Winters in AZ

Are seriously amazing...

It's so hard to get a good picture of Carden lately. The little stinker just won't sit still for anything and half the time absolutely refuses to look at the camera at all, which is why most of his pictures are a profile shot. And then he saw a picture with his toy cars in it and now all he wants me to take pictures of are his toys, like this:

(that's a nasty frog Josh got on his mission and for whatever reason Carden wanted a picture of it.)

Carden loves to imitate EVERYTHING. "Mama! Mama! Like this!" And then he shows me what he is copying. Here he is showing me how the frog had his arms.

Carden's books had to be included in this picture

Carden-two years and few months

Carden is becoming more entertaining every day. We just love this little guy. It's so fun to watch him learn new things and copy EVERYTHING we do.

He still loves his quad. Pretty much he loves everything outside. We go on walks, feed the ducks at the park, ride bikes, drive quads, throw rocks, play in the dirt, everything. The weather here is amazing and we just can't get enough.

Carden is a picker. A scab/owie picker. And he will not stop. So now even the tiniest cut has to be covered in bandaids. He loves to show everyone his "bob bandaid."

My parents gave Carden a sand/water table for Christmas and it has provided hours of entertainment in the backyard. As long as someone is there to play with him. We're still working on playing in the backyard while mama makes dinner. Not quite there yet.

Carden already is asking to have friends come over and play. He has some play dates every week and the neighbor kids come over all of the time, so he doesn't think he should ever play alone now.

Carden is becoming more of a a daddy's boy. Josh is gone a lot with school and work now and Carden sometimes won't see him for 2-3 days, so when he does finally get to spend some time with him, Carden doesn't want much to do with me.

He is still such a cheeser. He's playing with rice here. Just pouring it from one container to another. I think it entertained him for about 2 hours. And it only took me about a week to get it all off my floor!

Carden loves his little brother a little too much I'm afraid. Poor David is always being crushed/rolled on/stepped on/kicked/licked/anything else you can think of.

Carden is getting so much better at talking. He is talking in 4-5 word sentences right now and more people than mama can understand him (thank goodness!) Here's my speechie bit for those who are interested. He has the phonological process of dropping the inital consonant of words that start with s, sh, ch, f, v, basically any sound that you prolong. So it can be kind of hard to understand him at times. I talk too darned fast and the poor guy probably can' t even hear the first sound when i talk! He's able to imitate me correctly when I prompt him and he's starting to say it right on his own now. I have to admit this has always been my fear-that my kids would have a speech issue. And then I'd have to prove how good of a therapist I am! jkjk. He's still only two so I'm not really worried yet. And when my parents came to visit they were able to understand at least 50% of what he said, so we are definitely on track.

Carden used to always say the randomest things, give a fake laugh, sigh, and say "funny." I loved it. too bad that it didn't last for long. He would say thing like "two orange tic tacs." laugh. sigh. "funny."

He gets all of his pronouns mixed up and I love it. Josh tried to correct him the other day and I wouldn't let him. "Mama hold you?" "Mama help you?" Mama play you?" Mama thinks it's just too cute.

David-9 months

David is actually 10 months now, so it's definitely time for an update. 9 month stats: Weight-18 lbs., Length 29 in. About 15th percetile for his age of 9 months.

David is still doing awesome. He is now FINALLY crawling after about 2 months of rocking on his knees and rolling around the whole house to get into everything. He is a much happier baby now that he can get around to everything. Although he is still a mama's boy and gets so mad at me if I walk by him without picking him up.


David is a grabber and a pincher. Nothing is safe around him. He knocked over an entire bowl of cereal and has dumped over his own food more times than I can count. Seriously, it takes less than a second for me to turn my back for him to grab whatever I had and chuck it.

"huh?"

David loves his big brother and I just love to watch them. He laughs and laughs at Carden. Even when Carden is climbing all over him and stepping on him or rolling over him, he still smiles when I think he should be crying.

David already loves cars, trucks, and trains. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with Carden. He will scoot/roll over to the tile and push the little cars back and forth.

Lovin some dada time

He is doing awesome with his helmet. Well, he doesn't complain about it, but his head hasn't grown since we got it, so it still looks the same. Grow baby grow!

So there I was, lecturing everyone else about not blogging enough and then I take a vacation. Whoops. It's about time I write about Christmas.

We had a great Christmas of course. We spent Christmas Day with Josh's family and then my parents and sister came down later in the evening. Carden loved everything about the Christmas season. Our neighborhood was pretty festive and we would walk around every night to look at all of the lights. Carden loved to show me all of the "ismas ee ights" ("Christmas tree lights"-yea I'm a speech therapist and I think my child has a speech impediment. kind of ironic. More on that later). HE LOVED LOVED LOVED to see the lights at the temple and still asks to see them. He also still asks "ick or eat? (trick or treat) so I'm not expecting him to forget about Christmas lights anytime soon. David was pretty chill about the whole thing. He just went along for the ride most of the time.

Carden and David got pretty lucky this year. What can I say, Santa wanted to give the presents just as much as Carden wanted to get them. Josh was tired of Carden always begging to drive his real RC cars, so we decided that Carden needed his very own REAL rc car.

Carden was so excited, he pulled the trigger and drove right into Grandma K.

Daddy teaching him how to drive.

See how excited David is to play with his new cars and ball?

And so excited to look in his stocking! Oh wait, that's the face he always makes...

Carden also got a Thomas the train set. He loves it. The trains are out every day and he just loves to make new train tracks.

We had a very merry Christmas and I'm always so sad to see it go.. As Carden still likes to say.."bye bye Christmas tree lights!" I already can't wait until next year.