What did you say?

As Carter is communicating more and more, he is saying a lot of funny things. I thought it a good idea to capture a few of those. I’ll try to give enough context so these make sense.

1. We have a puzzle of the United States of America that Carter loves. He knows every state and is now starting to learn the capitals. He knows Olympia, Salem, Sacramento, Boise, Helena, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City. Emily was trying to teach him the capital of Alaska the other day. Here’s an abbreviated version of that conversation:

Emily: Carter, what’s the capital of Alaska?
Carter: I don’t know.
Emily: It’s Juneau.
Carter: No, I don’t know.
Emily: No, Carter it’s Juneau.
Carter: But I don’t know Mom.

It took a little while for them both to understand the confusion. Now, if you ask Carter what the capital of Alaska is, he’ll respond, “Juneau, but sometimes I say I don’t know.”

2. Carter loves when I make him pancakes (or at least I pretend that he loves them). However, he doesn’t call them pancakes, but rather PanPakes. He also has a book of nursery rhymes that has the story Pat-a-Pake (not Pat-a-cake). It is too cute to correct.

3. I am a big fan of creating nicknames for our kids; I’m not sure I really ever refer to them by their given name. For example, Brandon is now affectionately known as The Little Buggy. If I call Carter by something other than his name, he will say, “No, I’m Chunky Monkey Carter.” That name has definitely stuck with him.

4. Carter has a couple of names for Brandon – The Little Buggy (not to be substituted with The Little Pookie as we quickly found out) and My Babe. It is fun to see him go up to Brandon and say, “Hey Babe, you doing ok?” or something similar.

5. Speaking of terms of endearment, Carter has occasionally referred to me as Hun. He has come to get me at times saying, “Hey hun, dinner is ready.”

6. We are working on potty training Carter (and yes, it is taking that long). He has mastered going #2 though, so that makes us happy. He does have the habit of examining the product after going on the potty chair and he will come running out telling us that his “poo made an H” or “an S.” A little gross, but quite funny.

7. Carter is pretty good with the alphabet and is learning the lower case letters. He was getting confused with the lower case L’s as they look like I’s. So, Emily had a good lesson with him the other day. That night, as she was putting him to bed, he told her to wait and said, “Mommy, the door has two L’s and two I’s.” Emily was quite confused, so she asked Carter to show her what he meant. He proceeded to point out that our six-panel doors had two rectangles on the bottom that didn’t have dots (small square panels) – these were the L’s – and two rectangles that did have the dots on top – those were the I’s. It’s amazing how kids see things. (hopefully you can visualize what the doors look like – otherwise, this probably doesn’t make sense.

8. Carter will now ask us almost on a daily basis, “What day is it?” If we don’t answer right away, he will follow up with, “Is it Saturday?” He knows that he gets to watch cartoons on Saturday, so if it is Saturday, he lights up and lists off the cartoons he wants to watch. His favorites are Cars, Pooh and Friends, Bob the Builder, and Thomas the Train. Thankfully, we are moving away from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show – that has to be one of the most annoying shows out there – no offense to Barney or the Teletubbies.

9. In a couple of weeks, we are heading to Carmel, California with the Hastings family. We have told Carter of the trip and he is quite excited. So, every now and again, he will ask us if we are going to Carmel that day. When we say we aren’t going for a couple of weeks, he responds with, “I want to go to Carmel right now.”

10. I have a pretty cheap little studfinder I used to put up some shelves in our garage. Carter thinks that this is a phone he can use to call the Cars characters. If he finds the studfinder while we are in the garage, he’ll go and pick it up and say something like this, “Oh, hey Fillmore. I’m doing good. I’m helping my daddy. Ok. Bye.” He’ll then turn to me and say, “Sorry, daddy, I was talking to Fillmore.” He’ll then proceed to call the other Cars and have a similar conversation.

11. As most of you know, Carter seems to have gotten sick quite often. He seems to get a fever almost every other week. To show you how bad it has gotten, this past week when he was dealing with the latest ear infection, Emily took him to the Doctor and then to the pharmacy. Carter looked at her as she picked up the prescription and said, “Is that the Amoxicilin?” It’s sad when your two-year old knows the name of the drugs he is taking. He also knows Motrin by name. Each time we go to give him some Motrin or any other medication, he’ll ask us if it is the yummy kind. Like his mom, he can’t handle the cherry and loves the Bubble Gum flavor.

12. We have the tradition of singing a quick song (Let Us Gather in a Circle) before our Family Prayer each night, and now Carter wants to sing the song by himself each time before we sing the song as a family. He’ll sing the four-verse song and then we all fold our arms, and then he says, “We forgot to sing the song.” It goes that way every night.

