Current notes on Carter

Just a few notes on Carter right now:

--She can throw a ball fairly well. She releases it a little low still (with her arm at a 45 degree angle out in front of her), but it can travel a good distance. Her accuracy leaves something to be desired, but she's definitely getting much better.
--Her walking has turned from toddling into virtually running when she wants to.
--Her language continues to improve by leaps and bounds, both in terms of number of words and in terms of pronunciation.
--She loves to look at pictures of herself and the family.
--She can identify all her facial features: eyes, nose, mouth, hair, tongue, teeth, and ears.
--She continues to be Grandpa Greg's girl.
--She continues to love babies--pictures, dolls and real life. She talks about babies constantly, loves to see them, touch them, love on them and generally be as close to babies as much as she possibly can. As such, she is now obsessed with reading the BabiesRUs catalogue and my parenting magazines, both of which are filled with pictures of babies.
--She likes to feed herself with a spoon and she's not bad at it. However, she does often tip it before it gets to her mouth, resulting in some spillage.
--She, all of a sudden, is a complete participant in music class. She has always loved music class, but before she would just sit and soak up the music, take the instruments Ryder brought her, want me to carry her during the dance songs, etc. Now, she wants to be a part of everything. She goes to get her own instruments, dances by herself during the songs (even the ones where we walk in a circle), follows all the motions, and wants stamps at class. And, the biggest change just this last week, she goes to sit on the teacher's lap during the echo time! Each student goes up and sits on the teacher's lap to do a tonal echo and then, later in class, a rhythm echo. After all the kids who want to go up go, the teacher comes around to the rest of the kids as they sit with their parents. Until a few weeks ago, when it was her turn, Carter would smile, but then she would turn around and bury her head in my lap. For the last few weeks, she has sat on my lap, but would only smile and not make any echoes. Then this last week, all on her own, Carter ran right up to the teacher, plopped down on her lap and did the echo! And, she was so excited to do it, that she went back up 3 more times! I don't know what caused her to turn the corner, but she just blossomed in class this week.

In a few short weeks, she seems to have taken quite a few steps down the path from babyhood to kid-dom.