Carter's birthday!

I still have some pictures from our New York trip to post, but first I want to post some pictures from his birthday yesterday. We don't have any family here and we don't really know any families with little kids here, and since Carter isn't in day care we don't even have a base of kids to invite to a birthday party. So we had a quiet little birthday at home with him. :-)

He had a fun day playing at home, and seemed happy to have all this space to run around in again after having been stuck in a hotel room for an entire week. We fixed his favorite foods for dinner:



And Doug even bought him his favorite candy (gummi lifesavers):



We got some cupcakes from Hey Cupcake! in lieu of a birthday cake:



Compare to one year ago:



He's getting so big! My Mom Skyped in for the cake and presents part, and helped us sing Happy Birthday. Carter usually doesn't like it when we sing, but for some reason he loved us singing Happy Birthday to him!

We opened some presents:





He got books from Michelle, a fun squishy ball and ABC puzzle mat from Doug's parents, some "Signing Time" DVDs from my Mom and Rick, a Little People barn from my Dad and Barbara, and we got him the red keyboard and the computer keyboard you see in the photo below:



I am loving that keyboard, let me tell you. There are lots of cute online games for toddlers, but it was always nerve-wracking to play them with Carter because he would pound on my keyboard or hit a key that would mess everything up. This toddler keyboard plugs into a USB port and only has the keys necessary to run most games. (It also came with a toddler-sized mouse, but we haven't tried it out yet.) In that picture Carter is playing a game where you push a letter key and an animal starting with that letter appears on the screen and makes noise. He loves it! And I don't have to worry about my keyboard anymore.

And wow, we have WAAAY too many toys now. I haven't yet unpacked all the ones from Christmas, and it's clear that I need to go through and get rid of a bunch. :-P