Happy New Year!

We had a good New Year's Eve this year. It was the first one we've spent at home in a couple of years. Maybe even since Carter was born, now that I think of it.

Doug and my first date was on New Year's Eve 22 years ago, and we went to a Japanese teppanyaki restaurant, so our tradition all these years has been to go to a teppanyaki place on New Year's Eve. We went to a place down the street from our house.

Carter has always been pretty good about being patient in restaurants, but lately we've found that we can take him to places where he has to wait a little longer than before. This has helped us expand our repertoire of eateries quite a bit!

Of course, the phone helps a lot.



Carter enjoyed watching the chef cook, though he didn't like the fire. He put his hands over his eyes at that part.



He likes noodles. Oddly enough, he doesn't like rice. We've never been able to get him to eat it.



Here is one of Carter and me.



We went home and had our own little New Year's Eve party. Doug had bought some champagne, and I had gotten some balloons and noisemakers. We put on some music, blew up the balloons, and danced and had fun. Carter's current favorite song is "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black-Eyed Peas, so we had to play it over and over and over...



Carter fell asleep in my arms at some point, and I put him to bed without even putting his PJs on. That is why he's still wearing the same shirt in the following New Year's day pictures! We got up the next morning and made waffles for breakfast. He really wanted to me me make the batter, and he was actually helpful!







And then we got to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Mmmm!



Here are a couple of cute videos from today of Carter riding his balance bike. He's getting very good!





He hasn't had a nap since before Christmas. He just suddenly dropped naps, and he goes to sleep early instead. It's weird, but we're getting used to it! It's seemed to be coming for a long time, but I'm starting to think this is really it now. He'll sleep 12-13 hours overnight, so he's definitely getting plenty of sleep, and he doesn't even get cranky in the afternoons.

I've been paying more attention to his reading lately, and he can definitely read a handful of words. He'll also sound out all of the letters in a word, but he won't necessarily put them all together. He's getting there, though, and he definitely seems to be a little interested right now, so I'm trying to take advantage of it.

I think that's it for now. Happy New Year, everyone!

NaBloPoMo 18/30: Balance bike again

All of the sudden, he's starting to balance a little.

Cool, eh? He loves his bike!

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NaBloPoMo 12/30: Riding a bike

This morning I got to sleep in with Carter, which was nice. We got up around 8:00, and he woke up laughing, apparently having a funny dream. He told me he wanted to "go downstairs and see Daddy", and I reminded him that Daddy was at the office building. He was sad for a moment, but then I suggested we call Doug, and he got excited.

It's interesting that he can talk on the phone now. He does more listening than talking, but he really likes it. He'll just stand there and grin, and he loves it. It's funny how it wasn't that long ago that it would never have occurred to me to put the phone to his ear, but now we do it all the time.

I had to go to campus today, so we didn't get to spend too much time together. Michelle played with him, and took him to Lakeline Mall to ride the train. That mall is such a fun place to go with kids. It was rainy off and on today, so it was a good day to go.



Michelle often takes pictures of what they're doing and texts them to me during the day, which I really appreciate! These two are both from her. When I got home, they were playing in the driveway.



After Michelle left, Carter and I continued playing in the driveway. A little boy and his dad from down the street came to roller skate in the cul-de-sac, and Carter got excited and wanted to join in, so he got on his bike and started riding around. Out of the blue he started doing a little balancing, which I've never seen him do before. I tried to get in on video, but he goes so fast that it's hard to catch it! He does it around the 17 second mark in this video. It didn't get captured on the video well, but the whole time he was riding around he was saying, "Wheee! Yippeeee!" And right at the very end, he falls off!



I went over to see how he was, and he was crying,so I asked him if anything needed to be kissed, and he said, "No. I need to get back on the bike." And so he did! He rode around a bit more, and then went down a neighbor's fairly steep driveway, balancing for a good part of the way. Not by choice, I think -- he was going so fast he couldn't put his feet down! I knew that would end badly, but there was nothing I could do about it. Sure enough, he crashed at the bottom, and burst into tears again. This time he had a big scrape on his knee, and wanted me to kiss his hands. But then he wiped his tears away and got back on the bike!

I love how stubborn and determined he is. I really, really do!

Art, bike, and other fun stuff

I have two posts to make, and this is the first one. The pictures from our trip this weekend will be in the next post.

First, some random fun pictures from the last week. Here is one of Carter playing his drum:



It's so cute to watch him start to get into making music. He loves his harmonica that Nana Anna (his great-grandmother) gave him, and he is finally starting to strum (rather than just bang on) his guitar. Drums and percussion instruments are definite favorites, as they are with all kids this age. He likes to make up songs, and is ever so gradually starting to sing in tune!

Here are some cute pictures from a bath the other night. He had eaten a bunch of blackberries and really needed it!



I was taking pictures to send to Doug (who was out of town) and Carter started making funny faces. Here is his kissy face:



And a happy face:



And a sad face:



We've been talking about emotions a lot and trying to help him start to articulate how he is feeling, and playing games like this is something he really finds funny.

After not really being interested in his bike for a while, he's recently started riding it again.



He also likes to "work on it".



Here's a little video of him riding it a few days ago. He's starting to pick up a little speed now, though he has yet to take his feet off the ground and really balance on it.



Another thing we've been doing a bit more of lately is art. He's starting to get to the point that he's actually interested in playing with art materials for more than two minutes at a time, so it's more fun for both of us. ;-) His drawing is slowly starting to become more meaningful, and his fine motor skills are getting better. Here is a picture of him drawing with markers. He very carefully drew a bunch of concentric ovals, and when he got close to the point where the shape would close, he slowed down and tried very hard to make the ends meet. You can see several places where he went back over the closing point several times with the marker. It was really interesting to watch him draw something so deliberately.



I bought him a big t-shirt to serve as an art smock. It should get lots of cool paint marks on it in the next year or so!



I finally decided to let him try his hand at tempera paints. It wasn't nearly as messy as I'd feared, and he really liked them.





The paint set only had six colors, and so when he asked me for brown paint, I showed him how to mix colors to make it. He was really fascinated! We'll have to do more color mixing soon.



I took a video of him painting, and it's pretty typical of a 2.5 year-old. I keep reading that with kids this age, it's about the process, not the product. I believe it!



Here are the results of his first experience with tempera paints. Cool, eh?



I have a scrapbook to keep samples of his art in, and those will definitely be going in it. I think it will be cool to see how his paintings and drawings change over time.

I'll try to make another post tomorrow with pictures form our trip. Happy Labor Day!