It is that time again to do a list of my favorite things about Carter – on Christmas Eve he was two and three quarter years old (that sounded funny, didn’t it?). We are lucky to have such a fun kid in our lives, except for when he is being a complete turd, which is probably a good half the time these days. Anyway, on with our list:
- Grammatically correct – I sometimes forget that Carter is only 2 and three quarters. I can hold a full on conversation with him and he responds more intelligently and thoroughly than half the adults I know. Lately we have been working on having him think about the tenses of words and use what is appropriate.
- “Will you please…” “May I please…” Our eldest child is strong willed and demanding (I have no idea where he got that from). We have been working really hard on getting him to ask for things instead of demand them. He is getting way better and actually thinking through the correct statement for what he is trying to achieve.
- “WAIT! I have to tell you something!” And then he weaves some crazy story about whatever is on his mind. The other day it was painting with chopsticks.
- “Mom, I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED you.” Any time he wants you to come and hug him, this is the line he delivers. Not sure where all the neediness is coming from lately, but he has been asking for more attention. I think he has just learned to play us…
- “Just five more minutes” he will negotiate while holding his hand out in front of him to show you how many. Then when we say no, he will respond with, “Just THREE more minutes” and then he has to look at his hand and use his other hand to help him pull down his thumb and pinky so that his hand shows three. He is such a negotiator!
- Simple addition and subtraction – we have been working on what happens when you add or take away items through counting. He does extremely well with anything ten or under so that he can use his fingers if we are talking abstractly. If he actually has the items in front of him to count, he can deal with numbers up to twenty. Except he always skips thirteen, lol.
- Carter has started to play on his own a lot more these days. He will take his “guys” and his imagination will go on an epic journey with them. It is so much fun to listen to.
- The point of pain has finally come where Carter has started to drop his nap. He will still take one maybe two days a week, but the other five we get to push through cranky two-year-old moments because he clearly has not had enough sleep.
- Bedtime is still a complete challenge as well. He doesn’t like to miss anything, so getting him to sleep means a lot of yelling from the upstairs and the TV on really loud downstairs to drown it out.
- Leading up to seeing Santa, Carter was initially excited. Except he didn’t want to go to the North Pole. After we got home from seeing Santa, he finally fessed up to what was wrong, “Santa had a white mouth.” Huh? You mean mustache and beard? “Yeah, he had a white mouth-chin. I didn’t like it – it should be silver." Stupid Dora Christmas special – apparently Santa’s beard looked silver there.
- Carter now says that he eats food to get energy, except certain foods make his tummy sad.
- He is always aware of Gavin – if he comes in a room and Gavin isn’t around, it is the first thing he asks “Where’s Gavin?” And he is always worried that we are going to leave Gavin home, so he makes sure that we always bring him where ever we are going.
- And the last thing that Carter does … when he is attempting something physically that he should not – like putting his feet up at the window, his hands on the table balancing mid-air, we will ask him to stop doing it because it is dangerous. His response is always the same, “But I am being VERY CAREFUL.” Boys.
Carter isn’t too keen on getting photographed these days, so here is “the look” that he gave me:
And now he is trying to negotiate something…
