Carter's Trip to the Zoo

Carter received some Christmas money from his grandparents, and we chose to purchase a year's pass to the Central Florida Zoo. We took Carter there this past weekend, and we all had a great time. I can't wait to see the changes in his reactions throughout the year as he becomes more aware of the animals.

Here Carter is feeding the "nice" goat. Carter got scared by the goat after he feed her and tried to eat all the animal food himself.

This is a Zebu. Still not sure what a Zebu is, but it looks like a cross between a cow and a horse. This Zebu was small. The other Zebu's head was up to my shoulders! There tongues were very slimy and their noses were very snotty (kinda like Carter).

This is the "mean" goat. We weren't fast enough feeding him, so the goat decided to repeatedly ram the fence with his large horns. We quickly left to feed the "nice" goat and the zebus again.
These are spotted leopards. The one on the ground kept pacing the fence. We think he wanted Carter for a light snack, so we kept our distance.

Maude and Mary are the two elephants at the zoo, and they have been together since the 1970's. Carter didn't really care about the elephants, but he spent 20 minutes climbing up and down the steps of this wooden picture. He should have been hired as the official elephant section greeter because he said hi to about 20 people as they passed by.

Merry Christmas

Our families traveled in different directions this year, so we celebrated Christmas three different times. Here are our favorite pictures from the past couple weeks. Merry Christmas!

Carter at the Polar Express exhibit at Sea World.

Uncle Ryan and Aunt Kelly gave him a motorcycle for Christmas! Vroom-Vroom! (Sorry it's sideways. I couldn't figure out how to turn it around.)

Grandma and Bob (Granddaddy's new name) Meeks gave him a climbing set. His favorite thing to do is stand at the top and "stomp, stomp, stomp".

Wrigley decided the climbing set looked fun too.


We should have just bought Carter boxes.

This animals sang "Jingle Bells" everyday for at least 3o minutes.

Can't wait to pack them up soon!

Carter seeing the tree on Christmas morning.

It is much better to sit on the presents to open them.

Merry Christmas

On Saturday, we went for our annual picture with Santa. We have tried to prepare Carter for this day since Thanksgiving. Carter can point out Santa anywhere, loves to say Santa's name, and can even say "Ho, Ho, Ho". Steve even took him to the mall a few times to just look at Santa.

I guess nothing can prepare a one year old for actually sitting with Santa. The funny thing is, as he sat in Santa's lap, he yelled "Santa" in a frantic voice. Another memory to add to his scrapbook. :) Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving Day

One thing Steve and I are thankful for is that Carter is a good eater. He eats breakfast at home, breakfast again at daycare, double lunches, 2 snacks, and dinner in one day. At daycare, the teachers made a "Thankful Turkey", and Carter's feather said he was thankful for extra food. So, we were very excited about his first "real" Thanksgiving this year.

The Wagganer's and the Meeks' families got together at our house to celebrate. We had our traditional meal full of casseroles, bread, and of course, turkey.

Carter did not want any of those casseroles or that bread. He wanted TURKEY! I think he probably at 4 pieces of the turkey breast himself!

We hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family. We are looking forward to Santa this month!

Halloween

Sorry it has taken awhile for this to get up. We've been pretty busy around here.

For Halloween this year, Carter dressed up as a Red Baron. Not our first choice, but the costume we borrowed was too small. However, he was absolutely adorable! He even kept the hat on for about two hours. No trick or treating this year, but he did sit in the wagon and "hand out" candy. I'll update you on Thanksgiving next week.

Carter's Accidents

Carter has been walking for about a month now, but he is still extremely clumsy. Of course, when he falls, he chooses to fall near sharp corners, tables, or head first. At daycare, he fell and bumped his right eye on a table. His eye swelled up pretty good, but not too much damage was done. Then, the following day, he decided to climb up on our fireplace and crawl around smiling at me as in "look what I'm doing, even though I'm not allowed". He then proceeded to get down from the fireplace head first. This escalated the bump into a nice shiner. The next day, we headed to NY for my cousin's wedding where family pictures would be taken. And, Carter has a exquisite black eye.

