One Tooth Down...

Guess who lost his first tooth?!  Yippee!!  Carter was so excited to finally lose that wiggler on the bottom row.  His permanent tooth had almost completely grown in by the time that baby fell out was forcibly pulled out by yours truly.  I couldn't take it anymore.  Now we've got two loose ones on the top row that are on their way out.

Carter was super-excited to see that the Tooth Fairy brought him $5 AND a Lego Mini-Figure.  She just seems to know what boys like.  :-)

Fill 'er Up

We found out at the boys' last dentist appointment that Carter had a tiny cavity.  Our dentist (who incidentally I want to be BFFs with--she's amazing) said we could take a "wait & see" approach, but that it would eventually need to be filled.  So, we decided to get the filling while it was tiny and wouldn't take long. Carter was not thrilled, but he did great!

When we got there, the dental assistant asked Carter what movie he wanted to watch (Lego Movie) on the TV mounted on the ceiling.  She set him up with headphones, a soft pillow and a little laughing gas.  Davis was happily playing out in the waiting area/play room in the beginning.  Before we got started with the filling part, Davis wandered back & decided he would rather watch the movie with Carter.  So, he pulled up a chair and sat by his brother.  The staff decided they could do better than that & made Davis a little bed on the floor.  There we were, Carter chillin' on the big chair, Davis in his soft floor bed & me in the chair next to Carter, holding his hand for support.  I was blown away by how smoothly the whole thing went.  We absolutely LOVE our dentist! She is a mom of two little boys and just "gets it".  Also, she assured us that even though Carter turns SEVEN tomorrow (crazy, right?) it is not strange that he has yet to lose a tooth.  Whew!  We were beginning to wonder if that Tooth Fairy was mad at us or something.  We'll keep you posted!

Kindergarten Celebration

We had Carter's Kindergarten celebration this week.  It was beautiful and so bittersweet.  Mrs. Snyder, Carter's teacher, is just an amazing educator and loves her kiddos so much.  We can only hope Davis is lucky enough to have her, too!  The kids created a special book and video to share with us.  Mrs. Snyder created a video gift of the students' progress throughout the year, set to music.  Let's just say I should have brought a box of Kleenex.  I cannot believe our Carter is getting so big.  Where does the time go?  We are SO proud of him and all that he has accomplished this year.  The choice to keep him in Kindergarten was one of the best things we've ever done.  He has gained so much by being surrounded by his age peers and learning some valuable social skills. Academically, he continues to blow us away...he is reading at a level 26. (The minimum standard for Kindergartners, by the end of the year is level 3 and the test only goes to level 18, so Mrs. Snyder had to modify it a bit for Carter.)  Great job, buddy!

Here is a link to the Kindergarten video  It is kind of long, but very cute.

Getting a round of applause from all of the proud parents. 

 Grumpy and happy faces sharing the special book he made.

 Mom & Dad love you so much!!!!

 Mrs. Drake, the class Para, is so awesome!

 The wonderful Mrs. Snyder!

Davis got to hang out with the big kids & eat cupcakes!

Magic Tree House

The book fair at Preschool was selling the entire Magic Tree House set of books for about $1.50/each (instead of $5/each), so I decided that was a great opportunity for us to buy them, save some money, and have a big supply of books to give to Carter over the course of the next year or so. You know, for holidays and birthdays, etc.  Well, Sean happened to pick Carter up from school on the day that book orders were delivered and never got the memo about rationing out the books.  So, here is our reader with his large supply of reading material:

Big Scare/Our TV Debut

**Update: I called the Hexbug headquarters in Texas today (2/12) to speak with someone in their legal department about my safety concerns with the button batteries in their products.  To my surprise, they had already seen the story on 9News! The head counselor said "Are you the mom that was on TV last week?"  Wow, news travels fast!  He was very polite & shared my concerns about the batteries but was unsure how to go about putting that into a packaging warning.  I told him that I felt it was important enough to warrant a blurb somewhere on their product. (He pointed out that anything on their packaging has to be translated into 6 languages, so it couldn't be too "wordy".)  Anyway, apparently there is a big toy fair in NY today, so all the head honchos are out-of-town. But, he assured me that it would be put onto their radar when they returned from the show.  I hope so!!!!  I'm not looking for lip service.  I will be following up with this and keep you posted!
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We had a scary incident on Monday afternoon that has turned into a public service announcement for other parents who were clueless about the dangers of button batteries, like we were.

