don’t really have much to report in this area.  I’ve said it before on other blogs, but we use time out.  We have his pack-n-play in the corner of our living room and that’s what he goes in if he’s in timeout.  When he does something wrong, he goes to time-out for about 2-3 minutes while Justin or I leave the room.  We don’t want him to see us when he’s in time-out.  After the 2-3 minutes is up, we come back in the room and kneel down to his level (while he’s still in the pack-n-play) and tell him what he did that made him go to time-out (when he’s older and understands it a little better, we’ll make him tell us what he did instead of the other way around).  He absolutely positively must say “sorry” before we lift him out of the pack-n-play.  Making him do this has increased the likelihood of him saying “sorry” for things that don’t send him to timeout.    Even if he does something wrong and we’re not at home or the offense isn’t big enough to justify a time-0ut, we still make him say “sorry”.

Other Notable Things

The thing Carter is doing right now that I think is stinkin ADORABLE is giving kisses and hugs.  He does it every time we leave somewhere.  If we’re leaving a party, or church, or someone’s house…anywhere!  I’ll say “ok Carter tell them bye and we’re going to go” and he’ll run up to whoever and say bye bye with the cutest little hand wave ever and then he leans his head into theirs and either gives them an open mouth kiss or leans his cheek towards them so that they can give him a kiss.  It’s beyond precious.

And, this month (around September 20th to be exact) he said he loved me for the first time.  I say “I love you” to him a ton, but he’s never repeated it.  I will even say “tell me you love me” and he still says nothing.    I just so happen to get on video of when he finally said it.  He was upstairs playing with a walker and he was stuck in between the couch and his playpen.  I told him I would help him if he told me he loved me and he said it!!!

I also finally took the bumper pads out of his crib.  He loves those things.  He uses it as a pillow.  Loves to get his head in between a corner so there’s a bumper pad all around his head.  Problem was that he could stand on the bumper pad and lean over the railing.  After a close call of him almost falling out in front of my very eyes, I decided to take it out.  Didn’t affect him in the least though.  He’s got at least 8 stuffed animals in his crib with him and the night I took the bumpers out, he arranged his animals to make one huge pillow and slept there.  I ended up buying him a toddler pillow this weekend.  Last night was his first night with the pillow, however it didn’t matter because there’s so many stuffed animals in there that he didn’t use it.  As far as toddler bed transition goes, I’m not ready yet and I really don’t think Carter is.  If I converted the crib now, he would stay awake playing with his books until 10pm and I would find him asleep in the corner of the room where his books are the next morning.  Guaranteed.  So I think I am going to wait until a little after he turns 2.

The other big thing we did this month was turn Carter’s carseat to forward facing in my car.  We were trying to hold out until he was 2, but just couldn’t do it anymore.  He is still rear-facing in Justin’s car and also in Debbie’s car (his caregiver while I work).  For the last month or so Carter’s been getting antsy to turn around.  He kept saying my name as if he didn’t know where I was because he couldn’t see me.  He also kept trying to turn his body around in the carseat to see me which worried me that he was going to break a leg based on the positions I have caught him in trying to turn around. 

In the state of Alabama, you can legally turn a child forward-facing at 1 year old, but the AAP recently started suggesting to wait until 2 years.  We had a goal of doing it at 2 years, we really did.  Most people I know that have toddlers turned them around somewhere between 1 year or 18 months.  Carter’s pediatrician even turned his kids around at 18 months.  Reasons most people use for turning them around are 1) the kid doesn’t like facing the back or doesn’t like the carseat in general and cries so they turn them around hoping that it will make them less fussy (this wasn’t an issue with Carter because he didn’t hate his carseat) and 2) their kids are tall and their feet are hitting the backseat.  The height thing, I understand though.  For me, it was a personal preference.  Carter’s not tall by any means (he used to be, but lately he’s been in the 30th percentile for height) but at 21 months, his feet were laying on the seat at an incline.  Someone said to me once “If you got in a wreck, would you rather them break a leg because their feet are at an incline on the seat or would you rather them have brain damage because their neck muscles aren’t developed enough to handle impact?”  Broken leg please!  So that’s why we kept him rear-facing for as long as possible.  He’s truly loving being able to see us though.  Every time I turn around to look at him, he looks back at me and laughs.  And I gotta admit, I ADORE being able to see his face!

