Nov 1: Halloween pics, cookies, language

Today is the first day of November, which means it's National Blog Posting Month, aka NaBloPoMo. The goal is to make one post a day for the entire month. I did it last year on this blog, and it was actually a lot easier than I expected! You can see last year's posts here. Look how much Carter has grown!

We had a good Halloween, even though it was quick. We didn't have as many trick-or-treaters as usual, for some reason. I got a costume for Carter at the last minute, an easy Thomas the Train costume. Here is a picture of Carter and I ready to go trick-or-treating.



We went up the street and back, and that was an adventure! Walking with Carter is like herding cats. It's really not an easy task, LOL. But we managed to go to about 7 houses, and he only tried to run inside 4 of them. He never said "trick-or-treat" until after we were done, but he did say "Happy Halloween" a few times. This one is really dark, but Doug was trying to get a shot of us TOTing:



I'm not sure what he thought of the whole thing. He seemed excited to be running around outside at night, but a little confused too. He ran up to groups of costumed kids waving and saying, "Hi! Hi!" but never seemed scared. We went in around 8:00, and he came to the door with me when TOTers came by. He got a little upset that I was giving away the candy, which was funny. I think he consumed a snack-sized pack of m&ms, and that kept him up pretty late, heh.

Here are some shots from the last few days. We had a date night on Friday night and Michelle came to play with Carter. They made Halloween cookies, and she sent these pictures from her phone:





I think he was eating m&ms more than helping!





Carter's had a major cognitive jump in the last week or so. I knew something was coming, because his sleep was being disrupted and he seemed extra "needy". And sure enough, boom! Big jump! Overnight, he is using two and three word phrases all the time, and is doing things like initiating games with us. On Thursday night he and I spent a whole hour playing, and he was the one who initiated every game. He made up a game he calls "sit", where we sit on the stairs and he tells me how to clap my hands, when to sit and stand, and when to bounce. Basically it's a follow-the-leader type thing, and it's so adorable! It's so amazing to get to interact with him that way, and I know it will only get more fun from here on out.

Some new phrases he's started saying are "What is that?" and "Where'd it go?" Of course, it's not quite that articulate, but he's getting there! He also says things like, "great!" and "all right!", in exactly the right context, which is funny. Last night I dropped something and said, "Oh, crap," and he went around saying "oh, crap" for a while. I'm usually pretty careful, but that just underscores that I REALLY need to watch what I say! :-P

He knows 6 shapes now, and I finally managed to get him doing this on video. There's something about his sweet little voice in this that just melts me!



One final note: The writing of this post was interrupted by a funny incident. Doug did some touch-up painting in the living room early this morning, and Carter found a patch in the kitchen that wasn't yet dry. He then proceeded to paint blue handprints all over the fridge! It washed up easily, but now I wish we'd gotten a picture!