"I want to go home"

Oh, this boy. He still owns my heart, but WOW does he try my patience these days! He has hit full-on threenager status. I really do believe though that at his core he is still a sweet, loving boy. I think this is just a phase. We can do it. We can do it. Haha.

• Common Carter phrases and funny misspeaks:
• "I want to go home" (spoken ALL THE TIME, including when we're already home)
• "See you at the finish line!" 
• "I want to be nice now" when he comes out of timeout
• "Mommy, I love you sooo much!" (usually spoken when he's in the middle of watching shows)
• "Absolutely" (for example, "I absolutely will not!")
• "This is a rough day" or "This is a lucky day" (spoken randomly and sometimes right after each other)
• "Tow by" for "bow tie" (referring to pasta)
• "Skittle the cards" for "shuffle the cards"
• "Destruction workers" for "construction workers"
• "Caboosk" for "caboose"
• "That is not a good idea!" when he doesn't like something I've said we're going to do
• "If it huggers, let it go" for "If it hollers, let it go" in "Eenie, Meanie, Miney Moe" song
• "You're breaking my heart" when I do something to make him sad or when Clara cries
• "I'm pressed" for "I'm impressed"
• "Huggy, huggy" and "kissy kissy" when he wants hugs or kisses
• "S-T-E-R-T-E-R" is how he thinks his name is spelled
• "Being reverent isn't my thing."
• "_______ isn't my thing."
• Calling Daniel "that guy" to someone at church

• He often puckers up and goes "mmm mmm!" until I let him kiss me. It's so cute! Sometimes he asks to kiss me on the lips, which I don't love. But I don't have the heart to tell him no!
• He still asks me for snuggles when he gets sad. I hope that never stops, but I know it will. *sniff*
• He calls the band OK GO "jump into paint" because of one of their music videos, in which they jump into spraying paint. 
• He likes to play a little game with me in which I say, "Mr. Carter" (pronounced "Mista Cahter") and then he says, "Mr. Mommy!" I then act all confused/affronted and say, "No, it's Mrs. Mommy! Mrs. Mommy!" He always laughs and asks me to do it all over again.
• His current favorite shows are the Disney shorts (Minnie's Bow Toons and the nursery rhymes), True and the Rainbow Kingdom and Doc McStuffins, and he still loves Wreck-It-Ralph, Coco, Moana, and, of course, High School Musical.

• At bedtime I always read two books to him. I used to ask him which book he wanted to read first, and at some point he started telling me to ask him that. Then he would jump up onto the bed while at the same time hitting one of the books to select it. He does it every night now and will even get off the bed to do it if he climbs up before I ask him.
• Then, after we read, we climb into bed for snuggles and songs. When I ask him what song he wants, he (lately) always chooses "I Am a Child of God" and then "I Love to See the Temple." After he selects the song, he'll say, "Do you want to know which verse I want?" He'll then proceed to sing the whole verse he wants (which is always the second one) instead of just telling me which one it is. It's pretty sweet hearing him sing to me! And then I sing it again to him, haha.

• For awhile there, he would ask me to sing him "The Chocolate Milk Song" at bedtime. It basically involved me repeating whatever weird phrases he said about chocolate milk and how/when he liked to drink it.
• One day we heard the kids arguing in the kitchen and then a loud cry from Carter, who had clearly gotten hurt. He came running to our room, and the following conversation occurred, with Carter very dramatically crying the whole time:
• Carter: "Aubrey hit me!"
• Me: "What were you guys fighting over?"
• Carter: "Cheese!"
• Me, trying not to laugh: "What did she hit you with?"
• Carter: "The cheese!"
• Ever since we went to IKEA a few months ago, he has become obsessed with it. He was particularly enamored with the huge and plentiful escalators. Now whenever we drive by it, he points and says, "Mommy, look! There's IKEA!"

