The Button

Whenever we to go to Wal-Mart, we always pass those stupid firetruck or horse rides that you put 50 cents in and the kids get to ride it for like 45 seconds. Almost every time we pass them, the kids say "Hey, I want to ride in the firetruck" to which I always respond "Sorry, I don't have any money on me", which is usually true. I hardly ever have cash or change any more since the bank gave me the plastic card to use instead of money. Tonight we stopped next to the rides to look at some stuff, and Dylan hopped in the firetruck while he was waiting. When it was time to go, he asked if he could ride it to which I replied "sorry, dude, but I don't have any money." He said "Hey, I've got a great idea. You can go to work and push the money button so you can get some money and I can ride in the firetruck!" That is a great idea. I need to find that money button.

Entertaining Grandma.

Recently, (November 28th-December 8th) I was very lucky to have my mom able to come into town to help me with the new baby and the other kids. This visit was very different from others like it in the past, because Soni had already made her appearance, so no time was taken up by the hospital stay, and I was pretty much back to "normal", so I felt bad about dragging her away from work, but I really appreciated everything she did while she was here.
One thing she helped me with was kid control. I got to shower every morning she was here, WITHOUT an audience of 1 or more children. I was also able to get our Christmas letter written, and a really cute birth announcement made in PhotoShop.
During one of the times when I was distracted, and my mom was upstairs with the kids, there was a thump, then a muffled Dylan crying. Apparently, my mom came out of the bathroom to find Dylan trapped under the couch, with nothing but an arm hanging out. She lifted the couch so he could crawl out, to which he thanked her by saying "Grandma, I lost my super powers!" Makes me wonder where the kryptonite was hidden. Maybe he'll think twice next time about trying to get something from under the couch on his own...
Another thing mom tried to help me with was understanding my eldest son, and his stubbornness about potty training. She bought him a really cool robot toy as incentive to potty train (he can have it once he goes potty all day for 7 days), and she tried to explain how different tactics could work for his personality. (She minored in child psychology in college, plus she raised 5 kids of her own, one of which was A LOT like Dylan.) We tried a few different things over the course of the week and a half, none of which had an effect for more than a day. Finally, on the second to last day before my mom was going home, I lost it when Dylan pooped in his pull up, yet again (minutes after being asked if he needed to go potty, and he had responded "no"). I was cleaning him up, and told him I was tired of it, and that if he was going to insist on acting like a baby, we would treat him like a baby. I revealed the new plan to him about how he was now going to eat dinner in the high chair, drink from a bottle, so on and so forth. He reacted just how I expected, with screaming and tears, so I thought I had finally found the solution. Dinner came, and Dylan sat in the high chair. he ate out of a plastic bowl, using a "baby spoon" and drank from a bottle. While drinking from the bottle, it made that ever familiar "squeaking" sound as he sucked on it. He looked up in frustration (looking really depressed) and said: "That cup sounds like a mouse". It was very matter of fact, but it cracked mom and I up. I really tried to not let him see me laugh, since he was being punished, but I failed miserably. I think mom had the hardest time keeping a straight face because it reminded her so much of something my brother, Barton, would have said. Don't kids know they're not supposed to be cute when they're being punished? Someone should tell them...

Pictures

When I was putting that sliding photo thing on the side of the blog, I noticed that we really haven't taken a lot of pictures of our kids lately. So, to rectify that, I took some pictures over the past couple of weeks. And now you get to look at them.

Hey, homey.

Peyton in his Halloween shirt that says "Will Scare For Food". It even glows in the dark.

Dylan's Halloween shirt says "Monster In Training".

You can probably read all of Andi's shirt. She likes it because it says the word "Princess" on it.

Our kids are cute. I'm not biased or anything.

We got Andi this shirt a few weeks ago. She likes it because it says the word "Princess" on it.

As an added bonus, it came with this cool nail.

Peyton was pretty tired after going to the doctor for a checkup today. I found him passed out on Sadie.

Ahhhh, furry warm pillow.

