Terrible Two's: The Peak (I hope it's the peak)

Today has made it clear to me that we are currently near the peak of those terrible two's with our young little Carson. I think it would be healthy for Kim and I to accept the fact that during this stage we will absolutely not have a tidy house. Not that it usually is tidy, but right now it is just not really possible. Our time at home basically consists of alternating between three things: cleaning up a mess of his, scolding him for hitting someone, or redirecting him from doing something that places him in immediate danger. That's pretty much it. We are having some recent difficulty with him getting objects from something and then hiding them elsewhere. For example, I am in the beginning stages of growing a Grisly Adams beard because he seems to have hidden the charging cord for my shaver somewhere. I have looked all over this house and driven myself nutso looking for it. Hope he didn't throw it in the trash. Oh yeah, the TV remote....it's missing too. You know it's hard telling what he might have put in our trash and we have thrown out without even knowing it. He also has developed a big-time fascination with all light switches. He will make flat-out certain that all lights and fans are on in our house at all times. And the refrigerator....absolutely will not keep it closed or stay out of it.

We got back from the drive-in last night around 2am - went to see Shrek: the Third and Spiderman 3. We had not been to the drive-in forever and neither of the boys had ever been. We were skeptical about it, primarily not knowing how Carse would do, but overall it worked out pretty good. Anyway, even though we got him in bed about 2am, he still was up climbing in our bed and laughing at 7am as if he had been asleep for twelve hours. You all know that once your toddler wakes up - you are up. Don't matter how tired you are or how glad you are that it is finally the weekend and there was a 5% chance that you could sleep in until maybe 8. You are up. A few days ago while he was still i his crib, Saturday mornings meant he would lay in his crib after he woke up and sing us a few songs and stuff while we dozed a while longer, but now he is jumping up and down on us like we are human trampolines and kicking us in the face.

Maybe in a year or two we can start living in a house that does not look like a tornado went through it.

Carse says bye-bye to the crib

During the middle of the night Sunday night, Carson wakes up and decides to climb out of his crib. Typically when he wakes up during the night, he immediately starts whimpering...and he has never tried to get out of his crib. Well, all of a sudden we hear a load crash through the monitor and then crying, and then he comes trotting into our bedroom just as we are beginning to realize what has happened. He seemed fine and fell asleep in our bed moments later. We put him back in bed after a little while and then in the morning when I go to wake him up I see the huge black eye. He looked like Rocky Balboa after a fight with Apollo Creed.

So needless to say after I got home from work last night I converted his bed into a toddler bed. He actually did fine with it last night and only got up once and Kim used the SuperNanny technique and he went to sleep after just a few minutes. So in a span of about 5 weeks, he has reached a couple of real nice milestones in saying farewell to his pacifiers and his crib.

Also, I wanted to mention that I have been playing with this new photoediting software....check the previous post of Jackson's graduation and see what I did with the picture of him in from of the garden at school. Here is a picture of Carson from October, 2005. I always thought his eyes were a brilliant blue color in that particular shot, so I decided to play with it and here is what I came up with.

I think the thing that is really cool about this is that those shades of blue are not edited in any way. Those are the actual colors from the original photograph.

the graduate

Jackson's kindergarten graduation was great. I think it means that he is officially not a little boy anymore. He will be a big, bad first grader next! He was a little nervous, but did very well and made his Grandma, Maam, mommy, daddy and little brother real proud of him. All the graduates got to say a little line during the during the program and Jackson said his just fine: " I like to learn about science, and birds and bugs!". Here is is holding up his diploma right after the ceremony.

I was fortunate enough to be able to capture this tender moment between mother and son...

awesome stuff, right there!

Doug E. Carson

So the fam is all having fun watching the American Idol finale on Wednesday night and when Jackson's favorite contestant Blake Lewis showed up on stage with Doug E. Fresh, our eyes were glued to the TV. After watching for a few moments in delight, we notice that Carson slips out of the living room and appears about 15 seconds later looking like this and grooving to the beatboxers!

I'm telling you, the Carse-man is going to be quite the entertainer.

our boys...

they're so awesome!

A day at the track (2007)

Some of you might remember that last year, I took Jackson to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the first time and I took a few minutes to add it to TWN. Tuesday provided another great chance to go back to the track...it was the first day that all drivers were able to practice and I already had the day off due to primary elections. Even though last year was a little shaky for Jackson when we went, he stressed to me that he really wanted to go this year - that he was almost 6 six and that the noise would not bother him as much. There was no chance of rain to I picked him up from kindergarten and we headed for the track. We had a great time. It turns out that a year made quite a bit of difference for him! Yes, he still got a tad whiney as we sat in the stands for part of the day, but after we got to the turn 3 infield grassy area we got more comfortable. Here are a couple of the better photos.

Then in the evening, Jackson had a baseball game, here he is making a great hit!