Updated Office

In preparation for my new job (more on that later), I've been engaged in an overhaul of our home office. LOTS of cleaning out, rearranging and two coats of paint later, here it is! The biggest change we made (other than the color of the walls) was moving our personal computer to share a desk with my work computer, since they are rarely used simultaneously. Our computer was previously on our little leaning desk, but we wanted more space for spreading out--and now the little desk is freed up for our new baby netbook!

News

We have all kinds of news!

On the work front, tomorrow is my last day with S&P. The company decided to shut my business unit down last year, so I've been winding things down for the last several months. After five and a half years, I'll be on to a new adventure! More on that soon, but let's get on to the more exciting stuff...

Patrick & Kirstin produced a new family member earlier this week! She's the second new addition to our family in the last 3 months (with nephew, Sammy's arrival in October). She's the first Stegall in the next generation. I couldn't help stealing some pics of her to post here. Isn't she a beauty?!

Eavan Marie

The Carters' Weekend

While we were in Chicago, Carter had a big time with his Cart Cart. As I understand it, they worked at a soup kitchen, went to Carter's gymnastics and swimming classes, played with the cousins, enjoyed the aquarium, played at Cart Cart's house and ate a LOT of food (at least Carter did, not sure about Cart Cart).

Here's an anecdote that Cart Cart shared with us about the weekend:

"I was, as usual, trying to figure out your TV remote. Carter walked over, said, 'Let me show you Cart Cart -- first push this, then this, then this.' And the $%^# TV came on! It's no longer, 'Are you smarter than a 5th grader,' but 'Are you stupider than a 3 year old?' Looks like that would be a Yes."

(Thanks for sharing, Cart Cart! And, to be fair, our remote is very difficult to use. I'm sure he just got lucky. Maybe.)

Chicago Trip

We took a grown-ups only trip to Chicago this weekend. I went up early to help Mandi with wedding dress shopping (we found one!). Thomas came up on Friday and we stayed the rest of the weekend with Stubbie & Shannon (and their growing fetus). While we were away, Carter had an excellent time with his Cart Cart here in Atlanta.

At Hopleaf with Andy, Mandi and Ross
(Not the only favorite food spot we hit, I also ate at Victory's Banner and Cross-Rhodes the same day!)

Playing darts at Cody's, our favorite neighborhood dart bar

Grocery shopping (with beer!) at the second largest Whole Foods in the country

Stubbie makes us a feast!

Carter Draws Our Family

Carter loves his Fisher-Price computer games. He can hook it up all by himself and will escape to our office to do his "work" for half an hour at a time (which, if you don't have a 3-year-old, you may not realize is a huge chunk of time).

Last night, called us into the office to see his work. "Look! It's our family!" He had used the art program to make a picture of the three of us. He used the stamp tool to select and make the faces, and then used the stylus to free-hand the bodies (and he even drew in noses).

His picture of the three of us:

The other Fowlkes family as a work-in-progress. (He switched to pink for them. He also gave them arms...)

And the completed pic of (from L to R) Sammy, Park, Anna and Ashley (who is apparently the tallest, in Carter's mind). You can click the photo to see larger.

Crash

File this one under parenting strategies.

I got tired of Carter constantly running and crashing into me this evening (his normal physicality exacerbated by the snow day stir-crazies). So, I pulled up some Dave Matthews Band and put on Crash Into Me. I told Carter that he was only allowed to crash into us when he heard the word "crash".

It succeeded in significantly decreasing the number of times Thomas and I got bowled over. Even more so when the rest of the random song selection played. He may still be listening to lyrics for "crash"...

Our Little Negotiator

We've always loved to give Carter choices. It was particularly helpful through the toddler years for him to feel that he had some control. We'd provide him with several options that were all agreeable to us but he got to make the decision.

Recently, he's started to try to work the system. Last weekend, we were at a restaurant, and Carter had gotten out of his seat. He wandered over to my chair and I told him to go sit down. He started to head back to his chair, but then turned around and came back to me to say, "I need two options." And in the subsequent days, he keeps trying to up the number of choices we give him, thinking that whatever he wants to do will surely be presented, if he just has more choices! "I need three options; I need five options..." etc...

I have to admit that I've been knowingly training him up for this since he was a baby, and there is a part of me that loves his growing evil genius!

New Year's Eve

We had 10 adults and 4 kids for a fun new year's eve at our house. As per usual, only the kids' fun got documented (but that's probably better on New Year's, right?).