Carsten WALKS!

Andy left yesterday for a conference in the NE United States, which means that Carsten and I are on our own for 1 week. Andy's flight didn't leave until 5 pm, so we got to spend some time as a family, which was super nice, as well as run a few errands and do a bit of cooking so I'd have leftovers. Andy had a great trip and we've already gotten to skype with him, which was fun for two reasons: 1) Carsten smiled and laughed at Andy (more so than I've seen him do to anyone else), so I think he clearly recognizes people and 2) he took about 5 steps from a chair to me which is way more than he's done so far. Unfortunately, this might mean he'll be an expert walker before Andy gets home, but I'll do my best to knock him over so he has to wait (jk, mostly :) ).

He spent most of the afternoon practicing for our families and he's getting quite proficient even after just a couple of hours of trying it. He's taken a couple of steps when he's excited and run out of furniture, but never quite anything so intentional as what he did today, so walking here we come! This is exciting news for me too because then playgrounds will start to be an appealing activity for him :). I don't have any video yet because when I tried, he just tried to crawl as fast as he could to where the video camera was sitting. I'll do my best to get some video tomorrow!

Pool Day

Last week it was really hot and since Andy doesn't have air conditioning at work, he took off a couple of hours early and met Carsten and I at the pool by Lake Zurich. We had a lot of fun with Carsten in the water, and Andy was surprised that he just sat in the water and played because he really doesn't just sit anymore. It was also fun because by chance, Andy's and Carsten's swim trunks nearly match (thanks for Carsten's swim trunks Kim!). We took Carsten to the lake, and since it was much colder than the kiddie area, we didn't stay in the water for very long. All in all, it was a fun day!

Carsten having fun splashing :)

Loves the kiddie area!

Matching trunks :)

wooden spoons are great toys

I try to introduce new things into Carsten's life every once in a while in an effort to expose him to other interesting things. One new thing that he's discovered is the wooden spoon and pot that I have hidden away in one of the lower kitchen cabinets. It's a great distraction for him when I'm trying to get some things done in the kitchen :). I took some photos in the hope of trying to capture some of the fun he was having, so here they are!

'A spoon?? For me?!'

'I must find something to hit with my spoon.'

'Tah Dah!!!!!'

Sweet boy :)

Couldn't be happier :)

LOVE LOVE LOVE this face :)

More Swiss Huismans - Part 3

The last two days Jeff and Amanda were here, Andy was able to take the afternoons off. So Carsten was able to get his morning naps at home and then we stuck around Zurich a bit so we could make the most of our time all together. We met for lunch on Wednesday at the Chef School's restaurant and we were told that lunch was pretty informal and we didn't need a reservation. Apparently the hostess for the restaurant did not agree and she told us that we would need reservations for lunch and in fact, all day (despite over half of the tables being empty). Hmmmm, so we were either underdressed, they don't like Americans, or babies are not accepted at this hoity toity place. Fortunately, they also had a bistro cafe which we were allowed to eat at, so we enjoyed cheese fondue and various other lunches. Carsten was amazing through the entire meal and did a great job eating his food and then playing until we were ready to leave (about 1.5 hrs!). Here's some pictures of us at our cafe:

what a great kid :)

Jeff and Amanda!

Andy and I :)

After we were done eating I loaded Carsten up in his moby wrap (after he screamed for a few minutes in his stroller) and we walked to downtown where Jeff had scoped out some chocolate shops for our very own 'chocolate tour'. I dont' have any photos of us eating chocolate because I was too excited for the chocolate and it wasn't around for very long... :). We really enjoyed seeing the different shops and it was fun to try different chocolates (YUM!). We even ended the day by finding another truffle cake, which we just had to try for comparison :). I think Carsten enjoyed having Andy around, although despite Andy's best efforts, he really doesn't have this particular hold down yet in a way that's comfortable for Andy.... :)

notice the sunglasses....

notice the hair.... 

giddyup! 

"Ok, I'll play nice now."

That evening Jeff and Amanda graciously made us risotto, which was yummy! I really enjoyed not having to do the meal planning and the cooking :).

The next day we went to a nearby castle, Scholss Lenzburg, for the afternoon. It was situated on a pretty high hill overlooking the town of Lenzburg and was reported to be a 30 min hike up to the castle. We elected to take a bus, which was definitely the right decision. The weather was quite warm and I'm pretty sure it'd be more than a 30 min hike for us :). The castle was really quite pretty and one of the main draws were rooms set up for different periods of the castle. It took me a while when we first got there to get Carsten to sleep (it was hot and later than his normal naptime), and once everyone else had finished eating, he had finally fallen to sleep. The rooms were really cool and the one major downside for me was that I couldn't really spend a lot of time looking because they had projectors with audio descriptions going in most of the rooms which I was afraid would wake up Carsten. All in all, it was a nice castle to see and it was really nice that it was only a 20 min train ride out of Zurich. Here's some photos of the castle:

I took this photo :).

pretty gardens

Andy took this for me as we were running out to catch the bus back down to Lenzbug. I love that I was thinking, "man, I'd like a photo of the drawbridges (especially the pedestrian one on the right), but we're running short on time, so I won't ask Andy." And then he took one for me, without my asking, because he knew that I would love a photo of it. What a guy :).

