Carter - The Wonderful Twos

So, having a two year old is like being on a roller coaster. One minute, you are as enchanted as can be with their wily, sweet, funny 2 year old ways and the next minute you are planning your escape.


Carter has wholly embraced being two. And he's good at it. I think we've got it fairly easy for the most part, but boy can he shriek. I don't even know if it's a shriek. It's a shrill, piercing scream. I don't know why he does it. Maybe for attention, maybe for the pure joy of listening to himself. We caught him the other day shrieking at his reflection in the oven. What is so astounding is that this incredibly loud boy can run from the room with his hands over his ears complaining that the vacuum is too too loud.

Carter seems quite taken with Baby Wyatt. He talks to him in the sweetest baby voice using words we've never introduced...like couchy and socky. Overall, he's been quite sweet with his baby brother....we've only had a few head smacks and a couple of hand squeezes. I do think nursing both of them has helped ease the transition.

Wyatt gave me 2 big smiles today. Just after he woke up and I picked him up. Ahh, there's nothing better in the world than a baby smile.

Wyatt Grey is here!

Wow, I really need to post more often, but with a 2 year old and a 3 week old, who knows when that will happen. Carter just turned two years old and had a nice party with a Thomas the Train cake. He LOVED it when everyone sang Happy Birthday and asked for more. So cute.

His baby brother, Wyatt Grey, arrived two days before Carter's birthday. They are 2 years minus 2 days apart. Here is Wyatt's birth story.

Wyatt Grey was born on 10/19 at 10/19am.....right around 9lbs. He's cute, a great nurser and hovering right around 10 lbs right now.We had planned a home birth with Vickii. At 32 weeks Wyatt went breech coinciding with, because of,or the other way around, major unprecedented bouts of anxiety and insomnia for me.

I/We tried it all....chiropractor, moxibustion, acupuncture, massages, slant board, heat, cold, music, flashlight, talking, pleading, crying, swimming/diving....ultrasound at 34 weeks to rule out abnormalities, and, at 37 weeks, a version to turn him at the hospital. Nothing, the little turkey wouldn't budge.I researched, discussed, and even spoke with a midwife who had her own vaginal breech homebirth. We decided we were committed to a homebirth, as we couldn't find an ob/gyn willing to do a hospital vaginal breech.

Then at 38 weeks, everyone involved had hesitations. I had a weird feeling that something wasn't right. We all agreed that maybe a c-section was best.I scheduled one at 39 weeks 2 days, as UCSD said they weren't going to allow minors on the maternity ward in the near future due to H1N1. I have a nursing, co-sleeping 2 year old and wanted him to have access to me.

So, we did it...the anticipation sucked (no other word to use). Having a planned c-s was surreal and crappy and all my plans went out the windowBut its done. I took tylenol after surgery for pain (and lots of good vitamins and minerals and arnica prior to and after surgery) and went home 2 days later. The ob/gyn said at the time of surgery that the cord was shorter than average. It took a lot of tugging, pulling, and a very bruised newborn thigh to get Wyatt out. There also went my plans of no vitamin K.

There it was, my second and probably last birth....going totally opposite of what we wanted.

Who knows what would have happened at home....he might have been fine, he may have done nothing and we would have transferred to a hospital safely, or things could have gone totally sideways with a very sad outcome for us.Nobody will ever know....just thought I'd share. But, we're co-sleeping, tandem nursing, cd'ing and loving our crazy Wyatt. Best we can do now, huh?

Dirt and horse poop.

Dirt and horse poop...the two things that make a boy happy. We went to visit our horse today and took him a carrot. Well, by the time we got to the ranch, there was about half a carrot left and someone in the backseat was mumbling, "num num carrot".

So, we fed the horse his partial carrot and brushed him. And tried to feed him some grass, then dirt, and then a few small rocks. Concerto is too smart though and turned it all down.

We then went into the riding ring and played in the sand. Carter asked for a shovel to dig, but I explained to him that we can't dig holes in riding rings, as the horses might fall down. We then spent about 10 minutes running through the ring whinnying and yelling "slip in hole" and then falling down.