Carter was trying to change the battery on one of his Hexbugs (unbeknownst to me) while I was in the bathroom (and no, I did not share that part on TV).  He later told me "I just wanted to see if it would fit in my nose." He freaked out when he put it up his nose & soon realized he was not able to get it out. Thankfully, he is a worrier and came to tell me immediately.  He said it hurt & he couldn't breathe, but I could tell that he was breathing just fine through his mouth.  I tried to clear it by blocking his opposite nostril and having him blow out through the nostril with the battery.  That didn't work and I resisted my urge to go get the tweezers to pull it out because it was lodged so high up I was worried I would just push it in farther, making the situation worse.  So, I called our pediatrician and they told me to take Carter to the ER immediately as they did not have the proper instrument to do it in the office.  My next call was to Sean to get home ASAP so he could stay with Davis. (I really did not want to deal with both boys in the ER, especially with all the respiratory and GI bugs that have been going around!)

On our way to the ER, Carter sneezed a couple of times & I thought "Great, this will clear it out!" No such luck.  So, on we drove.  Once at the ER, we were seen fairly quickly and within 15 minutes we had the Nurse Practitioner telling us that if she was unable to remove the battery with a balloon catheter, we would need to go immediately to the main Children's campus to see an ENT doctor.  That was scary.  I had told Carter what she would be doing & we had a chance to look at the catheter ahead of time (my Child Life Specialist skills came in handy), so he did well staying still as she fed the tiny tube up his nostril, just past the battery, then inflated the balloon and pulled out the tiny battery with the balloon.  Success! It was only after the fact that she told me they had a 3-year-old patient who died less than 24 hours after ingesting a button battery.  I actually think the aftermath of the whole event has been scarier than the actual event!   I was still in shock driving home thinking about all the potential disastrous alternate outcomes.  We are SO fortunate that this did not end differently & wanted to share that with other parents out there in an effort to  prevent this (or worse) from happening again.

On Tuesday night, I submitted a news tip to our local NBC affiliate, and on Wednesday morning I started getting calls from them to do a story about what happened to Carter.  In all honesty, I did not want to be on TV.  It's just not my thing and I get really nervous about being on camera.  I was just hoping they would see the value in our learning experience and do their own story on the danger of these batteries.  However, Dave Delozier is seasoned photojournalist for the TV station and he convinced me that going on camera was the right thing to do.  He is a new grandfather and was genuinely interested in getting our story out there to other parents & grandparents of young children.  I think he did a wonderful job and am so grateful to him for his interest in our story and making it happen. Here is the story on 9News.

Here you can see the battery after it was removed from Carter's nose.  If you look very closely, you can see that the rim of the battery is already black (this was after I cleaned all the gross stuff off of it) from corrosion and burning tissue.  And yes, I cleaned off the balloon catheter/syringe contraption and brought that sucker home!  After all, we paid for it and they can't use it again.  Let's hope we never have to use it!!  Incidentally, Carter continues to do well and we are putting Bacitracin ointment inside his nostril every night before bed.  It seems to be healing well and he only has a tiny bit of bloody discharge from that nostril now. Thank God our story has a happy ending!

She's a Big Eater

What you are seeing is how breakfast looked at our house this morning: Carter is eating Fruit Loops and Blankie is "eating" pretend Golden Grahams, because "She has a big appetite.", according to Carter.  Notice how he put her into the bowl so she could eat with him.  Gotta love that kid's imagination!  

Thanks for the "Help"

It is no secret that I'm not a morning person.  However, my boys never got that memo.  Carter has always gotten up at the crack of dawn (It's not unusual for him to come into our room at 5:45 ready to start the day.).  I can usually hold him off for a while by putting on one of his favorite shows.  Don't judge...a sleepy mommy is a very grumpy mommy.

Yesterday I slept in until, gasp, 7:00 and woke up suddenly when I realized the show was over and Carter was not in our room.  I came downstairs to find that Carter had made me coffee in a creamer cup (he couldn't reach the coffee cups) and opened up the Keurig before it was done brewing because the coffee had started to spill over the top at that point.  *Note to self: creamers are not large enough to hold a mommy-sized cup of coffee.  

Carter had also gotten food out of the freezer and the big scissors.  He was not messing around, people!  This was what I walked in to:  

He couldn't understand why I was upset, since he was just being "helpful".  We had a little talk about safety before I took these photos.  Then I had to chuckle to myself about how, most days, I feel like I'm living in a circus side show with these two boys.  I was just so happy that nobody got burned, cut or worse.  Turned out to be a pretty good day!

That's My Boy!

Carter made these two drawings the other day and we thought they were hilarious.  The first picture is a side view of our house, back yard and fence.  Carter pointed out to us that the house is empty, because...

