Carter Turns Five!

Shoot! I just realized I forgot to write about Carter's 5th birthday! So here's another post.

The first celebratory thing we did was go out to a restaurant with Daniel's parents about a week before (because they were going out of town). Carter asked to go to an Italian restaurant so he could have "vinegar bread," so I found a local place that turned out to be pretty underwhelming. Still, it was worth it for how much Carter enjoyed it—especially the bread and vinegar.

Then we had a park party on the Saturday before Carter's actual birthday. We invited all of his preschool friends and church friends for a race-car-themed shindig.

First the kids got some candy-filled race cars that also actually drove forward if you pulled them back first (you know the kind). So we tried to do races. It all worked a lot better in my head than it did in real life. It quickly became clear that taking turns to do a tournament (like I had originally planned) was not going to happen, so the kids just had a free-for-all. Oh well! I think they still enjoyed it.

Then we had a "car wash." 

Okay, so this whole thing would have been way more awesome if we could have had the party in our backyard, because then we could have drilled holes into the pipes and attached the hose to it so that water continually squirted down. Alas, our backyard is WAY too small, so we had to improvise and make do at the park. We brought squirt bottles and a bunch of those water bottles with the squirt tops instead, and the kids got to squirt each other as they ran through. Oh, there was also silly string (which I got nowhere near enough of, by the way) for "soap." 

Here's Aubrey going through with her friend Makaela:

I think the kids had fun with it, even if it was kind of ghetto. I mean, I never overheard anyone saying, "This is lame!" or saw anyone unwilling to participate. So we're going with everyone having had a good time. Yes? Yes.

I didn't get a video of Carter going through, unfortunately. I'm not sure why not... Oh well.

After the car wash, we ate pizza. Nom.

And then we opened presents. Carter got a lot of vehicle-themed gifts, which was right up his alley. I love his facial expressions.

After presents, we did a blue race car piñata. There were so many near accidents that I can't believe no one got hurt. Here you can see my friend pulling Clara out of the way for me as Aubrey swings. Oof.

Speaking of Clara, her turn with the piñata was rather entertaining (again, my friend was a big help so I could film stuff)...

And here's the birthday boy's final turn after everyone else had gone:

After the candy rush, it was time for more sugar. Only this time it came in the form of cake. I don't remember what flavor it was (probably chocolate), but here it is:

A professional cake decorator I am not. But Carter loved it, so that's all that matters. And it DID taste good! I even made my own marshmallow fondant for the first time!

It was pretty windy that day, so we had to use a cardboard box to block the wind so the candles would stay lit while we sang. It worked, and Carter got to blow them out.

The cake was enjoyed, and then it was time for goodbyes and cleanup. It was during this time that this happened with Clara... not sure what is happening here. 

Anyway, back to the birthday boy. On his actual day of birth, we did the usual—shape pancakes in the color of his choice...

... present unwrapping and assembling...

... and playing with all the new toys. I love that you can see Carter's mouth making truck sounds as he plays here:

And here's the racing toy in action after Daddy finished putting it together:

Unlike other birthdays, however, we had a bit of a scheduling conflict for this one. Aubrey, who was doing a tap/hip-hop class at the time, had a dance recital that afternoon/evening. She had to be there early for rehearsals and stuff, so Carter and I dropped her off (while Daniel stayed home with a napping Clara) and went to get some birthday ice cream before the performance.

Carter chose chocolate ice cream with gummy bears mixed in. It apparently wasn't the best combo. That didn't stop him from eating it though...

And here we are together! A little mommy/son date. 😁

After ice cream, we went and watched Aubrey dance. Carter got bored pretty quickly, but he enjoyed watching Aubrey when she got out there.

And here they were afterward.

And that was it! I'm sure we had meatballs and spaghetti (Carter's favorite food) for dinner that night, but the photos I have end here. Happy (super late) birthday, Carter man!

The King of Hip-Hop

Okay, I'm almost caught up with Carter's blog! Home stretch! This post is for documenting all of the things that make Carter who he is. We've got the good and the bad. Here it is...