• He once said, "See you Thursday!" when Daniel left to go somewhere.
• He likes to play a game in which he comes up to me with his little toy firetruck and say, "Is your kitty stuck in a tree?" I say, "Yes! Could you get him down for me?" He says yes and then proceeds to jump in the air and grabs the pretend cat out of the pretend tree and brings it to me. I then thank him profusely.
• When we get home and I go around the car to unbuckle his car seat for him, he always pretends to be asleep. So I unbuckle him and say, "Oh, Carter's asleep! I guess I'll let him nap in the car." Then I take Clara inside, and while I'm putting my shoes away, he sneaks up and behind me until I turn and act all surprised and say, "Oh, it's Carter! He's awake!" Then he laughs.

• When we go to Dos Amigos, he doesn't ever want to eat rice or quesadilla. He does, however, like to eat chips dipped in ketchup. It's horrible, but at least it gets him to eat something.
• I don't remember what they were talking about at the time, but Carter randomly said to Aubrey, "Ms. Shelley and Ms. Kathleen are nice to me. They wouldn't eat me."
• He sometimes drags his finger across words as he pretends to read them. He has no clue how to read, obviously, so the only things he gets right are the titles of books he knows really well and has therefore memorized. One time, while driving somewhere near Denver with Daniel, he pointed at a sign and said, "That says, 'Happy Thanksgiving!'" It actually said, "We love Denver."
• Just earlier this week I said, "Aww, it's okay, my love!" to Clara when she was crying. Carter then said to her, "Aww, your love, it's okay!"

• At the end of my pregnancy with Clara, I always had to tell Carter he couldn't sit on my lap because my belly was in the way. For a couple of weeks after she was born, he would say, "Mommy, you have a lap again!" He also kept saying the baby was going to "pop out" of me, so afterwards he would sometimes say, "Mommy, you have a lap again! Baby Clara popped out!"
• We made a laminated "getting ready checklist" for Aubrey when she first started kindergarten. Carter wanted one of his own to draw on like Aubrey (who checked things off after she did them), but since he didn't have one he would just scribble all over hers while describing how he'd go to school and walk in and hang his backpack up, etc. 
• Speaking of preschool, he totally loves it. For the first month or so he would say, "I'm so excited for preschool!" when we were on our way, and then he'd say, "I had so much fun at preschool!" when I picked him up. His teachers said multiple times that he was very gentle and sweet, even politely asking other kids if he could have a turn with a toy and offering to help other kids with a puzzle. I'm so glad he is good and sweet at school! 

• At home, however, he's been having a much rougher time. He is going through what I hope is just a phase of hitting, screaming, kicking, and shouting, "Stupid Mommy!" whenever something upsets him. And a lot of things upset him. If I ever tell him no about anything, he immediately throws a fit and starts hitting me and/or yelling. I don't give in to his demands when he does this, so I'm not sure why he keeps doing it. But oh, he does. 
• He is obsessed with pockets. That's all. It's cute.
• When he fake cries (but is actually upset), he puts both hands in front of his face and nods his head while moving his hands up and down. It just makes me laugh at him rather than feel bad for him.
• He often sleeps with his hands behind his head. It reminds me of my Grandpa Westall!

• He turns everything into a gun (which he calls a "shooter thing") and goes, "Pew pew!"
• When my mom and I dropped him off at his first day of preschool and said we were going shopping, he said, "You'll be bored without me." Haha.
• When I tell him not to do something, he says smugly, "But I already did."
• Another time, when we were at the park with my mom, he said, "Mom, can we go to the car? Because I'm kind of whiney." It was true, but I can't believe he recognized it!
• He loves to play with any kind of vehicle, and he often asks me to ride whatever vehicle he's playing with. By that he means for me to put my pointer and middle fingers on (if it's small) or in (if it's larger) the vehicle while he moves it around. I'm usually sitting when he does this, so he can't go too far before my hand loses contact and I "fall" out.