...we are all at Olive Garden!  See the person in the window on the right? That's Carter. Those lines below are the parking spaces and our car is parked on the far right.  Guess he's been craving some salad & bread sticks!  I couldn't be more proud...those boys really are mine, even if they don't look a thing like me.

Screwdrivers for Breakfast?

The boys have started waking up (their usual wake up time is 5:30-6:30 am) and going straight downstairs to play, without coming into our room first to wake us up.  I have mixed feelings about this since I am definitely not a morning person.  The extra time to sleep is great, but the flip side is that you could go downstairs to find your four-year-old with a screwdriver in his hand, in the process of changing the batteries in his toys.  This is what I walked in on earlier this week:

Lovely!

Fun with Boxes

The boys' new car seats arrived yesterday and the boxes were a big hit! They should start listing the "box fun factor" along with the crash safety ratings on these things--double bonus. 

 Is this safe, Mom?

 Surprise!  It's a Boy-In-a-Box!

Nap time!

Lego Tower

Check out the cool Lego tower that Carter and Sean built.  Carter looks so proud!

Goodnight Moo

Last night we read the book Goodnight Moon.  Carter had fun noticing that the words in the book rhyme and pointed out to me that if you take the "n" off of the word "Moon", the title becomes "Goodnight Moo", which he thought was hilarious.  So, there you have it!

Now What?

First of all, let me just apologize for how long this post is.  I want to be able to remember milestones as the boys get older...and especially to document the BIG things for them.

For the past month or so, we've been pursuing getting Carter tested for some sensory processing concerns that his Preschool teachers had.  Some examples of things they've seen:  Carter choosing to push friends instead of using his words to get what he wants (even though he has a good vocabulary), then having a disconnect between his actions and why friends are upset; Carter having difficulty sustaining eye contact with adults; getting really agitated by certain sounds & covering his ears (even if it's as simple as a vent/fan in a bathroom);  being so bothered by tags in shirts that he asks us to cut them out.

Any one of these things alone is not that unusual, and there are some more things that I just can't remember right now, but if you put them all together they could be indicative of a larger issue, so we decided to move forward with getting Carter tested to see what the experts think.  Incidentally, our pediatrician is not concerned.  He feels that a lot of people are jumping on the "Sensory Processing" bandwagon right now.  Dr B. encouraged us to go ahead with testing, but pointed out that a lot of successful adults have issues with loud noises or tags in clothing or not wanting to get their hands dirty and they are called "quirky".

As part of the process, his Preschool had the Social Worker and school Psychologist observe him in the classroom.  I had an opportunity to speak with the Social Worker this week and she had some interesting insight based on her observations of Carter.  After an hour of observing Carter, she noticed him:  loving story time, not really focusing on the teacher but being able to still follow her directions, looking "lost" when the noise volume increased in the classroom and being equally comfortably playing alone as he was playing with friends.

Then, she decided to get down "in his space" as she put it & try to engage him in one of the "centers" he was playing in.  Something prompted her to grab a MagnaDoodle and start writing words for Carter.  Of the 15-20 words she wrote, he could read all but one.  As she described it "Then I knew I was dealing with a completely different kid than I initially thought."  He had no trouble making eye contact with her as she talked to him about letters and words and he came right over to her & sat in her lap as she wrote words for him to read.  He even invited her to his birthday party next year & told her "You'll be the only girl there, but that's OK.  But, I just had my birthday this year, so you'll have to wait for my party NEXT year."

Ms. May feels that some of the "concerning" behaviors Carter displays in the classroom could be out of frustration or boredom because he already knows many of the concepts they are teaching.  (She did not witness any behaviors she would label "sensory processing" issues, but we may continue the testing for that, just in case.)  She thinks he may just be so focused on "bigger ideas" in his mind, that some of the social skills the rest of us take for granted just don't come naturally for Carter unless you really strike a chord with his interests.  She suggested further testing to see if Carter qualifies to enter Kindergarten next year, a year early.  Or, if he may do better to continue another year of Preschool but at a school that has a different curriculum so that he won't get bored.

At this point, I kind of started to freak out.  The only thing I know about "gifted" students is that I was never considered one growing up.  Whatever Carter's "above average" skills, I think he got many from Sean and some just are inherent in his personality.  However, rather than being thrilled to hear that the professionals think my kid is smart, I am now worried about making the right decisions for him academically and socially.  Of course, will have additional testing done before we decide how to move forward.  We found out that just early reading skills alone are not enough to consider a child to be gifted.  Whatever happens, we are already so proud of Carter and the person he is.  We think he is smart, but we also think he is funny and outgoing and creative...all are equally important in my book.

