Woo's your daddy: 4 and counting...

What a year 2011 has been. Carson has grown so much, it's almost hard to put it into words. This time last year, Carson was speaking in 2-3 word sentences. And now, after a year of speech therapy and another year of preschool under his belt, is speaking in sentences and paragraphs - and it's hard to get him to keep quiet. And even beyond speech, we are seeing him developing friendships where he was uninterested a year ago. He talks about his classmates and other friends all the time. If we could only make the time for more play dates...hopefully that will come in 2012.

And since our last post, Carson has been on his first fishing trip. We were at a cousin's wedding over the summer in Idaho, and Jason and Uncle Steve taught Carson to cast and reel. He wasn't interested in leaving the line in the water to actually catch anything, but the cast and reel have been mastered.

And this fall is being dubbed "the Diego era". Carson found his new favorite show - Diego - and has been obsessed. At first i tried to discourage it, but then found my attempts were worthless. Carson knows how to launch Netflix in the iPad and can navigate to his favorite Diego episodes without me. So...he was Diego for Halloween thanks to a pretty sweet "rescue vest" and "rescue pack". He even has his spotting scope, a rescue rope (thanks Yeh-Yeh and Ghin-Ghin), binoculars, magnifying glass, video watch, and rescue radio. I’m pretty much Diego’d out, but C loves it. He insisted on wearing his Diego costume to see Santa #1 (we were able to get a nice outfit for Santa #2). People keep telling me it’ll be cute years from now when I look back on pictures, but I’m not so sure I’ll feel that way. But, I know Carson makes friends every time we go to t he park because the kids think he’s Diego.

And now we are gearing up for Christmas, just one week and we are still trying to milk the “Santa is watching” to get some good behavior. Carson just had his holiday concert at school, and we weren’t sure what to expect. What we would was Carson was quite the performer. I thought he would have fun, but had no idea that he would in center stage belting out songs, using arm and hand movements, and even calling out to mom in between songs “C’mon Mom, come up here and sing with me!” I think others thought it was cute too, and not too annoying. I’m just proud of my guy for being strong and confident. I hope that continues once he gets to grade school.

All in all, it’s been a great year, smart guy, super happy. I feel very proud of the little man he’s becoming – full of please, thank you, may I’s…and a few “C’mon Amigos” and “Al Rescate Amigos” and “Ayudame’s”. And while we’ve had some ups and downs this year, I feel so blessed to have Carson with us every day as he truly is our miracle. Cheers to 2011 and can’t wait to 2012.