Happy 11 months Carsten!

Carsten is 11 months old today. Where has the time gone? I know it's cliche to say that, but seriously, he's always been changing and growing faster than we can keep up with. It's been a wonderful 11 months with Carsten, and this month has been a lot of fun. Here's the month in review:

Happy 11 months Carsten! :)

Physical Prowess: He now walks! He's been walking for 2 weeks now, and he's improved such that this morning he followed me all the way from the living room to our bedroom which means that he successfully navigated 2 corners and went quite a distance. In the past couple of days he's also started standing up on his own in the middle of the room, so I'm sure this skill will come along quickly as well. In the last week he's also been trying to perfect walking with objects in his hands (see photo below). Walking has also meant an increase in falling which has been associated with various head bonks, so we've had our share of crying and cuddling with Mommy time. With his newfound walking skills, it's getting even harder to take photos of him because by the time my camera is ready to flash, he's already made it to me, which means that he's no longer in focus and has just been blinded by the flash :).

Walking with objects. 

Baby on the move!

Something really adorable about your baby walking to you :).

Disposition: Carsten continues to be a happy baby with the over-riding comment that he's very 'busy' - which is true because he's rarely sitting still. For those of you who knew Andy and I as children, this is unsurprising :). He's pretty quiet around other people at first, but he does a generally does a good job of playing with other kids at church and the gym, which has been really nice for all of us. And for now, he doesn't seem to have a lot of stranger anxiety, which is a blessing. He still is making his 'baby face' and he is starting to make his wishes known more clearly. So far though, the only baby sign that he's doing is 'more', which I have found usually means 'Cheerios.' :)

Full smile (hard to capture!)

baby face :)

Playtime: Carsten does a pretty good job of entertaining himself, and lately, the construction project across the way has been really interesting for him to watch because they have big construction equipment out demolishing a building across the street. So in order for him to be able to watch it better, we moved our futon so he has full access to the window (see photo below). We've been trying to play outside, go to the gym, go to the zoo, and go swimming in order to change up playtime for him - I think he's really enjoyed the change of pace. It's actually been more difficult that I would have thought to go somewhere in July because for the most part it's been 60 and rainy for the entire month. This makes it by far the coldest July I've ever encountered, which has been nice because we dont' have a/c, but it's been a challenge to get out and do things with Carsten when the weather isn't great. We're working on finding out indoor activities, which will be useful for winter as well. His favorite toys have been the exercise ball (he chases it around while walking, which is fairly impressive), little red block which he carries around almost continuously, and books (caterpillar and hippos go berserk). We've also gotten to enjoy Carsten dancing to music this month, which has been really fun to watch :). He also will come and find you when you're 'hiding', and he really enjoys being chased, so he's at a really fun age :).

Sleeping: Carsten has been an amazing sleeper this month with him only waking up in the middle of the night a handful of times. He typically is in bed around 7:30 pm and is up around 6:30 am. This has meant more rest for all of us, which has been really nice. His naps have consistently been good, with his morning nap usually about 1.5 hours long at 9 am and his afternoon nap lasting about 1 hour at 1 pm. Yay sleep! :) We've also switched him to sleeping in his pack n play full time because for whatever reason, he was getting blisters on his mouth from chewing on his crib.

Baby in Training: We've begun behavior modification training which has meant using the word 'NO' quite a few times. We're trying to teach him to leave a few things alone in the house, such as the oven, and to sit down while in the bathtub and on the train. We've had reasonable success with everything except the oven. When our oven is on, the light inside the oven is on, and this really seems to attract Carsten. We've looked for baby gate options, but with our house layout, it just is not possible - so he must learn!

Eating: Well, Carsten has now had eggs, so we're moving on to eating all foods that Andy and I are eating. We've figured out that we're spending a small fortune on baby food for the last two months since I had switched from making baby food to buying it in jars from the store. Now that he's pretty adept at picking up food and can have pretty much everything we're having (no nuts yet), we're going to push to have him eat our food full time. This will require a bit better meal planning on my part and most likely we'll be eating even healthier as a result :). In other news we can also see 2 more teeth coming in on top, so that brings his total up to 6! So, I think we're going to expect more mess at dinner time with Carsten (please refer to the curry face photo that I posted before :) ).

Skype: Andy was gone for a week this month to the US for a conference, and he was able to skype us every day. Skype is not new for Carsten because we've used it to keep in touch with friends and family, but what was new was that he was SUPER excited to see Andy, which I'm pretty sure meant that he recognized Andy. Also, Andy and I both got to see Carsten walk for the first time because he did it when I was talking to Andy over skype (yay technology!).

Also, my blog is telling me that this is my 100th post. Who knew I had that much to say? Well, having a baby to talk about helps :).