Carter

Carter has been crawling like a little mad man lately. He still crawls the army crawl/arm pull. He is pretty quick at it. He tries to get up on his knees and he will kind of bounce there a second trying to figure it out, but then just plops to his belly and starts pulling himself around. The last couple days he has started to do the push up pose with his arms up under him and he is balancing on his toes. It is really funny. He really wants to pull himself up to a stand and I think if we had shorter and sturdier furniture around him he would be. He tries to stand next to Caleb's chairs, but they are pretty flimsy and he just pulls them on top of himself. He has been crawling under his exersaucer a lot lately, Caleb used to do that when he was a youngster, too. Carter loves to crawl in and out of things and especially under things, but then he gets cranky when he bumps his head or gets stuck. Carter loves to babble and blow raspberries. He says "dadadadada" a lot. Anytime of the day you can hear him blowing raspberries, either at someone or to himself. When he does them he always has a special twinkle in his eye like he is being mischievous doing it... he is too cute! The ornery streak, I feel, will be running thick through him just like his father and brother.

Carter is eating like a champ lately. He eats a 4-6 ounce bottle when he first wakes up, sometimes early enough he will go back to sleep after. Then after we both wake up enough he will eat about 1/4- 1/3 cup cereal and a 2 ounce container of fruit. He has tried applesauce, bananas, pears and peaches (I don't think he really cares for peaches). He then has a snack of 4-6 ounces of formula a couple hours later. And for lunch will eat the same meal as breakfast, but with 2-4 ounces vegetable instead of fruit. He has tried squash, sweet potatoes, green beans, peas and broccoli (but that was with chicken in another meal). He will have a little bit of formula right after lunch. Later in the afternoon he will have some more formula, then for supper he will have cereal and a mixture of some type of meat. He has tried turkey w/ gravy, applesauce with chicken, applesauce with ham, and broccoli with chicken. He also had a couple "dinner" type jar foods like beef vegetables with dumplings and chicken vegetables. We wait to feed him his bottle at night until right before bed.

His napping and sleep habits have also improved tenfold compared to a month ago! A typical day looks like this:
7:00 a.m. Wake up
10:00 a.m. nap (1-1 1/2 hours)
1:00 p.m. nap
8:00 p.m. bedtime
We only have to lay him down, give him his paci and pretty much walk out the door. He will fuss just long enough for Caleb to tell us "Baby crying" and maybe a minute later he is done. At night for the most part he sleeps through. A couple nights last week he woke up in the middle of the night- we are never quite sure why, hungry, trying to poop, teething?? who knows. We usually put Carter down to bed before Caleb and usually by the time we are coming in to lay Caleb down he is sleeping. But, there are the occasions that he will still be awake and when we are reading to Caleb, Carter will be scooted all the way into the corner of his crib and he will be peeking through the bars, moving his bumper out of the way if needed. It is funny to look over and see him watching us. :)

Carter has no teeth right now. We keep saying- oh, he's crabby, he must be teething or, he drooling, he's chewing, he's waking up at night, etc, etc, etc.- but, we have been doing that for a couple months or more now and no teeth. Caleb had already had a couple teeth by this age which just shows us that they may be brothers but, they are very different children.

Which comes to my next topic. I think Carter is going to have brown eyes. Every once in a while when I look at him he looks like a brown eyed baby, but when you look really close- his eyes are still kind of blue. I will have to try to get a picture really up close. Some of his facial expressions remind me a lot of the Hartwigsen side of my family. He has what we call "the Roger look". For family members- 'nough said. He made a look the other day that looked just like a picture of my mom when she was really little. But, there are still some people who say he looks A LOT like Chris and his side of the family. I guess that just means he has a good mix.

I guess that is all I have to say about Carter right now. He has his 9 month check up middle of September. I can't believe how fast this year has gone! I don't want him to grow up so fast! :( *sniff* I want my baby to stay a baby forever!