Carter - Three Years Old

Cannot believe I am mom to a three year old!!!  So here’s what’s going on with Carter at age 3 now:
 Diapers
No diapers!!  Carter is completely tee-tee trained and has been for a while.  I don’t even have to take him to go to tee-tee.  If we’re at home, he’ll just go on his own and the only way I know that he’s gone to the bathroom is to hear the toilet flush.  Then he brings his underwear to me and asks me to help him put them on.  I usually put them on around his ankle and he pulls them up on his own.  He’s just not coordinated enough yet to put each foot into it’s respective whole just yet.  As far as poo goes, well, we’re unfortunately still not trained for that.  He just won’t go in the potty for some reason.  He waits until naptime or bedtime because he wears a pull-up during those times (he’s not ready for underwear while sleeping long stretches just yet-his control over his bladder only applies when he’s awake).  So he basically waits until he’s wearing a pull-up and then goes poo in the pull-up.   I’m about to force him to sleep in underwear during naps.  Hopefully this will force him to go in the potty because he really does refuse to poo in his underwear (and I’m ok with that!).
 
Shoe Size
It’s been a while since we had his foot measured, but last time we did, he was an 8.5 wide. 
 
Clothes
Our small boy is still small!  He can wear 2t and 3t shirts, but his 2t pants are still a little big!  I got a bunch of 3t jeans from consignment sales and NONE of them fit him.  I went and bought some 2t jeans from Children’s Place and even those are still a little too big!  Pajamas are all still 2t or 3t, though I’m starting to put away a lot of the 2t ones that don’t fit. 
 
Feeding
This year had a lot of ups and downs with feeding.  We know that we do have a picky eater on our hands (at least when it comes to trying new things), however his pickiness has started to get less and less as time goes by.  He now eats pizza!  It’s not his favorite thing to eat, but he will eat it.  I finally got him eating grilled chicken again, too.  He used to eat it but he hit a spurt where he just refused to eat it for some reason.  So I let it go for several months but tried again just this month and he eats it again.  I’d like to try for a peanut butter jelly sandwich next…or even a grilled cheese.  Bottom line-he still doesn’t like bread, so that’s what we need to work on.  He also doesn’t eat hamburgers yet, but I’m hoping that will come with age.  He tried potato soup for the first time this month and liked that as well.  He still does really well with his vegetables-preferring peas, green beans, corn and carrots.  As far as meats goes, he likes ham, grilled and fried chicken, and fish nuggets.  He still loves fruit too, particularly blueberries, strawberries, bananas, apples, peaches and pretty much any flavor of yogurt.  He’s tried a ton of other new snack foods, too.  His favorites right now are Doritos (cool ranch kind) and Mike and Ike’s. 
 
Sleep
Still naps once a day for the most part.  Sometimes he just goes up to his room for a couple of hours but doesn’t actually sleep.  I’m ok with that as long as he still has quiet time.  On the days that he doesn’t nap, he falls asleep FAST at night.  On days that he does nap, he still goes upstairs to his room at 7:30pm, but a lot of times he doesn’t actually fall asleep until 9ish.  On average, he still sleeps about 10-11 hours at night.  Naps range anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to 2 1/2 hours. 
 
Mother’s Day Out
Carter is in the Older Two’s class at our church.  He loves it.  This was also the first year that he will walk into the room and not cry.  He did cry for the first few weeks (new teachers and all) but eventually stopped and he hasn’t done it since.  When we get to his room door, he ALWAYS turns to me and says “kiss and a hug” and I give him a hug and kiss him and tell him I love him and to have fun and then he runs into the room and plays with the other kids.  I love his teachers (I knew them before this because they are members at our church).  This is also the first time he’s come home and sung me songs he learned or talked about things that happened.  He’s memorized not only who the moms of the other kids in his class are, but also what cars they drive.  He can tell me in the parking lot whose mommy is driving what car and he’s always right.  
 
