Bring My Car Back

I blogged previously about how possessive Carter is with our car. His bedroom windows look out over our front yard and driveway and he likes to lay in bed and look at the car. This morning, Thomas had taken the car to an orchestra concert. Carter woke me up with heaving sobs, crying, "My car gone! My car gone!" I calmed him down, explaining that his Dad had taken it, but he would bring it home later (I can only imagine how horrible it would be for Carter if our car got stolen).

Later this morning, Carter insisted on calling his dad. Here's his recap of the message that Carter left for Thomas...

Cookies and Milk

Given this week's discovery that Carter has never had cookies-and-milk, we baked some cookies this afternoon and taught him to dip. He was an excellent student, exactly mirroring my actions. Probably because he couldn't believe that I was actually encouraging him to put something in his milk!

Fresh Warm Nuts

This winter, we got a LOT of peanuts and pecans through our CSA. While I love salted peanuts in the shell at a baseball game, its not something I'm likely to snack on around the house - especially in the raw, unsalted form. But it felt wasteful to not do anything with the piles of nuts laying around the kitchen.

So, this weekend, Carter and I shelled all the peanuts. Carter is actually pretty good at it, but he tends to eat all the ones he gets out of the shell!

Once they were shelled I (improvising off a recipe I found on the internet) boiled them with a small amount of water and some spices (I did half garlic and half cajun) and then roasted them in the oven. They were hands down the best roasted nuts I have ever had. Carter and Thomas seemed to like them, too. They were best fresh out of the oven, but were also plenty tasty cool. Needless to say, they are all already gone.

The Exception Proves the Rule

In our seemingly never-ending quest to teach Carter some table manners, we spend a lot of time telling him that you do NOT put things in your milk. Not forks, not spoons, not toys, not your fingers, not food.

Tonight, I was reading him a story that showed a picture of a kid eating milk and cookies. Carter got very upset that the child was dipping his cookie in his milk. He kept going back to that page, pointing and repeating, "No do that! No do that!"

I tried to hide my chuckle as I explained that the "don't put anything in your milk" rule doesn't apply to cookies. At which point, I had to promise that we'd have cookies and milk -- very soon.

I expect we'll be baking this weekend.

Spring Gardening

We finally built our raised garden this weekend! We're at least a month late getting started, but hopefully this will be one of those better-late-than-never scenarios. Our yard is inclined, which limited the garden's placement, and it is also pretty shady, so we are hopeful that the spot we picked will have sufficient sunlight. We put in two kinds of tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, yellow squash, banana peppers and tossed in some carrot and wax bean seeds for fun. That's too much for the space, but I don't expect everything to actually make it, so we'll move things around once we see what wants to grow for us. It was very much a family project, and with the exception of all of Thomas' tools breaking on Saturday (thanks to Rob for talking T down off a ledge), it was a pretty easy project. Looking forward to seeing what happens out there.

Over the last couple of weeks, when my time has been more limited, I focused on getting my herb garden going again and getting our containers filled with annuals.

The big containers in the front previously had rosemary and flowers in them, but the rosemary was outgrowing the space. I relocated the rosemary to the yard and filled the container in with more flowers. Strangely, one of my two containers flourished once the rosemary was removed, but in the other container, the flowers are barely hanging in there (I've only provided a picture of the pretty one!). Not sure why one pot is so dejected over the loss of the rosemary, while the other was so happy...

Word Puzzles

When Carter wasn't talking, it was a challenge. Now that he's talking, it's also a challange, just a different kind.

Tonight in the car he kept saying something over and over. All I could decipher was: "I h*** n***!"

I thought it was probably either "I have nap" or "I hurt neck". But when I said those two things to him, he just kept repeating "I h*** n***!" "I h*** n***!" over and over, making me think that neither was a correct interpretation. But then he said it again, "I h*** n***!", and pretended to sleep. Okay, I figured, he WAS saying "I have nap". But then immediately afterwards, he said "Ouch! I h*** n***! Need band-aid!" So... what was he really saying? We'll never know.

Another fun thing is that Carter has decided that he doesn't want to go to bed anymore. We're constantly doing up-and-down at bedtime, adding at least an hour onto each night. It's always something different that finally works to get him to stay in bed. And the up-and-down is made so much more complicated by the fact that we can talk.

A few nights ago, Thomas was working late and Carter had been getting up for well over an hour. After doing stay-in-the-room-with-him, giving him books, giving him a doll, telling him what kind of sweet dreams to have, being stern, being really really stern, and giving the silent treatment (most of which work at one time or another), I finally broke down and the following transpired:
Me: Why?? Why?? Why won't you stay in bed??
Carter: very cute and smiley "Because I happy. I happy about my Dada.
Me: You are staying up because you want to see your dad?
Carter: Yeah!
Me: Carter you won't see your dad until the morning. The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you will see him.
Carter: I need hurry! I need hurry go sleep!
And he did, and I didn't hear from him again that night.

Tonight Carter came out and wanted to know why I was eating in the living room. "What you eating? Why eat in living room? No eat in living room! Eat in kitchen! You watching TV? I watch Sponge Bob, I like Sponge Bob." And so on and so forth about Sponge Bob. Until I finally asked him what, exactly would make him stay in bed. And he was decisive. "Two yellow sticks". I did get him some "sticks" which shortly sent him into hysterics "I need put these away!"

Thanks, verbal development. Two yellow sticks. That really helps.

These brothers make beautiful babies

Just had to share these two beautiful pictures taken at Jep and Shelly's wedding recently. Gorgeous shots, right?! (Thanks to Brinkley for the pics!)

Show-and-Tell

Friday is show-and-tell day at Carter's school. Each week they are supposed to bring in something starting with a different letter. This week is the letter g. We just received an email with some suggestions for what the kids could bring this week. Here's the list

Gel
Gloss (as in lip gloss)
Grape lip balm
Gillette razor
Grout
Green
Garbage Man (Oscar)

Seriously?!

Carter's Favorite Song

This morning, while running errands, Carter and I were listening to music. A song came on and Carter informed me (emphatically), that it is his favorite song. He's never claimed a favorite before, so it was pretty darn cute. For the rest of the drive, we listened to the song and sang the "uh-uh-uh-oh" parts over and over again. That is the only part that he sings and is undoubtedly the reason he likes the song so much (if you listen to the amazon preview of the song you'll hear that bit) .


As both Thomas and Mandi can attest, listening to a Ben Folds song on repeat and singing along at loud volumes is not really a rarity in my car. Like mother, like son, I guess.

Wedding

Last weekend, we went to Gainsville for Thomas' cousin's wedding. Granny B and Grandpa Ron were in town, and while I don't seem to have any pictures to prove it, Carter had a GREAT time with them! Here are the pictures I do have.