Carsten is 10 months! :)

Carsten is 10 months old today! It's hard to believe how time flies, but honestly, it really does. Each day is new and exciting (for the most part!) for both of us. I love watching him discover new things and I think he enjoys getting into things that previously he hasn't been able to. This has been a wonderful month of visitors with my entire family here for 2 weeks in early June and Andy's brother and sister-in-law here for the first week of July. This has meant traveling with everyone and Carsten has really enjoyed playing with other people besides Andy and I.

So, I'll give my usual update on Carsten's milestones in honor of his 10 month birthday.

Crawling/Standing/Walkingish: Carsten has been crawling since 7.5 months, but his army crawl has turned into a true crawl for the most part, which is fun. He's been standing since about 8 months, and he's getting to the point where he can stand using a wall and he can also balance for a second or two without holding onto anything, so his balance is getting pretty good. He also has discovered the patio windows and loves to stand up and look outside. His ability to stand up well also has him into almost everyone including the window shade handle (which he LOVES - picture below). In addition, he LOVES to walk places while holding the furniture, wall, or onto my hands. Carsten no longer will tolerate being in his walker, but is perfectly happy to climb and play on it. We'll see when he takes his first steps, but I anticipate him walking soon :).

Carsten pulling on the window shade handle (after he stood up using the window).

Carsten crawling!

Eating: Carsten has conquered dairy, and I'm currently trying to transition into having him eat all our meals with us so I can stop buying baby food. We've been using baby food from the store since early June because with so much traveling it's just a lot easier. The only thing that he really hasn't yet had is eggs, which we'll introduce soon. In general, he's not a picky eater, he just doesn't always eat a ton of food. But since I'm still nursing him, I'm not too worried about that. He's also done really well with chunkier foods and finger foods this month, although he's not too interested in feeding himself yet (except Cheerios and puffs). He's also more reliably drinking out of a sippy cup and will occasionally drink from it himself. We went out to eat this week with Jeff and Amanda, and Carsten ate and played in his high chair for the entire 1.5 hr meal. What a treat for us! Here he is:

What a GREAT kid :)

Sleeping: Carsten tends to sleep quite well when we're at home, and not so well when we're at a hotel, but hopefully this will get fixed someday soon. He's getting more consistent about sleeping through the night and if he wakes up it's typically between 4 and 5 am so we can put him back to bed after feeding him. He does wake up a lot when he's sick, but this is to be expected. Naps have been AMAZING this month with a typical schedule of a nap at ~9 am which usually lasts 1-1.5 hrs and then a nap at ~1 pm which lasts about an hour. I've appreciated this extra time to myself and I think we've both found ourselves a lot more well rested with his current nap schedule. He also does pretty well when we're traveling with naps as long as I let him sleep in the moby wrap, which gets really hot for both of us in summer - oh well. We'll be working on trying to get him to nap in the stroller and our hiking carrier which are more comfortable for us as he gets heavier. Anyway, it's really been a good month for sleeping - hooray!

Teeth: He has 4 teeth now (2 bottom and 2 top), and they came in staggered with this order: bottom left, top left, bottom right, and top right. I understand this is a bit atypical, so we'll see which ones come in next!

Favorite toys/activities: His top toys are these: laundry basket, my waterbottle, toy baskets, exercise ball, shoes, books, my laptop, cords, and paper. These 'toys' will keep him occupied for a long time, provided he's supposed to be playing with those items... :). Most of the time he plays pretty well by himself, but I've noticed that right after people leave, he needs more playtime with me (probably because he missed everyone!). He's really fun to play with and I love coming up with new ways to play with his current toys.

Disposition: Carsten is really interested in his surroundings, and we've noticed that he's got quite a determined and persistent personality. He's starting to express his wants more clearly (although we're not quite to the point where he's signing back at us yet), and it's fun to watch him 'think' (as in 'I'd like to have that object'). He's a happy kid and even when he's sick, he still is a lot of fun. He's also pretty good to take on trips, provided he and I are both getting a pretty good amount of sleep :). Here's a picture of him playing this morning:

Happy 10 months Carsten!