Statistics
Carter’s three year appointment was on January 5, 2015.  They took his blood pressure for the first time.  He had Henry with him of course and naturally, Henry had to get his blood pressure done too.  Thank God for the sweet nurses at our pediatrician office that are patient and understand that sometimes the only way a toddler will do something is if his “friend” has it done too.

He wasn’t a fan once it started getting tight.  He kept saying “it’s too tight!!!” but he was able to keep it on because we distracted him by showing him the screen that had the numbers that kept changing as his blood pressure was being taken.  It was 108/50, which the nurse said was a tad high for his age, but she said it’s likely a bad reading since it was his first time and he was really nervous.  The doc didn’t seem worried.  Carter is now 32lbs (50th percentile) and is 3 feet 1 inch tall (40th percentile).  Our doc estimates that he’ll be 5’9 at full growth.  Justin is 5’9 so that won’t shock me.  We opted to do a vision test where the nurse stood several feet away from carter and had some pretty small pictures of objects (house, car, birthday cake, christmas tree…stuff like that).  He had to cover one eye and tell the nurse what the objects were and then do it again covering the other eye.  Carterman got all of them right!  We talked to the doc about him not pooping in the potty and after a few questions on his part, he decided that Carter is likely constipated and when he does poop, it hurts, which is why he won’t go on the potty.  He told us to give him a stool softener and we would likely see a difference so we’re going to start that soon.  The doctor also noted that Carter is developmentally advanced for his age, which we knew already.  He is so stinking smart it’s ridiculous!  We go back again when he turns 4 at which time he will get his very first tetanus shot.  Yikes!!!
   
Other Abilities/Random Things to Note

• My insanely smart kiddo loves to identify the states on a map of the U.S. now.  He knows the name and location of about 15 states so far.  For Christmas, he got an Encyclopedia Britannica U.S. Map puzzle.  Once you put a state in it’s proper location, you press the state and the map will tell you the state, it’s capital and the nickname of the state.  So for example, when he presses Alabama it says “Alabama.  The Yellowhammer State.  State Capital-Montgomery.”  He has learned so much by playing with this toy!!!
• He loves puzzles
• He still absolutely loves the alphabet and it’s the very first song he asks to sing at night before going to bed. 
• He sings songs on his own now too-mainly songs like Jingle Bells, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and, thanks to daddy, the Auburn fight song.  Thanks to me, however, he also knows a good chunk of the Alabama fight song ;)
• We are currently working on him putting his own underwear on.  He’s good at taking his clothes off, but is pretty dependent on us to put them on, so we are going to start working on that too.
• His new obsession-CARS!!!  Like the little hot wheels cars.  He doesn’t even necessarily play with the roads that the cars come with…just the cars.  He got roughly 20 of them for Christmas and he just puts them all in a line and plays with them. 
• We introduced him to Sprite and he is obsessed.  He wants it all the time!
• The biggest thing to note is that he is an AMAZING big brother.  Y’all…this kid just brings me to tears how much he loves his brother.  He is always checking on him to make sure he’s ok, he wants to help change diapers, wants to go upstairs with me to put him down for naps and ALWAYS has to give him a kiss and a hug.
• He remembers EVERYING.  And I mean…EVERYTHING.  We can’t promise him something and not follow through because he will totally call us out on it.  He also repeats absolutely everything he hears so if you come around my child and curse, be prepared to see the bad side of this momma!!
• He also (just last month) started using the pedals to ride his tricycle!!! 