Fun and Games

• He likes to go "fishing" with his stuffed snake. He holds it by the tail and throws it out in front of him, waits, and then pretends to reel it in.
• At bedtime he likes me to play "Tickle Spider" as well as a game he calls "Check the Clock Time." He starts by saying, "Guess what time it is?", to which I respond, "Snuggle time?" Then he says, "No, check the clock time for a long time," after which he proceeds to stare at his clock while I act sad. Then he asks me again what time it is, and I say, in a fake crying voice, "Check the clock time." Then he says, "No, snuggle time!" and flings himself down next to me to snuggle, at which point I act all happy. He also started a game in which his bed spread is the ocean waves, and he pulls them up over my head while I pretend to thrash/swim around and blow bubbles until he pulls the blanket off of me and I gasp for air. Who knows how these things get started, haha.

• After I read to him at bedtime, he likes to slide down my legs (like a slide) onto the ground when he goes to turn his light off.
• Some of his favorite music is Encanto, In the Heights, Hamilton, Weird Al, Trolls World Tour, Cake, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. I recently overheard him singing, "He'd never go out with a skank like that," from In the Heights. Am I a bad mom? I mean, he doesn't know what it means... Hahaha.
• Speaking of games, he's finally starting to play games with the family. He still gets mad when he loses and often leaves the game before it's over if he gets mad. We're working on it. But he likes Uno Attack, Tsuro, Takenoko, King of Tokyo, Carcassone, and Splendor.

• Some shows he loves are Octonauts, Carmen Sandiego, Puppy Dog Pals, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. He really likes Elephant and Piggie books, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, any book about cars or motorcycles, Dr. Seuss books, and whatever we have from the library at the time. For movies, he loves Encanto, Cars, The Incredibles, and Raya and the Last Dragon.
• Speaking of Encanto, his favorite song from the movie is "Dos Oruguitas," which is completely in Spanish, and which he insists he knows all the words to. He actually sings along in a way that sounds like he does know some of the words, haha. Of course, he doesn't understand their meaning. He does get what the song is about though, because he's heard the English version of the song (which isn't as good). Anyway, it's a slower song, which he doesn't normally like, so it's fun that he likes this one.
• I got the kids noodles from Panda Express one time, and now he's obsessed. He always talks about how good they are and how he wants to have them again. Thankfully, he has been satisfied by noodles from other Chinese restaurants in the meantime.
• He is a huge fan of bath bombs and wishes he could have one for every bath. 
• He really enjoys playing with Legos. For awhile there, he would build me things all the time and put them in my room for me. It was really cute.

Skills and Improvements

• He has become such a good reader! His recent progress report from school indicates that he's at reading level G, and he's supposed to be at level D by the end of the year. Unfortunately, he won't read out loud to me or Daniel. He's too embarrassed. It makes me sad! I'm glad he's reading well though, I guess.
• He has an amazing ability to memorize song lyrics. He picks them up so quickly!
• He apparently is a joy to have in class and is always ready to learn. That's what his teacher just told us during conferences. We're glad the behavior issues we see at home don't manifest at school, but it's also disheartening and confusing.

• He can finally handle getting his face wet in the bath and doesn't scream anymore. We used to have to use a baby shower head umbrella thing (it barely fit him), and he doesn't need it anymore. Progress!
• He was doing speech therapy at a local place to improve his lisp (both frontal and lateral, apparently), but we stopped once he began kindergarten. But then the school put him on an IEP and does speech therapy for him there, which is great! Truth be told, I haven't seen a whole lot of progress in regards to him remembering to correctly say his S's (How do you pluralize that?!), but he does pronounce them better when prompted, so that's a thing.
• He finally figured out how to swing on the swings by himself. Yesssss!

