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.

El Rio

Summer Vacay at the River!  We got to go for 9 days this year - long enough to start really feeling relaxed, and then WHAMMO - back to reality.  Carter had so much fun running up and down the dock (once he got used to the life jacket):

Come on guys!

Let's go!

We played EVERYWHERE: digging in the shallows, chasing frogs, swimming using Brian as a float, in boats, up on the hill, in the forest.  The highlight for me was that he LOVED kayaking!

Happy in the kayak.

He first got in the kayak while it was on top of the dock, and since he loved it and wanted to stay in it, I pulled it into the water next to the beach.  He wasn't so excited about that at first, but then he got into it, so then I sat down in the kayak first and pulled him into my lap.  He became quite upset and squirmy, but I asked him to trust me for a few minutes that it would be fun and that we could get out if he really didn't like it.  So I pushed out into the water and he immediately calmed down and couldn't get enough.  My arms were tired by the time we got back from paddling around Aunt Jane's Bay and saying hi to the neighbors and he STILL didn't want to get out.  He went two more times with me, and then once with Brian and once again with Laura - I guess we have a little paddler on our hands!

Other events included a LOT of fishing with Ed - even a chartered trip where we caught enough bass for several meals, visiting and playing with Aunt Jenn and her boyfriend Steve (who amused Carter to no end), and really great sleeping.  He probably slept 13 hours overnight and 2-3 hours each day during nap - I think the River is magic...

Hanging around with Aunt Jenn

Running up and down the side of the boathouse

Daytime moon!

Loving up Mama (Shaylie got in on the action, too)

Hikes on Mama's back

Playing in the house that the *NEW* washing machine provided (YAY!)

Morning lap time with Granddad

Fingerpainting with Sarah while all the responsible adults got to go play...
(I hope he picks up a thing or two from her!)

We had an awesome trip - thanks to Grammy and Grandpa for providing the place and the people!

From a development perspective, Carter is starting to mimic many more words than in the past and this trip really made an impact.  New words include: two, three, rio, pretzel (per Gram), egg, toast, eight, nine, hi, on, off, up, down, please, Curt ("Dirk") and dog.  Big vocabulary jump for our little delayed expressive language fella.

Sadly, there were no pictures AT ALL of Carter with Grammy, Gram, or Grandpa.  We'll work on that next time.

We did get one family photo (sans Gray-C - she doesn't like boats much):

And then we had to say goodbye - Carter got a little more comfortable during that last boat ride than he had all week.

Bye River!

Mama's Birthday

The plan for Mimi's birthday was to take Carter for his first visit to the zoo. We awoke to some much needed, but ill timed rain and so we changed our plans and headed to the Baltimore Aquarium instead. After a late start we met Mitzi up there around 11 and found the place packed. Carter was interested in all the fish but he may have liked all the escalators more.

 We made it all the way to the top with Carter still in pretty good spirits so we stopped for lunch at the cafe.

After lunch we headed down through the reef fish (good) and sharks (not as good) and over to the dolphin area. Carter liked the dolphin pool, and the Jellies and he was a good sport through the dolphin show which started 1.5 hrs after the normal nap time. After so much good behavior we decided to quit while we were ahead and left for home.

I made some cupcakes for Mimi and then we all went out to Viet Thai for dinner. By this point Carter still had no nap, was pretty punchy, but was holding it together. Turns out he likes satay (not a big surprise), carrots shaped like flowers, pad thai, tom ka gai, and drink umbrellas.

Happy Birthday Mama!


In other news, Carter has taken up typing...

And here's a shot of the two of us from last week.

The Annual Thomas Trek

We headed up to the Thomas' for our yearly visit on this past Saturday.  When we pulled into the driveway Carter noticed that uncle Jason's old play house was pulled out in the front yard, just asking to be occupied.  Big Hit!

(Great?) Aunt Lynn taught a class in the finer points of outdoor pretend cooking.  Cater was hooked.

Not to mention the S'more making lessons with Grammy TT

There was a trip to Midway and the kiddie amusement park.  Carter didn't quite know what to think about the rides at first, but he ended up pulling us back to the carousel a few times.

Are you sure this thing is safe Papi?

Diggin the Choo Choo Train

Only the big kids were allowed on the bigger rides, so Dad and Carter sat a few out.

There was some hang out time with Uncle Jason,

showing Ama the finer points of "knuckles", 

lots of splashing in the creek,

and of course, there was ice cream trouble.

(click to see the full magnitude of mess!)

We managed another four generation family shot, even though Carter was having a rough morning.

Thanks for the visit Ama, Papi, and Uncle Jason!

(Thanks to Aunt Lynn and Grammy TT for all the guest photography)