"We all live in a yellow house"

Recently at our house the kids have discovered a new passion. Cameron started it by playing CDs that had not been played for some time. He must have started doing it on Saturday mornings while I'm sleeping, because one day while Cameron was at work, Andi kept telling me she wanted to listen to the "We all live in a yellow house" song. I kept thinking it was something from Joy School, so I looked through those discs, and got nothin'. She got really irritated with me when I told her that I had no idea what she was talking about. Probably a week later, she told me she wanted to listen to the "Booties". Again, I had no idea what she was talking about. Finally I woke up one Saturday early enough to learn what she was talking about. There were Cameron and the kids in the living room dancing around to "We all live in a yellow submarine" by the Beatles. Suddenly everything made sense. It has since been claimed as a favorite song by Andi, and she and Dylan agree (which doesn't happen very often) that they love the "Booties". Hey, a classic is a classic, even amongst preschoolers!

Going "Camping"

We bought a play tent for the kids the other weekend. They finally cleaned up their rooms, so they were able to set it up on Saturday. They really like it, and Andi and Dylan "slept" in it Saturday night. Sunday they tipped it over and said it was a rocket ship. I actually took some pictures, so I thought I'd put them up here.

What to do

Since it's late and I can't complete a rational thought, here's another one of those posts that is all over the place. Sorry.

Those of you who know Dylan know that he can be a bit of a handful sometimes. I love the kid to death, but he does some things that make us want to sign him up for a spot on the moon base. I'm sure that most parents feel like that about their kids from time to time.

Today's case against Dylan involves a DVD. Sam ordered some movies online two or three weeks ago, and with the great speed and efficiency of Amazon.com, we got them yesterday. While Andi was at Joy School, she watched the movies upstairs with Dylan. She left to get lunch ready, went back upstairs to find that Dylan had broken one of the DVDs. We hadn't even had it for 24 hours, and Hulk Jr. goes and busts it in half. Have you ever tried breaking a DVD? Those things are pretty flexible, and snapping them takes quite a bit of effort. I don't know how he did it, but he did. We need to find something to occupy him so that he won't end up breaking stuff. Something like a coloring book, a puzzle, or a weight training system.

In other news, Happy Birthday, Mark Hamill! You can download your very own Mark Hamill wallpaper here. Don't be the only person in your neighborhood/office without a Mark Hamil wallpaper.

In my ongoing fight against all things Sandra Bullock, I must warn you that she is making another movie. This one is called All About Steve, and thankfully it looks like she will not be a recently divorced undercover FBI agent traveling through time on a runaway boat.

For only $130, you can buy Halo 3 and a commemorative helmet. (Lightning gun and electron vaporizer not included.)

I was going to look for a video to embed here, but I couldn't find one that wasn't stupid. Instead, here's this, which is just as good as a video.

Oh no! I tried to fix the cow, but I ended up killing it. Here's a less cool alternate cow.

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Nothing Happening

Nothing much has been happening here lately. Jared and I had a little adventure going to work on Tuesday. You can read his account of it here if you're interested. To summarize, we took a shortcut to avoid some traffic and ended up having to slog through three feet of mud on a county road. Our shortcut made up 2 1/2 hours late for work.

Yesterday we were at the store, and Dylan was helping me push the cart. After a minute of helping me push he said "Dad, my pants are falling down." I looked down and his pants were around his ankles. It happened once more before we left the store. Good thing he's too young to get embarrassed about stuff like that.

The NFL season is starting this week. Woo hoo! I predict that tomorrow night the 49ers will beat the Cardinals 154 to 12. If my job were to set the betting lines in Vegas, I wouldn't be very good at it.