**Picture above is of him eating a donut.  He LOVES donuts!!!**

Carter’s Third Birthday Party

As you can see, I’m trying to catch up on blogposts today.  Justin is at church with Carter while I’m at home with Garrett (momma didn’t sleep well last night and didn’t quite feel like going to church today).  So anyway, Carter turned three years old on December 28th.  His birthday party was on Saturday the 27th at a place called Pump It Up.  It’s basically a warehouse full of bouncy houses for kids to jump around.  Carter LOVES  bouncy house so I knew this was going to be the perfect place for his birthday party.  When you have a party there, you have the entire place rented out for two hours.  You start in one room that has a few bouncy houses/slides and stay there for about 45 minutes, then you go to another room of other bouncy houses/slides for another 45 minutes or so.  Then you go to the party room where you cut the cake and open presents.  I cannot begin to express how much fun that Carter had at this place!  It was the perfect place!!!  The only bad thing was that a bunch of his friends couldn’t come.  It’s the downside of having a birthday so close to Christmas.  Lots of his friends were out of town visiting family.  On top of that, there’s an insane flu epidemic and I got several responses from parents who had the flu or whose kids were sick and didn’t want them being around other kids to get them sick.  He still had a good turnout, I was just sad that a lot of his friends weren’t able to make it.

Here’s a few pictures from the day:

This was the first room.  I know….Heaven for a three year old!

One of Carter’s classmates, Anika.

Our friends two boys, Vaughn and Fisher.

Sweet Mary and James, who wasn’t quite old enough to slide down the big slides.

 

Clearly Carter and his cousin Celia are having a BLAST.

One of the slides was so tall and climbing this thing to get to the top of it was pretty difficult, even for me!  I can only imagine it was like Mount Everest to a three year old!

This may have been a record for the longest Garrett had been awake.  He was awake in my mom’s arms the ENTIRE party.  I don’t think he’s ever stayed awake that long!

 

Some of my favorite mommas!

And here’s several “in action” shots using the slide…forgive the fact that a lot of these are blurry because it’s impossible to get a good picture when kids and adults go that fast down a slide!

   

 

These two LOVE each other!!!  And apparently they both say “cheese” by grinding their teeth together!!

 

All the kids had a blast and I found a new place to take Carter that’s not the Zoo or the McWane Center or the park.  He’ll love coming to open play at Pump It Up!!!  Happy Birthday my sweet baby!!!!

Christmas 2014

This Christmas is what I consider Carter’s “first Christmas”.  It’s the first Christmas, just days shy of three years old, that he truly understood Santa and all things related to Christmas.  He knew why we were leaving cookies and milk out on Christmas Eve night, he knew what Santa did for a living, and he got excited, for the first time, about coming downstairs Christmas morning.  Let’s begin by taking a look at Carter’s FIRST time ever for taking a picture with Santa and not crying!!!

Garrett wasn’t quite comfortable in Santa’s lap, hence his face, but this is the very first picture of both of my boys with Santa.  I will cherish this picture forever!!!

After that came the Christmas with my extended family that lives in Gordo, AL.  We only really get to see them once a year at this time.  One of my cousins, Quinn, had just had a little boy (after having 3 girls she finally got her boy!) and is roughly 2 months older than Garrett so it was nice having 2 babies for everyone to love on!

My aunt Delane (left) is holding Garrett.  To the right is Emily holding baby Cole.  These women loved on these precious boys most of the evening!

These are all the kids in the family.  That’s a lot of kids!!!  Thank heavens for Quinn and her three girls…otherwise our family would be nothing but boys!!!

Cole and Garrett….Love Cole’s face in this picture.  He’s like “ummm…why is this kid laying on me?!?!”  And for being 2 months apart, they’re basically the same size.  Garrett’s in the 75th percentile for weight while Cole is in the 25th percentile, which makes sense for why the look the same size!

Where our families started.  To the left is my grandmother and to the right is her sister.  Love them!

 

Love this boy!!!

And then came Christmas Eve.  We do Christmas Eve with my side of the family-this time it was just my immediate family instead of the whole extended family.  We went to my sister’s house in Tuscaloosa again and we had so much fun!

My grandmother held Garrett the majority of the time we were at Lindsey’s house.  Unfortunately, she had to ask whose baby he was several times (Alzheimer's) but you could tell that holding a baby again absolutely made her day.  And I will absolutely cherish this picture whenever my Nanny goes to be with the Lord.

