Everyone loves sketti

Karsten continues to love spaghetti - when he feeds it to himself he often has trouble getting the entire noodle into his mouth. When he can't get the noodle in his mouth he uses his arm and wrist to push it into his mouth. As you can imagine - that gets a 'little' bit messy.


For some reason he also likes to rub his hands in his hair while he eats - this also results in a natural hair mousse of whatever he's eating at the time. :)


...and then he was done, done, done.

Happy Birthday Scott

Since you've already seen that Karsten's big present for Scott's birthday was to take his first step, I thought I would share some more pics from that night. Since Scott is the chef in our house, he picked up a deep dish pizza from his fav pizza place on his way home from work and we had that for dinner!

Karsten and I got Scott a cookie cake in KSU colors for his birthday - yum!


After dinner, Karsten played with his push toy. After he couldn't get us to push him anymore sitting on the seat, he decided to push the toy.


He was pretty impressed with himself - he was doing a great job pushing the toy. After cruising around the kitchen a few times behind the toy, I think it gave him the confidence he needed to take a step on his own.

Scott showing Karsten how to push his toy. :)

Madison isn't so sure what to think about Karsten being this mobile - she just got used to him being able to crawl around...now he is walking?!

So proud of himself - who can resist this smile!!

First Steps!

Karsten took his first steps tonight!! What a great birthday present for Scott!

Busy Boy

Tonight we got Karsten his fourth haircut - can you believe it - some kiddos don't get their haircut at all during their first year. If we hadn't cut his hair I think it would be as long as mine.

After dinner he had a ton of energy so we played a bunch before it was time for a bath and bed. He was all over the place - first the puzzle, then climbing over Scott, then pushing the car around the house - he was one busy boy! I couldn't get him to sit still and smile for too long, so hopefully you can see the cute haircut in these pics.

Playing with his 'baby ipod'


...onto the puzzle!


He has a great time climbing over Scott.


He loves to be chased around...he will crawl really fast, then sit down and turn around to look at you and laugh. It's hilarious - his laugh is contagious!


...onto the push toy. He was so proud of himself!

Happy Birthday Scott

Saturday night we set out for an early birthday celebration for Scott. Karsten hung out with grandma and grandpa for the evening.

Karsten and grandpa playing with his car. I don't think Karsten was too disappointed that we were leaving.


Scott and I headed out for dinner.


We went to Fogo de Chao, a brazilian steakhouse for dinner. We had been to a different brazilian steakhouse before, but it was several years ago. I read reviews of Fogo de Chao and it got rave reviews. It definetely did not disappoint - from the moment we walked in, the staff was super attentive and helpful. If you've never been to a Brazilian Steakhouse, they have a great salad bar with appetizers and salads, but the main extravaganza is meat, and lots of it. The servers carry around a variety of cuts of meat on large spears - then cut you a serving if you select that meat. This describes the experience better than I am! The food was wonderful - we were stuffed!

Our waitress asked if we were celebrating anything special and when we told her it was Scott's birthday she brought out this super yummy cake. I would go back just to have that cake!! We forgot to take a picture before we started eating...oops! :)




This was on display in the front of the restaurant. It was cool to see how they cook the meat.

20/20

During our last Parents as Teachers meeting, our gal told us about a program that the state offers called InfantSee for kids under 1 year. The program helps establish a good foundation for healthy vision by checking to ensure the baby's eyes are healthy. Yesterday was his appointment.

We were interested to see how they would evaluate this eyes since Karsten couldn't tell us which option was better - 1 or 2, plus he couldn't read an eye chart!

Waiting patiently for the doctor to get started. Karsten was looking all around at all of the equipment.


The doctor was great with Karsten. He had done his residency at Children's Mercy so he had lots of tricks for working with kids.

After the doctor looked in his eyes, Karsten got a sticker for being so good.

He started to get more comfortable and wanted to touch all of the equipment.

The last step of the appointment was for the doctor to put in dialating eye drops so he could look into his eye and see if his eye was healthy. After his eyes were dialated, Karsten did NOT like it when the doctor shined the bright light into his eyes, he would cry and turn his head quickly away from the light. The doctor had a few tricks that allowed him to get a couple of quick peeks into his eyes.

When we left, Karsten actually kept his sunglasses on as we walked to the car. He typically pulls his sunglasses off immediately, but I think he realized they were helping him.



Overall, the doctor said that Karsten's eyes looked great. He could tell that Karsten (like all babies) is farsighted right now, and predicted that in the future he would be nearsighted (like both Scott and I). He said that he recommended we get his eyes checked again when it was time for him to start school.

He also shared an interesting tidbit that I had never heard - a child's eyes are mostly done developing by the age of seven. Eye doctors like to see children before the age of seven because they are able to make changes that will prevent long term damage to their vision (where applicable). He said that after the age of seven, it is much more difficult to fix eye problems. So there you go - take your lil one to the eye dr before he/she is seven.

Pool Party

I got a text from Scott during work yesterday that said...'do you think we should fill up Karsten's pool tonight'. Sounds like someone wanted to play in the water with Karsten. When Karsten and I got home from work, the pool was filled up and the water had warmed up...but only a tiny bit.

Karsten showing off his new swim trunks. Good thing he has swim trunks on because otherwise you would see that his Little Swimmers diaper had Ariel from Little Mermaid on them. I was so focused on getting the right size of Little Swimmers that I didn't even notice that you could look at the side of the package and see the design on the diapers. Sigh...oh well, lesson learned. It will just be our little secret.


Slowly getting in the water - he's not so sure about this.

He wasn't loving the pool - I think the water was just too cool for him.

Please Dad, rescue me from the pool!

He starts to relax and enjoy the water. Scott showed him he could splash the water and then everything was good.

Thinking this pool thing is pretty fun!

Splish splash

Scott decided that Karsten would like the pool better if Scott could get in with him and show him how fun it was. Do you think Scott just wanted to get in the pool? Yeah...I thought so too. :)

Karsten does seem to be having more fun with Scott in the pool - he's a smart dad!

Then Karsten sat in the water an was not happy with it. He quickly climbed up on Scott and put his head down. Poor lil guy. I was ready to call it an afternoon but Scott suggested giving it one more try...

...and he was right again. More smiles and splashing in the water!

Finally we decided it was time to get out of the pool and get ready for dinner. I managed to get Karsten out of the pool and convinced we should go inside - look who I couldn't get out of the water.

Not too interested in saying cheese - what you can't see in this picture is that my jeans are soaking wet because as I was kneeling down to try to get a closeup picture of Karsten I lost my balance and kneeled on the edge of the pool. You know what happens when you kneel on a plastic pool - yup, the water all rushes out...thus, wet jeans from the knee down. LOL.