Likes

• Running all over the place
• Walking in and out of places as opposed to being carried by us.  He’d rather walk on his own and hold my hand instead of me carrying him.  This is all fine and good, except that it now takes about 30  minutes to go from my parking spot to the front doors at Target.
• Still loves golf cart rides.  He’ll only be able to enjoy them for another month or two before we’ll have to retire the cart for winter!
• Books.  He’s become very interested in books.  I have recently figured out that if I have a book in the car with me, he doesn’t need to watch a DVD.  As long as it’s a short trip to run errands or something, he’s entertained with just a book.  He loves flipping through them and I have even noticed that he jabbers a lot while looking at them.  I can’t help but think that he THINKS he’s reading the book like me or daddy do.
• Golf clubs.  His great grandmother on Justin’s side gave him a toy golf club set back in June and he loves them. 
• Doors . Still loves experimenting with opening and closing doors.  ***This exact bullet point was under the “likes” section of his 12 month post.  Carter is now 9 months older than he was then and he STILL does this.  The only thing that’s changed is that now he says “bye bye” when closing doors.  It’s really the cutest thing ever.  In the mornings when I get him up and get him out of his room, he always steps on his tippy toes to reach the doorknob and while walking backwards to close the door, he says “Bye bye Henry” (Henry is his stuffed animal that stays in his crib while we’re downstairs).  When it’s bathtime, he’ll come in the bathroom with me and close the door behind us and say “bye bye good girl” (good girl is our dog, whose name used to be Gizmo until we had a kid that apparently felt she needed a new name)***
• Diapers.  See note above about the diapers.
• Stuffed animals.  There was a time when Carter used to throw all of his animals out of his crib before going to bed.  Not anymore.  He loves them all….all 8 of them.
• Lunchbox and backpack.  He’s really becoming obsessed with these items.  He wants to carry his own lunchbox and backpack when going to school.  Makes me a little sad that he’s grown up enough to carry it on his own!
• Other babies.  Lots of my friends have been having babies so when we go visit, Carter always gives the baby a kiss.  Just yesterday we went to see my friend Ashley’s newborn and the baby started crying and Carter was saying “oh no, baby”.  I think he’ll be a good big brother one day.
• Taking Gizmo her food, one pebble at a time.  Now this is hilarious:

Dislikes

• Being told he can’t go outside.  You’d think Armageddon was going on at the way he reacts when I close the back door and he knows it’s closed for good.  Bless him.
• Bread of any kind (pizza, actual bread, rolls, grilled cheese, sandwiches…won’t touch any of it)
• Time out, but that’s kind of a given
• Letting others hold him.  He still, at 21 months old, won’t let very many people hold him.  He’ll interact with strangers just fine if he’s in the floor or being held by someone he trusts.  He’ll even give strangers kisses if he’s told to.  But he won’t let anyone other than a select few of us hold him.  It’s so weird.  It’s not separation anxiety either, because like I said, if he’s in the floor, he’ll come up to people and chat it up with them.  He’s just very very picky of who’s holding him.

August in a Flash

I can’t believe it.  Have I really only blogged one time?  ONE time in August??  I’m so slacking my friends.  So let’s just do a real quick crash course of our August.

My sister and her family came to visit.  They live in Tampa and Jennifer, Jeff and my 2 year old nephew Cooper came down.  Jeff only stayed a few days and flew back to Tampa to go back to work while Jen and Cooper stayed a whole week.  The last time Cooper and Carter got together, Cooper was younger than Carter is now.  They are totally different kids now than they were last time they were together so we were both excited to see how they would act together.

Here’s a few pictures Jennifer got while they were in town:

You’ll have to excuse the fact that Carter is hoarding toothpaste.  He’s currently going through a phase where he is OBSESSED with it.  He loves carrying it around the house!

  

Bath time fun!!

She took a ton more but that’s all I have on my computer to share.

Carter got his 2nd ever haircut, but this one was way more fun than the first one:

I mean, it’s SO much more fun when you get your hair cut while sitting in a jeep sucking on a sucker!!!  Notice that in the picture on the right, he has something in his hand.  He took the stylists comb and started combing his hair.  He does this all the time with all kinds of brushes in our house.  He loves to take my brush off my vanity and walk around the house brushing his hair.  It’s funny for the most part.  Not so funny when I have just given him a bath and combed his hair into the perfect part and then he screws it up!