 

On the left…these two boys.  They so love eachother.  I’m pretty sure that this was when I was playing “Turn Down for What” by Lil’ Jon on my phone.  Carter calls that his song and he loves dancing to it.  So I’m pretty sure this was him dancing on the ottoman and then Anderson hopped up there with him to dance too.  On the right is us skyping my other sister, Jennifer, who lives in Tampa and couldn’t be there.

My photographer sister found these fun props at Target and had to buy them.  So glad she did because we got some super cute pictures with them.  See:

 

When you have a baby, you can almost always count on never once holding him during a family function.  Everyone else wants to!

All the fun wore this kid out!!!  We were trying to get home in time to see Santa on the fire truck driving through our neighborhood, but we left too late and missed it.  So we decided to go to church where, shocker, Papa held Garrett the entire time…

 

We really wanted Carter to see Santa on the fire truck, so we went to Papa and Nana’s house after church because he was supposed to be on there street at 8pm.  Well he never showed up so we sent Justin to drive around the neighborhood to find him.  He found him alright…but he was leaving the neighborhood!!!  Justin came back to his parent’s house and we piled the kids up quickly.  The website said Santa would make one last stop in another neighborhood so we drove around trying to find him.  When we finally found him he was leaving the neighborhood!!!  We followed him in the fire truck back to the fire station and when they were in the turning lane, we pulled right up next to them and he waved at Carter through the window.  We went through A LOT of trouble, but finally got Carter to see Santa!  After all that drama, we went back home and put out cookies and milk.

 

You’ll notice that each cookie has a bite taken out of it.  That’s because this three year old decided he needed to make sure the cookies tasted ok for Santa.  He also took a sip of the milk to make sure it was ok too.  He cracks me up!!! 

Then came Christmas morning!!!

Carter’s main gift from Santa was a fun little dune buggy.  He also got a cookie monster toboggan (he still LOVES cookie monster) and that thing he’s eating??….well when you asked Carter what he wanted for Christmas he ALWAYS said “double cookie” (a double doozie cookie from the Great American Cookie Company).  So naturally, Santa brought him a few of those to put in his stocking ;)  I’ll have to learn how to better spread out the money for Carter and Garrett’s Christmas.  At Carter’s age, the toys are just more expensive…for Garrett’s age…I mean what do a baby need other than clothes, books and a toy? 

Santa got all of Carter’s favorite things in his stocking….candy canes, double cookies, twizzlers and blue M&M’s!

Why are there no pictures of Garrett??  Well, because my master sleeper did this while Carter was downstairs opening his presents…

 

After a while, we got Carter dressed and took him outside to drive his dune buggy!

I didn’t want him to eat only double cookies for breakfast so I gave him a bowl of fruit and he insisted on eating it while driving.  Toddler’s first to go food I guess :)

 

This is why I love our neighborhood and particularly our street.  All the kids were in our culdesac playing with their new toys so all the kids got to play together while us parents enjoyed cups of coffee in our pajamas :)

Carter thought Garrett wanted to read his Farm Animals book so he gave it to him.  But then he wanted to show Garrett his brand new lunchbox so he brought that to him too.  Poor Garrett!

After playing with toys for a bit, we packed up and headed to Papa and Nana’s house for lunch with the twins!  I didn’t take many pictures there because we were outnumbered by kids!  I took a great video of them all opening presents, but for some reason I can’t put videos on my blog via Windows Live Writer anymore.

 

Nana gave the kids Gingerbread Cookie Decorating kits so after opening presents, all the kids decorated their cookies (there may have been some assistance from the adults!).

 

That was our Christmas!!!  It was great!  We only had a couple of days before we had to gear up for Carter’s birthday party (will add that stuff to another post).  After his party we drove to Florida to have Christmas with extended family and stayed for a few days before coming back home.  Our December was super busy!!!