Like Mother, Like Son?

Iphoto's face recognition software thinks Carson looks like me. I am very proud of that. I wanted to see if my baby pictures look like Carson, so I went to my scrapbook. Which is where I found this:

Which reminded me of this:

Maybe all kids do this. Or maybe Carson is sorta like me. 

I like to think so, because he is totally awesome.

Also, I cannot be held accountable for what I'm wearing in that picture. 

I was not old enough to dress myself...

New Orleans

This past weekend, we went to New Orleans! I have a brother who lives in Houston with his wife and they drove over and met us there. It was really fun to see them since we haven't seen them since July of last year. And, they are just always really fun.

David acted as our tour guide for walking tours of the French Quarter and the Garden District. We saw a lot of cool architecture and learned some interesting facts. We saw some properties that are/were owned by Nicholas Cage, Archie Manning (father of Peyton and Eli), and Sandra Bullock. Some of the houses also had related ghost rumors which made for good stories. 

There were some really fun shops in the French Quarter. I think our favorites were a lighting store, an antique gun and coin store, a pepper store (where you can taste all the salsas), and a paper store that let us try out some glass pens. 

Carson spent a lot of time in his stroller. 

Here he is eating a peanut butter cracker making a face for Aunt Jessica.

 This is Preservation Hall. We were a little surprised when we saw it, I guess we just expected something a little better preserved...

With the famous nightly jazz shows, they're mostly focused on preserving the music.

This is us in front of the St. Louis cathedral which some say is the most photographed cathedral in the US. In the spirit of that rumor, I will post more pictures of the church than anything else...

Carson was taking a nap in his stroller at the time which is why he missed the picture.

 David and Jessica :)

 We also had some beignets (French donuts) at the Cafe du monde. They were good.

 It was interesting to tour the Lafayette Cemetary which (similar to others in New Orleans) mostly has graves that are above ground vaults. 

We also heard some great jazz. Once at a show in the old US mint (now also a jazz museum with Louis Armstrong's cornet!), and the other time with dinner at Palm Court. Both were awesome shows with great musicians, especially the clarinetists, who knew? We tried some new foods as well, muffuletta sandwiches, gator on a stick, jambalaya, and of course the beignets.

It was such a fun weekend, short but sweet. I'd like to thank David and Jessica for researching and planning the outings and providing us with these pictures. They are great travel buddies!

From the Video Archive

So I was watching some old footage of Carson, and stumbled upon a few things you may have missed that you just might want to see.

You may not have seen Carson eating his birthday cupcake. In one bite...

Or when he decided to do some yoga while we were waiting to get our tires changed in Nashville. A picture just wouldn't do it justice.

He learned how to chant "diaper." Sort of.

You also may have missed the transition from crawling to walking.

You're not too behind on this one, but Carson recently learned how to walk his dog. Which closely resembles dragging his dog while he walks. Sometimes he even multitasks.

If you missed any of these things, you should have been clicking on the videos to catch up. Ok, hopefully you're all caught up now.

Easy Parenting

Carson is such a fast learner, we're running out of things to teach him.

We've taught him how to eat

How to clean

How to read

 

How to save money

  

He even knows how to party

So...from the way I see it, we just need to teach him how to use the toilet, and we're pretty much done.

Parenting is easy :)

This is cute.

Our Valentines Day

We had a great Valentines Day. 

After our normal morning routine, Carson and I watched Tangled- well we watched about half of it until Carson's attention span ran out. It was a treat since we never really eat popcorn and Carson doesn't really watch movies. 

Interestingly enough, his attention span ran out about the same time as the popcorn...

Of course Carson was my little Valentine, but I did have some competition. Can you believe he already has admirers? These are Valentines from Rozlyn and Braelyn (two girls in our ward).

Taylor and I got some things, too.

These are some flowers Taylor gave me. Pretty.

These are some pistachios I gave him. Yummy.

We are always excited when Taylor comes home. And it was especially exciting yesterday since he brought a party size bag of peanut m&m's with him!

This is kind of a random video, but it has hearts in it so it kind of belongs in this post. The hearts were from a package my sister sent to me.

There is always so much love in our family, but it's nice to have a day to celebrate it anyway and realize how lucky we are. I feel like the luckiest girl to have these two boys in my life. I love them more than words can express. It may sound cheesy, but it's how I feel and since it's Valentines Day I can publish it online. :)

The One-armed Woman

Carson has been teething. He's getting molars- one top molar on each side of his mouth. He still sleeps really well, but the last couple of days after his nap he gets really clingy. If I'm not holding him he reaches for me and whines. Poor kid.

Each time I pick him up he hugs me, pats me on the back, giggles, kicks his legs in excitement, or gives me kisses. How could I not pick him up with such a great reward? So, I've just learned to do a lot of things one-handed. Making dinner, scrubbing dishes, getting a paper towel (why is that so hard to do one-handed?!), etc. I kind of love my little hip attachment, I think I'll keep him.

New Tricks

*Author note: this is Jenny. I had to use Taylor's account so the videos would work...

Carson has been learning so fast lately! I can hardly keep up with him. 

There are probably a hundred things he learned this week, 

here are some of those things we were able to catch on camera:

Elephant Sound:

Lots of Walking:

Whatever this is:

Lots of Eating:

Ear Wiggle:

Oh man, that last one is the cutest! He also learned a monkey sound (ah, ah) and a sheep sound (ba, ba). Yes, a lot of these noises he could already make, he's just learning to associate them with animals. One of my favorite things is that he takes his dirty diapers to the trash!- what a good helper! We just love him, and can't wait to see what next week brings!