Our last week of summer waaaaaaaaahhh

Summer will live on for Carter, but not for Mommy. I have to go back to work next Tuesday and I am trying to relax and savor these last moments. Nevertheless, it's hard when you have three months of maternity lesson plans to make a dent in, and a major case of nesting going on where you feel this urge to start shifting Carter's nursery into the office which will eventually house both boys.

Carter is feeling no stress though fortunately. His cut is healing nicely, although he still talks about it constantly. In a desperate attempt to declutter my mind, I boxed up 2/3 of his toys and bought some bins to put the toys on a rotating system so he will continually have some novelty in his life. The house is much less cluttered and he seems to be playing longer with each toy now.

This week he finally started building blocks again. He started at 12 months stacking a couple blocks, but in spite of my encouragement, he found greater joy in knocking them all down, and that's all he did until I recently decided to run with his favorite word, "On" and tell him that I was putting the block "on" the other block. He took notice and now he likes to say "on" and "off" when attaching and detatching Duplos.

I also cleaned all the "I'm a clueless new mom books" out of my closet since I feel like an old pro now at dealing with babies. I went to Half Price to trade them in for new books for Carter. I got $40!!! That bought Carter about 8 new books. He especially loves the Scholastic On the Go book that has like every truck that exists in the entire universe in it. Since he can stare at those static trucks for several minutes saying, "Wow!" I thought he would really love me if I could show him those trucks in action. So I introduced Carter to some YouTube videos about excavators, bulldozers, dumptrucks and firetrucks. Sure enough, I am mom of the year in his book now, and I have learned a thing or two myself. For instance - a bulldozer does more than push things around, it also has a ripper that rips up dirt. Fascinating stuff. I'm on my way. Maybe Youtube can teach me football, baseball and all the other sports in easy to digest five minute videos.

Carter also loves garbage trucks. He used to be fascinated with digging through the trashcan until he mastered the words "ew" and "yuk" and now he treats the trashcan like the plague. The same thing happened with the word "hot." Once he learned that word, we identified many household dangers as "hot" so he would stay away, and he does. This worked for electrical outlets, water heaters, stoves and ovens.

Carter has really gotten into nursery rhymes too now that he's seen the animated versions of all the major ones on Youtube. He is doing the hand gestures to the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "This Is the Way We Wash Our Hands" songs.

In spite of my efforts to put off exposing Carter to tv until he is two, I have fallen victim to Desperate Housewife syndrome where I just run out of energy at some point in the day and feel the need to have a child who will sit still on the couch for thirty minutes. So we have started one show a day. Usually it's "Yo Gabba Gabba," "Thomas" or this dvd on nursery rhymes I got for free. It is freaky how drugged he looks when he watches tv. He barely talks and doesn't always dance along or move his hands along to the songs unless I physically make him, but I know it's going in there becuase if I say anything that even loosely resembles something he has seen on tv, he will go to the tv and insist on turning it on. The sad thing is, that now there is no turning back. Nothing indoors beats the tv. He asks constantly for the tv to be turned on. I wish I could take him outside more often, but I can't take this heat at any point in the day.

Anyway, that basically sums up this last week of summer. I am not looking forward to going back to work, but I take comfort knowing that I will be off again soon. I will be a sleepless zombie with my hands full of two high maintenance little guys, but I will be home again.