Precious Carter

To kick off my blog, I’d like to introduce the youngest of my four children.

Ten-month-old Carter has been crawling around for a month and a half and he’s the easiest baby alive. I don’t think he’s human. He wakes up and plays in the crib. Or lets the girls take him out, whatever. One to two hours later, he’ll cry. I feed him and put him on the floor. He crawls, pulls himself to a stand against the couch, eats everything in sight (this is the only thing I have to be diligent about. See below.), laughs at his sisters, screams if Mia pokes his eyes, chokes him, etc. Then he’ll cry again a few hours later (yes, hours). I put him in the crib with a pacifier (he really insists on the pacifier) and he goes right to sleep, ready to start over again in a little while.

Someday he’s going to go postal and then I’ll know I should have held him as a baby.

He also almost died. At 12:30 am a few week ago, Mike and I woke up to Carter frantically screaming. It’s not that he never cries hard, but he never, never, never cries hard for no reason and I’d fed him at around 10:30 that night. So I got up and gave him a pacifier, thinking it was a dream. He took the pacifier, obviously exhausted, and relaxed into a sleep that lasted ten seconds. He woke up, screaming, screaming. Fine. I got a bottle ready while he wailed. He took the formula for five seconds, eyes barely open, then screamed. Then vomited. Mike was up by this time and I cleaned the bedding while he held Carter, who just wanted to sleep in his arms. Yay, he’s all better. We put him in the crib. Screams. Frantic screams. More vomit, immediately.

Mike asked if he could be choking on something. But he’d been in his bed for hours, I argued. He was dead asleep. How could he have put something in his mouth? Carter screamed again and we both saw it, the inch of blue tape folded in on itself that he’d probably had in his mouth for two hours. I think he was chewing on it, fell asleep, and it fell to the back of his mouth later. Okay, maybe he wouldn’t have died, but I was really scared. Scared enough to sweep my floor five or six times a day and have the girls scour the carpet for choking hazards ever since. Just tonight, I found large bits of colored egg shell in his mouth and I have no idea how he got it. The girls know that if they really want my attention, they just have to say, “Mom, Cawtah (Carter) has somefing in his mouf.”

I hold him so close sometimes. I just love him so much.