Nov 14: Odds and ends

It's funny how Carter picks up words in just the right context. He likes to climb, as all toddlers do, and when he's climbing on something a bit precarious, we'll often say, "Careful." Well, now he says it himself, before we can even get a chance. Whenever he's in a spot that's not completely secure, he'll say "careful!" I'm not sure if he's reminding himself to be careful or if he just thinks that's what you say in that situation.

He's never really liked toys that make a lot of noise, with the exception of toys that sing songs or play music. He has a few toys that make a lot of noise that he has never really grown to like. He has a ball popper someone gave him a while back, and the noise it makes really upsets him. I kept thinking he would grow out of it, but he hasn't yet. He gets upset at hair dryers, blenders, and food processors as well. He will actually scream and looked really distressed. He's lately learned to apply words to these sounds, and he calls them "loud" and "scary". Oddly enough, he's not yet scared of anything else - not the dark, or big animals, or anything.

Carter loves high fives. I'm not exactly sure when this started, but he's really been interested in high fives in the last month or so. He'll run up and say "high five!" and especially enjoys it when you make a big deal of the high five. His swimming teacher will fall over backwards underwater when the kids high-five her, so that may be where it got started. One night a few weeks ago, he woke up to nurse around 1:00 am or so, and in the middle of nursing, without even opening his eyes, he held up his hand and said, "high five!" I high-fived him, and he fell asleep again!

We're starting to realize that he's beginning to recognize numerals. Doug was reading to him today and he pointed to a 6 on a page and said "six", and did it again a few pages later with 4. This is interesting because he doesn't include 4 or 6 when he counts!

He's starting to show empathy is really cool ways, which is very exciting to me. Today I cut my finger cooking, and he's really concerned about the bandaid I have on my finger. He keep pointing to it and saying, "Ouchie" and looking really worried. He will then sit in my lap and cuddle for a bit, or give me a hug. He's giving hugs a lot lately anyway, which is really fun. He's starting to be really nice to the cats (at last) and will try to give them gentle hugs and pet them (rather than whacking on them like he did for the last year). A few days ago he was laying on the bed with me and Lucy came over to snuggle against him. He sat up and pushed her away, and when she meowed in complaint, he said, "I know, I know."

He will apologize for stuff every now and then too. Occasionally when he's had a rough afternoon and has been really fussy, he'll just stop in the middle of it all and say, "I sorry, so sorry." Then he'll go back to being fussy again. I don't quite know what to make of that! He'll also apologize when he pushes past someone to get to something ("sorry!") or when he bumps into someone. When we were traveling last weekend, I bumped the stroller into another stroller, and he looked at the other baby and said, "sorry!"

I've been modeling "please" for him a lot lately, hoping he'll pick it up. And he has, but not exactly in the right context, LOL. If he's holding something I want (like the remote control), I'll walk over and ask him to give it to me. And he'll grin at me and say, "Pleeeease!" Heh.

He knows his own name now and uses it to refer to himself. He will say "Carter" when he sees a picture of himself too. He knows he used to be a little baby and will point to pictures we have of him as a baby and say, "Carter", but he'll also do this for pictures of random babies, LOL.

Finally, here are a few pictures form today. We were in his room and I asked him to get up on his big boy bed and pose for me, and to my great surprise, this is what he did:



I know that's blurry, but it was so funny I couldn't resist posting it anyway! Here's a closeup:



What's the male version of a diva? ;-)