Tuesday, June 23, 2020

"I amn't"


Since Carter just turned four, I thought I should do an update on him! There's a lot to say about this boy. He's a complicated one. He's very high-emotion and hits both extremes of the spectrum multiple times in one day. When he's happy, he's the happiest. When he's sweet, he's the sweetest. But when he's angry... Well, you can guess.

Anyway, here are some more fun facts about Mr. Carter:
  • He says funny things!
    • "Harbert" for "harbor"
    • "Mom, is the Earth spinning?" (asked randomly and often)
    • "I amn't" instead of "I am not"
    • "Holy moly fock-a-foly!"
    • "I don't want to bother anyone. I just want to scream!" (said happily while driving)
  • When he eats something like a fruit cup, he likes to put his spoon in one hand and the plastic cup in the other hand and say, "Watch, Mommy!" He then stretches both arms all the way out and drops the spoon in the sink and throws the cup in the trash at the same time. He's always so proud of himself.
  • We got Aubrey a wooden rainbow stacking puzzle for her birthday, and for awhile there Carter was obsessed with using the red arch, the largest arch, as a jet pack. It's particularly funny because I don't know that he really knows what that is. He would take the arch, put it over his stomach, and "blast off" by running around and making a "pshoooo" sound.
  • He was also obsessed with bows and arrows for awhile, and he used to pretend clothes hangers were bows. He would shoot pretend arrows with them and tuck them into the back of his shirt, in the neck hole behind his head. I love the creativity!
  • We went to Matthew and Sharon's house for lunch one day, and they have goats. William wanted to show Carter and Aubrey the goats, so they went out while the rest of us stayed at the kitchen table playing a game. Just beyond the table at their house is a set of French doors leading to the back yard, where the goats are kept. So a few minutes after the kids went out to see the goats, we heard Carter yelling and looked towards the back yard just in time to see him run to the door with a panic-stricken look on his face. He grabbed both handles of the French doors, shook them but couldn't get them open, and then kept running away while screaming in terror. A few seconds later, we saw a goat saunter lazily past the doors. Naturally, we all cracked up. Then we went to help poor, traumatized Carter. Hahaha.
  • When I put him to bed, I always tell him to choose two books for me to read to him. He went through a phase in which he would walk over to the bookshelf, pretend to grab a book, and then "hand it" to me. I would then pretend to grab it, open it, and begin reading. Then I'd say, "Once upon a time, there was a boy named Carter who liked to read invisible books!" or something like that. He always cracked up with his adorable laugh.
  • Unfortunately, he likes to shake his naked butt at people. After using the bathroom, he used to run out with his pants and underwear off and shake his butt at Aubrey. The more she said, "Ew!", the more he laughed.
  • One day, when I took a walk through our neighborhood with Aubrey and Carter, we walked by one of those pad-mounted transformers that look like this:

I think one of the kids asked me what the sign meant... the one that looks like this:


So I told them that these boxes had a lot of electricity and could shock people if they weren't careful. I don't remember if one of the kids asked me if it could kill someone or if I just told them, but either way they found that out. Then, a few days later, Carter pointed out the window as we were driving and said, "Look, it's a death box!" He was pointing at one of those transformers. Once I realized that was what he meant, I almost died laughing.
  • He has an imaginary friend! His name is Caymer. Carter always talks about him as having done something, like winning a race or telling Carter something. Sometimes Caymer is out somewhere, like the store or something. I think it's SO cute!
  • He still always says, "I love you" to me randomly. I will never not love this.
  • He is a bit whimpy about hiking and tends to complain about being tired towards the end of each hike. One time, after he had done a great job on a pretty long (for him) hike, we told him hiking would make him strong. He responded, "Yeah, I'll be strong like Daddy and Mr. Incredible!" Daddy in particular liked that cute comment. :)
  • Speaking of hiking, Carter has a tendency to lag behind, and not just when he's tired. He is always preoccupied with finding sticks and dragging them (or sometimes his hands) through the dirt. There was one hike when he got down on his hands and knees and crawled along the trail so he could push dirt around with his hands. Boy loves dirt.
  • When he and Aubrey play superheroes (which happens a lot), his character is Brick Man. Not sure what his powers are, but I feel like it's a fitting name for him.
  • His favorite number is 126. Whenever he says a number for anything, it's always 126.
  • When we went to Utah to have a little family gathering at Colt's cabin, we got to ride in their offroading Razor car thing. During the ride Carter shouted, "I don't like this at all! Wait a minute; yes I do!"
  • He likes to wrap a paper towel around his forearm at dinner and then say, "Mommy, I broke my arm!" It actually does look like a cast...
  • Ever since Carter got stitches, we've been adamant about him wearing a hat when he goes outside. But for some reason, he wears his baseball hat so far forward that he has to tip his head back really far to see anything. If we fix the hat for him, he just puts it back. 
  • He's so sweet with Clara! She gets excited when he pays attention to her, and that makes him just beam. He likes to grab her face and baby talk to her. He is also very attentive when it comes to keeping her safe from objects she shouldn't have. We don't like her to chew on the Nerf gun bullets, because the tips can break off. So he always takes it upon himself to get them (and other potentially dangerous items) from her or move them to where she can't reach. He also got super excited when she first learned how to crawl. He still says, "Baby's crawling!" whenever she does it. 

Friday, June 19, 2020

Carter Turns Four!


