Carter still hasn't said any words yet, but lately he's picked up a few new sounds and seems to understand a few new words as well. Most recently, he's started running around yelling, "Yeeeeeeee!!", and if you ask him to "spin", he'll go to the Sit-n-Spin he got for Christmas and give it a little spin. He picked this up after only about 24 hours of the word being introduced! He also seems to finally be grasping the meaning of "cup", which took a while but that's probably partly our fault, because without really thinking about it, we call it "juice", "milk", "water" (whatever's in the cup when we hand it to him") so we weren't consistently using just one word for it. I tried handing his cup to him earlier today, he didn't see it and took off running, but when I said, "Carter, do you want your cup?", he came back, grabbed it, and started gulping at it like he hadn't had a drink for days, haha. Such a silly boy!

I am hoping that he continues to add sounds and understand new words, and that that will be enough to satisfy his pediatrician for now. At the rate he's been picking up new sounds and grasping new words, I feel pretty optimistic that he will say his first word before his second birthday.

He's also figured out (completely on his own, I might add!) how to drink out of a straw. I've been meaning to get him a straw cup for a while now, but our Wal-Mart is pretty limited in the selection in the "baby" aisles. we were at my mom's on Friday though, and my 4-year-old niece has one of those 1-dollar straw cups where the straw is the handle, that you don't even really have to suck on, just tip it towards your mouth. Anyway, Carter just was not interested in his own cup, so my niece let him have a try at hers, and the first couple of attempts ended up with juice down his front, but finally he figured out which part was supposed to go in his mouth, and started sucking away. He didn't tilt it at all, but you could see that he was getting the juice out, so he literally figured it out all on his own, within about five minutes. He's also taken to grabbing mugs, with one hand wrapped around the handle and the other hand supporting the other side of the mug, raising it to his mouth, and...chewing on it, instead of drinking from it. I saw a little plastic mug at the thrift store the other day, and I should have got it for him, but I didn't think about it at the time. I'll have to see if I can find one for him somewhere.

He's been much more snuggly lately, but at the same time more independent. He'll play on his own for quite a while, try to help himself to snacks, but every 15 minutes or so, he'll run up to me and either raise his arms for me to pick him up, or if I'm on the floor, he just runs up and tackles me. That's my favorite, it's so cute! He will literally run to me as fast as he can and throw himself into my arms, shoving his head to my chest like he's trying to put his head THROUGH my chest. He'll just sit there for a few minutes, letting me hug him, rub his back, kiss him, sing to him, whatever. Or if he wants me to pick him up, he'll lay his head on my shoulder or just stare at me, and he wants to be held for several minutes. If I put him down too soon, he immediately wants back up. Several times a day, he'll just climb up onto the couch and either sit on my lap or right next to me with my arm around him. I'm absolutely loving it!