5K

Thomas ran the Chomp & Stomp 5K this morning. His goal (as mine was when I did one several weeks ago) was to run the whole way--and he did it! He even had the energy afterward to carry Carter around.

Chomp & Stomp is a chili cook-off festival. The run is in the morning and the chili is from 10am-8pm. We left after the race, around 9, ran some errands, and then went back for the chili around lunch time. Note to ourselves for next year: Don't leave after the race. Kill time until the chili starts and just eat chili and drink beer at 10am. By lunchtime, it's too crowded and they are out of lots of chili! Also, make sure friends are in-town (ahem, Park & Ash) to enjoy festival with you (and share child-watching duties)!

Potty?!

Carter apparently used the potty not once, but TWICE, today at school. We've been working on potty awareness for months at home, and he'll occasionally sit on it, but there's never been any...action. And then today--his second day at school--he not only went on the potty, but he asked to use the potty and then went (i.e. it wasn't just an accident of good timing). And he did it twice.

We are most impressed. But we are not holding our breath for him to repeat the feat at home anytime soon!

First Day (updated)

Today is Carter's first day at his new school and--so far so good! .

I think the four visits we made in the last two weeks definitely helped. He had almost no trouble saying goodbye. My stroke of brilliance in getting him a new backpack for today may have had something to do with his excitment to GO to school, but even once it was unpacked and put away, he seemed happy to be there.

I'll update this post this afternoon to let you know how the rest of the day turns out!

Trying out his new backback yesterday

Ready to go this morning in his new backpack and (huge) new shoes!

Update: Well, the first day went even better than we could have hoped. He played, he ate, he napped, and he didn't cry. And he didn't want to leave at the end of the day!

Halloween

By popular (okay, Rachel's) demand, here are some Halloween photos! It was a very busy day for us. After working all day, we had to dash up to Carter and Donna's house, get costumed, do a small round of trick or treating with Carter, say goodbye to him for the night, and then dash back downtown to meet Park, Ashley, Angie and Alan to see Wicked at the Fox. It was a fun, but packed night.

Carter quickly figured out what this trick-or-treating stuff was about. And he was OFF! He was an insistent door-knocker. Even where candy had been left outside, he was determined to knock, and knock, and knock....

Showing off his cool tattoos (he had one on each cheek).

Carter insisted that Cart Cart wear his "costume" at all times.

The three of us (we dressed up a bit for Wicked, too)!

Thanks for the cool pirate costume, Kimbros! And for the cool glow necklace, Cart Cart and Nonna!

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...