Struggles and Frustrations

• We have to pull the chain on his fan/light so he doesn't play at bedtime. Otherwise he'd play until 10:00 or later (and actually has). It's super frustrating.
• When he gets mad, he sometimes talks like a baby. He also yells, "Waa! Waa!" when he doesn't like something or he's told no.
• He is very afraid of going to the dentist and refuses to let them use the spinny brush to clean his teeth. He literally runs away. I dread taking him to the dentist. 
• He is also very afraid of dogs. His fear seems to go through phases of severity, and for awhile there he would start to freak out if we even drove by a dog. He stopped going to play with friends in the neighborhood because he had to walk by dogs in people's backyards. It got better when we went to Grandma's and Grandpa's house during Winter Break, when Aunt Maren brought their dog. He no longer screams and runs away when a dog walks by, but he definitely won't approach one.

• He's also afraid of comets. I have no idea where that came from. He would see something in the sky while we were driving and would be convinced it was a comet that was going to crash into Earth and kill us all. He has mellowed on that one for now, but I still wanted to mention it because it's so weird.
• Sometimes, when we try to instruct him or discipline him, he closes his eyes and sticks his nose up in the air in an act of defiance. It's pretty infuriating.
• Speaking of defiance, he has a tendency to refuse to do what we say—try new food, clean his room, get ready for bed, get dressed in the morning, etc. It's the worst in the mornings before shool when I'm trying to get him ready for school on time. We never are on time, and it's often because he refuses to get dressed and I have to dress him like a baby. He flops around and makes it hard for me, either laughing during the ordeal or screaming and thrashing. Sometimes he removes items of clothing (or shoes) while I'm trying to put others on. It's usually the worst part of my day.

• He is very picky about food, and when we ask him to try things at dinner, he says, "No! It tastes like rotten fish eggs!" Okay then.
• He's still very sensitive and typically can't be told that anything he does is wrong or should be done in a different way, no matter how gently we try to say it. He also often can't be told anything he doesn't want to hear without freaking out (like "no"). He always goes to the worst-case scenario and won't listen to us when we try to explain that something is not as bad as he thinks. Example: Literally, as I was typing this, Carter was brushing his teeth, and Aubrey told him to stop because I just made cookies for them (which he knew but had forgotten). He started freaking out that he couldn't have a cookie now, despite us assuring them that he still could. He just kept saying, "No, I can't!" He wouldn't listen to let us explain. He just immediately went into screaming mode.

Trying to remember the good things when it's hard, like this thing he wrote:
"Love is rainbows. Love is playing. Love is green. Love is Mommy."

• In a similar vein, he pretends like he can't see/reach things when he's mad. It's hard to explain, but here's an example of what I mean. We told him to eat the pork on his plate a few nights ago, and he said, "I don't have any pork." When we pointed at it on his plate, he looked right at it and said, "I don't see it. I don't have any." Again, I have no clue what this is about.
• When he gets mad, he calls us "stupid," "idiots," or "meanies" (that last one just makes me laugh). He also kicks me, hits me, and throws things at me. He hisses at us. If we put him in his room, he destroys things, like his door, which is literally splintered and pulled apart (it's a hollow core door) so that it doesn't shut without special maneuvering from the outside or slamming it shut from the inside.

Cute and Sweet

• Nearly every night he wakes up and comes into our room. Half of the time he climbs into our bed without me even noticing, and I wake up some time later to find him snuggling me. If it's 6:00 a.m. or later, I don't do anything about it because I know he won't go back to sleep. If it's before 6:00, I send him back to his own room. It's cute he wants to snuggle, but he really needs to be able to just roll over and go back to sleep when he wakes up at night. Still, I can't really complain about snuggles from my buddy. Anyway, here he is one morning when he crawled into bed with me and I didn't notice until it was already morning. Pretty cute, I must admit.

• Every day, when I pick him up from school, he gets in the car, sits down in his seat, and then inevitably sees a friend he knows walking by the car. So he yells, "Mom, put down the window!" and then shouts the kid's name out the window, repeating it until the kid sees him and waves back. He does it all along our drive from the school. Sometimes he shouts out Clara's window. It's so cute how excited he is to see his friends and to see how they smile, wave back, and say, "Hey, Carter!"
• He's usually very sweet with Clara, sometimes adopting a baby-talk voice when he speaks to her. I love this video from his restaurant birthday dinner:

• He's still a very affectionate buddy. He'll randomly hug me or tell me he loves me, and I live for those moments. They usually catch me off guard, but they always bring a smile to my face.
• We're redoing the floor in the kids' bathroom next week, and Carter has said more than once that he wants to keep the flowers (because some of the squares in the linoleum have pink flowers on them). I promised him we'd cut out a square with a flower on it and let him keep it (after I disinfect it, haha). That made him happy. D'awww.