Molar Bear

I HATE POTTY TRAINING! I mean, I absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt despise potty training! The process at our house has gone remarkably slow with Dylan. Andi was completely potty trained by the time she turned 3, with not even so much as a nighttime accident since. This may sound like bragging, but believe me I have absolutely no reason to brag when you look at how poorly the process is going with Dylan. We're not talking 1 step forward, 2 steps back. It's been more like 5 rungs up on a ladder, only to lose your footing and plummet to the ground again so fast the bruise lasts for a month. Yesterday, Dylan came to me in a panic that he had pooped. I wasn't surprised; I was irritated, but not surprised. My irritation turned to outright rage when I saw that he was wearing big boy underpants. Not a pullup, but honest to goodness superhero underoos. He told me that Andi had given them to him. Of course! Why shouldn't Andi have the authority to give him big boy underpants? After all, she's the one that does all the laundry, and can operate the carpet cleaner, makes perfect sense, doesn't it? I dragged him into the bathroom (and yes I mean I DRAGGED him, because every time I told him to get in the bathroom, he looked at me as if 1) I was speaking a different language, or 2) like he had no idea that our house contained any of these alien things called "bathrooms".) and told him to hold absolutely still while I tried to shimmy these diarrhea filled underpants down his legs, without making too big of a mess. I don't know what part of "hold still" actually means "when I get these underpants almost completely off, I want you to jump out of them as quickly as you can, so that poo will cover everything within a 2 foot radius, including your mother" but apparently, I don't know much about such things. I get him cleaned off and in a diaper (yes, I was so frustrated, I reverted him back to diapers, until he's a little more serious about doing this again.) and sent merrily on his way. Then I clean up the bathroom, and set out to clean up the puddle he had left in the middle of the kitchen floor. My only hope for him is that he will be potty trained before he outgrows every size of diaper in the infant department. I would really hate to go to the store to buy him "Depends" and have people think that I'm the one with the incontinence problem. Okay, so maybe that's more a wish for myself than for Dylan, but I'm sure his wife would appreciate if he's potty trained at some point.

If there is anything that comes even close to my dislike for potty training, it would have to be TEETHING. Peyton has been working on getting his bottom molar on the right side, and has been letting us know it for several weeks. When Dylan cut his molars, he cut them all at the same time, so we had a miserable few weeks, and it was over. I don't think we're going to be so lucky with Peyton. I try to tell myself that he's in pain as he follows me around whining and crying all day. He is being really needy, which I understand, and would normally enjoy, but my maid seems to have gone on vacation and left utter devastation behind. I'm trying to get caught up, and just as I start to see a light, my laundry fairy up and quits. So, as much as I would love to cuddle a crying baby ALL DAY LONG, I just don't have the time.
I really need to stop having kids so that these two miserable stages will eventually be over and done with, for good. Aubrey and I keep saying that we're going to take a vacation without the kids. The only flaw in the plan is that one or both of us have been nursing babies the entire time we've known each other. Again, we need to stop having kids. Someday...

Dylan's Birthday

Here are some pictures from Dylan's birthday.

He was pretty happy that it was his birthday.


Unwrapping is fun because it's destroying stuff without getting in trouble.


Cars stuff! Woo hoo!


More Cars stuff! This is a Mack truck that you can take apart and put back together. Whoever got him this is brilliant!


Aubrey made this really cool Dinosaur cake for him. It was delicious.

Constructicons

When I was a kid, I really liked Transformers. I watched the cartoon show all the time. I always asked for Transformers for my birthday. I would dream about having a toy that I wanted, then when I woke up and realized that I in fact didn't have the toy, it just ruined the rest of my day.

Some of my favorite Transformers were the Constructicons. They were all robots that turned into heavy machinery like a bulldozer, a crane, a dump truck and other stuff. Here are some pictures of them.

The Constructicons were especially cool because the six of them could combine to make one powerful, super destructive robot called Devastator. Here's a picture I found of Devastator.

Devastator is mean and nasty. Nothing is safe from his devastative powers. Over the past two weeks, he has done several destructive things like:

Tipped over the TV.
Tipped over the couch.
Took a black and purple crayon and drew all over the couch. (He must have soemthing against the couch.)
Dumped a whole bag of dog food on the floor.
Unraveled half a scane of yarn.
Destroyed two coloring books.
Torn a board book to pieces.

