Carter is 15 Months!

Wow! Is our baby already 15 months old?!? He really isn’t a baby at all anymore. Carter has grown and changed so much since he turned one in January. He is definitely all boy! Here is what he is up to these days.

• Carter started walking at 10 months and never turned back! He is now running all over the place. He is still a little unsteady on his feet when he is trying to run fast or go up and down a hill. This makes for lots of bruises on his shins and two scraped knees. I am sure he will probably look like that until he is 18! Carter and Abbie love to place chase around our first floor. They have a little circle path they run in from the kitchen to the living room, through the dining room and back to the kitchen. They especially love it when I hide behind a corner and surprise them. Hilarious! I must get in on video. I love their squeals of laughter.
• Carter no longer has any baby food or bottles. He stopped having both right at our move, so just a week of so after he turned one. Thank goodness he was ready to give both up because it just made life so much easier during the move and living with my parents. He loves just about any food. He especially loves food he can take from someone else’s plate! For breakfast he typically has pears, a waffle or blueberry muffins and some oatmeal bar. Just today I gave him his very own orange juice, which he loved! He drank half of Abbie’s yesterday while she was at school so I figured it was time he had his own. For lunch he usually has ham, cheese, yogurt, cheese puffs or some type of cracker, sometimes raisins, just about anything we give him. I have found he really likes my Baked Lays and starts grunting for some the minute he sees me get the bag out of the pantry! He drinks a full glass of milk with his snack in the afternoon. For dinner he eats just about anything, He loves macaroni and cheese and makes quite a mess eating it! He usually has a banana, strawberry or orange slices at dinner as dessert. Sometimes if he is lucky he gets and oreo! He also recently had some chocolate shake at Fudrucker’s for dinner, which he gobbled down. With all he eats, I am amazed that is is still not even 22 pounds!
• Carter sleeps through the night, thank goodness! Occasionally he will wake up and cry for a few seconds or just make noise, but then he goes back to sleep. He usually goes to bed between 7:00 and 7:15 and wakes up between 7:15 and 7:45. Sometimes we have to wake him up at 8:00! He is currently alternating between one and two naps during the day. If he sleeps late in the morning, then I have been putting him down around 1:30 for just one nap. If he wakes up and seems tired, then I put him down for two naps. He usually sleeps between an hour and an hour and a half.
• Carter is getting a bunch of new teeth! His top, two molars are now through the gums and coming down. He is working on the bottom, left molar and the tooth right next to it. Poor thing! I think his teeth have really been bothering him as he has been chewing on his fingers for weeks. I will be so glad when they all finally come in! He currently has 9 teeth.
• Carter now says Mama, Dada, Baba, ball (bah), bubble (buhbuh) for bubbles or water, and maybe one or two other words. He uses baba to mean several things, Bailey (our dog) and baby (any other young child he sees, even if they are older than him!). I definitely don’t think he is as verbal as Abbie was at his age. He has recently started making more sounds so perhaps his vocabulary will pick up in the next couple of months.
• He has started having temper tantrums. I try not to laugh when he has one but sometimes they are just so funny! When he doesn’t get his way, he usually walks away and pouts, hits something, or throws himself on the floor. Fortunately they are very short lived as I don’t give him any attention. He has also started hitting me when I am holding him and do something he doesn’t like. We are working on not hitting. He was biting, too, but that seems to have stopped. I know these are all normal behaviors, but they are still frustrating for both of us. He really doesn’t like to be scolded, though, so the behavior usually stops instantly.
• Carter and Abbie are playing more and more together now which is fun to see. Sometimes, they will both sit on the couch and each be “reading” a book. Other times, they are playing with blocks or cars on the floor. Of course, along with their increased interaction has come more fights between them. Sometimes Abbie will be trying to wash her hands or brush her teeth, and Carter will try to push her off the stool so he can get on. I am not used to sibling fights and find them not fun at all. I am not looking forward to at least 15 more years of them!
• Carter is our little monkey! Seriously….the kid can climb on top of or into anything. He has now managed to climb out of his crib several times (more on that later, I promise), crawl into Abbie’s bed over her protective railings, climb on top of his changing table, climb on top of our bed, climb on top of the play kitchen and climb into the bathroom sink. There really is no safe place for Bailey to hide from him anymore! At least he has now learned how to climb down from things by going to feet first. I am just waiting for his first broken bone.
• Carter can easily follow one, and sometimes two step commands. I know he understands just about everything I am saying to him. I can tell him to go drink his milk or go pick out books to read before bed and he will do it right away. Those are just two examples, but he will do just about anything we ask him to do (that he wants to do, of course).
• He is just the sweetest boy I know! He loves to give everyone kisses. He even likes to hug and kiss Abbie’s babies. I just love getting his open mouth kisses. He loves to smile and will walk up to a stranger and just smile the biggest grin. Just last week, we were watching Abbie’s swim lesson. About half way through the class, he walked up to the dad of Abbie’s classmate and climbed in his lap. He sat there for about 5 minutes! I couldn’t believe it! I kept asking him if he wanted to come to me and he would shake his head no. You should have seen the confused look on Abbie’s face when she looked through the class and saw him sitting with someone else. She couldn’t figure out what was going on! He also loves his “babysitter” at the YMCA. The same woman is there every time we go and he really likes her. He gives her hugs and kisses when he leaves. He just melts my heart!

I feel like I could write a novel about what he is up to these days! He just changes so much every day. I can’t wait until he is talking more so we can find out what is going on inside his little head. We love you our sweet boy!

Our Sweet Boy at 15 Months!

This day I had to make sure he could stack two blocks. We had just been to the doctor for his 15 month check up the day before. I read the little paper that says what your 15 month old should be doing. In addition to using a spoon, it said he should be able to stack two blocks. Being the second child, I have yet to sit down with him to stack blocks. So I had to make sure he could do it and he can! Way to go, Carter!

He loves riding his fire truck (when Abbie isn’t taking it away from him). He has recently learned how to move himself forward and backward.

Of course he still loves to stand on it, much to my dismay.

Here he is giving Bailey one of his open mouth kisses. He sure does love his dog. He must get it from his Mommy :)

He thinks standing on the kitchen is just the best thing ever. He is a smart one. He used to pull anything over that he could stand on to climb up. When I started moving everything away from it, he realized he could pull the oven door down and stand on that to climb up. Well, the door is now broken. That didn’t last long with Carter around!

And my little photographer helper took some pictures with her camera!