13. Carter is now becoming very curious. He is constantly asking “Why” anytime we try to explain something to him. He also wants to make sure he understands what you are talking about whether or not you are talking to him. He will come up to Emily or me, grab our faces, turn them towards him, and ask, “What did you say?”

Photos of Carter

A gal in our ward asked for some kids to help her with a photography project, so we volunteered Carter. She has posted a couple of the pictures on her Blog, so while they are still there, here's the link...

http://www.ravissantphotography.blogspot.com/

Note that the first two pictures are not of Carter; he is not a girl. But the next six are him. Enjoy.

Carter v. The Duck

Ok, so Emily has asked that I upload this video to our Blog. I'm not sure how the quality will be, but we'll give it a try. This is Carter throwing dirt at and mocking a duck while at Camp White last summer (Is Camp White going to happen again this year?).



I'll answer a couple of questions I'm sure you'll have. No, Carter usually wears more than a diaper, but he was wanting to work on his tan that day. Yes, he does appear to have a pretty good arm; too bad he hasn't developed it at all since last summer. In fact I think he's even lost a little something.

Update on The Fam

Aunt Leslie has asked for a quick update on our family, so here goes…

Brandon is 7 months old, but is the size of an 18-month old kid. At least that’s the size of clothes he is wearing. The clothes come right out of Carter’s dresser and into Brandon’s. He is at the stage where he’s trying to crawl, but still can’t quite get it. He ends up scooting backwards a bit, rolls around, and then starts crying because he’s too frustrated. It’s a little sad, but quite funny. He has always been a happy, smiley boy and continues that now.

Carter is 2 ½ and is growing up a ton every day. Unfortunately for his daddy, he hasn’t developed a love for sports quite yet (although we do play ‘kick’ every now and again). He has however developed a love for reading, doing puzzles, watching Cars, and building houses out of the couch cushions. We are working on potty training and he is doing quite well. He loves wearing underwear, especially his ‘Tow Truck Mater’ undies. As for the puzzles, his favorite one now is the ‘United States of America’ puzzle (not American Idol, as he’ll remind you). He knows every state and is working on the capitals.

Emily and I are doing quite well. Emily is still working one night a week and finishing up some school work via BYU-Idaho. This, and raising two youngens, keeps her quite busy. I’m still working for the same company, Vulcan, and am enjoying that quite a bit. The occasional trip down to Portland for Blazers games and other perks have made it even better. We love our ward and the neighborhood we live in, but have been quite frustrated with the weather this winter. Who would’ve thought it would rain this much here? And we miss being closer to family.

Our dog, Chica, has not been with us for 4 years now and is missed dearly.

Mueve el Ombligo?

Ok, we all know that naming your Blog appropriately is instrumental to its success, so I thought long and hard about what to name it. I mean, its almost like naming a child or choosing the name of your Halo character. After at least 45 seconds of back and forth between Emily and me, we settled on naming the Blog "Mueve el Ombligo." For those of you unfortunate enough to not understand Spanish, this directly translates to "Move the Belly Button." The significance of this song in our life is paramount. When in Chile for our first wedding anniversary, this little girl's song, titled "Mueve el Ombligo," was being played on every radio station and morning program known to Chileans. Due to its prevalence while we were there, it has been permanently imprinted in our minds and has somewhat become our song (I guess every couple is supposed to have A song, right?). And by our song, I mean I will sing the chorus line every now and again and Emily will give me a courtesy laugh. Neither of us knows the rest of the words or the name of the singer; however, the song is still very important to us. I almost get choked up thinking about it.

Ok, I decided to find the song on YouTube. Apparently the singer is Chirstell (she seems to be a big enough star to only have one name). Here is the link if you'd like to share an important part of our life.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=FITjSfAUzlk&feature=related

Enjoy.

Reason for Blogging

Well, up until now I have been set against starting a Blog despite Emily's repeated attempts to get me to do so. I don't know what it is, but I have just had something against blogging. Anyway, on Friday, Emily sent me the following email, essentially forcing me to start this Blog.

Top Ten Reasons You Should Start A Blog

1. Your parents would love to see the pictures
2. Not to mention your sisters too
3. You would be really great at blogging (quote from Deborah when I told her I wanted to start a blog: "oh why don't you have Ryan do it, he would be really good at it")
4. I've heard it is super easy, it wouldn't take up much time.
5. You haven't written a family letter in a while and it would be a good way to keep everybody up to date.
6. There are lots of cute videos I would like to share with the family
7. You would have fun
8. Everyone would see how cute our kids are
9. It a good way to save our memories of our boys
10. And Number ten: YOUR WIFE WOULD REALLY LOVE YOU FOR IT!

I replied back saying that my wife should love me irregardless of whether I start a Blog or not, but due to Emily's conditional love and my desire to save our marriage, I have thus decided to start this Blog. I hope you all get some benefit from the sacrifice I am making. Enjoy.