Here's our big boy in his first school photo:  (I can't believe how OLD he looks!)

First Day of School

Today was Carter's first day of Preschool at his new school! We had a "meet & greet" at the school last night and got to visit the classroom and meet his teachers so we would be prepared for today. Carter loved the classroom and all the stations they had set up to encourage creativity and discovery. We are excited for him to start this curriculum and expand his knowledge base, but also to have him grow his social skills as he makes new friends. We have felt kind of isolated this Summer with the move and getting used to a new neighborhood, so this will be a nice change and a welcome return to routine.

Waiting outside the classrooms--there are four preschool rooms. His school is Pre-K to 6th grade, so we will be here for a long time! In two years, Davis will start preschool here and Carter will be in Kindergarten. But, one thing at a time for this mommy.

Going into his classroom! What a big boy--he took Ms. LaDonna's hand and walked right in. Not a tear or even an ounce of clinging to mom. He was ready!

Ms. Glo(ria) and Ms. LaDonna with Carter when I picked him up today. He had a fun day & his teachers both said he did well--way to go, buddy! Ready to do it all again tomorrow?

Winnie the Pooh

I took Carter to see the new Winnie the Pooh movie on Saturday & we both loved it. We decided to leave Davis home to take a nap, so we were able to relax and just enjoy the show. It is fun to be able to do things like this now that Carter is getting older. Mommy loves any excuse to eat popcorn!

It's hard to tell, but Carter was dancing to the music as the credits rolled.

He is quite a dancer these days!

More Than a Desk

When Carter was still a baby, my grandfather refinished this old school desk for him. We had actually put it into the attic and, honestly, kind of forgot about it...until recently. Carter loves sitting at his desk to color or paint & Davis loves to come over and get into whatever his big brother is working on. I know the boys will get hours and hours of use and enjoyment from this very special gift. Thank you, Grandpa Ted!

3-Year Well Check

Carter had his Well Child visit a couple of weeks after his 3rd birthday & everything looks great! It was his easiest by far, as he didn't need any vaccinations this year. Our only concern was the bedtime routine that has become very stressful with a stubborn 3-year-old & and the fact that the boys are sharing a room. Dr B. gave me some good ideas and we are ready to tackle this! He did warn me that it will likely be a rough couple of weeks as we transition with this new routine, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. I think we will wait until after we return from our KC trip to start, though.

Developmentally, Carter is at a 3 1/2-4 year old level. This was wonderful to hear because we think he's smart, but I'm sure every parent thinks his/her child is the smartest/cutest/best...so it was nice to hear from an unbiased source that Carter is doing so well. However, his growth has tapered off a bit, with his height actually staying almost exactly the same for the past six months. His weight is also down to the 12th percentile, but he is healthy and that's all that matters. We are very happy with Carter's love of school and the progress he is making with learning to share, take-turns and be a good friend.

He is also staying dry at night about 90% of the time (yippee!), but still no #2 in the potty. Hopefully by Christmas we will be done with potty-training!

Happy Birthday, Carter!

I will never forget the moment Carter was born. He started crying immediately at the top of his lungs and didn't stop until they had him dried and swaddled and brought him over to us. I was crying with joy to finally meet my son after just dreaming about him for so many months.

Everyone in the O.R. was commenting about how he must be my son because he was "talking" to us so much (clearly, they don't know my husband!). It was love at first sight and he (and now his brother, too) is hands-down the best thing that's ever happened to us.

Happy 3rd Birthday, Carter! You become more amazing to us every year. We love you!

Our mini-celebration this morning with a cookie & cupcake breakfast!

He was pretty excited to have the #3 on his cake.

The Boy Loves Numbers

Last week I took the boys to Target, and Carter saw this orange shirt hanging on the rack. He started yelling "Mommy, a number 4 shirt! A number 4 shirt!" He was so excited about it, and they were very inexpensive, so I thought maybe we would get a shirt with the number 3 since he will be three soon. Anyway, needless to say there were no other numbers. He was thrilled beyond belief to be able to take this shirt home. He even wore it in the store before we left! Since then, he has been asking to wear it every day and keeps talking to me about how we looked for a number 3 but couldn't find it so we got a number 4 shirt instead, and how he thinks Davis and I should get number 5 shirts. I just love this boy!

Yet another red flag that maybe our sweet, smart boy is growing up to be a little dorky. I wonder who he gets that from?!

just like my dad...

Carter and Sean were modeling their matching All-Stars (aka Converse) over the weekend. Pretty cool!