Q: Why is Halloween unnecessary for toddlers?

A: Because every day is dress up day!

Pumpkins!

Or, "punks" as Carter likes to call them.
(Mandi - I always miss you when we carve pumpkins!)

New School

Carter starts his new school the first week of November. We went twice this week for about an hour to get him acclimated, and we'll do the same twice next week. The first day he was very clingy, but the second day was much better. On the first day, we took a bunch of photos, and we looked at them and talked about them before the second day, so I think that helped some.

The school is less than a mile from our house and they serve children 6-weeks through pre-K (state-funded pre-K, I might add). There are three classrooms of Carter's age group, the "older toddlers". He is in the "Rainforest" room with 12 other kids that are anywhere from two months older to six months younger than him. All three of his teachers seem very nice, as do the administrators we have met.

In the reception area, they have a fish tank and a bird, which families can sign up to take home for the weekend. When we got there yesterday, someone had apparently already picked up the bird for the weekend. Carter immediately ran to the empty table where the bird cage usually sits, pointed and started yelling, "Oh no! Oh no!" I expect we'll be taking the bird home for a weekend soon.

The sand table in the classroom

Trying out the pint-sized potty

He loved the rocking horses

And, of course, the playground

Speech

Those of you who have kids, or know kids, or read blogs about people who have kids may have noticed the lack of pithy blog entries about the funny things that Carter says. This isn't because Carter isn't funny. We think he's very funny. It's just that he doesn't say much.

Ever since his 15-month check up, Carter has been toward the low end of the verbal spectrum, and we've been waiting for the burst of verbal activity that every doctor since then has told us was just around the corner. Shortly after his 2-year checkup, we decided to get him evaluated. While he isn't that far off of where he should be--and we do think that he just has more interest in gross motor development (the kid can climb a rock wall)--he has recently started to become frustrated (and we have, too) by his inability to express himself in a way that we understand. So, we've found him a speech therapist, and he started with her this week.

His speech therapist, who he calls La-La (perhaps you graduate from speech therapy when you can pronounce your therapist's name properly?), seems terrific. She takes a very holistic approach, so in addition to vocal and mouth exercises, Carter is now getting a nightly full body massage with organic coconut oil (wish I could get someone to prescribe that for me) and we'll likely be starting him on fish oil supplements soon. So far (they've had two sessions), Carter LOVES her, loves the 'games' that they play and is amazingly on-task during their work. Unfortunately, he's less inclined to do his homework with us, but that's to be expected. One of the techniques La-La is using with him is sign language. Now that we know Carter is better at expressing himself physically than verbally, we are really wishing that we'd given baby sign language more of chance (I'm pretty sure we gave up on it after about 2 weeks when he was 8 months old), but, cest la vie...

Carter will be meeting with La-La weekly for the foreseeable future. One thing that is helping make that possible is that we are moving Carter into a daycare center in November. We are very sad to be leaving our terrific nanny, but there are lots of benefits of the new school, most of which I won't go into now, but the relevant one is that La-La already works with some other kids in the school. She will pull him out of class to do his therapy on-site, which means that we don't have to take off work every week for it, which is very helpful! It also means that she'll be able to talk directly with his teachers about how they can help him, and she said she'd probably do a session or two in his class to both model for his teachers the things that they can do to help him, and also to allow Carter to show off what he's learning.

I'll do another post in a day or two with more details about the new school and some pictures!

Chilly Weather

It has started to cool off here in Atlanta, and here are some pics to prove it.

Carter, sporting a stripey sweater and a scarf that he picked out to go with it (it is by no means actually scarf weather)

Morning blanket snuggles

Blue Food

I have been known to go a little crazy with food coloring in my quest for more blue/purple/etc foods. I like a good green milk or a teal yogurt. But when Thomas and I make shepherd's pie this weekend, we didn't even have to get out the artificial color. We used a mixed bag of fingerling potatoes that we had in the pantry that included blue/purple potatoes.
Eating weird color foods is just more fun! Someday, I am going to make Carter some rainbow pasta with my pasta maker...

Baby

Ever since Anna came along, Carter has been crazy for babies. Sometimes he wants to be treated like one, but mostly, he likes to play with them--both the human and doll varieties. His favorite baby doll is Eli Daniel, my brother's old Cabbage Patch Preemie. For a while, the only way we could convince Carter to get dressed was if we would dress Eli Daniel too. Finding that Carter's clothes were much too big (and that it is very annoying to have to dress a baby doll 100+ times a day) we got a few newborn things out of the basement, so that Eli Daniel has his own wardrobe.

Here is a picture of Carter giving Eli Daniel a very sweet kiss (we wish he were always so gentle with babies of the human variety).

Bounty

We recently finished up our first CSA contract, and we convinced Park and Ashley (okay, mostly Ashley) to go in on a full share with us this time around. Now we get twice the goodness! Sure, we only keep half of it, but it's still exciting to pick up this much loot every week.

Santa Scramble

I stayed up until midnight last night in order to make Carter an appointment to see Santa at Phipps Mall - supposedly the best place to see Santa in Atlanta. Now, I'm not overly concerned about going to the best place, but I was highly excited by the prospect of making an appointment and thus avoiding the torturous wait in line. Carter has never actually been to see Santa because we felt that if he wasn't old enough to understand it, we weren't waiting in line, at a mall, in December. This year, we figure he's old enough, plus, we heard about these appointments.

