I can’t believe my little boy is almost 2 years old. I really feel like this last year (since his 1st birthday) has flown by so fast. I kept thinking I need to write a Carter update, I need to post to my blog, I need to take pictures… and here it is almost a year later and I feel like I’ve barely done any of those things! I guess that is live with a toddler… always crazy!
Carter continues to amaze us every day. He is seriously SO smart. He picks up multiple new words every day and he loves to talk! He will sometimes ask for something or call something by name and Kent and I will just look at each other like, HOW does he know that?!? It feels like there are so many concepts that he just understands so well, it’s hard to believe he is only 1. He can basically count to 10 now on his own with only a bit of prompting. He knows lots of colors and will often describe things by what color they are. He loves animals and knows what many are, both by name and what sound they make. But his favorite is definitely HORSES. He is obsessed with horses, which immediately leads to him saying “Nanny, Papa, Cota (Chacota), Maa (Mia), Am (Shazaam), and he even knows who’s horse is whose. Nanny’s is Mia, Papa’s is Chacota, and Carter’s is Shazaam! He will talk about these horses for HOURS… every day.
He likes to ride his "daddy horse" into his room on many nights. Carter’s nighttime routine is a family thing, so we all three read books, sing songs and pray together in his room before we turn out the lights and he gives us each a hug and a kiss. He knows some of his books so well he will either point and describe what he sees or even say the phrases with me. He loves to sing and will tell us which songs to sing. His favorites are “ Doudern” (Jesus Loves the Little Children), “Twinkle” (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star), “Baa” (I Just Wanna be a Sheep), “Barney” (The I Love You song), “Hop” (The Baby Bop Hop from Barney), and a few others – the list is growing every day! He will sing along with us to many of these which is so adorable.
When we pray we always ask him who we pray to, and he says “God-a”. He knows we hold hands and are quiet and say “Amen” at the end. And I can’t forget all his stuffed animals he sleeps with. We do roll call every night to make sure everyone is there: Barney, Elmo, Ba (Zebra), Guy (Dr. Suess character), Gorilla, and Tiger. We have to go find one if he is missing (or turn the light off before roll call if we notice it in advance).
He is such a sweet boy. He loves to give us hugs and kisses, and will always insist we do both if one of us is leaving for work or the store or something. He will run up and ask for a “Hug” then “Kiss” then say “Bye” over and over until we say it back. And of course, he wants multiples every night when we put him in bed, followed by many “Byes” back and forth as we walk out and shut the door. There are many mornings when he will lay on the couch or in bed with one or both of us and cuddle while watching Barney (he is OBSESSED with Barney). But I am more than happy to watch a couple episodes if it means I get to have my boy snuggled in my arms the whole time. He will usually give me a couple random hugs and kisses, too, which is just so sweet.
Carter is also really athletic. He has always impressed people with his throwing arm, from a very early age. He can really chunk a ball a good distance and loves to make “goals”. He will say “goal” if he (or we) make the shot and “miss” if we miss it. He also loves to kick and will even “dribble” a soccer ball, running and kicking it multiple times as he goes. I know his daddy is a soccer guy, but I’m really not sure how he knows how to do that! Yesterday I had three colored baskets and would tell him which color and he would dribble the soccer ball over and kick it in the right one every time.
He has really good upper body strength, which we witnessed first-hand as we watched him easily pull himself out of his crib earlier this week. SO, he is now sleeping in his toddler bed! That transition is going a LOT better than I expected. The first night he got up quite a few times, but once we established that he would get in trouble (and put a knob cover on his door handle so he couldn’t open his door), he has gone to bed with very little to no problem. Kind of amazing really… I was expecting a week of no sleep! He only tried to get up once the second night and none at all the third. I hoping for another full night’s sleep tonight. Nap time is not so easy, as he screams for quite a while until he finally passes out, and he seems to not sleep as long, but hopefully he will get more used to it soon. All in all, he is doing great with the transition.
He became really interested in the potty in the last month or 2. He gets the concept of sitting on the toilet and putting toilet paper in it, though he won’t sit there long enough to actually go. I had to move the toilet paper roll so he couldn’t reach it because he just wanted to keep tearing it off and throwing it in the toilet, and once that game was gone he really slowed down his interest in the potty. Maybe I should have let him waste the roll? Now he just wants to sit on it once a day for like a second, then he will get off and flush. Flushing is the new game. I guess paper and flushing are two of the concepts of the potty, so he’s learning, though there’s kind of a big one missing – at some point you have to actually GO in the potty. But for now, he will tell me when he “potties” in his diaper, so he is definitely putting it all together. Soon enough he will get there.
He is also very aware of the baby in mommy’s belly. He will point and say ”baby”, and when we ask what kind of baby he will say “siter” (sister). He will even occasionally attempt to say her name, which sounds more like KiKi, so cute. Though he sometimes points to his or daddy’s belly and says “baby”, I think he really gets the concept that a baby is in my belly. He will point at babies or kids we see in passing and call them “baby”, too. It’s fun to see him putting the pieces together.
There is so much more I could tell about Carter, but this post is already quite an essay, so I’ll end here for now. We are LOVING every day with our boy, he is SO much fun to be around. He brings so much joy to our lives, I can’t imagine life without him!
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