22 Months with Carter

July 28th-August 27th, 2014

Seriously, only 2 months (less now, actually) until my little guy turns TWO YEARS OLD?!?!? How is this possible??  I'm mostly loving this age (you, know...besides the typical two year old temper tantrums/independence issues), and time could totally slow down just a bit for us to enjoy it!  Anyways, here goes another month's recap.

We started with our church's annual fundraising picnic.  We host a run, sell BBQ, play bingo and kiddie games, raffle off a brand new vehicle and host political speaking and music.  On Friday night, Carter enjoyed the run from Juju & Pawpaw's front lawn.  He liked waving at everyone going by!  And on Saturday, I took him to play some of the games before I needed to get to work.  He liked the prizes, but he couldn't quite understand why I wouldn't let him run around on his own.  He was not into holding my hand at all and would not be held, and since it was packed already with people, we just made a short morning out of it.  Brent's dad watched Carter while I worked my shift selling chances on the Jeep, and then we brought Carter back out again for supper and to visit with friends and family.  Thankfully, he was much more cooperative with staying with us and he loved his ice cream cone Memaw snuck him!  

Watching the runners come in from the 5K

Playing with Picnic toy prizes

Unfortunately that week, several kids that Ms. Judy also babysits came down with hand, foot and mouth disease.  Carter had no signs or symptoms, but pretty much every other young kid that she keeps did.  So Ms. Judy shut down for the rest of the week to disinfect everything and give everyone time to get over it.  Somehow, Carter managed to make it through the epidemic without catching it!  We got so lucky!  We were also super lucky because Brent was laid off from work and was able to watch Carter at home, so there was no having to find a back up babysitter or anything.  

Later that week, I had a doctor's appointment that also included the big gender revealing ultrasound.  We took Carter along with us since his babysitter was out of commission and he did decently well for having to sit in waiting rooms.  But during the ultrasound, he kept calling his baby sister a "fishie"!!  To celebrate how well baby sister was growing and developing, we went to Chuck E Cheese afterwards.  Carter man was a pro at riding the cars and loved watching the show.  It was quite obvious he knew exactly what he was doing from the many trips he has made with his grandparents.

Daddy had a pretty good time, too!! :)

We also watched Brent play in the soccer alumni game for our high school one night.  Carter loved watching and playing with his grandparents and the other kids.  He was up well past his bedtime, but he is getting so much better about being flexible by an hour or so when the need arises.  

The next night we made a trip to the drive in to watch Planes 2 with our little man.  Our friends Heather and Jake came with us.  The drive in has THE BEST cheeseburgers, so we started off with some of those while waiting on the sun to set and Carter ate a hot dog.  When the movie started, Carter actually watched quite a bit and was really excited about the planes and especially when they showed some tractors.  He wouldn't sit still to watch, but he was watching!! He kept walking back and forth in the bed of the truck to sit with Heather and Jake and then back to sit with us and play awhile...thank goodness for friends who are good with him!  When I got some popcorn, little man couldn't get enough.  He kept asking for more and I even had to go buy some more when he finished off the first round.  We were so proud of how well he did after last summer's horrible drive in experience.  We are definitely going back!

That weekend we also had a 2nd birthday party for Ryleigh to go to.  Her parents rented out a bouncy house at the YMCA and the kids had a blast jumping!! Carter had more fun just falling around like a crazy person, but he had his fair share of jumping too! My phone would NOT get a good picture...every one was blurry, but trust me, fun was had. :) 

We have been doing lots of work to the house throughout the month.  We have some renovating and shuffling around to do before we welcome little sister into the world.  Carter is getting a new room upstairs which has to be framed in and have a closet put in.  While we are doing that, we are also going to go ahead and put new flooring in throughout our upstairs since it is all 20+ years old.  Then, of course, we will be redecorating Carter's nursery for baby girl.  We have made many visits to Lowe's and Home Depot and have spent plenty of time working up there.  Carter calls it "daddy's mess" because he ripped all of the carpet and linoleum that was there up and we have been painting and pulling down wallpaper and that sort of thing.  We can't wait for it to all be done!

Another part of that renovation has been finding some older furniture we want to fix up for Carter and some rustic looking things to decorate his new room.  So we spent a morning hitting up yard sales in the area.  We went to this one estate yard sale, and between Brent and I, we found all kinds of things for next to nothing!  While Brent was paying and loading everything up into the truck, I was entertaining Carter.  I saw a Big Mouth Billy Bass sitting there and I know my child's love for fish, so we went over to look at it.  Well, the thing worked and Carter had a blast listening to it sing and dance.  He was stomping and singing along, too!  Some little old ladies were loving the show and ended up going to see how much they wanted for the fish and then bringing us the 50 cents to buy it for him.  But the guy having the sale made her take it back and said it was free for him!!  So we ended up taking home our own Big Mouth Billy Bass for free!  Carter would not part with it and we listened to those songs the rest of the day.  He was not happy unless Mommy and Daddy would sing and dance along too, so we had dance parties in between checking out each of the next yard sales we went to.  And we still have been listening to it at home as well.  It is so cute to hear him sing "Don't Worry, Be Happy" along with the fish! :)

Obviously from the mention of Daddy so much in this post, he has actually been laid off quite a bit (besides a few short calls) and has been able to be home to spend some time with little man.  Carter has been loving it!  And he now demands that we drive the truck everywhere we go.  He actually cried a few mornings when I was taking him to the babysitter in my SUV that he wanted the truck!! I don't plan on trading in my SUV for a truck anytime soon, so I hope he can get over that one!  

He has still had issues when I drop him off in the mornings at the babysitter, but suddenly last week he just stopped!  He would just wave and tell me bye and go on about his playing.  I thought we were out of the woods, but he started having a fit for me when I am leaving this week again. :(  Maybe it was the long weekend...hopefully next month I will have a better report.

He is definitely working on the two year molars, but they have yet to be seen.  Hopefully they decide to leave him alone or pop on through soon!  

ALL boy...he loves anything with wheels!  He can tell the sounds apart before he can even see them!

His vocabulary expands everyday and now he has learned to put words together.  Like when we drive by my grandparent's house, he used to just say their name, but now it is "Juju Pawpaw house".  He also asks for "more tractors" and to "see tractors" when we are in the car.  

Stuff he is loving this month: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse...suddenly, he actually likes a TV show!  He asks for "Mickeck" all of the time.  He won't actually sit and watch an entire show, but he will pay attention for a few minutes anyways!  The moon...he has really gotten into finding the moon when it is out which also lead to his love for the "Goodnight Moon" book.  We pretty much read it at least once a night.  Making his "mean face" (pictured above) at us...he loves being silly!  Playing on the swing set with his cousin Brayden or our neighbor's grandson...he still won't slide entirely on his own, but as long as we will hold his hand or catch him, he is happy!  Also, tractors, trucks, and trains, of course!!