"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.