Wheels and books

Teaching summer school is keeping me a lot busier than I expected! I've been spending all my extra time working on my class, which hasn't left much time for doing anything else. I have a couple of videos from the last week, but no pictures. I will try to take some this weekend of Carter in his 4th of July outfit. :-)

Carter's current obsessions are wheels and books. I'm actually not sure of the order there; it depends on the day. It's funny how he has no interest in balls or fluffy stuffed animals. I recently bought him some new books about cars and other sorts of vehicles, and he was SO excited! Here is a video of him with one of them, a book about airplanes. Notice how he keeps signing "airplane" (it's his own made-up sign, with his thumb and forefinger extended and his hand bouncing. He also signs "book" and says "bubble", "wheel", and "shoe" here.



The signing has been very convenient lately. Often when he's extra cranky, he will start signing "hurts" and indicate that his mouth hurts when we ask him where. The poor kid has been getting molars for months now. I don't think any have cut yet, but there are several teeth visible just under the gums now. I'm glad he can tell us when it's really bothering him, though, because sometimes it's easy to think he's just tired or cranky or whatever. It's nice to be able to do something to make him feel better!

This is a cute video. He almost loses his diaper in this one! (And um... should I be disturbed that this video already has 65 views even though I just posted it a couple of days ago? Most of my videos of Carter have only a handful. Hmmm...)



Swimming lessons continue to go well. Last week Carter went under for 2 seconds, which is pretty cool. He didn't seem to mind it either. He popped back up and blinked the water out of his eyes like it was no big deal. He likes the pool a lot and when we say "pool" he will get excited and run to the back door! He'll also point to the back door and say "pool" when he wants to go swimming.

Related to swimming, he loves taking baths, and frequently requests to take a bath by signing and saying "bath" excitedly. The nice thing about that is that he will let us know when he's ready for bed by telling us it's bathtime and going and standing by the stairs. I came home one day last week and Michelle said he'd asked for a bath in the the middle of the afternoon, and even went all the way upstairs and took her into his bathroom to show her what he wanted!

I teach in the afternoons and have a few hours with Carter in the mornings. We've been doing fun things every morning. We have our swimming lesson on Mondays, go to Gymboree on Tuesday and Thursday, and to the Children's Museum on Fridays. We have music class at Gymboree on Thursday mornings as well, and that's been a lot of fun so far. They offer art classes for toddlers who are over 18 months, and we might give that a try soon. Carter will be 18 months old in less than a week, as crazy as that sounds. Developmentally he's somewhere between 16-17 months, but he's definitely catching up. They say preemies are usually caught up by their second birthday, and I'm starting to believe it.

He's more and more mobile, and I'm starting to forget what it was like for him not be be able to run around the house. He's more verbal all the time, too. He can count... to two! Every number bigger than one is "two", basically. We'll keep working on that. He's learning new words all the time, and is getting better about using them in the right context. He now says "achoo" when someone sneezes, and continues to say "bye" and "thank you" at generally appropriate times. Most mornings he's unhappy when I leave for work, but some mornings he's fine and just says "Bye!" when I kiss him and tell him I'm going.

Another thing that's changed in the last week is that he suddenly wants me to read him bedtime stories. Up until last week, he wanted to hold the books and turn the pages himself. If I tried to read to him, he would eventually take the book away and go through it at his own pace, in whatever order he wanted. At bedtime he wasn't interested in being read to; he wanted to nurse and go to sleep as soon as we sat in the rocker. And then out of the blue, he wanted me to read to him at bedtime. He has his favorite books too, and if I read one he's not interested in hearing, he will close it and say "no", and then sign "all done" and look over the side of the rocker into the basket of books for another one. His bedtime favorite seems to be Goodnight Moon at the moment. I always save that one for last, and we read it at least twice before he closes it up and turns around in my lap to be nursed to sleep.

I had a lot more to say, but I'm tired and it's late! I'll try to post again over the weekend, with more pictures. :-)