The Carter Chronicles: 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."