Carter Logan Smith: Talking, swimming, and more

Carter is talking so much these days, and learning new words all the time. I've been meaning to compile a list of all of his words and signs for a while now.

Words:
apple
ball
bath
bird
boat
book
bye-bye
Daddy (so cute!)
doggie
fishy
kitty
hello (when "answering" the phone)
meow (said as a greeting to any animal he encounters)
Mommy (aww...)
no
nom-nom-nom (which means yummy)
nap (occasionally said to indicate he's ready for one)
play
pool
outside
shoe
thank you (repeats when someone else says it)
uh-oh
tree
water
wheel (current favorite word)
yucky (this is a funny word to him)

Signs:
again
all done
airplane
ball
bath
book
bye-bye
cup/drink (these are kind of blended together)
eat
fish
milk (when he wants to nurse)
more
phone (he made this one up himself)
play
poop (sometimes signs when he has a poopy diaper)
tree
want (he also uses this for "help")
wheel

I'm sure I've missed some, but those are most of them, anyway. We were dreading him starting to say "no", but now that he says it, it's actually really cute. It's fun to watch his little personality start to emerge, and to watch him express his opinions. Sometimes he will look at something he knows he's not supposed to touch and say, "no, no, no." And then he generally won't touch it. It's like he's reminding himself that thing is a "no-no", heh.

We have a pool, and Carter LOVES to be in it. He got to swim a lot at the beach, and now that we're home and summer is in full swing, the pool stays a balmy 85 and is really refreshing in this heat. I'd been meaning to sign him up for some swimming lessons for a while, and now that we're actually using the pool (and will be in town for an extended period of time), I decided to go ahead and do it. There is a very well-respected swimming school just a few miles from our house called Emler Swim School. They are just starting their summer classes, and so I enrolled Carter in the Waterbabies program. We had our intro class on Friday morning, and our regular classes will be Mondays at 10:30, starting this week.

The intro class was really fun, and it gave me an idea of what the lessons will be like. They basically went through a regular class, but took time to explain to us what all the activities were meant to do, and gave us the basic safety guidelines. The big skills at this point are learning to blow bubbles (for breath control), learning to hold onto the side of the pool, learning to kick their legs and swim after toys, and learning how to turn around and head back to the side of the pool after jumping in. Carter has already been doing almost all of those things for a while now, so the introductory class was a breeze. I'm really looking forward to seeing what happens this summer during the lessons. I had always said I wanted my kids to learn to swim before they could walk. I didn't quite get that done, but hey, close enough!

We've gone swimming several times in the last couple of days and have had a chance to practice what we learned. I'm expecting our pool will get used more this summer than it ever has!

Yesterday morning we went to the Austin Zoo, which is really an animal sanctuary more than a zoo. I grew up going to the huge animal park in Asheboro, NC, so it was hard to be impressed, but it was still enjoyable. They have a lot of big cats and monkeys, and a bunch of large ground tortoises, and those are the highlights. It was fun, even though it was incredibly hot and humid. Carter likes to say "meow" to animals -- I guess he's decided all animals talk like cats do -- and he said meow to every animal he saw, including the goats in the petting area.