Skip to main content

The Best Things About Carl (at 2 and 3/4)


1.  He loves to sing and knows a prodigious number of songs.
2.  He can set the table.
3.  He usually invites friends over for lunch.  When there is no one to play with, he tells me "I want to visit someone!"  Since I also crave company, we make a pretty good team.
4.  He is a cheerful guy.  He smiles easily and often.
5.  When he gets upset, he bounces back quick.
6.  He plays imaginative games with Soren frequently.  They are pretty happy to cooperate in a flight of fancy.
7.  He likes hugs and kisses.  I love it when he rushes up and hugs my knees.
8.  He can be quiet during family scripture study.  And afterwards, he always asks for a synopsis in terms he can understand.
9.  He is brave.  Yesterday, he climbed up a great big curved ladder at the playground, all by himself.  
10.  He speaks clearly and politely.
11.  He can pull me in a wagon!  That takes a lot of strength.
12.  He is happy within the boundaries we agree on.  I can trust him to stay where I tell him to stay.
13.  He is an enthusiastic dancer.
14.  He enjoys it when I tell him stories and read him books.  He frequently requests stories and books, not just at bedtime, but throughout the day.
15.  He loves to "cook" for Benjamin Bunny.  Usually he cooks up peg soldiers and stirs them with a long lego.
16.  He still likes to be helpful and he is getting better at it.  He can now help mop the floor without spreading water everywhere.
17.  He likes to share.  Whether its imaginary or real, he wants to share what he is eating, doing, or otherwise enjoying with everyone.
18.  He is learning to restrain himself when he is angry with kids his own age.  He will ask to adult help in solving problems rather than hitting.
19.  He memorizes books and then "reads" them to me and to himself.  
20.  He is growing into a good-looking boy!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What Works for Us: Room Time

I've decided to do a new series of posts on how I make parenting work for us. Every parent does it differently--which is great!--but I have a hard time keeping my discoveries to myself. The things I do may not work for anyone else but I want to record them and remember them. Hopefully, it will also help me vent my soap-box-y-ness so that I'm not always imposing my ideas on other people. That will be what "What-Works-for-Us Posts" are about. One of the things that we have always done, but has made a HUGE difference in the move from one to two children, is Room Time . When Soren was 6 months old, I started having him play alone (in a safe place) every day for a few minutes. At first it was only five minutes in the port-a-crib but we quickly worked up to fifteen, then thirty. At that time, I used those precious minutes to do housework or relax on the couch. When I was pregnant with Carl, Soren would play alone for about an hour in his room and I would usually tak...

Surrounded by Love

One of my greatest worries about having four children was that I would not be able to welcome and love my new baby as well as I had the others.  Now that he is here, I feel that he is perhaps the most welcomed and best loved of all my sons.  More on that in a moment. I struggled to bond with Leif in utero, in part because pregnancy was old hat to me and in part because life was busy with too many other things.  The new miracle  growing inside of me was the most normal thing about my life.  There were a few good moments that helped me prepare mentally: doing guided meditations during Christmas vacation, my blessingway on January 6th, and a really good conversation I had with Scott about my hopes and worries.  But mostly, my mind was elsewhere. And then there was the birth.  I should have known that it would be a totally unique experience and that it would prepare me for this totally unique child. Needless to say, I'm crazy about the little guy. ...

ABCs

A couple of months ago I was trying to encourage Soren to draw. For 15 or 20 minutes every afternoon, we would sit at the coffee table with paper and pencil. I would draw stick figures and doodles; Soren would watch, his own paper untouched. After a couple of days repeating my usual pictures over and over, I ran out of ideas and started writing the letters of his name. One day I wrote and drew pictures of all the things I could think of that began with S: Soren, snake, superman, spider, stars, etc. The next day we focused on the letter O. It gave me ideas for drawing, which kept Soren entertained even if it wasn't fulfilling its original purpose. A couple more weeks went by and I didn't put any effort into reinforcing the letters. So I was very surprised when, one day while reading a naptime story, he pointed to the page and said very distinctly, "ess". He was, in fact, pointing to an S. And he was very excited about it. So, instead of reading the book, we sp...