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?”