Bathtime Hilarity

Getting clean should always be this fun. I've only provided a minute here, but Carter's fun in Mama Helen & Daddy Phil's enormous bathtub went on and on and on.

More Arkansas Fun

Oops

I guess we need to find a different place to keep the Easter candy.
At least he doesn't know which is the right side of the lollipop.

Easter Sunday

On Easter Sunday, we went to church and saw my mom at work. Carter showed off for mom's congregation by going right up front and (mostly) sitting nicely during the children's service. He was the very first one up there!

Before church, Carter opened the basket that the Easter bunny left for him.

Yes! I got it open!

Oh! It has jelly beans inside. I remember these from yesterday. (I don't know why they withheld such wondrous things from me for the first 22 months of my life).

Black jelly bean. Delicious!

Looks like Carter will be responsible for eating all black jelly beans in our household... yuck.

Easter Saturday

The day before Easter my parents had mom's side of the family over for lunch. Carter very much enjoyed running around with all his cousins. He especially appreciated the toys Sam brought and the ice cream that Sadie fed him.

Sam, Aaliyah, Carter & Sadie

Carter finds an egg! We didn't have enough proper baskets for all the kids, so Carter had a pretty floppy, soft "basket". The eggs he found kept falling out of his basket, so he just kept finding the same eggs over and over and over again.

Sam shows off his loot!

Sadie and Carter

Playing with the Big Boys

This weekend, Carter got to play a lot with big boys, including his older cousins and my dad. But the first big boy he played with was Caleb, who drove him around in his Jeep. I didn't fully appreciate how good a driver a 6-year-old could be - or how fast his car would go!

Safety First!
Carter picked this helmet up all on his own - and (thankfully) insisted on wearing it in the Jeep.


It appears as though Carter was a bit nervous about the ride at first...


But he quickly warmed up to it.

Carter was clapping and "Yay!"-ing all the way up the street.

More pics from the weekend, including Easter photos and some bath time hilarity, later this week.
Spring training pics from Thomas to come as well!

We're Off

Thomas and his dad left this morning for Braves' spring training in Orlando. Carter and I leave this afternoon to spend Easter weekend in Arkansas with my parents. I'll try to post pictures while we're away. Wish us luck on the trip. Carter hasn't flown since he was 15 months old, and that wasn't pretty...

Upholstered

Given the minmal furnishings we brought with us from NYC, we really had a lot of work to do to fill our house. The family pitched in with various furnishings, including and old wing back chair from my mom and dad. Realizing that the chair's plaid didn't really work in our house, Carter and Donna gave us re-upholstering for Christmas. (Donna also provided a large amount of design assistance.) It was our first time to ever do such a home-y thing. When we picked up the chair this weekend, I just kept saying, "It looks so, professional." Which, of course, it is. I see this as a major step towards grown-up-ness.

Thanks for the chair families!

March Holidays

Because Easter falls so early this year, we were able to celebrate two holidays this weekend - St. Patrick's Day and Easter. (Next weekend, Carter and I will be in Arkansas, and Thomas will be in Orlando watching the Braves' spring training, so this was our chance to do Easter eggs together.)

Park, Ashley, Anna and Angie came over to celebrate with us. Everyone was very accommodating (if not completely understanding) my compulsion to color all our beverages green (how else do you celebrate St. Patrick's Day?). The green iced coffees were, admittedly, a little strange. The funniest part of the afternoon was when Carter kept snatching the dyed eggs and trying to eat them. He was confused and disappointed when his teeth kept hitting shell. We did peel a couple for him, which he chowed down.

Park-Hopping

Not to say that my bar-hopping days are entirely behind me, but Carter and I had a pretty terrific time park-hopping this afternoon.

Thomas had the car today and it was beautiful, so I picked Carter up on my bike and we hit every park on the ride home (three in one mile). The highlight was when we discovered a new park with... you know... with... those things. You know... The pipe where you talk into one end and can hear out the other end, which is on the other side of the playground. What do you call those things?

Anyway, we found the things, and Carter got it! He stood and one, and I stood at the other and we talked quite a lot. And by talked, I mean that he repeated everything I said. But it was adorable!

Thanks Cart Cart!

Right now, I'm in Boston and Thomas is in tech, so Cart Cart is on evening Carter-duty.

How did we ever survive having a child without ready access to doting grandparents??

(And take heart, you far-flung grandparents, you're all scheduled to get your doting time in soon, too!)

Cousins

Carter met Anna last night. I expected that he'd be completely disinterested in her and eager only to chase the cats. But, he divided his time pretty evenly among checking Anna out, looking for the cats and playing with her toys (this was probably the highlight). Carter didn't touch her (gentle is not his best skill), but he tried to (notice my hands poised to grab him in the pic below), and he nearly rocked her out of her Moses basket. He did say both "baby" and "Anna" several times while we were there. He was definitely intrigued by his new cousin.

Where do they learn this stuff??

We went out for dinner tonight at our local beer-and-wings joint. We ordered a burger and fries for Carter. He isn't ready to handle a whole burger yet, so we generally put the bun aside, cut up the burger and let him eat it as finger food. Today's bun had been covered liberally in ketchup, and we realized that this was Carter's first ketchup experience. Neither Thomas or I use it on fries or anything else. Carter took a bite of the bun and seemed pretty excited about it, but then he moved on to his burger and fries. It was only a little later that Thomas and I noticed that Carter had begun dipping his french fries in the ketchup on his bun. Seriously. Where did he learn that??

We gave him more ketchup, and he was a happy kid. We don't do fried food very often, but Carter LOVES french fries. I didn't think that there would be a food to top french fries, until the discovery of french fries with ketchup.

And then, after he'd wolfed down his burger and fries (with ketchup), we pulled out the little packet of Oreos that had come with his meal. The kid has never eaten an Oreo before. As far as I know, he's never seen an Oreo before, and besides, the package didn't even have a picture of a cookie - just the logo. But still, he went crazy when I pulled out that packet of cookies (I suppose after the wonder of fries and ketchup, he just figured life had to keep getting better?). I twisted one cookie open (half the white stuff came off on one wafer, half on the other) and gave him one of the halves. By the time we gave him the other half, he had figured out - all on his own - to turn the cookie over and scrape the white stuff off with his teeth before eating the rest of the cookie.

Innate knowledge of how to eat junk food?? Scary.

Park Fun

It was gorgeous last weekend, and we took advantage of the nice weather in the park.

Aunt, Uncle & Cousin

We were thus dubbed when Anna Ellise Fowlkes made her debut on Friday night.

She is a beautiful girl, and her mom and dad are, as expected, in love with their little one.

Carter hasn't gotten to meet his cousin yet because they don't allow little ones in the maternity ward (I can't imagine why not:), and we've all been a little under the weather since she went home. We'll be sure to post pictures of the cousins' first meeting!

I had to post this picture of me and my niece (!) because it reminds me so much of the pictures we took of Joo and Kirstin with Carter the day he was born.

Haircut

If you think cutting a toddler's hair would be difficult, take how hard you think would be and multiply by about 100. And that's about how hard it actually is. Last time we got Carter's haircut professionally, we ended up in the ER (not because of the haircut, though). This time, I decided to cut it myself.

It's not the worst haircut I've ever given (as my Barbies would attest), but it's also not the best. In fairness to myself, this picture wasn't meant to be a haircut shot, so the hair is a bit mussed up, but you can still see the slightly severe haircut that I gave Carter. I guess next time we'll be going back to the professionals.