Sunday, October 25, 2009

Weekend at home

This was the first weekend we spent at home, with Doug in town, in quite a while. It was fun to have some time to just hang out! Unfortunately, we've all been struggling with a little bit of a cold, but nothing so big that it's knocked us out. It was enough to get us to take it easy for a few days, which is probably not a bad thing anyway.

Friday morning Carter and I went to IKEA to look for a new way to organize his toys. The living room is essentially his playroom, and though I try to keep the toys in there picked up, it was starting to really be a mess. There were always toys all over the hearth, stacked up everywhere, and spilling over mismatched toy bins. At IKEA I got this cool storage thing.



Most of the toys fit in the bins, and there is room for his puzzles on top. The whole area looks SO much neater than it did!



We also got a playmat to put Carter's train tracks on. The new carpet we just had installed in the living room is so soft that it was really hard to roll his trains on it. The tracks kept sinking into the carpet and coming apart. The mat is really cute and has little roads all over it, so he could also use it to play with cars on. Gotta love IKEA!



Friday was Doug's birthday, and we were all still feeling a little under the weather. But we decided to go out for a casual birthday dinner to a local bar & grill that recently built an enclosed playground out back. This is a trend that I love, I have to say. I don't know if restaurants are doing this in other places, but in Austin adding a playground to attract families is the latest thing. You can sit at a picnic table, drink beer, listen to live music, and watch your child play. How awesome is that?



Here are some pictures of Carter playing in the backyard on Saturday morning. The weather has finally turned cool here, and we have been having some beautiful fall days!



It's amazing how suddenly he is able to climb up, get on the slide, and propel him hims down it, with no help from me.





He still loves his car!



He's really had a language explosion lately. He's putting words together more and more, and repeating a lot of what we say. For example, he uses words like wow, great, all right, okay, and he uses them in exactly the right context. He uses two word phrases quite a lot now, and is starting to be able to use "ing" words to describe his actions. For example, he likes to play a chasing game, and he'll run around and say, "Chase! I running!" Today I went to the grocery store while he was having a nap, and he woke up just before I got back. When I walked in the door he was crying and saying to Doug, "Want Mommy!" He is able to use language to tell us what he wants and needs, and he clearly understands us in return. It's really amazing to watch him soak it all up.

His pronunciation is a work in progress, of course, which can be funny at times. For example, all of his S sounds come out like "sh", so when he climbs on the couch and sits between us all proud of himself and says, "sit", it comes out like "shit". He loves to climb on chairs and say "I shitting!" Heh. We just say, "Oh, you're sitting, aren't you?" and hope the pronunciation will work itself out soon!

I think we're all over our colds now, happily. Maybe we can spend more time outside this week, enjoying the beautiful weather!

2 comments:

Mattison Grace said...

I love the storage bin. IKEA must be the place to shop. I can't believe Raleigh does not have a store. Our living room looks like a play room as well. We are always tripping over toys. I need to check into IKEA.
Carter is getting so big and looks so much like a little man now.
He is so close in age to Matti you will not believe how fast they pick up on words now. Every day new words! We really have to watch what we say.

Debby said...

I laughed at the "sitting"...how funny....each picture he looks like he has grown so much!!! Love you Mom/Nana