Carter at 20 Months

Wow, 20 months already?! My little guy is not so little anymore. He's getting closer and closer to being a big brother, and thankfully keeps getting more and more ready with each passing month. I just wanted to take a few moments to capture Carter Glenn in all of his brilliance at 20 months. I know how easily I forget exactly when he did what (and a lot of this has been going on for a while) but I just wanted to document it here for posterity. :)

- He knows most of the alphabet (still mixes up a few letters here and there) and can identify most of the letters, match letters if there is more than one of a kind, and is starting to learn the alphabet song with me.
- He can count 1 to 10 well, sometimes up to 20, and is starting to understand how to count things...he definitely understands when there are a few items, but gets a little mixed up when there are a lot (I think once he starts counting, he just doesn't want to stop, so if there are 8 of something, he keeps going to 10 most of the time!). He's started counting the steps when we go up and down them.
- He knows all of his basic shapes (circle, square, triangle, rectangle, oval) and also knows star, moon, heart and even octagon. Glenn has even started teaching him crazy shapes like rhombus and parabola. If you draw shapes on a piece of paper, he can color certain shapes certain colors, which just amazed me.
- Speaking of colors, he knows his colors...red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black and white. The hardest ones for him to get were orange and purple. He still mixes up black and brown occasionally, and purple and pink.
- He has a crazy vocabulary! When we go through his books together, he can identify pretty much everything I point to in every book, even difficult items like microscopes, caterpillars, feather dusters and octopus. Sometimes his prononciation isn't the greatest, but he definitely knows what things are if you take the time to understand him. He loves his lift-a-flap books and his look-and-find books best of all, and I think these have helped with learning so much so fast.
- He can identify pretty much any animal we run into and knows sounds for most of them that make sounds, and motions for anything I could think of that doesn't make a sound. We go through these a lot in the car when I'm trying to keep him awake, and recently, I started telling him the sounds and he is able to tell me what animal makes the sound, too.
- While he's still far from reading, he's starting to understand the concept. He knows that "C" is for Carter and Collin, "M" is for Mama, and "D" is for Dada (plus a few others, but these are the main ones) and if you write those words down, he can identify the four of them by looking at the letters. He is also good at filling in words when we read books...sometimes by pointing at the pictures and he fills in the blanks for me (Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Goodnight Moon), sometimes just because he remembers from reading it so many times (Knuffle Bunny, Ferdinand).
- He's starting to understand relationships...big, little and medium (we work on this with his "quack quacks"), in and out, on and off, etc.
- He knows all of his body parts, even his eyebrows, and can identify them on himself, other people, and in books. He loves to pound on my back saying "backabackabackabacka" which I'm hoping will translate into nice backrubs down the road!
- Some of my favorite "Carterisms": duck = quack quack; bird = peep peep; monkey = ha; lion = grrrr; elephant = finit; pigs say "eh eh" instead of oink; roosters (and usually chickens, too) say cock-a-do; yogurt melts = myna melts; ice cream = ki keam; apples = a-a's; pineapples = a-a-a's; bicycle/tricycle/motorcycle = guycycle; Mickey Mouse = Myna Mo; Elmo = MoMo; Grancy = Cee Cee; Zoey = Suzzy; Sophie = Phie Phie
- He really is such a sweet little guy. Sure he has his moments, but he's a total cuddle bug, loves to give hugs and kisses and snuggle, and will occasionally say "love you" which melts my heart. What he lacks in independence, he more than makes up for in affection, and I don't think I would trade that for all of the independent sleeping in the world. :) I am such a proud Mama and just can't even believe that we made this amazing little person from scratch!