• For a brief period of time, he would move his head all around and smell the air for things he was looking for. It was so weird.
• When I gave him homemade syrup one day, he said, "Thank you so much, Mommy! You made my life come true!" He actually thanks me a lot--without being prompted--for doing things for him. It's the sweetest.
• We decided to do a one-week camp of swimming lessons for him, and it went okay at first. But then his second or third time he decided he didn't want to get in the water, and I had to basically force him. Then one day Daniel took him and didn't force him but just took him home. And the whole thing was a disaster. The video below is from his first day, before he freaked out. We weren't super happy with his instructor, who basically stopped doing anything with him other than holding him and dragging him through the water as he looked up at the ceiling (photo below). After everything, he ended up being more afraid of the water and less confident. So that sucked. We've finally got him back to where he was before, but talk about a waste of money!

• He once called Clara's pacifier a "fireman thing." I think it was the FIER part in "pacifier" that threw him off. Either way, I loved it.
• He is almost always driving a car around our house. It's so cute.
• When Clara still had the umbilical cord attached to her belly, I explained that when it fell off she would have a belly button like Carter's. He then started saying that Clara was growing her belly button. Hehe.
• He is nothing but sweet to Clara. Two different times now he has gotten mad at me and screamed so loudly that he scared Clara and made her cry. And when I pointed that out, he immediately calmed down and said, "I'm sorry, Clara! I didn't mean to!" Heart melted.

• Oh man, potty training. We are FINALLY done with that chapter in Carter's life, and let me tell you... it was rough. We tried several different times to potty train him before he started preschool, but it never stuck. We tried a naked day. We tried having him sit on the toilet for an hour at a time, and he'd hold it the whole time and then pee in his room. We tried giving treats after every success. But then he started saying, "I don't want a treat," when we tried that as incentive. When we said he couldn't go to preschool unless he was potty trained, he said, "I don't want to go to preschool." And so on and so forth. Every time we tried with him, he'd have a day or maybe two of success, and then he'd utterly refuse. It was so frustrating because we knew he could do it. He just wouldn't. So we put him in a pull-up for preschool and crossed our fingers. And he used the bathroom there! But he still wouldn't at home. *sigh* That was when we got REALLY annoyed. It got so bad that we finally decided to just back off, put him in diapers all the time again, and just wait for him to decide to do it. We just kept encouraging him to go if we wanted to, but he always said no. This proved to still be bad for how we felt about him (so much resentment), but it was good for him for us to remove the power struggle. Then one Friday, a little girl Carter's age saw he was wearing a diaper and said, "He's wearing a diaper. He's a baby!" And while I think that was bratty of her, I used it as an incentive by reminding him of it a few times that day and the next. And whether it was related or not, on Sunday he asked to use the potty. By Monday he was wearing underwear full-time and even pooping on the toilet. (I won't even go into all the details, but suffice it to say that if we had had to change one more poopy diaper in the middle of the night--which he had squished until it was ground into poop sand, getting it all over his fingers and all over in his bed--I think I may have shipped him to his grandparents. This happened twice. SO not okay.) Anyway, here's a cute photo from one of his naked days.

• We had a funny conversation at dinner the other night:
• Aubrey: "Carter, do you know what animal makes honey?"
• Carter: "Uhh, sheep?"
• Me, giving a hint: "Bzzzzz!"
• Carter: "Oh, bees like honey on their bread!"
• One time, when we put him in his room for timeout, Daniel went in and found him sitting in his rocking chair in the middle of the room, his toy gun in his hand. Uhhh...
• My parents got him his own toolbox as an early Christmas present, and he loved it so much he asked if he could sleep with it.

• His preschool went on a field trip to the police station, and when his teacher said that police officers are our friends and can help us, Carter said, "You know who else can help us? Jesus!"
• After preschool one day, he came running up to me so excited. He said, "Mommy, Mommy! I went poo poo on the potty at preschool!" I responded, "Awesome, buddy!" Then his teacher said, as an aside to me, "Yeah, it was in the urinal..."