Carson, in his own words

Selected quotes, lately:

"My hair is gross. I need a bath." [This one is recurrent. He loves baths and does not--gasp!--get one every day.]

"The goat had to die." [Explaining himself to the Mount Shasta Animal Hospital staff upon entering the building with a heart in a Ziploc. Which goat? "The sick goat."]

"Dada, STOP!!! Stop sitting on the couch! You should get up and play with me!" [He thinks he should be in charge of all activities.]

"I'm a hedgehog! Animals don't wear clothes!" [His response to my query of his preference for jeans or sweatpants that morning. This is an appeal to his book The Hat in which Hedgie the hedgehog finally escapes a sock he had got his head stuck in.]

"Right now I'm looking for the power, because Mom and Dad lost it, Hannah, so we can't have any lights on.... The power is out, so we need to get a new one." [Hunting, flashlight in hand, during his first experience of a power outage in the dark.]

"Please can I ask?" [Usually follows a conversation something like this... Bubba: "Carson, did you ask before you took that off Dad's desk?" Carson, hastily: "I'm gonna ask, Dad. Can I aaassk?"]

And one of our very favorites, that makes us melt rather than laugh: "I need a kiss and a hug!" before he will let either of us leave him... we love this boy.

with Mt McLoughlin, southern Oregon, on a trip this week with Dad

The fantastic twos

This week Carson is 28 months old. I thought he was a lot of fun at 18 months, but it keeps getting better! We’ve seen a lot of growth just in the last 6 weeks. Things we’re loving right now:

1) He suddenly learned how to entertain himself. In a matter of a week or two he went from needing mom or dad’s undivided attention at all times (at least when indoors) to playing for long stretches with legos, puzzles, or just in his own imagination… speaking of which…
2) Wow is that imagination soaring. He pretends he is one of the cats (“I’m soft and cuddly Hannah”) and curls up on my lap. When he puts on his fireman boots he imagines “flames leaping out of the windows” and has to find his hose to spray water on them. “Soon the fire was out, Mama.” He drives his car around “going shopping” and always says he’s buying donuts or chips (for the record, this does not reflect our typical purchases). But mostly he takes great and detailed care of his “bees”, which are bowling pins that resemble insects. He changes their diapers and takes them to the potty, feeds them, puts them to bed. The following videos are from a month ago, on the day the bee fascination began… still going strong.






Some additional little things that have surprised and entertained us of late: He correctly points out “the way to the clinic” and “the way to church” when driving. He contracts “I am not” to “I amn’t”. He greets me when I come home from work with “Hi gorgeous! Hi precious!” (The first is Bubba’s fault; the second we think he may have picked up from Grandma?) He knows which is his right hand (and foot, and eye etc) vs. his left. (He still appears to be left-handed). He recognizes 10 or so of his letters and picks them out in random places—for example seeing Bubba looking at Wikipedia from across the room and pointing, “That’s a dubbo-you!” (He also woke Bub up from a nap one day by whispering next to his head, “S like a snake…S like a snake…”)

I’ve taken amazingly few photos in the past month and need to catch up on a lot from the fall, so I’ll stick with just another video for today--another from the first of January: