Carter and his cousin Eden

And Ava, too!

Merry Christmas 2010

Proper Christmas attire!

How about a smile?

On to the stocking:

Chocolate's always a good stocking stuffer.

Carter turns 4

Carter turned 4 on Monday, and Sunday we invited eight other kids to Chuck E Cheese to celebrate. It was everything I hoped it would be (surreal, cheesy, bizarre and amusing) and more. I think it must have been totally mind-blowing for a four year old.

Carter willingly posed with Chuck E Cheese. I was shocked.

Having fun with our neighbor Jackson, age 6.

Carter got a funny inflatable hat with tokens embedded in it.

Star Wars cake. When Carter leaned over to blow out the candles, he got frosting all over his shirt. I should have anticipated this, but I'm still a rookie at kid birthdays.

Chuck E Cheese came out to sing and dance. He had a strange New Jersey accent.

Carter got to take one friend into the ticket blaster machine. He took Grant, and they got to grab tickets for 30 seconds:


And here's a video of the Happy Birthday song:

Christmas concert

Carter's holiday program at school:

Don't I know you from somewhere?

Carter says that the Santa in the mall is just a guy in a costume -- but a guy that works for the real Santa, representing him while the big guy gets his sleigh ready. He saw fake Santa today.

Here's the 2009 Santa picture:

And 2008 and 2007:

School pictures 2010

Hi Eden

Carter's new cousin sure is a cutie...

At the State Fair

Die!

One of the more hilarious moments of the past few months was when we played Chutes and Ladders with Carter. In one of the articles about helicopter parenting that I've read (and, sadly, identified with), one teacher said that some students start kindergarten having never lost a game of Candyland. That's just wrong.

So I decided that when we play board games with Carter, we all play to win and we don't let Carter win just because he's the little guy of the house. And that was the setup for our first game of Chutes and Ladders.

This game is all over the place. Carter was winning big at one point, but he ran into the giant slide in the middle and tumbled all the way to last place. That didn't go over well. He finally got so upset that he tried to turn over the entire board, but we didn't let him.

Frustrated and enraged, he screamed, "DIE, MOM AND DAD!" before falling on to the sofa in tears. Quelle tragédie!  It was all we could do to keep from laughing. But we maintained a remarkable stoicism, put the game away and went about our business while Carter moaned in despair.

From then on, he refused to play the game with us. Since then, I have bought a few more games that he likes. One of them, "What's on my head?" has no losers and he loves it. For his birthday, he's getting Candyland.

Does this look like a kid who would wish death upon his parents? It's always the cute ones...

A new cousin

Carter has a new cousin! Eden Grace was born on Oct. 28. Carter won't get to see her until next month sometime (hopefully), but I think he's going to love her.

The subject of Carter's affection

Carter absolutely adores playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii. He would play it for hours if we let him. It's the first thing he wants to do in the morning and when he gets home from school. We probably let him play it too much, but it's so amazing to watch. He can get through several levels on his own, and these aren't easy to do. It's really funny when he watches the Star Wars movies and sees the things he knows from the game -- usually it's the other way around!

Iron Man

Carter's Halloween costume, 2010:

Let's recap his costumes so far:

Halloween 2009: Handy Manny!

Halloween 2008: A tiger!

Halloween 2007: A pumpkin!



















A chicken!

And a dragon!

Early Halloween

Ava and Grant joined Carter for a Halloween party at his school.

Making ghosts:

Facepainting. Carter refuses to get his face painted:

Who is that mustachioed boy?

Hey, how do you use these things?

Hanging around

At a birthday party at the gymnastics facility.

Listening to music

Carter and the beanbag

We got this beanbag at Target and Carter loves it. He sits on it to watch TV and to play Star Wars Lego on the Wii -- his favorite thing to do right now.