Sunday Night Surprise

Tonight, I was cleaning up dinner in the kitchen and Carter comes in and tells me he has to go potty. This has happened a couple times before and has either been too late or a false alarm.  (We haven't been making any effort at toilet training -- he hasn't seemed quite there yet.)  Well tonight I dropped what I was doing and took him in to the bathroom and... what'd'ya know?  He took care of business, stood up, and said "done."  Way to go little guy!

Don't worry, I didn't take any pictures, but here are a couple from the other morning.

A Crazy Thanksgiving Week

It all started with a visit from Marni the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Carter and Marni had a blast and Mimi and I got to go out on two dates!

Then the Jordan's showed up and Carter had more playmates than he knew what to do with.  There was a lot of reading time on the couch, which suited everyone just fine.

We had a great Thanksgiving dinner complete with family, good friends, good food, and a fair bit of geekery in the turkey cooking department.

Carter was very ready for dinner and ate himself silly -- doesn't take much.

"Hey, what's a guy gotta do to get some pickled peaches around here?"

(Thanks Grammy!)

To walk it all off we had a couple good hikes at the local State Park.

Cruising with Mama

To end the week, we had a little (and somewhat belated) surprise party for Gram.  

Boy was she surprised.

The Thomas' Came to Town

It was a quiet weekend but there was good Papi time...

 including some wrastling.

 We tried to get some good lego time pictures with Uncle Ja, but the bricks were flying fast and furious.

 Ama was super popular as always

 We even made it to the beach.

Thanks for the great visit!

Go Take a Hike!

We haven't really been camping or hiking much recently, because reasons, but we have gotten out a bit to enjoy the cooler weather with Carter - here are some dismal phone pictures that have hardly seen any editing.  Enjoy!

These are from two different walks we took and Carter actually wanted to walk more than I ever expected him to.  When we let him down at the beach, he cheerfully walked a good 1/2 mile if not more afterward.  Little guy likes to jog, too - it's hard to get a decent picture of him!

For those of you who actually click through to the blog itself, I changed the background a little bit (I felt like it was getting old) and I might mess around with it a little more today if I have time.  Thanks for reading!

Happy Halloween

 Carter (the Triceratops) would like to wish everyone a very happy Halloween.

From One Year to the Next

We thought it would be fun to give a few pictures to compare and contrast Carter at 0, 1 and 2.  

Carter would like to give a shout out to his (our) friend Sue for the awesome card!

On the development front, Carter is making almost daily strides with his words.  He routinely puts two words together now to get his point across like: "No yuck" (referring to his diaper), "Bo peep dirty" (uh?), "More eat" and on and on.  He is about 35 inches tall and somewhere we've read that if you double your height at two, it is a good predictor of adult height.  So it looks like he'll be around 5'-10" (an inch taller than I).  At mealtimes he's getting a little more picky, but he still likes fish and just tonight we were able to get him to eat (and maybe enjoy?) his broccoli.  Although if you ask him what he wants to eat, you'll get one of these three: Egg, Oats, or Cake.  Thank goodness he hasn't learned to say "ice cream" yet.  He's a cautious little guy and we're thankful that he mostly stays out of trouble.  It has been a good year and we can't wait to see who he is at 3!

Another River Birthday

We headed back to the river for a beautiful fall weekend to celebrate Carter's big 2. 

 Luckily, this time Marni came too.

There were some good walks around the island.

More of Carter's favorite aquatic hobby

Horsing around with Grandad

And of course there was lots of playing down at the dock

(The little guy has gotten to like his life jacket - thankfully)

Of course there were some presents like a great book from Aunt Jenn

and some cool trucks from Gram and Grandad

Overall I think he was pretty satisfied

Oh, and did I mention the cake?  He was a little daunted by the number of candles. 

(If they keep doubling like this we'll be in trouble...)

It took some help to get them all blown out

But after that, Carter knew just where to put things

Once he got his piece, it was gone.

Fork - Schmork!

Thanks to everyone for making this another great birthday!