Well, another "quarantine" birthday in the books. I think it turned out well, all things considered! No party, but it was a good day. Carter was a happy boy, and that's all I could ask for.

For two weeks leading up to Carter's birthday, we were out of town visiting Daniel's family in Utah and then visiting Maren in California. And with vacation brain, I didn't realize that Carter's birthday was on Monday until it was Thursday. (I knew it was that week, but I thought it was in the middle of the week.) We had been planning on driving from California to Utah on Saturday, taking a day to rest and hang out with Karen's family, and then driving the rest of the way home on Monday. But I felt awful having Carter spend his birthday bored in the car, and we were ready to get home anyway. So we drove two days in a row and got home the night before his birthday.

Thankfully, the presents I ordered for Carter on Thursday made it there the day before his birthday. So after the kids went to bed, we wrapped presents and ran to the store to get balloons, Lucky Charms (his favorite cereal), and stuff to make some of his favorite foods. I also made the batter for our traditional birthday Swedish pancakes.

In the morning, Carter came and snuggled me in bed like he always does. It's my favorite. Then we went downstairs, where his presents were waiting for him on the table, along with his balloons, cereal, and a sign that said, "Happy Birthday, Carter!"

He couldn't wait to open his presents until after breakfast, obviously, so we did that first. (Side note: My phone's camera sucks, so most of my pictures are blurry. It's better than nothing though, I suppose.)


Aubrey insisted he open hers first. She got him the Owl Glider from PJ Masks. He's been asking for it for quite awhile. 


Then he opened the stomp rockets we got for him.


He was excited!


Finally, he opened the helicopter transformer we got him. I love his face here! (Also, he named it Helicopteree before finding out its real name is Blade.)



While the pancakes were cooking, Carter tested out his new toys.



We finally got him to eat some pancakes... sort of. He was pretty distracted. He chose purple for the batter color. I think he was just copying what Aubrey chose for her last birthday. But Daniel made him this cool birthday cake pancake, which I thought was fun.


Then we got ready and headed to the park to launch the stomp rockets. We let Carter and Aubrey test it out at home by pressing the launch pad with their hands, but we wanted to get out in the open air so they could stomp on it and really make the rockets go far. Carter's first attempt was awesome! Only...


... he missed it. So yeah, jerky reaction. It really bugged me. But it is pretty funny that he didn't even see how far it went. He did at least calm down right after this video, and watching Daniel do it made him very excited.


So then he was ready to try again. I love his wind-up!


Because it was Carter's birthday, we let the kids play at the park for awhile. There were just a few other kids there that we actually know from church, so... *shrug*

We then stopped at the school to get lunch for the kids (Yay, free lunch!) and headed back home. I made Carter take a photo with his balloons, with the intention of getting a better photo later but also knowing I probably wouldn't get around to it. (Spoiler alert: I didn't.) They were tied to one of the kitchen chairs, so it was hard to get a good shot. And the background shows our messy house. But hey, again, better than nothing! (I think that's starting to become my motto...)


It was much easier to get just the balloons...


We then let the kids watch a movie while I baked the cake and made the frosting. Carter chose Hercules. When it was over, he decorated his cake. He chose orange for the frosting. (And yes, he's not wearing pants. He pretty much never does unless we make him.)


Then he wanted to do a heart in sprinkles (which is what he did on the mini cake he got to help me decorate for Aubrey's birthday). He used all the colors of the rainbow!


And here's the finished product (with some help from Mommy)!


His face! Love.


After dinner (pasta with homemade rosemary focaccia bread dipped in Carter's favorite thing--oil and vinegar), we let him place the candles in his cake.
 

Then we sang.


And, of course, then we ate cake! Carter mostly ate the frosting, as usual. Then he said, "Look! I can balance my fork on my finger. Because I'm four!" Hehe.


All in all, it was a good day. Carter didn't have any big meltdowns, and he said multiple times that it was a great day or the best day ever. That made me happy.

Happy birthday, Carter! Oh, and STOP GROWING! K, thanks.

Stitches... Again

So... 2020 has not been a great year for anyone. But poor Mr. Carter has had a particularly rough time of it. As I posted about before, he had to get stitches on February 13th. I was hoping we had checked off the obligatory stitches box and wouldn't have to go through that with him again, but alas...

On May 13th, while I was in the kitchen getting lunch stuff prepped, Aubrey and Carter were spinning in the family room. They were having a lot of fun until--thud! Carter started crying and I instantly knew he had hit the coffee table again. This time it was the corner. And this time it was the other side of his head, just below the eyebrow.


It bled for a bit but then stopped, so we thought he probably didn't need stitches. But Daniel did the chat-with-a-doctor thing on Kaiser's website, and they said he should go in. They said he'd probably only need glue. So Daniel took Carter to urgent care, where they informed him that Carter actually would need stitches. Ughhhh.

So long story short, they tried the numbing stuff, but it didn't work. He kept wincing when they tried to clean it. So they had to do a shot. I wasn't there, so I can't give details, but Daniel said it was awful. Carter screamed the whole time, and Daniel had to hold him down. If we had known Carter was going to need stitches, we would have gone to the pediatric ER again. On the one plus side, he was fine as soon as they were done. At least there's that. And I'm glad I didn't have to be there; I would have been seriously traumatized. I just hope Carter wasn't.

The best thing is that I did get some good snuggles from all of it! 


Anyway, no more stitches please! We have a new ottoman coming to replace the coffee table. So that should help. Oyyyy.