I was skeptical that staying up and waiting until the online appointment system opened at 12:01am was really necessary. Come on, I could probably do it this morning and be fine. But I really wanted the first appointment on a Saturday, and I was mildly interested in all the fuss (chalk it up to another social experiment in being a mom), so I stuck it out until midnight. I had no trouble getting an appointment, and the system even let me on a few minutes early. So... was staying up necessary?

My late night is justified. I checked first thing this morning and almost every single weekend appointment is already booked - even the ones in early November! The email confirmation for our appointment included this note: "Any appointments found to be sold or placed on ebay will be cancelled immediately."

We'll be reporting back in 2 months to let you know if its worth all the fuss!

Update: An article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Thursday said that 1,400 appointments were made in the first 45 minutes.

Recent pictures

Here are a few recent pictures that I am not even going to try to explain...

Pumpkin Patch

We had quite a day! First we hit a neighborhood festival this morning (sadly, I forgot my camera for that one). This was the first festival that we attended after moving here last year, so it was fun to go again this year! It was doubly fun because Carter was actually old enough to participate in most of the kids activities: he got a tattoo, painted a pumpkin, made a necklace, jumped in the bouncy castle, made his own snack mix and tried to climb on stage with the karate demonstrators. Then, after a failed nap attempt, we headed to a GREAT pumpkin patch.

They had a petting zoo, fun slides, a hayride, tricycles, peddle cars, a playground, corn shooters, a pumpkin sling and a water-pump game thing. And those are just the things we didn't get good pictures of! They also had...

A corn box (like a sandbox, but filled with corn)

A cow train

(There weren't any multi-occupancy cows left by the time we got there, so we let Carter go on this by himself. As soon as they drove off, we immediately realized we'd made a mistake. How could we let our 2 year old go by himself!? Sure, he was strapped in, and the mom sitting behind him offered to keep an eye out and grab him if he tried to unbuckle, AND they didn't go very far at all, but we still started to worry and be afraid that he'd be scared when he realized we weren't with him. We needn't have worried. He had a great time and didn't seem to notice he was alone...)

PIGLET RACES!! seriously.



A hay maze, which Carter quickly... mastered Though the same technique was not possible with in the very complex corn maze (that started at the end of this fun slide).

But, BEST of all, they had a REAL pumpkin patch. Unlike many I've seen, there weren't just a bunch of already picked pumpkins in a bare field, there were actual pumpkins still on the vine!
Carter will be sleeping well tonight, I'm sure.

An Observation

When I return after being away on a business trip, Carter punishes me by being extra clingy with Thomas.

When Thomas returns after being away on a business trip, Carter punishes Thomas by being extra clingy with -- Thomas.

You've got to give it to the kid. He knows how to push our buttons...

Caught In the Act...

Of being good - again.

Back in February, I caught Carter in the bathroom by himself - washing his hands. Tonight, when we got home from dinner and picking up our CSA, Carter had Oreo crumbs all over his hands and face (his dessert from the restaurant, which he ate in the car). I didn't rush to clean him up because he was about to get a bath, and I figured we'd clean him up then. I started the bath water running and then puttered around the house, straightening up and putting things away. A few minutes later, I came back into the bathroom and discovered that Carter had just finished washing his hands by himself (he did a good job, too). Then, he took a hand towel off the rack, put it in the sink and turned on the water. I instinctively started to tell him to stop, but then realized that the worst that would come of this was a wet towel, so I just observed him. He wet the towel and set to work washing the cookie off his face. And I set to work praising him and taking pictures. He was so proud when he was done!

Dinner Etiquette

We've slowly been working on dinner etiquette with Carter. And while there is LOTS to be learned (not throwing food is a fundamental, yet still elusive feat), he is picking up some skills.

Carter loves to do things by himself, and cutting his own food is a real treat. We're still working on holding the food still with the fork while he cuts with the knife (he tends to move both or cut with both), but he gets the concept (we didn't quite get a picture, though).

And he is really getting good at drinking from an open cup. He spills sometimes when he's holding the cup and gets a little too animated with a point he's trying to make, but that happens to me too. The biggest problem with the open cup is that he sometimes confuses cup-of-milk with dip-for-my-food. But we're working on it.

Back to Blogging

Sorry to have been such a bad blogger the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, I was working in the yard and got some kind of skin thing that gradually got worse and worse. Combining the three sources I consulted: the doctor, Ashley and random Internet research, I've decided that I was bitten by a bug that I was allergic to, which had been living on a poison ivy plant. I've been on mood-altering drugs for the last week, and coming off of those drugs for the last 24 hours has been even worse than being on them. Needless to say, I haven't been in much of a blogging mood. But my chemistry seems to be back to normal, and I have a few pics from the last weeks to share. So, we're back in business.

Meanwhile, Thomas left yesterday afternoon for Mexico (luckily missing my real downward spiral of coming off the steroids) . The Ballet is performing Swan Lake in Monterrey tomorrow night. I'll let him fill you in on his trip when he gets back, but he called today and it sounds as if they are having an... adventure (and not the good kind).

Mom'd

I've been mom'd!

Ever since Carter started talking, I've been "mama". I knew this cuteness would fade into the inevitable "Mom" and "Dad" (my parents tried very hard to get me to call my dad Papa to no avail), but I expected that he probably wouldn't make the transition until he was closer to school age. But all day today, he's been calling me "Mom". (Thomas is still Dada.) Actually, it is kind of cuter since he is so little, and I really don't mind. But I thought it was worth recording.

Update: Today, he's not just saying "Mom" -- he's saying it gratuitously--like he's so proud he figured it out!