Careful what you ask for...

Carter is doing well with his language development. He's continuing to pick up new sentences, and his sentences are getting longer. Here's an example.

Previously: "I want _____."
Now: "I want _____ RIGHT NOW."

Isn't communication great?

p.s. I promise Disney pictures soon. Mine aren't that good, so I'm waiting to get some (hopefully) better pictures from Ashley when she gets back from Spain (trying to reign in my jealousy:).

Sea World

We'll do a few posts from our weekend in Orlando. Here's the first one with some pictures from the day Carter and I spent in Sea World

Mesmerized by the divers

Carter loved the Shamu show -- for about 3 minutes. He much preferred sticking his head in the fountain outside the show.

Riding a roller coaster! The first time we rode it (there were several), Carter looked pretty terrified, but after we got off, he said "I need more!" and then threw his hands up in the air and said "Weee!!" When he wanted to ride again, he kept asking for "more choo-choo train", which makes some sense to me. It's just a really fun choo-choo.

Climbing in the three-story tall maze of nets and tunnels. It was really neat, but is huge and has multiple exits, so, in order not to lose him, I crammed myself in the tunnels, too.

More on spring training and magic kingdom later!

Road Trip

We're headed to Orlando this morning so that Thomas, his dad and brother can go to Braves' Spring Training. This year, Carter, Ashley, Anna and I are tagging along, but not for baseball (in fact, we don't expect to see much of the men at all).

The tentative plan is for Carter and I to hit Sea World tomorrow and then for the four of us to attempt Magic Kingdom on Saturday. I don't expect to be able to blog, so a report on whether or not we'll ever attempt Disney again will likely have to wait until next week.

St. Patrick's Day

The chef , pasta-maker extraordinaire

Our little leprechaun

Dinner of homemade spinach pasta with green onion and Gorgonzola sauce, green wine and green milk!

Really BIG Songs

Every night before bedtime, Carter and I read books and sing a few songs. One song he particularly likes is the "big and hairy" version of the Itsy Bitsy Spider ("The big and hairy spider went up the water spout..."). It's sung with a big, deep voice and with clapping hands instead of the more complicated little spider finger play.

Lately, he's begun to insist that ALL of his songs be sung "big". So we've had to come up with some new song variations including "twinkle, twinkle, REALLY BIG star..." and "five GIANT ducks went swimming one day...".

Needless to say, you'll never see clips of these songs on this blog (at least not sung by me), but Carter loves them and the accompanying motions are pretty funny (the mother duck's quacking requires a very large range of motion).

Scabs and Savings

The picture below shows a couple of recent Carter-things.

1. He has lost most of the skin on his nose. Literally. It's lost. As in, we don't know what happened to it. Frustratingly, neither do his teachers at school -- which is where it happened.
2. Carter is very interested in both pockets and money. Accordingly, he likes to have money in his pockets. And he's always saying "I need more!" Here he is with a whole pocket full of "money".
   
   

   

Mama Helen & Daddy Phil's Visit

My parent's made a short trip to Atlanta this weekend to see us. The weather was perfect so we gardened, went to the zoo and dined outside. Mom, Dad and Thomas also got some history in at the Atlanta Cyclorama. Here are a few, not-so-good, photos of the weekend. We all loved having them here, but none more so than Carter, who was in HEAVEN all weekend!

Snowman Cake

In honor of our rapidly-melting snowman, and inspired by Aarti's masterpiece, Carter and I set out to make a snowman cake last night (since it's March, he's a bit of an irish snowman). Carter had to go to bed when the cake went in the oven, so he only got to see the finished product this morning. Here's a short video of the reveal (and also a chance to hear Carter's expanding vocabulary). Don't worry, he'll actually get to eat some cake tonight!

Photobooth Phun

Thomas and I went to a wedding last night that had "Photobooth Phun". We thought we'd share the phun with you:

Snow!

Atlanta welcomed March with a nice snowstorm today. It started about 11am and is still going strong as of 3:30pm. It's our first Atlanta snowfall! I think it snowed once when we were out of town, but it has not snowed like this, when we've been here, since we moved. Which means, we don't think Carter hasn't seen snow in real life since he was about 9 months old. I wasn't home when the snow started, so I'll let Thomas blog later about Carter's reaction to it.

This is good snow. Big flakes, pretty wet -- perfect for snowballs and snowmen. Afraid that the snow would stop and melt any minute, we took advantage of the snow as soon as there was enough. Here are some pictures.

Patches - Updated

I updated the previous patches post with a couple more pictures.