Funny Things

• It may be weird to add this, but he almost always puts his underwear on backwards. He never cares though, so he never fixes it.
• He eats frozen waffles without cooking them... so they're cold. But he still eats them with syrup. *shrug*
• He has started calling himself the "king of hip-hop," which he apparently thinks he is because he can dance "hip-hop," which is really just him flinging himself around and spinning on the ground in a funny imitation of breakdancing. I LOVE it.
• Here he is doing "push ups" at the park. He was taking it so seriously, and I had to try not to laugh.

• Some funny conversations we've had:

• Me: "Carter, you only have 7 more days at preschool! Stop growing up!"
• Carter: "I can't, Mom!"
• Me: "I know. I like watching you grow up, but I don't want you to get older and become a man and leave me!"
• Carter: "Mama, I'll stay in our house with you forever, even when I have a new mom."
• Me: "A new mom? What about me?"
• Carter: "No, like when I'm an adult and there's a new Mommy."
• Me: "Oh, like a wife! And you guys will live with me?"
• Carter: "Yeah, but then you'll leave."
• Me: "Wait, you're going to kick me out?!"
• Carter: "No, I'll ask you to please leave."

• Me: "K, Carter, go get your jammies on."
• Carter: "I'm the police chief now; I don't have to do what you say."

And, finally, because I forgot to add them earlier, here are his cute responses about Daniel for Father's Day at preschool:

And his "All About Me" poster from the beginning of kindergarten:

Singing and Soccer

Because I'm so behind on posts, I've decided to do a post about what Carter was up to during the spring, summer, and fall of the year 2021. The last post had some things from the first half of 2021, but here's the rest.

Carter was able to continue doing Soccer Buddies during the winter, but this time it was indoors. It was so fun to watch him improve! They kept it indoors during the spring as well, and here he is in May.

May also brought Carter's graduation from preschool. They did a cute little performance, and Carter was SO into it. He was having a blast and was clearly proud of himself. It was fun to see that side of him.

Here he is playing guitar on his arm, hehe.

And more singing...

And here he was at the end, all proud of himself!

That smile... 💙

Here's his whole preschool class:

And, of course, we had to get a shot of Carter with the wonderful Ms. Shelley and Ms. Kathleen!

Once summer started, we decided to switch Carter from soccer to T-ball for a change of pace. He picked it up pretty well! He was especially good at hitting.

Here is his first time learning to field:

And his first time learning to hit:

And his first game (he's playing in the pitcher position):

And his first game at-bat:

Some throwing/catching practice:

And now I'll dump a bunch of other favorite videos (I took a lot of them, haha). This first one is him fielding in the shortstop position:

And then two more hits:

Though he could have continued doing baseball in the Fall, Carter opted to return to soccer. I was actually pretty bummed, because I like baseball better and think he could be really good at it. But in the end it's his choice, not mine. *sigh* Haha.

Anyway, we felt like Carter was ready for an actual soccer league with games, so we put him in the Colorado Rapids program. Again, it was fun to watch him improve!

And, because I'm terrible, here are some funny fall videos:

This one's my favorite fall. He literally spit grass out afterwards, but I unfortunately stopped the video before that:

And here's a near goal:

And then a goal! I think Carter thought it went in but the other kid didn't and kicked it in more, but it's hard to tell from this angle/this far away. Either way, Carter did awesome!

And, finally, some action shots (And yes, I know I took too many videos and photos of Carter playing soccer... and this isn't even all of them!):

Anyway, that's all for now. I have another post for Carter coming up, but that one will be filled with cute photos and descriptions of who he is and what he likes and funny things he says and does.

