3 years, 4 months; 9.5 months

I recently read another blog where the mom listed all the things her baby was doing at the current age, and I thought that was a great idea! While I try to catch a lot of the day to day things we do, I don't know that I truly capture who my children are, so here goes...

I will start with Carter, my first born.

• Carter, you are 3 years and 4 months old (exactly!).
• You love pretend-play in which you pretend to be a robot, dinosaur, batman, monster, spy, etc.
• You LOVE watching Scooby Doo and can sing almost the entire theme song.
• I am currently watching you count sides and angles on shapes all by yourself, and am ever impressed with how bright you really are. But don't let it go to your head :)
• Most of your baby words are gone now - "lellow" is now yellow, and "wipe" is now white. This makes me sad, so I am hanging onto the very few that remain... "Bessert," "basagna," (dessert and lasagna), and "grips" instead of grits.
• You are starting to give in to marketing aimed at children. Every interesting commercial on TV comes with an, "I want that!" from you. The most recent item is a box of cereal straws. You even remembered to remind me about them when we were grocery shopping.
• You are so sweet (most of the time). Last night, you climbed into my lap and said, "Mommy, you're my pretty girl." I melted, of course!
• I love that you are not picky at all and will eat just about anything. We go to Subway, and you get almost everything on your mini sub (and eat it all gone). You eat salads, broccoli, onions, olives, fish and shrimp, and just about anything, except for tomatoes.
• You love books and will sit for hours if someone is reading stories to you.
• Your favorite lullaby right now is not really a lullaby, but you think it's the funniest song ever. "Put Your Hand in the Hand" cracks you up, and I'm not sure why! You request it every night.
• You are very, very silly all the time!
• You want to be the leader of everything. Some people call it bossiness, but your daddy thinks these are good leadership skills and that you will be a quarterback. We'll see if Mommy allows football...
• Your favorite color right now is red.
• You are learning to be a little gentleman, and usually let me go first because I'm a girl.
• You are growing up too fast!
• There is so much more that I can't remember right now, but I will try to add to this list as time goes on...

Charlie, my second born.

• Charlie, you are exactly 9.5 months old.
• You are not interested in crawling, but you would like to be able to stand so that you can walk.
• You don't love the car seat, unless your brother is next to you and playing with you.
• You laugh harder at your brother than anyone else. I hope you always have a strong bond.
• You LOVE moving around in your walker and you try to chase the dog and get into everything!
• You are very patient and laid-back, most of the time.
• You are so very sweet and love to give giant, slobbery kisses - you've been doing this for a few months now.
• You seem to be a little picky and don't like a lot of veggies, foods with textures, etc. You are not interested in much table food, or in feeding yourself finger foods. You love fruits, yogurt, and all sweets.
• You are sensitive to certain stimuli, and loud noises scare you.
• You love your morning nap, but not so much the afternoon nap. We'll have to work on this.
• Your favorite thing to do is to make a scratching movement (this is your comfort when you are sleepy), and you scratch your face and head repeatedly. I keep your nails as short as they can be, but you still manage to scratch yourself, and other people always like to make comments as if I am not doing my job.
• You are so stinkin' cute! You have the biggest brown eyes and the cutest toothless grin! You also have such a soft, sweet voice. I hope you don't get mad at me later for making a girl reference, but when you talk, it reminds me of Pebbles Flintstone.

I love you both so much, more than I can express. I am amazed at how very, very different you both are (as the doctor puts it, different dips in the gene pool), and yet I love you both the same, infinite amount. Carter, you were never a baby - you came here grown and did everything super early. Now, you are able to help me a lot because you are so beyond your years. Charlie, I am so happy that, being my last, you are really a baby still. I only hope that I don't treat you as a baby longer than you want to be, simply because you are the baby of the family.