Carter Update

Carter is about 2 years and 2 months old now. It's been awhile since I've posted about all the little things he does right now so I'm going to try to list out a bunch of things now before he changes or I forget them!

• Carter has a bunch of new words. He had an "explosion" in his vocabulary a few weeks ago (I think this was the third time I thought he suddenly knew a ton of new words). He still doesn't say as much as a lot of other kids his age, but he's always able to communicate what he wants. Some of Carter's new words include: Grandma (which sounds like blah-blah), Grandpa (which sounds like da-da), GG (this is what we're going to start calling Brian's mom), Bella (my sister's dog), Pete (a character on both Chuggington & Mickey Mouse Clubhouse), Minnie, they, cold, cool (everything is cool right now!), out, more, cut, pat, play, help, milk, ice, like that, and I see. There are more words too but I can't think of them right now.

• Carter still doesn't count very high. He always skips one but will say two and three. He often says, "Two, three, go!"
  

• When Rylan chews on one of his toys and then Carter picks up the toy, he'll say, "Baby, chew ... eeeewwwww."

• Carter often watches a cartoon or two in the morning while I'm getting ready. Instead of commercials, Disney shows mini-cartoons that often try to get kids moving instead of just sitting and watching TV. There is one mini-cartoon called "Dance-a-lot Robot". Carter has started imitating the moves and dancing along with the cartoon robot and kids. Now he'll start moving his arms up and down and say "tweet, tweet" at random times during the day pretending to be a bird.

• Carter is quite the ham right now for the camera. He likes for me to take his picture and then show him what it looks like on the camera. He has a very forced, fake smile where he shows all his teeth and squints his eyes.
  

• It's been awhile since I've written about it, but Carter did an amazing job giving up his paci. Within a few days he stopped asking about it at naptime and bedtime and then after about a week he didn't ask for it in the car either. It took Carter a while the first night without it to go to sleep, but that was really the only time it took longer than normal. We did start putting a pillow in Carter's crib when we took away his paci and he's been loving having it. I don't know if that helped with the transition at all, but it definitely didn't hurt.

• Carter has suddenly seemed to develop a fear of the dark over the last few days. We used to keep his door to the Jack and Jill bathroom he shares with Rylan open a crack since there's a nightlight in there, but we've been closing it for awhile since we've had Rylan sleeping in his own room. Rylan wakes up crying a lot at night and we don't want him waking up Carter so we close both doors to the bathroom. Putting a regular nightlight in Carter's room makes the room really bright so we'd been letting in sleep in the dark lately. Last night he got really upset when Brian was leaving the room so Brian turned on Carter's Cloud B Twilight Constellation Night Light Turtle and put it outside of his crib. That seemed to make Carter happy and he went right to sleep. Tonight Brian put it in his crib and again he went right to sleep. Carter knows how to turn the nightlight on and there's a timer on the turtle of 30 minutes. Hopefully the nightlight helps!

There are many more things to write about but I both can't think of them right now and am too tired to type anymore. I'll try to do a similar post about Rylan in the next few days!