Nature vs. Nurture

Today I asked Carter to please help me clean up his toys. I handed him a toy and said please go put this away. I would watch closely to see what he would do. Every toy I asked him to put away, he put away in the right place. He has a pretend food basket, Mr. Potato Head container, Misc. toys basket, dinosaur basket, cars bin and a tool bench. As I was cleaning I put some of his cooking stuff right on his grill so I could just toss it in the pretend food basket after I was all done picking up the other toys. I handed Carter a pan and asked him to put it away. He brought it to the food basket and put it in. I continued to pick up other toys and quickly noticed all the food and pans I had piled up on his grill was gone and put in his food basket. He put the stuff away without me even asking or pointing it out to him. He noticed it was out of place and put it in it's place. He is so smart. I found a magnet on the floor and asked him to please put it where it belongs and he takes it and happily runs over to the fridge. I hand him a piece of his tool bench, ask him to put it away and he places it right on his tool bench. Before I know it the mess is all cleaned up and each toy is in it's rightful basket. I don't know if it is because I like having a basket for each toy and he quietly has observed me put his toys away or if it is his 'Virgo' personality shining through but I am pretty proud he already knows where things belong.

Alphabet and counting to ten
Carter says his alphabet and can count to ten. Can I just say the way he says w is the cutest thing ever. He does not have it memorized so I have to say a letter and he will repeat it. I have to say the number and he repeats it. Sometimes when I say 1 he will hold up just one little finger and say one. I can ask him how old he is going to be and he answers in the cutest voice, TWOOOO.

I'm Sorry, So Sorry...
Carter now says sorry. It is the sweetest thing. If he picks on Pippa I correct him and ask him to say sorry. He goes over and tries to gently touch her and sometimes throws in a kiss. I thought apologizing was just something he did because I asked him to but last night as he went to lay down on my pillow he accidently bumped my head. Out of reaction, I said owe. He immediately turned to me, touched my head and said sorry then gently gave my head a kiss. Melt my heart!!! I was so proud. Carter can sometimes be aggressive. He pinches, hits and sometimes bites. Mostly I think he does it because he gets a reaction out of us. Even a negative one is still attention. I also don't think he realizes that it hurts. This apology thing is really helping though for him to learn right from wrong. I really don't think his intention is to hurt anybody when he does these things. He does not have anyone that does it back to him so he does not know it hurts.

He listens pretty well now. I can tell him to get down from something and sometimes he actually does. He will repeat get down and then he gets down. I learned a technique from Janice that I did not think of. When Hunter needs to be corrected Janice looks him straight in the face and tells him not to do something in a kind voice. Although this seems like it should have been such an obvious form of communication I did not think to do it. Since using this method on Carter I have noticed hitting, pinching and biting stops after the first correction. Time outs have become less and less frequent. Not that he had a lot of them but anytime I can avoid the screaming and crying that comes along with a time out I am happy.

Carter's Car
Yes it may seem silly to some that Carter already has his own car but Daddy got it for him to have a project to work on with Carter as he gets older. Daddy had many sports cars growing up. He has even had some he intended on making a project out of. Those projects usually never got very far. But I guess he never had a special reason to finish one before. This car needs a lot of work, I mean A LOT of WORK. It needs some new pieces, a new engine and a lot of restoring. Daddy found it on ebay in Virginia. I did not know about this car until he won it on ebay. The same day Daddy purchased it, before I even knew about it I took Carter to the store to get him his first Hot Wheels cars. I picked up a few and took them home. That night Daddy was going through Carter's new cars and came across a blue one. It happened to be the same car that Daddy just won on ebay. That is when I found out about the real car. How cool, Carter's first car was also one of his first hot wheels. Carter knows this car is his too. He goes around the house saying Carter's car. He is so cute. I look forward to Daddy, Carter and Pepe working on this car through the years and making some great memories.



My Little Artist
Monday night, after the car got delivered, Me, Daddy and Carter went to ArtzZone to paint some pottery. I had a plate I needed to finish from when Carter turned 18 months. Auntie Courtney had brought over a fish piggy bank last week and let Carter paint it so all weekend Carter would ask to paint. I thought it would be a good time to let him go to ArtzZone, pick out his own pottery and paint it. Carter and Daddy painted a baseball glove. They both painted it brown. Daddy did the finishing touches on the front while Carter picked out colors to paint the back. After Carter was done with that he painted a dragonfly. He had a great time doing it and until he was finished he did not even notice the huge mess on his hands. Once he did though he wanted nothing more than to wipe all that paint off his hands. He hates messes and when his hands are dirty he can't think about anything else until they are wiped off or told it is ok. When we had Uncle Johnny's birthday party Carter had some ice cream cake and made a mess. He came up to me with his hands out and upset. I figured he was all done but once I cleaned his hands he went right back to his plate to finish what was left. He was not able to enjoy the rest of the cake until his hands were clean.



Taking Pictures
Carter climbed on one of our chairs and notice our camera sitting there. He picked it up and pretended to take some pictures of his own. Daddy came over and showed him how to hold it as if he was going to take a picture of me and taught Carter how to say cheese to his subject. It was so cute.

Groceries anyone?
Carter has a grocery cart. He took the basket off the base and then loaded some cars and dishes on the base and pushed it around. It was so cute I could not resist taking a picture.


I hope you enjoyed the pics!