There are probably several other things that he's done that I can't think of right now. He is on some kind of rampage. There has to be a way to stop him besides locking him in a closet until he's ready for college.

Oh yeah, Happy Birthday, Devastator!

Video Time

I've been trying to load some video from the camcorder to the computer, but the two of them aren't communicating with each other. If I'm lucky, I'm able to get 20 seconds of video at a time. I was able to piece this together. Enjoy.

OK, it stopped working for some reason. I uploaded it again, so hopefully it will work now. If not, we'll just move on.

Cutting It Close

Last year on Dylan's birthday, I posted a list of goals that I had for him. One of those goals was for him to start doing this:

Finally, last night he went #2 in the potty! (You can tell you're a parent of small children when most of your conversations involve your children's bowel movements.) He has been going #1 pretty well for a few weeks, but last night he finally took the big step. Woo hoo! I gave him a handful of Skittles instead of just the three he gets when he goes pee in the potty. I also gave him a play phone that we got a month ago as a bribery to get him to start going. He was pretty proud of himself. I'm glad that he's coming around.

Of course today I've had to change two poopy Pull-Ups and he stuck his phone in the sink and it stopped working until it dried out. But hey, he's taken one step in the right direction. There is hope that he will be potty trained before high school.

Kid Quotes

Here are some memorable things the kids have said in the past few days.

Andi:
I think M&Ms would make my throat all better.
*cough* Daddy, can I go outside and ride *cough* my bike? I'm all better now *cough*.
I'm tired of Dylan breaking all my stuff.

Dylan:
Daddy, your belly is much bigger. Why is our belly so big?
Peyton is not my brother. I want Noah to be my brother.
I pooped in my hero underpants. Time for Cars pullups.

The other day, I was trying to explain to Dylan how to put on his big boy underpants. I told him that the little pocket thing goes in the front. So he gets the underpants on, and immediately sticks his hand in his "pocket" and wouldn't take it out. I should really think before I speak.

4th of July Extravaganza

It's been raining a wee bit here in Texas for the past month or two. The city postponed the fireworks show because of rain. To provide some source of pyrotechnic entertainment for the night, Jared and I went to a fireworks warehouse to get something we could light on fire. We spent a grand total of approximately $16.72. Some people were buying cart loads of stuff and racking up two or three hundred dollars worth of stuff. I guess their money was burning a hole in their pocket. Anyway, here are some pictures from the first annual Crookston / Carter fireworks extravaganza.

The crowd could hardly contain their excitement.

Oooooooooh. Ahhhhhhh. Sadly, that's about as good as it got.

Andi was into the sparklers.

You can almost feel the excitement.

Peyton observed the flames and carnage from a safe distance.

As you can see, we have no pictures of Dylan with a sparkler. I tried to give him one, but he ran away from me and after that he avoided me like I was trying to hand him the plague on a stick.

After the fireworks were over and the kids were in bed, the adults stayed up and watched "Better Off Dead". That's some good watching. Overall it was a pretty fun night. Hopefully we'll get to see some bigger fireworks on Saturday. Of course, we're only at about day 23 of the 40 days and 40 nights of rain, so it might not happen.

What Goes Around Comes Around

One hot summer day when I was around Dylan's age, I went to the store with my dad. We were standing in line to check out. The person in front of us was a young woman wearing shorts. I think I embarrassed my dad a little when I told him, "Dad! That girl isn't wearing any underpants!"

The other day at Wal-Mart, I was pushing Dylan around in the cart. He apparently was being observant and looking at people that we passed. We passed a few women who were dressed for the Texas heat. Dylan noticed them, and announced to me quite loudly "Look daddy, she's naked!"

I guess I had that coming.

Let's Go Rangers

The Cub Scouts in our ward got group tickets to a Rangers game Tuesday night. Since Jared is in the Cub Scouts he knew about it, and since I have a way cool wife, she was willing to let me go to the game with Dylan. We had a pretty good time.

