Back Home Again

Hey everybody! Carter here! I know it's been a while since we wrote, but I've been all over the place lately. First we went up to Indiana to visit with Mom's whole family and then we rode all the way down to Atlanta to see Uncle Krin! Boy my legs are tired. Ok, so I didn't ride my new trike down there, it was in the back of the van. But it's pretty cool, huh? Now I need a sidecar so I can pick up chicks.
Uncle Krin's keeping me upright while I get my eat on. It's embarrassing, but I have been known to pass out mid-bottle and wake up in a puddle of milk.
Climbing the stairs. Up, down, up, down. I'm getting good at this! Right after we took this picture, I managed to elude Dad for a second and fall down a couple of stairs. The resulting big bump I got on my forehead is what I'll blame any bad grades on when I get to school.
Grandpa and Grandma sure do love me. Also big pink flowers. But mostly me.
Land ho! Tighten th' riggins and run out the layward reef! To the timbers, lads! Shake her! Shake her! Then bake her! Okay, so I don't remember exactly what Captain Sparrow said, but I think I got the gist of it.
This tiny chair makes me feel all grown up!
Great Grandpa Hemmerlein sure likes to bounce me on his knee! I must be good luck, because everybody just can't wait to get their hands on me.
Grandpa Baer knows just how to get me. Wahahaha!
Gramdma Baer knows it too. Wooooo!
I'm so excited I wet my shirt! Hahahaha!
Grandpa Bardonner and I decided to wear matching shirts on this day.
Great-grandparents Baer were so excited to see me, they drove three hours to get here on the same day we suggested it!

Gotta pose for the papperazzi...

Hey are you still taking pictures of me? No fair.

Here Grandpa is helping me steer the boat. I know where we need to go but my arms aren't long enough yet.

Finally, here we were at the beginning of the trip. The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Sure is a lot of sand up here.

This is way too much sand for me to eat all at one sitting. Guess I'll just have to pick at it...

Howya doin, cousin Andrew? Would you like to be buried in the sand? Yes? Well, I can't do that myself but I could walk on your back and fall on your head. How does that sound?

Look, mommy! These cool shades give me the power to see when the blog post is done!

Hot Times

Ahh, summer! It's a time of plenty... plenty of sunshine, plenty of heat. Lots of blueberries to go around too. Cierra took Carter to a babywearing field trip at a local farm. Here, Carter and his pal enjoy the fruits of her labor. Good thing Cierra's so practiced at picking blueberries... otherwise, they'd be eating them faster than she could throw them in the bucket.

Meanwhile, I got to deal with the aftermath. We use cloth diapers, and I'm pretty sure 2 of them permanently changed from white to blue the day after this picture was taken. :
Carter examines the tomato harvest. We're having a really good year at the market. We've now paid for the fence, our new fancy produce scale, and numerous other one-time expenses that come with starting up a new venture. So hopefully we'll continue to do well and be able to show a little profit by the time it's all said and done.

Walking is now an established skill for Carter... he only falls down a lot when he gets really tired. He's in control... of everything except for his drooling. Cierra got so tired of him soaking his outfits that she asked our neighbor Ruth to crochet this bib for him to absorb the slobber. So now he just looks like he's ready to tuck into a meal all day long.
Such a good baby! Carter really is quite possibly the best baby ever. He goes to the farmer's market with me and spends 5 hours helping sell veggies so patiently, then comes home and plays with me all afternoon. We like to play the BOO! game now, which involves me hiding my face in the couch and popping up to yell BOO! This causes hysterical laughter from him, and eventually he has the need to press our foreheads together and get tickled too. He squeals with glee and by the time he's finished, I'm completely spent too. Gotta get my stamina up!

Hey, Dad! How long before I can drive the swagger wagon?

That's right folks, that is me with our spankin' new 2009 Sienna. LOVE it. I'm still playing with all the buttons, and finding new ones all the time. The ride is so smooth, the power doors are awesome, and the cargo space is a dream come true. It's now so easy when we load up to go to the market, where before there was only one way I could fit everything into our Cavalier, now it's just throw it all in the back and we've still got room to spare!

That's about it, Carter just has one more thing to add... "BAH!"

