Crawling

It’s been a busy week. Carter started to crawl on Monday night, and by mid Tuesday morning he could make it across the living room. He gets faster and more fearless everyday. He can pull himself up to his knees already and is working on getting to his feet. The crib railing is now to its highest level since Saturday, when Shawn went to get him from his nap; Carter was standing in the middle of the crib holding onto only the mobile!! Everything is interesting now that he can crawl, and lately he is focused on Holden’s dishes, door stops, everything on the TV stand and anything he can reach on the coffee table. Of course Carter also loves to crawl up to (and onto) Holden, who lays there and takes all the hair pulling abuse. They have some sort of agreement, Holden and Carter: Holden lets Carter pull his hair in exchange for Carter letting Holden eat the soggy cheerios stuck to his pants. Its been freezing cold here in
Arizona, the coldest it’s been in 30 years!! Our plants all look dead since we have had many nights of frost, and some homes have even had pipes burst due to freezing. Tonight we even had snow!! It’s very odd to see snow falling when you have cactus in your backyard. 

Shawn ran the PF Chang half marathon last weekend. Shawn ran, and I drank coffee and watched while he ran by. It was pretty neat to see the thousands of people running. He did very well, running 13.1miles in 1hour 45minutes, ranking about 1050 out of 12,000. Anyway, more video for the grandmas: 

1^st time crawling: (this is Monday night when he was just figuring out how to shuffle his arms and legs)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y65uamT1b7U Crawling: (Tuesday morning, he figured things out pretty fast)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyKsSLsOjCE 

More crawling:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foZ2yLJGtfw Chase me!: (Holden trying to get Carter to chase him in his walker)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ClVqHXOUc

Video Extravaganza!

Well here are some video from Christmas and this week. Some show up a little dark on you-tube, but hey it free!! Enjoy!!

On the table:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBFaAsNbuiQ

The Christmas bear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MWjsFBqLkY

Great Grandma Davis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlPsQs0j_gU

Santa:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLxEBeG6Cpo

Fun at the Willett House:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISfH6pth8I4

Fun with Mommy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axEspnpSZbE

Walker:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YqNfvqeN0Q

Snow!

We spent the weekend in Pinetop, Arizona. So while Carter saw very little snow in Canada over Christmas, he did get to see snow here in Arizona!! We went with three other couples from my baby group; there were 8 adults and 6 babies all about Carters age ( 2 sets of twins). We stayed at a family home of one of the couples, actually it was two homes: one 8,000 sq ft and the other 2500 sq ft!! Not to shabby!! We bundled Carter up and pushed him around on a seld and took him for walks.

We bought Carter a walker since he loves to stand. He’s still figuring it out but with the right motivation he can get it to move pretty fast. Holden is the motivation, and he now has to keep one eye out for Carter. Carter launched himslef at Holden the other day while he was trying to have a little dinner. Holden took off, as Carter slammed the walker into his food bowl!

Poor Holden. He had surgery yesterday to remove a small tumor from his leg.  Hopefully it will be nothing. He did very well with surgery, and he is liking the extra treats and attention. He is currently “recovering” in our bed.

 

Happy New Year

We have made it back to Phoenix. The holidays were good, we spent a few days in Ottawa & the rest of our visit in Bracebridge. Everyone, including my parents, goes to the Willett home for Christmas eve and Christmas. Everyone was there except Trent, who did not make it home from Korea.

Carter did really well on the airplane. We even had comments on how good he was. Have to admit, it is exhausting to have your child be “good” on the plane, because that means you have to entertain and distract them when they are not sleeping. Carter loves to touch and taste EVERYTHING right now, so he had to bang on the tray, close the window shade & chew on the arm rest. At  one point the barf bag did provide about 45 minutes of enterainment though.  We now know that we are indeed the couple people dread being next to at the airport. Yes, the people with the baby who will make attempts to grab your magazine and spill your drink. We also take forever in the security line. I think we had 6 bins: 2 laptops, one camcorder, baby food, a breastpump, two belts and jackets, and three pairs of shoes. Yes, we had to take of Carters shoes!!

We did have one challenge on each of our flights…. where do you change a diaper!?! As soon as we saw his poopie face (he grunts, turns red & puffs out his cheeks), we knew we were screwed.  He’s eating solids now, so he can really stink up the place. Shawn owes me big, because I changed both diapers.

Anyway Carter has had no lack of attention the last two weeks, and apparently he can do no wrong. He never seemed to get tired of entertaining or soaking up the attention. He wasn’t shy and didn’t seem to miss us; only looking for mommy when he was hungry for milk. The endless attention for Carter did mean, that someone else fed him his solids, changed his diapers, gave him baths, did his laundry, & were waiting to play with him first thing in the morning! At one point Shawn even commented that he missed Carter because he hadn’t gotten to hold him in  a while.

When all 4 grandparents were together, they did have to learn how to share Carter. They a were all pretty good, but Grandpa Willett was a definite baby-hog. You’ll notice who is holding Carter in most of the pictures.  Grandpa Willett even developped a knack for stealing Carter post diaper change: Grandma would take Carter to change his diaper… Grandpa would hang around the door, make his strategic entry & somehow exit the room holding Carter, clean diaper & all.

I’ll post some video from christmas later this week, but I did post pictures on flkr:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/77936547@N00/with/342811617/