He FINALLY ate a real cookie!  He’s always eating things like Teddy Grahams and Vanilla Wafers (which we refer to as “cookies”) but he’s never actually eaten a real cookie.  During a trip to the mall to ride the carousel (won’t be doing that again for a bit-he was a little ridiculously scared) we stopped by the Great American Cookie Company and I saw a small cookie that had cookie monster painted on it.  I got it hoping he would try some of it, but kind of knew I would end up eating it.  No way.  This kid devoured it!  Hence all the blue on his face in the picture above.

We had dinner with our bf’s the Lobdell’s and Carter and their son Harper had some fun taking pictures with their dads.  Boys. 

   

Lots of moving going on around my office!  We had promotions recently and our new supervisors needed to move to window offices.  At our firm, if you’re in the management group, you get a window office.  Everyone else has their own offices, they are just not next to windows.  A few of us are “retiring” and some are moving cities so we had a ton of rearranging to do.  I got the boot from my window office because a new supervisor needed to move in since I am only going to be around for a few more months.  I had to pack up all my stuff and take my diplomas and CPA licenses down.  It was bittersweet :(

Justin and I went to Nashville for a weekend to celebrate our four year anniversary.  We got to meet up with our friends Stacey and Brian that moved there a couple of months ago.  They were in our Sunday School class at our church and we miss them so much!

Nashville has the best candy shop EVER downtown.  How did I not know about it when I lived there?!?!?!

And I get to knock something off my 101 list!  Number 82 on my 101 List was to visit my friends Lillian and Craig and meet their offspring.  Lillian and I had some pretty fab times together in Nashville, but then I moved back to Birmingham for Justin and she met her fantastic husband, Craig.  I hadn’t been able to make it back up there to see her and since then, she had her little girl, Maggie and most recently had her son, Miles.  Maggie’s 2nd birthday party just so happen to be the weekend we were there, so we made an appearance!  Maggie is Lillian in miniature form.  Looks, mannerisms, everything.  Miles is only 3 months old and to me, all babies look like babies and I can’t tell who they look like.  My guess is that he’ll end up looking like Craig :)

   

On the left is me and Lillian with Miles fast asleep on his mamma.  On the right is Maggie about to blow out her candle.  Her birthday party was a cowgirl theme and was adorable!!  I expected nothing less from Lillian since she is an event planner!

I made this little comparison and put it on Instagram.  Can we just talk about how DIFFERENT Carter looks now than a year ago?!?!?!  That hair finally started to come in and he has a mouth FULL of teeth now.  The only thing that really didn’t change was his eye color.  Sweet boy still has BRIGHT blue eyes (you just can’t see them real well in the pic above).

My life planner from erincondren.com finally came in.  My sister, Jennifer, turned me on to this life planner thing.  She ranted and raved about it so I had to check it out.  See, I’m a writer.  It’s why I have a blog.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE to write.  At the moment, my entire life is planned on my outlook calendar attached to my work email.  Once I leave my job in December, I am going to need a way to organize my life!  And because I am a writer, I would TEN TIMES rather get a planner like this and write in it than add things to my iPhone calendar.  I am loving my planner!!!!

Our sweet one is slowly becoming obsessed with cars.  We got him a pack of three cars that light up and make noise (a fire truck, and ambulance and a police car).  He likes rolling the cars, particularly the police car, all over the floors in the house.

    

Last week, Carter started school again.  He is now in the toddler class where there are no naps, just playtime.  He is in a class with 8 kids-6 boys and 2 girls.  He is not in the same class as the twins, they’re in the “older twos” class, but he does get to see them when all the classes play either outside or in the gym.  He was so happy when he woke up the morning of his first day.  I kept telling him “we’re going back to school today Carter!” and he was constantly saying “cool….go!” (cool=school in Carterman language).  But when we got to the church, you could tell he was starting to get hesitant.  Notice his not so happy face in the picture on the right.  We sat in the lobby area for a while because we were early, and he waved and said “hey” to pretty much everyone that walked through the lobby.  When it was time to take him to his class, he started crying.  He gripped onto me so tightly.  He’s in a new room with new teachers and new kids so it’s all very new to him and I imagine he’ll be like that for a couple of weeks until he gets used to it and realizes that we’re not leaving him forever and that we are going to come back and get him.  Justin picked him up from school and he was so happy to see his daddy.  The next day when he woke up he kept saying “cool….cool….cool!!!” and walking towards the door.  He wanted to go back to school!  Sweet thing!

