Potty training, take 1.

I got the bug last week that it was time to get serious about focusing on potty training. I am well aware of the whole "you can't force them" thing, but Carson has shown all the signs that he is ready. I would hate for my laziness to be the reason why he isn't going for it. He's had his potty chair for quite a while now, but we haven't had a schedule of sitting on it, we have just had it around when we felt like trying.  I have read a bunch and talked to the girls at his daycare. One of them said she got underwear for her son at Carson's exact age with his favorite characters. She skipped Pull-Ups altogether because he didn't want to go in his cool undies. I came right home and ordered some Thomas and Yo Gabba Gabba big boy underwear and patiently waited. 

They showed up yesterday during naptime. Carson spotted the boxes on the floor right when he came downstairs so it was really exciting for him to get to try them out. I have been stoked to potty train because of how ridiculously adorable his little bum would be in them.

He picked out Brobee for his first pair. They did not fail me on the cuteness factor.

He ran around the house in his new found Brobee undies and ate his favorite new treat, popsicles. 

I just love his pouty popsicle lips.

This all started around 3:00 and by bedtime we were in pair #6. He loves telling me AFTER he goes and he has yet to actually go in the potty. This morning it took two hours for us to be in pair #5 and I decided this apparently isn't the right approach for him. He literally gets off the potty and comes in the living room and pees. I switched back to a diaper and I'm trying to take him to the potty every 20-30 minutes. We really think that as soon as he goes that first time in the potty he'll get it, but until then I can't chase him around cleaning the carpets all day.

This was this morning with his jammies and his Caillou goes potty book. He thinks it's fun to be in there at least. I have stickers waiting for him when he finally goes which he's excited about too.

I'm open to any and ALL suggestions right now since I apparently have no idea what I'm doing. 
Anyone? Bueler?

My birthday in Nederland

When we were trying to decide where to drive for on Sunday I wanted to try somewhere in a different area than we normally go. Plus, my mom and dad were coming so I didn't think we should really go off-road. Carl had been on a bike trip up Golden Gate Canyon to Nederland and we figured that would be a scenic drive that was all real roads. The problems was that the canyon wasn't all that scenic and most of it had signs saying you had to pay if you stopped anywhere along the road. It was kind of lame. I jumped out of my seat and snapped one pic of a flower when we stopped at a bathroom. Lame-O.

We get up to the town of Nederland and it was actually pretty cool. It was full of hippies and bike riders (mountain bike and motorcycles...).  There were cool old shops and a big river running through the middle of town.

Door leading to nowhere? Check!

Random poster of a tiger? Check!

Then I spotted a sign that said there was a carousel. We walked over and there was an old train car and a huge working antique carousel. It was actually really cool. Carson couldn't have had more fun.

Next we found some of the oldest tractors I've ever seen. They were enormous, but once again, Carson was in heaven.

Me, Carson and my Mom and Pops :)

Then it came time to find somewhere to have lunch. Carl insisted that he has heard about the "German influence" in Nederland and that there was a good German restaurant there. Of course he spotted it as soon as we pulled into town. I don't like German food, but it said there was American too so I figured it would be fine......

Why not have a large plant and water feature in the middle of your German cabin/restaurant??? Huh?

Carl was in German beer heaven:

And they were so nice to Carson. They brought him homemade applesauce and candy. Then this REALLY old waiter kept talking to him and when I told him to just bring him some water he said something about a "moon man" and walked away. I didn't know what to expect after that. They came out with a Shirley Temple for him. Connection? Apparently that's what he needed, but it did keep him occupied for a very long time.

The bad part about lunch was.......my lunch. I ordered oven baked chicken with mashed potatoes and veggies. Sounds just fine, right? Wrong. The chicken looked like they caught a robin out back, cooked it and then gave me half of it. I got one little ice cream scoop of potatoes and there were two pieces of broccoli and cauliflower. I literally laughed out loud when they set my plate down. And it really didn't even taste good. My mom's lunch was really really bad too.

By the time 4:00 rolled around I was already starving. Carl made the fatal error in suggesting that I make a Digiorno for dinner. Um, no. Not on my freakin' birthday when THAT was what I had for lunch! We went down to Real de Minas for Mexican food that couldn't be any better. It was the right way to eat on my birthday. And yes, I get to be a spoiled brat for one day a year. :)

Carson and Grandpa after dinner:

Carson had a blast with his grandpa for the last few days. He brought him his first real baseball mitt so guess what we've been doing all day every day since!?!? My dad finally has his boy to play sports with. You know I sure wasn't doing it!!!! haha

And I KNOW I said I wouldn't post any more photos of the sky, but but but look at this one! This was the sunset when we got home that night.

Just us

Last night we all went out to dinner to celebrate the birthdays of me and our good pals Megan and Luke. I picked Red Robin because it's one of the only places we can take Carson and not be the outcasts. He outdid himself for even RR though while screaming at the top of his lungs for half of dinner. 