"Mommy, what is the pain of the past?"

Ahhh, why do I fail at this? I used to be so good! This post is a LONG time coming. I'm going to stop berating myself over not doing this earlier and get to the subject matter at hand—this cute boy:

This post is going to be very photo heavy and not so text heavy. There are just so many cute photos of this guy that I wanted to share! Anyway, without further ado, here's some (kind of old) stats about Carter:

• As you can see from his drawing above, he's become quite the little artist. He never used to be into coloring, but I guess Aubrey rubbed off on him!

• He still loves trucks and all things with wheels, so when this truck came to our neighborhood he had to go see it. He just squatted there forever watching the guys unload.

• We once had this awesome conversation:
  Carter: "Mommy, I would cry if you died."
  Me: "Oh, and I'd be sad to not see you grow up."
  Carter: "Yeah, then you wouldn't get to see how good-looking I am." 
• His hair has a bit of wave to it sometimes, and it makes me happier than it probably should.

• At Wrangler Park there is a play structure with horseshoes on it, and Carter calls them "the U's," which I love. He also tried sliding down them at first instead of climbing up them. Hehe.

• One day I came into the family room and found him lying on the ground under Clara's walker toy. He told me he was a mechanic and that he was fixing it. I almost died from the cuteness.

• He loves Batman, particularly his Batman costume.

• He loves the king's songs in Hamilton. Here he is singing part of it.

• Tongue pictures!

• A favorite quote: "Mommy, they should call it a boy's AND girl's cheese sandwich. That would be better."
• This is SUCH a Carter face. He makes it a lot, and I love it.

• One day he randomly asked me, "Mom, what's the pain of the past?" It confused me for a second, until I realized that it's a line from a Frozen song: "Say goodbye to the pain of the past..." Hehe.

• As I mentioned in my last post about Carter, for awhile there he would pretend hangers were bows (as in a bow for arrows) and tucked them in the back of his shirt. Eventually he started pretending the hangers were swords, but he kept tucking them in the back of his shirt. And then he started using other things as shields.

• Then we got him actual toy swords, and he was obsessed.

• Another favorite quote, spoken after Aubrey killed a fly: "Not fair! Aubrey got to kill something, and I didn't!"
• We often find him sleeping on his floor in the middle of the night. 

• Here's a copy of his preschool evaluation, for lack of a better word. His preschool teachers know him well!

• Speaking of preschool, he got to take home Clifford for a week as a class "pet," and he was so cute about it!

• One day he decorated my face with cat stickers. He thought it was so funny.

• Once, after discovering I had hiccups, he said, "Aw, I don't like my mommy to have hickeys!" Haha.
• Due to a lack of answers about Carter's behavior issues (and the fact that he sometimes snores), we decided to have him do a sleep test to see if perhaps he wasn't getting good enough sleep. I worried he would freak out and become uncooperative, but he did great! He was brave and patient. 

• He has such beautiful eyes. I can't tell if they're blue or green, but I love them!

• At preschool they had the kids answer questions about their moms for Mother's Day and dads for Father's Day. Here are Carter's answers about me:

• At Nana's and Papa's house one time, he wrote Aubrey's name with hearts next to it on the backyard patio. It was so sweet!

• He also played this awesome piano song!

• We put Carter in Soccer Buddies for many months, and he was SUCH a fan. I have a ton of soccer photos and videos. Here are some favorites from Fall 2020:

• This video shows how Carter didn't pay attention a lot of the time.

• This video has an awesome three-kid collision involving Carter.

• In addition to soccer, Carter was very obssesed with the movie Trolls World Tour for awhile there. (He still loves it, but he's no longer obsessed.) He's all about the rocker trolls and their songs. In fact, the movie made him love rock music in general. Win!

• Here he is watching the movie and talking/singing along with the movie. This is the techno trolls song. He LOVES this song.

• And here he is drumming while singing one of the Trolls World Tour rock songs.

• And finally, here is Carter doing his birthday buckets at preschool. He did it on his half birthday (when he was 4 1/2) since his birthday is in summer.