She Walks!

It seems like Tamsin has been on the verge of doing this for months.  But finally on Monday, she woke up from her nap and it just clicked.



She loves to celebrate her win too!


She's not always so steady...


And then sometimes, she's just her regular goofy self.  (Turn your volume up for maximum goof.)

Big Changes Afoot...

First of all, Tamsin can sit up on her own now.  In fact, this video is a few weeks old.  She's on the verge of crawling.



We made a trip up to New York the other weekend and Carter got his first real winter experience.

Tapping a maple

Sledding with Mama!

Aunt Jenn got her Tam fix

A few weeks back, Carter and I took a joyride on the DC metro. It was Carter's first time on a train and he was overwhelmed by all the things to take in.

On the other hand, he found the National Mall to be somewhat less interesting.

I know we've been pretty sparse on the posts recently.  Things are full on crazy-pants around here these days getting ready for our move.

Tamsin's hobbies

Tamsin's been practicing some new skills (we will now observe two minutes of eating):


Tam Eating from Brian Thomas on Vimeo.

and Brian's been working with the new slo-mo video feature on his phone:



Tam from Brian Thomas on Vimeo.

Picture her rollin'

We got the 3rd roll on video:


Rolling over from Brian Thomas on Vimeo.

I think Tamsin just wanted to start playing trains with Carter...

We also tried to get her to eat pears this weekend, but she wasn't so into it.  Don't worry, I won't make you watch a video of Tam spitting out pears...

Hope everyone is enjoying the fall as much as we are!

A Little Side By Side

Some folks have mentioned that they think that Tamsin looks a lot like Carter did at this age.  Here's some similar pictures so you can judge for yourselves.

Tamsin at 17 days

Carter at 14 Days (Sure wish we could find that pair of jammies)

Tamsin at 17 Days

Carter at 1 month

We've made it to the talkies....

Some of you might have been under the impression that life with Carter was a little like a silent movie:



But these days, he's down right chatty most of the time.  Here's a little sample:

Dude's Weekend

Mimi had to work this weekend so Carter and I were on our own for a 3 day guy fest. Saturday morning over breakfast I asked Carter what he wanted to do, and he answered, "Make big boy bed."  We were thinking of waiting for a couple weeks since we have some trips coming up and didn't want to jinx our normally solid sleep routine, but how could I resist a little guy who wants to put stuff together?

Carter showed remarkable patience and managed to get 5 of the screws put in (by himself!) before he was off to do other things like "cook cake in pan" leaving me to do the rest.  (Thanks to Ikea for making little allen wrenches that can be turned by eager toddlers.)

He slept like a champ in the new bed and we seem to have made the transition easily - whew.    

We cleaned out a fireplace and Carter told me, "No me like orange robot.  Too loud." referring to the shop vac.  It was also a complete surprise me when he reminded me,  "Dad, get egg boxes" on the way out the door to the Farmer's Market.  Thanks little guy -- I would have completely forgotten!

We got together with friends and brewed some beer, fixed lots of little things around the house, had tons of play time, and squeezed in some Sunday night nachos.  

He seems to surprise us every day with new words or phrases but here are a few that stand out from the weekend:

"Watch out" - pushing us aside

"Better hide" - covering us with a blanket

"Dad, be right back down, no need help" - going upstairs to get a book

"Me make cupcake [with] bacon and peas" - maybe cupcake carbonara will be the next big thing

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.

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!

Fending for Ourselves

This is a test of blogging from my phone, so if anything is wonky, I'll try to fix it...

Brian's teaching out of town this week so Carter's my copilot. This is a quick on just to let you know that carter said his first three word sentence the other day: "more eat cake."

Then, last night he was in the bath and pouring water on a mosquito bite on his leg. He clearly said, "agua on my booboo." Then he got all confused and started babbling and put all the syllables in a different order. Hopefully his language skills are going to start coming on strong now.

A Day in Pictures

Carter and I spent a rare weekday together last week and had a ball.  

But first, there's breakfast:

Carter's Day from Brian Thomas on Vimeo.

Sweet guy pre-haircut

I have such dreams...

The morning paper, perhaps?

Just kidding!

AWWGGHH!

Do we have to get the haircut?

Yep!

K - as long as I can walk down the street later...

And have a lolly...

OK, the haircut wasn't so bad.

Love my Legos!

I am Lego-Ninja!

They make me giggle sometimes...

Upside down book time!

I'm getting the hang of turning the pages, though!

Swagga'

Today's a good day.

A yardstick, a sand-table, 

and a keg - what else is there?

A SPRINKLER!!

Hmm, maybe that wasn't so fun.

But bath time is!  Yummy!

Happy guy!

That's all folks!

Molars

He's got'em.  We can feel at least three peeking through the gums.  Ouch!

Day with Dad -- Redux

A little more than a year ago I did a post about a day Carter and I spent together while Mimi was at work.  My, what a difference a year makes...  

We had breakfast (scrambled eggs and blueberries) and then it was off to the races.

While I worked on mending the gutters Carter worked on his bubble blowing skills.  He's pretty good with the dipping part, not so good with the blowing part.

We searched the house high and low for more devices with buttons to be pushed.  Carter enjoyed exploring the CD player, but it made me think how he will likely grow up in a CD-less world (for music anyway).  Crazy.

We ran some errands.  Whole foods has this machine that makes and spits out rice cakes like a bullet from a gun.  I'd like to say that we watched it for 10 minutes because he liked it so much, but I was pretty fascinated too.  (The free samples didn't hurt.)

We had lunch (couscous and chicken with veggies). Even though he liked it a lot, he still ended up with a very messy shirt.  Should'a remembered the bib.

After naptime we moved on to legos.  It is pretty hit or miss on putting them together, but he sure likes taking them apart.

For those wondering, he still doesn't say much.  He occasionally uses "Dada" but mostly he is very effective with pointing and grunting (just like his Dada).  He did start using his first sign language sign today.  We were eating some yogurt for an afternoon snack and he wanted "more".   Given his enormous appetite (and matching belly) I'm sure we'll be seeing plenty more of that sign.

Goodbye Wolf-Boy

I resisted and resisted because I wanted to have a little long-haired punk for a little longer, but it was time. 

It didn't go so well:

I have to hand it to Tiffany and the whole gang at TNT hair salon in good old Cape St. Claire - they were troopers.  Carter pretty much screamed the whole time - iPhones, purple hair spray bottles and orange gel didn't distract AT ALL.  They were great and handled the whole ordeal with aplomb.  AND it was only $16.  They should've charged more.

 

But he got a lollypop afterwards and that made it all better:

Any of you still reading that aren't Carter-obsessed can probably move along the interwebz now and continue on your surf-journey.   The rest of these pictures aren't any better than the previous ones, but I thought Carter was SUPER cute with his Dum-Dum (gum-gum?) that I had to post several more in the series.

OK, thanks for indulging me.  You can click on those pictures to embiggen in case you want to make a t-shirt out of them or anything (just saying).