Summer Fun in Charlotte

Howdy from Charlotte once again. It is so hot down here right now, it's hard to go outside at all during the daylight hours. Starting with this blog post, you may notice a slight improvement in the picture quality... my birthday present from my Mom was a digital SLR camera that puts our other one to shame. These first 3 shots were snapped as I was playing with it one evening.
Carter loves it when Mama gets home early enough to play in the evening. Here he is getting ready to be flipped over in a somersault. Carter, are you EXCITED?

Looks like that's a YES!

Yet another party with all of Carter's friends over... he throws the best parties! Now if only he could stop worrying about that stain on the floor and enjoy himself.

The garden and farmer's market are still big parts of our lives... and this week when our helpers Gretchen and Nick came by, we checked out the fruit trees and found ripe apples and peaches!
Yummy! Our white peaches are especially delicious... and plentiful. If our pears end up tasting good this year, we'll really be doing well. Both our trees are loaded down!
Carter has a great kid to look up to in Campbell, Gretchen's oldest.
For my 31st birthday this Sunday, Cierra got me this great shirt from the Apple Store. It's unbelievable, a revolutionary shirt. You can even use it to watch movies! Well, by that I mean you can wear it to the movie theater, which I did when we went to see Inception. It's not often that I pay full price to see a movie, and it's very rare for me to feel like I got my money's worth and then some. Overall, a great birthday!
Carter's first word has arrived! He now says "Uh-oh", which was our word to cue him that he's doing something wrong. We may have to find a new phrase, because now he walks around the house throwing his ball and saying "Uh-oh". It's so cute that we have to laugh and say it back to him, which isn't exactly how you want the "trouble phrase" to be reinforced.

Ok, I know we've been lazy about these posts. We'll try to get another one up next Thursday. Until then, stay cool people, stay cool.

Keeping it Cool

It's been SO hot in Charlotte recently... it hurts to even think about going outside in the middle of the day. So it was a great week to have a pool party! Some friends of ours were watching this ridonkulous lake house this week and they invited us over to take a dip. Here's Carter and his friend Adelaide chillin' in their pool chair...

And Carter and Adelaide both thought the built in waterfall was super-cool. Splish splash!

The mansion itself was unbelievable. Built out on a point, it had around 200 degrees of lake view. It was 10,000 square feet and felt like a slightly scaled down version of Disney's Wilderness Lodge. The place was so amazing that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I found out that it was just these folks' lake house... they actually have another house they live at full time 15 MINUTES AWAY!!! To have all this beauty at your fingertips and then just let it sit empty a lot of the time seems like a crime. Sadness.

Earlier in the week, Adelaide came over and spent some time with us while her parents had dinner out. She and Carter played with his toy that shoots little balls around and plays music. She really liked the music, dancing and hugging Carter. Carter likes to be hugged the first five or six times, but then after that, he's just looking over at me like "Why are these girls always suffocating me?" Trust me, buddy, this will come in handy someday.

Hugs. And more hugs. Hey, would you like to dance and hug?

Life continues to speed by. Carter's walking up a storm and doesn't want anyone picking him up now without his permission. He's making progress in other areas too... mimicking sounds, throwing a ball, and tonight, a very special moment. As Cierra was taking him up to bed, I asked him for a kiss. Normally when we ask for one, he purses his lips and makes a kissing sound. This time he leaned forward very deliberately, put his lips together, closed his eyes and gave me the sweetest little peck on the cheek. I was smiling ear to ear for the next ten minutes.

Two Step, Three Step, Four......

That's right... he's walking and our lives are changed forever. Carter's been on the verge for a while, we could see that he had all the skills but hadn't put them together yet. So Wednesday afternoon, I sat down with him on the floor and put him next to one piece of furniture and my iphone on another, four or five baby steps away.

"Carter", I said, "If you can walk over to get my Iphone, you can play with it." There were a couple of failed attempts, but there was no doubt that he understood the challenge. After one or two successes, then I started to move the finish line farther away. He kept making it! Then Mommy came downstairs and he really got going!

Grandparents Baer timed their trip well and got to witness the breakthrough firsthand! Deann stayed with us for four nights and Greg was here for two. Thank goodness Deann showed up because the transmission in our Mazda is finished and I needed some help getting Carter out of the house.

This boy sure knows how to work the camera. One of his "excited" poses and everyone's in stitches!

Carter posed with Mimi outside the Volkswagen Jetta where he took his first car ride sans car seat. He looked like the baby from the movie "The Hangover"! Don't worry, it was just a few feet as we figured out how to get it in reverse and got it away from the garden fence. But he was still looking over at Mimi in the driver's seat with a look that said, "Umm... I'm pretty sure that I'm not supposed to be riding shotgun."


