Big Boy Chair and other gradual changes

I meant to include these pictures in the last post, but they were overlooked somehow. So, bonus quick post!

Carter outgrew his high chair a while back, and we rigged up a booster seat on an old kitchen chair for him. I covered the fabric seat with plastic so it would be cleanable, which helped, but it wasn't really ideal. It gave Carter the freedom to get in and out of the chair as he wanted, though, and that was the idea.



But he finally started to outgrow this set-up. In particular, he wanted to rest his feet on the chair, which meant his knees were up too high to push the chair all the way up to the table. The big chairs at our kitchen table swivel and roll and are a bit top heavy, so we didn't think he was ready for one of those yet. I did some looking around and found a chair I really liked for him. We call it the big boy chair!



The seat and footrest are adjustable, and you can even configure it for an adult, so we should get a lot of use out of it. Carter likes it too!



It's funny how things change so gradually with a child. It wasn't that long ago that I couldn't imagine putting his food on the table itself, because he dumped things out and smeared them everywhere. I'm not exactly sure when that changed, but now he's eating with us at the table. He even uses utensils most of the time these days! Now if only I could get him to eat more than the occasional vegetable...

This is a cute painting Carter and Michelle made the other day. They used fingerpaints.



Carter is only napping a couple of days a week now. He even refuses to nap for Michelle now, and she always had the magic nap touch! But he easily goes to bed a few hours earlier on those no nap days, so it works fine. Of course, this means we get less time to spend together in the evenings, which is sad for me. On Wednesday I worked until 5:30, and Carter fell asleep in my arms at 6:00. I laid him on the bed in the guest bedroom, figuring he was just taking a late nap, but that was it -- he was down for the night. He was still asleep when I left for work this morning. He's done that several times now.

At some point over the summer, my leaving him stopped being traumatic. It basically happened overnight, and it was like he suddenly understood that Mommy was only going to be gone for a little while and would come back. He just had to get to the point that he understood that, and it's been fine since. For two years I would sneak around as quietly as I could while getting ready on my work mornings, hoping against hope that he wouldn't wake up before I left, to avoid the awful scene. Now it's the other way around. I don't intentionally wake him up, but I'm always relieved when he stumbles sleepily into the bathroom while I'm getting ready. I like our leaving routine in the morning, and I now feel bad that I don't get to give him that hug and kiss and say goodbye for the day.

Here's a video from last week. Carter has always liked pinwheels, but struggles to blow them hard enough to make them spin. So you can imagine his delight when he discovered another way to make them spin:



We're off to New York on the morning, where I hear it is actually fall! There will be pictures at some point, so stay tuned!