Normally I am a person who enjoys winter in Nebraska. I get excited about snow, enjoy a few cold crisp air mornings, and absolutely love the frost and snow covered trees when we are fortunate enough to get them. But my outlook on winter is changing as the middle of this year’s winter has arrived. Usually, the cold temps and heavy snow don’t really hit us until mid-January and by mid-February we get a couple of 40 or even sometimes 60 degree “breather” days to melt the snow, let the dogs hang out in the yard, and maybe take a walk in the fresh air. This winter has been filled with colder than usual temperatures and heavy snow since about mid-December and I’m ready for my “breather” days, but there isn’t one in sight (at least not for the next 10 days). It snowed about three inches at our house last night and for the first time since I can remember, I wasn’t at all excited to see the winter wonderland this morning. I’m officially ready for spring – a little sunshine, digging into some dirt, and sitting around a patio fire all sound awesome right now.
Carter has been busy progressing these days. Lately he’s started playing with his shape sorters and such. He dumps all of the pieces out, puts the lid onto the toy, attempts to get the pieces back into the buckets via the small shaped holes, and then when he’s unsuccessful he lifts the lid and just throws it back in the easy way – takes after his mom. Ha!! He’s definitely in the “dump things out and put them back in” stage though.
He is now standing up on his own consistently (without assistance or using an object to pull himself up), but isn’t confident enough to take those first unassisted steps. He’ll take a step or two if he knows someone or something is going to be there to help him regain his balance, but if he knows he’ll have to take more than one or two steps to get to his destination, he’ll get down on all fours and crawl. And I can’t blame him…falling isn’t fun.
With his confidence building in his ability to stand, he’s also started to dance over the last week or so, which gets me dancing too. He absolutely loves music, so it’s super fun for me to sing and dance with him. He enjoys pat-a-cake and the itsy-bitsy-spider songs and gets mesmerized whenever I sing twinkle-twinkle-little-star. I also sing a lot of songs that we learned at his sign language classes, which makes me sound like a crazy woman when we’re out in public. Most of the songs are to the tune of row-row-row-your-boat, so that’s the tune he hears most often and it’s been a little overworked. I can tell because he no longer pays attention when I sing it.
After Carter started taking antibiotics for his ear infection a few weeks ago, we started him on the tooth brushing regimen. Surprisingly, he doesn’t mind having Matt or me brush his teeth and gums before we let him “chew” on the brush for about 5 minutes. And I’m enjoying the teeth brushing ritual in the mornings as it gives him something to do while I’m finishing my hair every day. Oh, that reminds me…he’s mastered the ability to lift the toilet lid (which is why I needed to give him something else to do)!! A toilet lid lock is on my shopping list for this weekend.
Speaking of Carter’s ear infection, it reared its ugly head again last weekend so I stayed home with him on Monday and took him into the doctor’s office again. I assumed it was another ear infection because all of his symptoms were the same as the symptoms he had two weeks prior, but it turns out it was the same ear infection. Dr. Russell said the antibiotics must not have worked, so Carter is on new antibiotics this week and was feeling better by Wednesday. He’s on new eye drops too which he’s getting MUCH better at receiving. We’ll be done with eye drops tomorrow though and I won’t miss administering them!!
Carter has been busy learning how to use a spoon over the last few weeks and is getting closer to figuring it out. Well, it appears that he understands what he’s supposed to do with it, but he just hasn’t gotten the coordination down. He’ll put the spoon on his tray, push some food onto it and then proceed to dump it into his bib. Or he’ll be holding the spoon upright with his left hand, pick up a piece of food with his right hand and attempt to stick the food to the spoon. Usually this isn’t a successful method. It’s all fun to watch though, and don’t worry about him going hungry…after a couple of unsuccessful attempts with the spoon he’ll resort to just feeding himself with his hands again.
Matt has been busy reffing basketball these days so I’ve been holding down the fort. He has one more week of regular season games and then he’ll have at least one more after that – a district final game – yay!! It’s a bit of an honor to ref a sub-district or district game, so he’s pretty excited about the opportunity, which means I’m excited for him. 
Not too many plans this weekend so it should be a nice relaxing one. We’re scheduled to get more snow on Sunday and Monday…I-yi-yi!!
GO COLTS!!! (I’m a Colts fan for the weekend.)