We had seats up in the nose bleeds, but you could still see the game pretty well. The first inning was pretty cool. The Rangers loaded the bases, and the fifth batter hit a Gran Slam. The next batter hit a triple, and they ended up scoring six runs in the first inning. We ate dinner there, which included a hot dog, a drink and a bag of Cracker Jacks, which all came to $16.75. I wonder why ballparks, Disneyland, and movie theaters have no sense of how much things cost in the real world. "How much is a hot dog? Let's say $4.50, that sound good. A cup of soda? $5.00, yeah that's about right." If I could get my hands on the people that makes those decisions, I would give them a stern talking to.

These (above) were not our seats

This is my attempt of a panoramic picture from where we were sitting.

Dylan lost interest in the game about the third inning. I took him walking around the park and I bought him a hat. He had no interest in wearing the hat at all. Its like the hat was a symbol of him missing his bedtime , and he was not happy with it. By the seventh inning he was crawling around me, the floor, other people desperately seeking comfort. He tried to eat stuff off the ground, but luckily I caught him before he got anything. I think.

He looked happy for a little while.

The Rangers closer Gagne got the save to end the game, and when I said the game was over, Dylan got excited and said "The game's over? Yeah!" It was the most excited he was all night. After the game was over, he would actually hold his new hat, and he said he had fun.

I thought it was way cool. Just walking in the stadium and seeing the size of it was amazing. We even got to see Sammy Sosa bat, so that was awesome. All in all it was a very fun, and we'll have to do it again sometime.

You can't really tell, but the white blip by home plate is Sammy Sosa.

Pictures

Ok, so I lied about not taking any pictures when we were gone. I did take a few pictures at the Salt Lake Temple while we were waiting the hour and a half for the bride and groom to come out. There aren't may, but here you go.

Hangin' out in the shade

Knock knock

Ladies Man

Yesterday Sam went to get her hair cut, so that left me with watching the kids. The mall we went to has a little play area for kids. One of the toys in the play area that a little convertable car the kids could sit in. Andi and Dylan got a chance to sit in the car at one point. They didn't do much but sit in it. Andi left after a while, and Dylan slid over to the driver's seat. Not too long after Andi left, two girls climbed in the car next to Dylan, and they sat in the car with him for a while. I couldn't hear what he was saying to them, but I'm sure that it was along the lines of "Hey baby, you come here often."

We left the play area, and Sam was still getting her hair cut, so I took the kids to lunch at McDonald's. I let them play in the Play Place because they don't get to do it often and we had time to kill since apparently Sam had a lot of hair. Andi was too afraid to climb up into the fun area of the Play Place, so Dylan ventured up there by himself. I would see him running past on a bridge every now and then, and he would sometimes stop to say "Hi" and wave. That is, until some girls joined him in the Play Place. After that, he was running around and playing with four or five girls. I think I heard him say something like "Your eyes are as pretty and blue as my Superman pajamas" to one of them.

Sometimes I worry about Dylan and his social skills (since somedays the only things he says to his mother are "No" and "Mommy, I pooped!"), but after yesterday I think he's going to be ok.

Dialogue

Over the last few months, Dylan has gotten better and better at talking. It's been nice to finally be able to understand most of what he says. A few minutes ago, I was changing his diaper, and decided to test his knowledge of his and his siblings full names. (He usually calls everone their first name followed by Kent Carter, since that's his name). After I got him to successfully name everyone off (Dylan Kent, Peyton Brian, and Andreia Elisabeth), I stood him up and asked him if he thought that we should have another baby. He enthusiastically said "YEAH". I asked him why, and he said "Cause Peyton Broken...he too big." I have to say I agree with him there...

Easter Eggs

The kids dyed Easter Eggs last night. It was pretty fun. We even took pictures since it was Peyton's first go at it.

Dylan was showing me what he drew on his egg with the clear crayon. You can't see it in this picture, but he drew a rendition of The Starry Night.

Peyton's egg never made it to the dye.

Andi did a pretty good job of putting the eggs in the dye. She used the pink dye the most.

You can feel the excitement!

The finished product. They didn't turn out too bad.