Happy Fourth! (A little late...)

I hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. We certainly did -- we spent most of it doing nothing! It's amazing how much I enjoy that these days. Basically, we just hung out and played with Carter. :-)

I finally managed to take some new pictures and video, so here they are. We got Carter a new ride-on toy, and he loves it. For some reason, he looks really big in this picture!



Here's a video of him riding on it in the kitchen. You can hear him say "beep beep" in this.



We're doing a lot of swimming, of course. Our pool is very shady, which is actually really nice for those of us who aren't sunbathers. It makes for a very private-feeling grove-like pool, and actually keeps the temperature out by the pool down. In fact, it can be chilly to swim unless it's pretty hot out.





We had waffles for breakfast on July 4. But mostly this picture is here to show you how long Carter's hair is getting. Isn't it awesome? I love it! I'm not sure how long I will let it get before I get it trimmed. I definitely love it long, though. That's actually pretty common in Austin. When we go other places, people think he's a girl (despite being dressed totally like a boy), but that doesn't happen very much in Austin.



We went to Central Market, one of the most awesome grocery stores that has ever existed, to shop for our holiday weekend feasts. They have a great playground there, and Carter really had fun playing.







The playground is shaded by big beautiful trees, and is right next to the store's cafe, so you can grab a drink or even lunch and sit near the playground. There is a section of equipment that's smaller and clearly intended for toddlers, which is awesome. I tried to get Carter to go down the slide on video, but he was really concerned that it was too hot, as you'll see in the video.



He's learning new words all the time, heh. We got him some flashcards with various pictures on them, and he adores them. He's learned quite a few new words from those, including "cloud", "bus", "truck", and oddly enough, "crab". We showed him the big tank of crabs of the grocery store, and he was fascinated. He stood there and pointed and said "crab-uh" over and over. Then he looked at the lobsters and called them crabs too, hee! We tried to teach him to say lobster, but he seemed adamant that these were also crabs.

We had thought about checking out some fireworks, but they all started after Carter went to bed, so that will have to wait for another year. We just hung out and played and watched TV in the evening, and it was fun.

Today has been another fairly lazy day. Carter played outside some this morning before it got too hot, and I took a video of him toddling around the yard and pushing his wagon. It's kind of long, but it really shows how well he's moving around these days.



It's really nice to be able to let him run around the yard. He lost his shoe while he was all the way in the far corner of the yard, and he picked it up and brought it back to Doug (who was by the deck) to have it put back on again. He likes his shoes!

He just woke up from a three-hour nap and toddled into the living room. (He naps in the guest room, and just gets off the bed when he's done.) Time to go...