 

Before we left I tried to get a family photo so here we are... Heaven forbid Carson actually looks at the camera for once.

This one just made me laugh. I'm going in for a hug/kiss and he is going in for the punch.

 

I'm only posting right now because someone (Grandpa) isn't ready to leave yet. Hopefully it will really be in the low 70s up there and a nice day today!

Seriously, take away my spatula.

I am just recording this so I have something to refer back to the next time I think I should bake something. Don't let me. Really. 

Yesterday I decided it would be a great activity for Carson and me to make cookies. I had a bag of toffee so I figured I'd just follow whatever recipe was on the bag. The problem was that it said it was for 6 dozens cookies, which I obviously didn't need. As I start throwing ingredients together I decide I'll half it. But then I thought, well, I'll go with 2/3 the recipe. Somewhere between the butter to flour to baking soda ratio, and my lack of actual measuring, something didn't work. 

Oh, and let's also add the fact that my lovely son apparently took one of my mixer arms and I didn't know this until it was too late. Not the easiest thing I've ever done. My whole sink area was covered in flour.

I was preeeeeettttty sure something was wrong when my dough looked like this:

I kept working with it and actually thought they looked like they could be REAL cookies!

Until I took them out of the oven. And tasted them. I like to describe these beauties as "cake cookies". It was kind of like eating a dry cookie or cake that really needed some frosting. Not what I was going for at all. 

I brought one out to Carson in the backyard and he threw it on the ground after one bite. Go me!

Our little fighter has a little swelling and a good cut from his battle with the coffee table corner. At least it isn't a huge black eye like I expected. It's in the worst place though...no band-aids will stick there and he won't let me touch his eyes at all anyways.

I did have a little kitchen redemption last night though. One good thing about Carl not being here for dinner is my mom and I can freely make lots of vegetables to eat!!! I was grilling chicken and wanted to try grilling veggies in foil packets. I made red potatoes, asparagus, red peppers and onions with some olive oil and lots of herbs and garlic.

I honestly thought that since they were in the foil it wouldn't actually be like grilling them. But I can't believe how good they were! They were charred and had a good grill flavor. We had way too much, but YUM!

Daddy comes home tonight too! It's about time. Carson is very excited to get to go to the airport tonight. When Carl came home two weeks ago his flight got rerouted because of weather so we were waiting in the airport for a while and had to go back home without him. My dad is coming in Saturday night too. When I told Carson Grandpa was coming he said, "Yay! Grandpa's coming out of the computer!" Obviously he said this because he talks to Grandpa on Skype all the time, but I couldn't believe he said that. We are all heading up to the mountains on Sunday because Sunday is my BIRTHDAY! :)

Rain, rain

This afternoon we both wanted to get out of the house. Carl is gone again, my eyes had taken all the computer they could for the time being and frankly, I wanted to shop. We had some large clouds way out in the distance, but I was hoping for the best. I actually took some pictures coming out of our neighborhood, but at the time I didn't think much of them. Silly me. I won't post any more photos of the sky and bore you to death. :)

On our way!

I spent quite a bit of time in one store (and didn't find much that I liked. I am at home online shopping, can't wait to get my hands on some real stuff, try on an arm-full and hate all of it. I just love the experience of shopping even though I rarely actually buy anything. I have to LOVE something to spend money on it. Then they had all the dressing aisles blocked so I had to squeeze in the tiny room with Carson in a stroller while he pulled everything off the hangers and pinched my legs. Wait, where was I?) I hadn't paid attention to the weather since I was sort of in a zone. We head for the door to leave and I see that it is pouring rain. I mean really raining hard. I'd already spent close to an hour in this one store so I figured we'd wait just outside under the awning thingy to let it pass. I think we sat under there for at least 20 minutes. We were at a corner shop so I couldn't even run to another close store because there was nothing close! It was so dinner time and I wanted to go eat if I couldn't shop!

At least I had my camera in my bag so we could have a little fun while we waited.

And tonight's another night that it is 10:30pm and I'm still up attending to randomness. I have never been a night person in my life, but now that Carson is here I find myself craving the quiet alone time. Of course, I regret it once 6am rolls around which is what his internal alarm is set to. I would give some serious bank to sleep until an hour that started with an E or N.

And if any one reading is on facebook that I haven't friended yet, add me at facebook.com/rachaelwooten. I bit the bullet.

And I notice that I love to start my sentences with And. Sue me.

Sweet Dreams! (as Carson would say...)

Gettin' jiggy wit it

Last night we got out of the house for dinner so Carson was being really silly in the car. Carl decided to give me a headache and turn on the techno channel. Blech. The upside is that it looks like Carson likes it like his daddy. It makes him dance...aka makes you completely dizzy to watch. :)  And you can see a pretty good mad face at the end.

Other stuff from the week:

"Funny" faces! Sort of.

 

One night the boys decided it would be fun to put EVERY car in the car table inside of Carson's shirt. Carl then held him upside down while they all rained out which Carson loved. 