Not only did he change classrooms for Mother’s Day Out, but he also changed classes for Sunday School.  He was in the nursery and was BY FAR the oldest in that room.  Yesterday was “Promotion Sunday” where all the kids get moved up a class and we joined services to present 3rd graders with their first Bible.  Carter got out of the nursery and moved to the toddler room.  On Sundays, he is with the twins.  And he loves it.  Carter seriously loves those girls.  He is always saying their names and wondering where they are.  After the service we had a luncheon at the church.  All the kids went to play on the playground after we ate and I got a couple of pics:

 

And a few other random pictures from the month:

These days, Carter is obsessed with diapers.  OBSESSED.  He picks up at least two in the morning when I lay him on the changing table to change his clothes.  He brings those two downstairs and combines them with at least 3 or 4 that are in the living room downstairs.  He carries them around all day long.  No joke.  No exaggeration.  He will be holding about 7 diapers and if he drops one, he’ll bend over and pick it up, the other 6 aren’t good enough. 

 

I cannot begin to explain how badly we’re going through a “daddy cures all things” phase.  He wants daddy ALL. THE. TIME.  If he falls and bangs his head on something in the living room, even if I’m standing right in front of him and Justin is in our bathroom, he runs to the bathroom crying for daddy.  Justin picks him up and holds him until he calms down and once he is calm again, I’ll try to take him from Justin’s arms and Carter says “no!” and then hugs Justin with all his strength.  It’s sweet to see, but it’s kind of heartbreaking at the same time!

Some other random tidbits about Carter at 20 months of age:

• He is saying like a zillion words now.  He’s beginning to form simple two word sentences too. 
• He’s becoming a champ at saying “please” and “thank you”.
• We’ve begun making him watch things other than Elmo (mommy can only take so much of the red monster).  We’ve tried Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Little Einsteins and Thomas the Train.  He prefers the first two over the third.  However, Carter generally never really watches TV.  He won’t stay still long enough to.  The only time he’ll really sit down and watch it is in the car…because he has to!
• He’s learned to jump and does it all the time.  We’re definitely going to have some type of bouncy house for his birthday party in December.
• As sweet as our little one can be, he is definitely strong willed.  Right now we are fighting the battles of throwing things and hitting.  Neither of them are things he’s doing to be “defiant”.  Books I’ve read have said that children this age aren’t neurologically and socially developed enough yet to be defiant.  That will come after they turn 3.  Right now, they are acting out of either happiness or frustration.  This is so true with Carter.   When he throws things, it’s because he is SUPER excited about something.  When he hits, its because he is frustrated that he doesn’t understand what we’re trying to tell him.  Both of these are normal at this age, per the books I read.  Biting is also normal but luckily we’ve had very little biting from Carter so far.
• We can tell he’s wanting to stay up later at night but he is so not winning that battle.  He still gets put in the crib at 7:30 every night.  Carter has always been happy in his room by himself though, so he never cries when he goes there before he’s ready.  He just plays with his animals until he falls asleep.
• If I had a dollar for every time he’s fallen off our bed….
• He also knows to say “sorry”.  Anytime he’s in time-out, he has to say “sorry” before he comes out.  I explain what he did wrong to him before I bring him out of time-out, but at his age, he doesn’t understand it in the least.  He’ll understand it better as he grows up. 
• We’ve been trying to introduce even more foods to Carter.  He is still not having the bread.  REFUSES to eat it.  As it turns out though, peanut butter isn’t allowed at his school, so we couldn’t send PBJ’s anyway.  The meats he eats are ham and chicken.   That’s it.  We haven’t tried steak yet, but I think steak is too chewy for him right now.  He eats the stroganoff Gerber Graduates meal with chopped up beef in it, but we made tacos the other day and gave him part of that beef and he wouldn’t eat it.  I want to try a pork chop with him too to see if he’ll eat that.  We just have to keep trying with certain things.  He loves most veggies and fruits.  Meat and bread is where we struggle with him.

iPhone Dump

This week is our first week of increased hours.  It’s a 45 hour week for us CPA’s!  Which really isn’t a big deal to me at all.  All that means is that I work through lunch and work 8-5 Monday through Friday, which I kind of did already anyway.  Next week we’ll be up to 50 hour weeks which will be slightly more difficult.  Luckily I can arrange it however I want.  If I want to come in on Saturday to get some of those hours so that I don’t have to stay late during the week, I can, but more than likely, I’ll work late a night or two and utilize working from home some as well.  The two weeks after that week are 55 hour weeks and the remainder are 60 hours weeks until April 17th.  Luckily for me, I don’t have to go above 50 since I’m part time.

Moving on to more interesting things….