When we returned from NY, Carter ran into another table at daycare and scratched underneath is other eye. The next day, he gave himself a nice bump on the head when he fell into the steps that lead to the sink at daycare. Steve and I have decided that Carter needs excellent health insurance with a low deductible.

Look closely his right eye (the left side of the picture). It is multi-colored...blue, black, green, and brown.

Carter & Erin's First Fall

This month, we attended my cousin Becky's wedding in Swain, New York. We spent four days at my aunt and uncle's home in Rochester, where we spent lots of time with family. The weather was gorgeous, nice and cool for us Florida people. Since Florida only has two seasons-summer and winter-this was the first time that I had seen fall leaves. Our leaves in Florida go from bright green to nasty brown in a matter of weeks--no in between stages. I was the crazy person walking through the neighborhood taking pictures of individual trees. We took so many pictures, but here are the best ones.

Here is just one picture of a tree. I think I have over 20 pictures of trees.

This was the backdrop for my cousin's wedding. Her pictures are going to be absolutely beautiful. It took us many shots to get Carter to look at the camera, but the fingers won't come out of his mouth.

For the entire wedding ceremony, Carter sat on the ground, hit the ground and chairs with his bat, and ate Gerber Graduates and Goldfish.

This is how my cousin entered her wedding--on a ski lift. It was really neat. Guests could either take a tractor hay ride or the ski lift to the wedding ceremony. We chose the ski lift. :)

After the wedding, we put Carter in a "hay pile" (aka: dried up grass clippings). He hated it. This is him rolling around trying to get away from it.

After the wedding, Steve and I had a "brilliant" parent moment. We decided to take Carter back down the mountain on the ski lift. Horrible idea...Carter enjoyed about 2 minutes of it, and then, he wanted "down". Well, you can't just get down off a ski lift. So, 20 minutes later of Steve holding on to Carter who is bucking like a bull, and me singing songs to Carter to keep him somewhat calm, we made it to the bottom. I still have nightmares about it.

Our First Real Sickness Scare

It has been an interesting few days here in the Wagganer household. On Thursday, Steve picked Carter up from daycare, and was surprised to find out that Carter had been running a fever most of the day. When I got home from work, Carter looked terrible. We took his temperature, and it was 104! I bolted to the Internet, and our pediatrician's website said don't call until it is 105. We gave him some Tylenol and sent him to bed. Obviously, there was not much sleeping on my part that night.

On Friday, my mom came over to watch Carter. She said Carter was great all day, and didn't run a fever. When she dropped Carter off with me, I noticed he was running a low grade fever. By the time we got home, his temperature was 103 orally. So, off to the pediatrician we went. At the pediatrician, his temp was 104.5! They took some blood, gave him a catheter, and sent us home with a diagnosis of a viral infection. Great...we don't know what he has.

Three days worth of fluctuating fevers, bouts of diarrhea (one at Target in the shopping cart), a throwing up episode, tons of sleep (on Carter's part), non-stop crying, and severe crankiness I thought he might be back to normal today. Boy was I wrong. After an hour and a half at daycare, I got a phone call that Carter had not stopped crying since we dropped him off. So, off I go to get him and head back to the pediatrician. When I pick him up from daycare, they tell me he has a rash all over his body. My first thought was that he had chicken pox because he just had the vaccine this past Wednesday.

When we got to the pediatrician, of course we have to wait in the room for about 30 minutes. All Carter wants to do is "down" and "go" as he points to the door. Then comes the crying. I want to pull out my hair by the time the doctor arrives. She looks at him briefly and says its a common case of roseola. Roseola is a common childhood illness that begins with three days of high fevers, then the child breaks into a rash. The good news is that the rash is not itchy. The bad news that my child now looks like a strawberry. No professional pictures for his first birthday yet! Carter will be just fine and can go back to daycare Wednesday. It's nice to know that everything will be ok after a few days of craziness. Below are some pictures we took of his rash tonight.