After that we sat down and filled our pant legs with dirt. We also found a nice dry piece of horse poop and practiced our throwing skills. Then fully satisfied with our outing, we pretended to eat the poop in front of mama, laughed, and then buried the manure. "Bye bye poop" were our parting words.

Papa Boom Boom

No, this isn't the title of a disco song, it's what you will hear Carter saying about his papa. "Papa boom boom", "papa vvvvvvv", and "papa loud" all mean the same thing: papa is working around the house. We are still working on our fixer upper, which means that papa is always making noise!

He's either hammering (boom boom), drilling or vacuuming (vvvvv), and sometimes taking walls down (loud). Carter loves to help and although it delays projects, papa always gets Carter a drill to use. Yesterday they were both doing a bit of drywall texturing. Papa was texturing the drywall, while Carter was texturing the bucket and his knees.

While papa works, he listens to really loud music like Metallica or Kiss or some other bands that I don't really know. Carter LOVES it and always pauses in the doorway to violently shake his head up and down to the beat. Makes papa really proud.

Not Blue..

I so wished I had blogged about this while it was occurring, because it was just so darn cute! Carter learned the color blue almost immediatey and 99% of the time could tell you when something was blue. If something wasn't blue, it was simply "not blue". He'd smile and confidently nod his head, "not blue". I wish everything were as easy as that.

He's now doing really well with colors and knows a lot of them. We like to name colors when we are out on walks......the only problem is that neither nature nor car manufacturers like to use primary colors, so we end up guessing about a lot of them. It's also not helpful when mama says, yup that flower is sort of blue and pink and purple.

I just think it's too early to introduce fuchsia, cerise, and cerulean blue.

Language Explosion

About six weeks ago, Carter transitioned from two word sentences (usually a combination of "more" and whatever he wanted) to 4 and 5 word sentences. It was unbelievable. We went to bed one night with a babbling baby and woke up to a toddler asking for "more tiny strawberries please". He signed the "strawberry" part, but we counted it nonetheless.

Most of our sentences still need a bit of translation. "Mama hold you" means "Hold me mama". "Papa big dip" means "Papa I want a lot of dip on that chip". Although I am sure there will come a day when Carter is big enough to hold mama and to tell his papa that he's acting like a big dip!

Just recently he used a 10 word sentence. It went something like "very very very very very very very very too far". He was explaining why he couldn't reach the moon.

Although my favorite sentence right now is "I love me", said in response to mama or papa telling Carter that they love him. It's still all about Carter.

He wakes up now in the middle of the night and talks quite a bit about very odd and random things. I assume that he's dreaming. Last night there must have been a bad dream about a train, as we woke up very distressed and saying "uh oh choo choo". The bad dreams are usually followed by a command of "up" and "mama walk". I take this time to throw him over my shoulder, go pee, and by the time I get back, he's fast asleep.

Carter loves his tofu!

Carter is a vegetarian.....by default at least. Mama doesn't cook meat, which means Carter doesn't eat any right now. He does just fine so far and loves all kinds of crazy things like kale and corn risotto and cooked leaks. He really enjoys his "topu" and will ask for it while finger spelling it....more of a wild movement of fingers, but we understand him nonetheless.

Rob's a bit worried about the vegetarian gig lasting too long. He's afraid he will have to take his son to a baseball game and order a tofurkey hot dog. I've assured him that won't be the case, but did remind him that nachos, cotton candy, peanuts, and ice cream sundaes all qualify both as vegetarian and righteous baseball game food. He still looked a bit concerned.

We may have to hire a private omnivorous tutor for Carter before he goes to school however, because he does have a bit of a learning delay due to being a vegetarian....the other day I fed the dogs their usual fare of raw chicken and veggies. Carter pointed to Agatha's chicken leg and said "topu?". Oh well, he does recognize chicken in its natural state....clucking with feathers! :)