The best teether

I am convinced that I am being punished for something. At 19 months, Carter has 10 of his teeth. Of those, four are molars that just {as in, in the last two weeks} popped through, and he is cutting more as I type. This teething bit is for the birds...especially at this age.

Today was especially tough. I put Carter in his bed for naptime, and he went right to bed. Usually when he naps at home, he'll sleep for 2+ hours. So I was shocked when he woke up after 30 minutes. I let him stir a bit until the banshee-like screaming ensued, at which point I couldn't, in good conscience, leave him to his own devices without the aid of Ty.lenol.

After the medicine, the teething pain seemed to subside, but his disinterest in sleep did not. We decided to abandon sleep and play instead. Yes, it has made the rest of the day a little tough, but he has resisted every additional effort to impose sleep.

After Nick got home from golf, I ran a few errands and found the BEST teethers out there.

Popsicles!

Mmm...this is pretty tasty.

Do you want some, Mom?

It fell off in my mouth!

I need to catch the dripping juice!

He hasn't fussed about his teeth since the popsicle. I am a convert!

Gearing up for the Tour

...the TGA tour, that is. The Toddler Golf Association.

This winter Nick had an older set of golf clubs in our basement, and Carter loved pulling the clubs out of the bag, pushing them around, and putting them back. To prevent injury--both to our son and our belongings--we felt like it would probably be a good idea to buy Carter his own set of golf clubs. As a result, he now has 3 plastic clubs just his size.

He is so fun to watch, and he wants to be just like his daddy. He walks around saying "Daddy's golf club" and "Carter's golf club" and pointing to the right clubs {though "golf club" sounds more like goff co}. In fact, when he is through playing with his club, he props it in the corner like Nick does with his "practice" club. I love it!

teeing up the ball (or walnut)

approaching his shot

the backswing

teeing off again

***please forgive the attire above...I don't normally dress my child in green tie-dye, but it is his emergency shirt at school and he played in the water and soaked his shirt today.

And for all of you in the deep south...just a little picture to show you what my daffodils are doing. This picture is from TODAY!!! To be fair, our daffodils don't get great sun, and there are many that are blooming around here. I thought y'all might get a chuckle since yours have probably long since bloomed and faded.

This, I could get used to

And by this, I mean this beautiful weather we have been enjoying. I fear that it is just toying with me, but I have to say that I wish it would just go ahead and decide to keep on getting warmer. When the weather is as lovely as it has been, we get to spend lots and lots of time outside, which makes me very happy. The only thing that makes it better is getting to spend that lots and lots of time outside with my two fellas.

Crawling through a tube

We decided to head to the park after Carter woke up from his (3.5 hour!) nap. We certainly weren't the only ones with that idea, but it was fun to watch Carter explore the playground equipment with lots of other kiddos around. He was a bit tentative, but I think that is because most of them were a fair bit older, moving rather swiftly, and he was trying to avoid getting run over!

Going to see Daddy...he was laughing and squealing...he loved that he could get to Nick!

Turning the wheel

Sliding down the "big kid" curvy slide. I was more scared for him than he was!

Posing with Mom...and not happy about it, I might add.

In other Carter news, he is talking up a storm! He will try to repeat just about anything that we say. Some words come out sounding pretty similar to what we said and others are relatively unintelligible, but he loves to try. While we were at the park today, he showed off his latest skill: helping us count to 10! If I started with 1, he would fill in all of the even numbers until we got to 10! Honestly, I am not sure if this is something he is learning at school (counting to 10, that is) or if it is from the counting books we have been reading, which he LOVES, by the way. Either way, we'll take it. It is so fun to watch our little sponge soak up everything around him!

Out-side!

Today was another beautiful Sunday with temperatures in the high 60s, and all I heard all day from a certain precious little boy was "out-side, out-side." I am telling you, I think we've created a monster! That's okay! I am really looking forward to all the fun activities we'll be able to do out-side this spring and summer! Of course, I am sure that this nice weather we had yesterday and today won't last too long...but we enjoyed it while we could.

Carter and I got out one of the cornhole boards and two of the bags, and he was a champion cornhole player. Of course, as you can see he wasn't exactly regulation distance away from the board.

He subsequently decided that getting the bags in the hole wasn't nearly the challenge he anticipated it to be. Rather, it might be a better idea to use the inclined board as a slide.

Then, he went searching in the garage and found the sidewalk chalk. After trying a few of the colors out on the driveway, he packed them all in the bucket and picked it up. He kept putting the bucket on his arm, saying "bye-bye," and walking away. I thought this was too funny, so I had to take a picture.

Earlier this weekend, on Friday afternoon (after another trip to the Children's Museum), Carter and I were again playing outside and throwing the ball. When he went to chase after it, his foot caught the edge of the driveway and he dove into the concrete. He bumped his head, and scratched his nose. The bump didn't leave a mark, but score one for the concrete as far as the nose is concerned.

The good news is that it doesn't appear to have slowed him down any!

Lovin' Warmer Weather

It would appear that hibernation is over...at least for the weekend! Yesterday was beautiful--in the 70s and we were outside ALL day! Any time we would go inside, Carter would say "out-side" and run to the back door.

At one point, when Nick brought him in the front door from playing on the golf course for a little while, he layed down in the floor and pitched a complete fit about being inside. We got some juice, went back out side, and he was perfectly fine! The boy knows when the weather is warm.

We dug out the sidewalk chalk, and Carter had quite the time dumping it out, coloring the driveway, putting it back in the bucket and taking it back in the garage. It was a cycle we completed any number of times over the course of the afternoon.

When we finally put the sidewalk chalk to rest for a while, Carter decided to go play with on the play set in our backyard. The playset was here when we moved in, so it isn't entirely toddler friendly, but that didn't stop him. He tried to climb up the ladder to get to the monkey bars (he didn't go too far, but loved leaning over and hanging under the rungs). We had taken his swing inside for the winter, but we left the "big boy" swings up. He was determined to swing in one of them, so...

He thought he was big stuff. I held on to the chains over his hands and pushed him back and forth and he loved it! This weekend made me so excited for summer and playing outside more often!