Sea World

On Carter's birthday, Steve and I took him to Sea World. Both Steve and I get into Sea World for free because we are teachers, and Carter is free too. It was an inexpensive day full of great pictures. We only went to one show, Pet's Ahoy, because at this point, Carter doesn't know the difference :) We stayed about 3 hours, which was just long enough. No one was in the park, and we saw everything we wanted to see. Carter loved all the animals. His favorite place was the Shark Encounter. He loves fish, and it was a giant aquarium. However, everything we saw was a "dog". We saw fish-he points and says "dog". We saw the walrus--"dog". We even saw Shamu--"dog". It was cute. In the polar bear cave

Barracuda! It looks like the fish is going to bite him. :)

My favorite pictures of Carter and Steve with Shamu. Look at how small Carter is compared to the whale! He loved watching the "dog" swim past him over and over again.

Carter's New Chair

For Carter's birthday, our friends Ryan and Kelly bought him a rocking chair. It's not just any old rocking chair though. It is a Chicago Cubs rocking chair...Steve's favorite team. Carter loves it! His favorite thing to do in it is try to stand. We're working on that. Thank you Uncle Ryan and Aunt Kelly! (Steve is in Cubs heaven. I think he even tried to sit in the chair.)

Happy First Birthday, Carter!

So, after a couple months of planning and a lot of help, Carter's first birthday party went fantastic! His party was this past Sunday, at a park near our home. There were about 15-20 people there to help us celebrate. I am so glad that we had it at a park. Number 1-no clean up. Number 2-the park animals will eat all the cake that was dropped on the ground.

This is Carter's smash cake. I made it (a whole lot cheaper than Publix). We went with a dog theme because Carter says three words constantly now-- "Uh-oh", "ball", and "dog".

Testing out Mommy's handiwork to make sure it tastes good.
"Mom, here's the candle. It's in my way!"

Trying to share his yummy cake with others.

There were no takers on that one.

Taking big bites! Carter had a great time "smashing" and eating his cake. He made a huge mess! He kinda looks like Santa in these pictures. After the smash cake was "smashed", it was time to clean up. Of course, we forgot something--towels and baby wipes. Luckily, our friends Shawn and Jessica have a little one too, and they are always prepared. :) Shawn and Steve spent 10 minutes wiping frosting and vanilla cake out of every crack and crevice of Carter's little body.

Grandma and Grandpa Meeks bought Carter a popper for his birthday. He plays with this toy constantly, although he can't walk while pushing it yet. He's getting the hang of it though.

We brought out the bubble machine to the party. All the kids loved it!

This was one of the best $5.00 I ever spent.

Carter then got a little too close to the bubble machine. Commence the crying and bubble machine being turned off. He learned that you cannot try to drink out of the bubble machine while it is in operation.

Happy Birthday, Carter!

Smash Cake #1

We officially started Carter's first birthday a little early last week (his birthday is September 22nd). On Thursday, we had his first smash cake for Steve's dad. His dad works in Alaska two weeks out of the month, so he wasn't able to come to Carter's birthday party. So, Steve and I decided to have a small party for him before he went back to Alaska.

Carter had no fear! He stuck his finger in the icing, and once he realized it was sweet, he dug right in. However, I forgot to take off his clothes, so that was a fiasco trying to get off the icing covered onsie in the kitchen without smearing it all in his hair. The kitchen floor was full of vanilla cake and icing. The dogs had a field day licking up the leftovers.

Mmmmm...cake.....

Want some, Mom?

I will update you soon on his first birthday party, and Carter's first trip to SeaWorld on his first birthday. I have about 150 pictures to download first. They only turn one once!

Happy First Birthday to Maddie and Ruthie! We missed you!

Enjoy your smash cake too, says Carter. It's yummy!