This little guy is LOVING the racecar shopping carts at Publix.  He smiles and laughs the whole time I’m at the store and I’ve gotten comments on his absolute cuteness while playing in the cart both times I’ve been to the store and used it.

Like I mentioned in Carter’s 12 month post, we were still working on the transition to the sippy cup from the bottle and were having a hard time with it.  I came to work one day and when I called Justin he said he was done with bottles and that he was going to wean Carter that day.  My initial thought was “man I’m glad I’m at work and he’s dealing with that!”.  HUGE props to daddy because after just a couple of days of refusing to give Carter a bottle, Carter is now solely on sippy cups.  We went from this:

To this:

He also has a new favorite toy.  One of my co-workers got him this farm knob puzzle for his birthday and he LOVES it.  Not gonna lie, mommy doesn’t love it.  For two reasons:  1)  Those little puzzle pieces end up ALL OVER my house and we somehow managed to lose the sheep at the Lobdell’s house, and 2)  Carter likes to flip it upside down to get all the pieces out of the big board puzzle and then he walks around the house with it.  I know it’s hard to see, but this is made of wood.  So she ain’t light!  It makes mommy nervous when he walks around the house with it because I’m afraid he’s going to drop it on his toes!  See video:

On a more positive note with the puzzle, I frequently sit down with him and go over all the puzzle pieces.  I say things like “this is the farmer, this is the goat, this is a horse, etc”.  After I took the above video, I asked Carter again (because I asked him once in this video) “Carter, where’s the farmer?”.  He was next to me by the couch and he walked over to the entertainment center across the room and picked up the farmer and walked back over to me.  HE UNDERSTANDS!!!

“I love my puzzle mommy!”  You may notice the tie on the onesie.  A girl in my Sunday School class has picked up a monogramming hobby so I let her make Carter several onesies and this was one of them.  He wore it to church last weekend and was his first tie :)

Feeding with adult food is going ok.  He’s gotten to where it’s easy to feed him non-pureed breakfast.  He likes yogurt, waffles, oatmeal and bananas.  Still working with lunch time and dinner time foods though.  He has eaten grilled chicken and ham before, but still sometimes refuses them.  He does like grilled cheese.  He’s eaten pieces of a sandwich before but he had to warm up to it first.  It’s still a process needless to say.  Doc said we could still feed pureed foods as long as we wanted as long as we’re trying to transition to adult food, which is what we’re doing.  Obviously I can’t let him starve so when he won’t eat adult food, pureed veggies it is! 

He tried string cheese a long time ago and didn’t like it, but Justin sent me this picture a couple of days ago of him eating shredded cheese (to the left).  To the right his him eating a banana that Justin is holding.  We do usually cut the banana up for him, but he also likes to eat it like a big boy sometimes.

Last weekend, daddy met up with some of his Jeep buddies to see if they could help him put something on his Jeep.  I should know what it was, but Justin has had so much done to that car that I can’t remember the names of things.  Anyway, it was an all day process, so I decided to take Boo Boo to the Zoo since it was 70+ degrees outside.

To the left is Carter enjoying watching the hogs and to the right is us on the train.  The last time I took him to the zoo, he was only eight months old and I don’t even think he could really see any of the animals yet.  What a difference a few months can make.  He was loving watching the animals.  The giraffes in particular.  We were able to be very close to one and it was eating off one of the trees and Carter was laughing hysterically at it.  You’ll have to excuse my hot-mess of a hairdo in the picture above.  Maybe it’s not just me, but in the past couple of months, I’ve been noticing some very short fly-aways all over my hair.  I’ve never had this problem in my life!  When I went to my hair stylist to get color done, she told me that it’s because my hair is re-growing from when it fell out after I had Carter.  One of the unfortunate things after having a baby, other than the sleep deprivation that is, is that your hair falls out.  I read about this, but man, it definitely happened to me.  I by no means went bald, but my hair was EXTREMELY thin.  I could definitely tell a difference.  Now it’s just trying to grow back which means there are baby hairs all over the place.  UGH.

Also, this week we are turning in our enrollment form for Carter to take the next class up at Mother’s Day Out.  In the fall, he’ll be in the toddler class.  It hurts my heart to hear that.  I feel like I just had him still.  And he’s a toddler?!?!?!  Number one disadvantage of being a working mom - time FLIES.  Before I know it, Carter will be 16.  And driving.  Lord help us all.

So that’s what has been going on with us!  Hope everyone had a great weekend!