Church

Andy, Carsten, and I had a wonderful weekend. We finally made it to church, which was a blessing. We went to the International Protestant Church (IPC) in Zurich where we met quite a few people with American English and Midwestern accents to boot! We met someone who grew up in Ames, IA (where my Dad went to college), someone from South Dakota, and someone from Oklahoma. I also was able to meet a few moms (with even younger babies than us!), and they invited me to a Moms and Tots group that meets on Wednesday morning (it's complete with babysitters!). It was so nice to connect with people again, and I think I finally started realizing how isolated we are out here. I've noticed that when I'm out I try to say and I pay attention to people, but for the most part I don't even listen to what people are saying because I have absolutely no idea... :). The church service was long, but fairly traditional, which is what we like and is good because there aren't a lot of English-speaking church options to choose from.

We had Carsten's first train ride on they way to church, which was very close to a disaster. Church is at 11:30 am, so we had to leave our train station at 10:30 am. We tried putting him down for a nap at 9:30 am, which did not happen, so by the time we made it to our train he had been up for 2.5 hours, which is on the long side for him. He absolutely did NOT like the brake noises (compressed air whooshing noises when the brakes released, which are really quite loud), and since there were about 15 stops that occurred about every 2 minutes, he had no chance to fall asleep on the train. Poor guy... Anyway, long story short, after this ride I think we were both thinking that I was never going to leave Egg again. However, our train ride back (even though he was still tired and hadn't had many naps because of church) was terrific. He loved looking out of the windows, and even though the brake noises still startled him, he wasn't upset by them. Hooray! Looks like I can leave Egg by train after all, I just need to make sure he's not on the verge of a melt-down before we go :).

Last week we had a few rough nights with Carsten. We have been putting him to bed asleep, but that no longer is working because he'll wake up MAD after about 30 minutes of being set down. So we spent 2-2.5 hours per night trying to get him back to sleep. We decided on Friday night that we'd like to be done with that, so we've decided that it's ok for him to cry. Friday night he cried 45 minutes straight, and we felt like horrible parents, but Saturday and Sunday nights he didn't cry at all! I think the trick with him is trying to make sure he's awake when we set him down, that way he knows where he is and that the expectation is for him to sleep. Last night (Monday night) he didn't do as well, but he only cried for little while. Needless to say, Andy and I are enjoying having some time to ourselves after he goes to bed (about 8 pm most nights).

Carsten has also decided that laying on his back is not the most fun place to be as he'd rather be sitting up (he still needs supervision & some help to do this), hanging out with me, on a walk (he gets excited when he sees the baby bjorn), and even tummy time is preferable to being on his back. He'll lay on his back and play sometimes, but it's usually the best after he wakes up in the morning, and he gets progressively less tolerant as the day goes on. This is a little stressful for me because it means there are a lot less times that I can go and do other things (like dishes and writing papers). He also takes very short naps (mostly 30 min naps), so it's hard to get things accomplished at these times as well. Here's some photos of him at tummy time:

He's a thinker!

He's become quite adept at eating his burp-cloths now. 

So bright-eyed!

Our smiley boy. This picture absolutely melts my heart :).

 And here are some other goofy photos: :)

This is what happens when Daddy dresses Carsten :).

This photo was Andy's idea - this is Carsten's hair after bathtime :).