And this shot speaks for itself... after all, what use is learning to walk if you can't splash naked through the puddles?

Beach Week

Okay, so it's been a while since we've written, but give us a break... we've been on vacation! It was Carter's second trip to Chincoteague Island, VA a beautiful strip of sand on the edge of the Delmarva Peninsula. We get together with my mom's family for a week of fun and singing each year.
Carter retreats from the scary ocean, way up sand mountain.
He might not be saying much yet, but his penmanship is excellent.
Next to me is my youngest brother Sawyer, then the other two are Freeman and his fiancee Kate who are planning to marry this fall. We got to meet her for the first time this trip! Freeman got super lucky... she is going to be a great addition to the family.
The bike we rented had a Carter chariot attached. "Onward, driver! My banana yogurt awaits!"
Beach hug for daddy!
This is too much fun!

Carter was afraid of the ocean the first day, but on the second would sit and let the water wash up on him a little. He also let me take him out in my arms. The third day he wanted to crawl out into it and we had to hold him back.

Take me out there! I want to ride a porpoise!
Carter practiced his walking on a nature path. He took his first few consecutive steps this week, but still doesn't seem to be in any hurry to start walking regularly.
The Tabony Brothers Trio giving a rare concert. There's always singing at a Hunter Family Reunion but it's rare to see me up on stage.

Well that's it for the pictures. We're super busy around here now that we're back. Not helping things... the transmission in the Mazda is acting shifty (ha!) so we're looking for a good used minivan. Hopefully the car will hold together till we find one. Talk to you next week (I hope)!

On Deadline-Latest from Babyland

Hey everybody! It's getting close to the middle of the night, but Cierra seems to think this thing has to go up on Thursdays or we risk losing subscribers. So we'll see what I can remember at this late hour about the last week. Also contributing to the tone of this piece... I've enjoyed a glass of wine this evening. Not just any wine, a wine I bought for less than 3 dollars. Yes, that is for a full size bottle. I'm detecting notes of huckleberry and overtones of mushrooms and worm castings. Wine this good usually comes in a box... a pine box. Ahh.... see, I'm not even sure what that means. Okay, I don't usually buy wine this cheap, but I needed some for cooking and I hate to waste good wine in the crock pot. I prefer to buy some deadly swill and see if I can ruin a bunch of expensive food with it.

On to the news of the day. A couple weeks back we had a photographer take a bunch of photos for us at a local park to mark Carter at around one year old. Here are some of the standouts!

Sadly, we didn't pay her enough so she took all the color out of this shot. We have all the pigment on layaway. Next week I should have enough for the blue.

Carter is very interested in the guitar. This may be the impetus for me to finally do something more with this thing than sit looking at it with my mouth hanging open. But if I know myself and my capacity for not doing complex tasks over long periods of time, I will probably find a way not to learn.

Carter loves to pluck at those strings, though. He'll probably learn before I do. In fact, he put more time into it today than I did. I had to cook some chicken for dinner and needed an activity to keep him happy. So I just put the guitar on the floor and listened to the music. I've labeled Carter's first composition "Dischordia". But as long as it's going on, I don't have to worry he's getting into anything too terrible.

Walking, walking, walking! Carter may be too scared to take his first steps yet, but he loves walking around with our help. He can do it for longer than our backs want to, that's for sure. So it's a good thing we've got one of those walking tools with wheels for him to lean on and push around the ground floor. Too bad our family room is three steps down. He'd avoided it for so long until today that I really thought he knew to stay away from there with his cart. Nope. I was standing in the middle of the room, trying to email Cierra a particularly cute video of Carter when all of a sudden he comes trucking into the room, pushing his cart out into midair. The cart careens down the stairs, and Carter, like any good captain, goes down with the ship, landing facedown on top of the smoldering wreckage. Okay, this is a lot of dramatic license. Actually he just sprawled across the top of the cart and didn't even bump his face, thank goodness. Of course, I rushed over and picked him up in a panic. He let me have it with one good scream and then followed it up with a very serious sounding "Eh?" It's almost like I understood he was saying "So I probably won't be doing that again."

Here's what he will be doing again... eating strawberries! That's it for this week... peace out until next time!