But I snapped this pic and when I saw it I couldn't believe how old he looks! Not my little baby anymore. :(

An adorable first

Yesterday Carson was running around and I made an attempt to get him to sit and watch a movie for once. That didn't happen at all. So he was in the backyard and my good pal Josey called. We were chatting about her wedding plans, Carson came to get me and I told him to hold on for one minute and we'd go lay him down for a nap. A few minutes later I realized he had gone in the living room, but it was quiet. I jumped up thinking he was actually watching the movie and I found this:

This is literally the first time since he was a baby that he has fallen asleep ANYWHERE other than the crib or the car. It seriously melted my mommy heart. He is getting to be such a big boy. 

 

Apparently I was wrong

I said last week that we had a frog in our window well and showed you a picture of it. 

Well, my mom and I were comparing frog sightings and she said the one she saw was brown. It was very obvious from my photo that the frog I always see was bright green. On Sunday we went out with Carson to see what we could find and at one time between four window wells we found SIX frogs! There is the one green frog and then five other brown ones we could pick out all at one time. Who know how many there really are since they seem to come and go under the lining. And they blend in so well with the rocks..

We've been keeping tabs on them and giving them froggie baths, which Carson loves. That basically means we fill up a bunch of water bottles and drip water down by them to get them to jump around. Oh, we found a black and white lizard down there too! I got video of a frog chasing it all around down there.

So yesterday afternoon my mom got daring and said she would go down to the basement to fetch some stuff for Carson. We were talking about catching the biggest brown frog, but I was too chicken. Once we got down there the thing didn't budge. I grabbed one of my tall, skinny vases and she got the frog to jump in. I was terrified it would be able to jump out so I kept a CD case partially over the top (you know, stuff you find in your basement, haha). We brought it upstairs and it was so fun just watching the thing. Carson thought it was so cool. After ten minutes or so we took it out to the front yard and let it go. We are contemplating getting the rest of them out...we are worried the little ones are that big one's babies. Yeah, I said it. We are worried about those stupid frogs! :)

Anyway, enjoy our cool little friend!!! He was such a fun new photo-specimen!

Counting

Last night we had to go to the mall to get Carl work shoes (AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!) because now he is required to have steel toes. While he was looking I was keeping Carson entertained. He "drove" the riding lawn mowers, tried on shoes, ran in endless circles and played in the playground.

While we were at Dillard's I noticed he was in a zone while rearranging things on a shelf and got a quick video of some of it. He loves to organize things into lines and he is getting SO good at counting. He can say a lot of the alphabet when you do it with him. If you say A, he'll say B and so on. If you just tell him to say the alphabet though he yells, "A B C O T M 2!"  It's the same every time and I don't know where he got that combination.

At the end of the video you hear him count to six.

Let me do it!

So, our child has become an independent person apparently. Every other thing that comes out of his mouth lately is along the lines of, "No, let me do it!", "No, let me try!" or "No, give it to me!"

He has to do up the car seat straps himself, walk up or down the stairs by himself, get his own ______ himself etc etc etc....including getting in the highchair by himself. Don't you dare try to pick him up, or else! (Which also means the highchair is one more thing we've added to the office since he uses it to climb all over the kitchen counters and get anything he can reach out of the cupboards.)

 

We also had to add a THIRD lock to our door at the very top. He uses the bench to undo the chain and throws stuff out the door when he can't just get the chain off. This one he can't reach. For now. I refuse to be that mom whose 2-year-old ends up at the neighbors and doesn't know about it! :)

The other "fun" thing he's discovered is that his crib is now an art project. One day recently he realized there are stickers above his crib. It's been all downhill from there. Every time I get him from sleeping now he has a blue dot on his forehead.

Another new development in his world is that he has really discovered bugs. He has brought me dead bugs and makes me come look anytime he finds anything. One highlight was a day last week when we were all sitting on the porch watching a storm. This cricket (maybe?) landed on my shirt and he thought it was so cool. Since I had a sweater on I was brave enough to snap a shot before I shooed it away. haha  Doesn't it look like it has a smiley face??

 And for over a month now we have had a frog living down in our window wells. I say wells because depending on when you look he can be found in two different ones. We see him go under the lining so there must be a tunnel connecting the two down there. The first time we saw it was when I was fishing toys out from the basement window and it scared the crap out of me. I almost touched it and screamed like a little girl!

Carson loves looking for him and yelling "wwwwRibbit!" 

(And that shovel is just one of the 20+ things he has dropped down there so far. I give up.)

This was last Sunday. Once again I'll say I seriously love the skies out here. I think I've figured out why too. Growing up in Utah made it so you only saw at most half of the sky at any one time since we were right against the mountains. Out here it seems so vast and it's a totally different perspective than I've ever had before.

I'll end this post with some Grandma love. Awww.

Carl heads to Dallas for a week on Sunday so that should be interesting. Wish me and Grandma luck! :)