I Just Called

Carter has always been obsessed with the phone. He loves to play with the one in our bedroom every weekend morning. He thinks the operator's voice is mine. From early on he has pretended any block, spoon, or even car is a phone. The past few weeks he has been talking more into the "phones". Instead of just hi or good bye he talks gibberish.. Whenever Oma calls Carter tries to talk to her. However he usually gets "hi" out and then proceeds to try to look at the phone instead of talking.

Last night I was on the phone with Justin. Carter was insisting to talk to daddy. I handed him the phone. First was a "Hi Daddy!". Justin asked him a few yes or no questions "(he listening to mommy, was he making good choices) all of which Carter answered yes to. Justin then asked him what he was doing. Carter answers "playing with puzzles. Sesame Street puzzles, Tyler do Car puzzle". He then answered yes or no to Justin some more and then with my prompting he said "Bye Daddy!".

Maybe this is normal for a 23 month old, but it blew the pants off Justin and I. Tyler has only started talking on the phone more in the past few months. Carter sure is a chatterbox.

Conversations

Tyler amazes me each day with the conversations he comes up with. Last night he filled up his potty chart (he is doing great!) and gets to go to another baseball game with daddy. I asked him if we all get to go or just he and daddy. Tyler's answer "Just Tyler and daddy go. Mommy and Carter stay and hang out. Carter you play football with mommy ok? Yay football!" He knows Carter doesn't like being left out, so I think he was trying to get Carter excited to be with mommy - to bad it was right before bed time that this conversation took place.

Today on the car ride home from story time Tyler tells me this " I ride a bus one day. When I am bigger I ride a purple bus. Mommy and Carter ride bus too. Daddy ride bus too. Carter ride blue bus, Mommy ride pink bus, Daddy ride red bus, and Tyler ride purple bus. Two buses will chase my bus. Daddy drive the bus. Tyler ride in back, Carter ride in back, Mommy ride in back, Heather ride in back. Steve ride in front. No Steve drive, daddy drive. Steve sit in front with daddy." What??? When did this boy learn to talk in paragraphs?

Two Minutes

Tyler's new thing to do is when we ask him to do something (usually go to the potty) he will say "in two minutes". About half the time when those to minutes are up he will do what we asked without hesitation - the other half ends in tantrums. Last night after the two minutes were up he said "in 14 minutes".

I am working less this month since the church isn't as busy in the summer. We are all enjoying being home more and our days are spent with baseball, sandbox, baseball, trucks, baseball, playgroups, and baseball. Tyler would play baseball for hours on end if it would just stop raining. We got him a new tee that came with some bases so now he has actual bases to run around. The next morning Justin set it up In the kitchen before he left for work. The boys have never been more excited for breakfast. Next task - to get that running around the bases in the correct order, and not thinking the pitching mound is a base. Time to go to some more baseball games I think.

Gotta Love Colorado...

Yesterday was an absolute gorgeous day with a high of 78 degrees. The boys wore shorts for the first time this year (which Tyler took awhile to get used to) and we played outside all day long. Today it is snowing. Back to the winter coats we go (at least until tomorrow). Carter is still talking up a storm and getting new words everyday. One of the ones he says the most "Taer" or Tyler. Whenever someone leave the room he always wants to know where they went. He asks this by saying "mommy go" (for example) and then lifting both arms up.

Tyler's speech is also improving leaps and bounds. He is down to speech therapy once a month now and no longer is getting OT services. He is also getting more interested in other children. We were at the mall and ran into twin girls that are in Tyler's class on Wednesdays. They got to play with each other for a bit at the play area and all Tyler wanted to do the rest of the day was see "the girls". Last night at dinner we ran into another boy who is in Tyler's class and Tyler recognized him right away and even remembered his name. I love how he remembers things we do each day now and can tell us who we played with at church and what they did together.

Random Updates

We had a pretty good weekend. Carter seems to be feeling much better and we went to try out a gym class for the boys. The boys would both be in a mommy and me classes and they get to take it together. The boys seemed to like it a lot so we signed them up. Next week Justin will have to miss it so we will see how it goes with just me.

Carter is still amazing me everyday with his new words. I can't even remember half the words he says now, but it seem like at least once a day I am shocked by what comes out of his mouth. Off the top of my head here is some new vocab: ketchup, all gone, baa baa (sheep), water, bath, bike, and many others.

Tyler is also taking off. His speech is so much clearer and he talks nonstop. He is always pretending to be some animal (usually a monkey) or talking about our trip to the zoo and what animals we saw. His memory amazes me too. We play a game on the computer together to help work on his letters. He remembers so many of them, but also remembers parts of the games. For example he remembers if we do the letter H, at the end a hippo will come up, but if we do the letter M a monkey will come up at the end. So fun to watch! If he is not pretending to be a monkey he either wants to play basketball or throw his footballs. Last night he also insisted that he sleeps with them.

It's been a while

It's been a while since my last post. Justin was covering the state wrestling tournament, which meant he had the computer with him in Denver. The boys did ok with daddy being gone. There were some frustrating moments with Carter getting into everything he wasn't suppose to and Tyler using his favorite word many many times. Overall we all did pretty well I think. Tyler's favorite word right now is "no". I ask him to do something and he tell me no. I am not quite sure how to handle this. Obviously I still make him do whatever it was that I asked of him. What I don't know is that should I punish him for saying no to me, or see it as him expressing his thoughts/feelings on the subject. I want him to respect our authority, but I also want him to be free thinker. Justin and I will have to ponder on this one.

So a couple updates: Carter got his stitches out on Thursday and while he did scream, it was nothing compared to putting them in. He will have a scar but I think it will be covered up by his hair for the most part. Tyler had an OT appointment again and his therapist is puzzled by a few things Tyler does. For example sometimes the brushing helps calm him down and other times it makes him riled up. I guess that isn't very common. She is giving us more things to try tho. Tyler is also talking a lot more at school which I am very happy to see. On Wednesday he was playing with a toy phone in the beginning of the morning. About ten minutes later he was onto something else and went up to another child asking him where the phone was. I was so happy to see this interaction!

Carter's vocab is also expanding like crazy. He is learning about 5 new words a day I think. Off the top of my head (because I know there is more) he says: quack, duck, uh oh, eat, cup, milk, bebe, baby, blanket(anket), Hana (our dog), book, beep beep, and many more.

The Next President?

The boys and I went shopping today and Carter was such a little flirt. He decied to try out one of his new words to everyone we saw - "hi". We passed two ladies a couple of times in the store and each time Carter would say hi to them and smile. One of the ladies said what a social butterfly - he could be the next president. I must say I agree that he is pretty cute! Other new words in Carter's vocab incude:

hi

bye

poopy

no (he also shakes his head no too!)

rice

After the store we went to the park to enjoy our nice weather before our next snow storm hits tonight. The boys love going to the park and it had been a while since we had gone. It was so fun to watch them. This was also a first for Carter as I let him do his own thing instead of keeping hin at arms length at all times. Carter followed Tyler everywhere - even up to the highest slide. Tyler would go down and then giggle in anticipation for Carter to follow him down. Of course if Tyler is giggling then Carter will be giggling too. We also did a couple sensory things at the park the OT suggested, none of which Tyler really liked, but he didn't make a huge fuss either. So far it has been a great day!