Updates:
Jack is talking up a storm. Carter heard us say that and one day busted out at the breakfast table, "Jack's just talkin like a storm!" Ok, back to Jack. He's so stinkin' cute, but he can be a stinker. He's really developed a little attitude. He doesn't like being told "no". Like, at all. Maybe it's because we really didn't tell him "no" for the first 18 months of his life. Like ever. But now we do, and it results in drama, drama, drama. He can throw one impressive fit. It's all we can do to keep him from hurting himself in the heat of the moment. So, he's a little of a loose canon, but 80% of the time, he's awesome, and hilarious. He's learning his colors, shapes and his letters and can identify about 25% of the alphabet and a few numbers. He really does not like the number four because his counting goes like this "one, two, three, five, six, seven..." No matter how many times we correct him. Who needs 4 anyway, right? He loves books. LOVEs them. We've been bad about reading bedtime stories to him like we used to do with Carter (i.e. unlimited numbers until he was practically asleep in the chair with us), but have really been forcing ourselves to spend more time on that. We've gotten him off the paci except at night time and nap time, and I think that's really helped with his talking, not having a constant plug in the pie hole. He's a good eater, but pretty picky. He doesn't like vegetables or fruit or pretty much anything that remotely looks like it grew from the ground. He's a meat and cheese and bread kid. We're getting there though. The other night he ate a huge serving of green beans, and he does like carrots and apples. Baby steps. He's a climber. He's been throwing a leg over the side of the crib and scrambling up cabinets and tables for the past few months. I foresee a toddler bed and lots of furniture straps in our near future. We're about halfway through his first semester of pre school (two days a week) and he's doing fantastic. He was a little quiet/shy/reserved for the first couple of weeks, and there is still some separation anxiety happening at morning drop offs, but other than that, he's really coming along like a champ. His teachers LOVE him. I can hardly get away when I go to pick him up because they love telling me how wonderful and sweet and cuddly and cute he is. It's a tough life :)
Carter is 3 going on 30. He's started sounding out words, which is just mind blowing to me. He's been "reading" for a little while now, but it was more memorization. He would see the letters d-o-g and know that it spelled dog, but not because he was sounding anything out. Just in the past few weeks, he's really gotten good at sounding out and figuring out words he's not familiar with. He's still a very early reader, so consonant clusters (ck, sh, th) are tricky, as well as vowels that don't say their long or short sound (like the silent 'e' or the 'a' in ball), but he's getting there. He's really intuitive and sensitive when people around him are upset, so I have to be careful about wearing my feelings on my shirt sleeves. He loves music and watches more TV than he should. He memorizes things he hears really quickly. He will recite entire versus to songs he's only listened to once, but that I don't know after hearing a dozen times. As a result, I have to REALLY watch my language these days. He also has the ability to outsmart me. A lot. Not on purpose, I just get stumped on how to answer him sometimes. I gave him a spanking when he was about 2 and a half and sent him to time out. He was sobbing and told me "Mommy, we don't hit!" I haven't felt good about spanking ever again. That's not a recent example, but it's stuff like this that just make me really have to think before I interact with him sometimes. We had a slew of flys in the house after having a window replaced. As I'm up on a chair swatting them, Carter asked me what I was doing. I told him I was swatting flys. Later that night, he said, "Mommy, can I ask you a question?" When I said, "yes", he said "why did you kill those flys?" I told him I didn't want them in the house. He told me "Mommy, we don't squash bugs. They just want to go to their home." Seriously!?! I think a lot of kids are like this, but Carter amazes me because he is our first. You just don't think that a little human that has only been on this earth for 3 years can put things together like that, but they do. He also can do some basic math, make patterns, recognize patterns, recite the planets (in order from the sun), and tell you the colors of the rainbow. After lots of back-and-forth, he's using his left hand enough that we are 90% sure he's left handed and 100% sure he's left-footed. Did I mention we think he's a genius? I know, we're really unique, thinking our kids are super special and super smart.
Stephen is doing well. He likes his work. I like him. He puts up with me. It works. Oh, I ran my first half marathon last Sunday. Came in at 2:28 which was a few minutes under my 2:30 time goal. yippee. I'm running another half in November, and my goal is to run the whole thing (I only ran 10 straight miles of the aforementioned race before stopping and walking periodically). I'm training for a full marathon in January, and, fingers crossed, will see the finish line in one piece. My time goal for the full marathon is 6 hours, and I have no intention of ever doing a marathon again. I just want to cross it off the ol' bucket list. I do like half marathons, though. I might keep those up. Half the distance, twice the fun.
Off to bed. I've been cheating on blogger with Kindle. It's awesome. I wonder how many times I said awesome in the course of this blog. Probably not enough. Have an awesome night. I'm out.