We had planned on taking a bus 30 min more to get to see another castle right in the area, but then we decided that it would be better to get home and make dinner since we were running short on time. We could have waited a few minutes to get the express train back, or their was a local train directly to Stadelhofen. We elected to take the earlier local train, however, once we were on Andy and I realized that we didn't have tickets (whoops!). So we got off and then bought our tickets. Unfortunately, the place we got off at only had a train once an hour, so we were stuck. And there was absolutely nothing there except a gas station and convenience store. So, we got to wait and wait and wait and wait.  Good thing we left the castle early so we could get home early.... wait, nope :). Next time we'll remember our tickets :). 

Anyway, that ends Jeff and Amanda's time here - we had fun! Thanks for coming Jeff and Amanda! 

More Swiss Huismans - Part 2

On Sunday, Jeff, Amanda, and Andy all went to church on time while I stayed with Carsten until he woke up from his nap. Carsten and I were about 45 min late to church (it's a 1.5 hr service), but it was nice to know that he had good rest and hopefully helped him recover from his cold. He no longer had his fever, which was nice for all of us. After church we got a tiny bit of ice cream that they were selling at the coffee hour, and then we made our way up to Uetliburg, which is up on the ridge just west of Zurich. This is start of the 2ish hour Planetary hike, which we had elected to do for the afternoon. The visibility was great, and we enjoyed seeing the mountains and general scenery. The only downside of the hike was that Carsten never managed to get his afternoon nap in. He didn't sleep in his hiking backpack or the moby wrap, so he just ended up TIRED. Despite being horribly tired, he did pretty well, especially once I stopped trying to get him to sleep :). Here's some photos from our hike:

Lake Zurich and the Alps in the background. So pretty!

Jeff and Amanda!

We like our hiking gear! :)

This is Carsten NOT sleeping.

On Monday, Carsten and I elected to stay home in order to try to get him feeling back to normal, and Andy had to go to work. Jeff and Amanda headed to Lucerne after Amanda gave Carsten his very first haircut in the morning (thanks Amanda!). It was time for a haircut as his bangs were touching his eyes if they laid down. Here's an action shot of Carsten's 1st haircut (and yes, I did save a lock of his hair for his baby book :) ):

Thanks Amanda!

On Tuesday Andy headed to work while Jeff, Amanda, Carsten, and I went to the Rhein Falls and Stein am Rhein. The falls were picture perfect and it was fun to see them again, and once again, I can't WAIT to bring Andy someday soon :). The only thing marring the day was that Carsten absolutely would not breastfeed in the morning while we were traveling. I think he was too distracted, hot, and by the end hungry. Carsten and I ended up both pretty frustrated for the morning, but in the end, I got him to nurse with the white noise of the falls and he took a short nap while we were walking by the falls, which seemed to do him (and me!) a world of good.

Rhein Falls!

Sleeping baby :).

Carsten saying 'hey - I missed that!' :)

 We missed our train to Stein am Rhein by just a couple of minutes, so we waited for a while at the train station for the next train. Here's some photos of Amanda and Carsten having fun!

We finally made it to Stein am Rhein where we were amazed at its cuteness :). We wandered through the time period museum (which Carsten slept through for his afternoon nap - go Carsten!), and we also got to try a few desserts and pastries. We headed home in order to meet Andy for dinner. All in all, it was a great day!

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!

More Swiss Huismans!

Jeff and Amanda arrived bright and early last week Friday (July 1). Andy met them at the airport (a bit late due to some train confusion), and then brought them back to Zurich where Carsten and I met them. We stored their luggage at the train station and then got some pastries to eat by the lake for a morning snack before Andy had to go back to work. Here's Jeff and Amanda in Switzerland:

Pastries by the lake!

We sent Andy off to work and then Carsten, Jeff, Amanda, and I set off for a walking tour of Zurich in order to see the sights and keep J&A awake :). We saw the 3 big churches and even found a chocolate shop that Amanda had read about (it was good!). We made our way to the Zurich train station and got some sandwiches for lunch, which we ate outside of the Swiss History museum. After lunch, we toured the museum for about an hour, and then headed back to Egg so everyone could take a nap. Here's a picture of J&A outside St. Peter's Church:

Unfortunately, after Carsten woke up from his nap, he had a fever, which lasted through the night and partway through the next day, so we didn't do much on Saturday so Carsten (& everyone else) could rest. Andy took J&A on a walk around Egg, and here's our traditional photo:

More to come later!