February and some of March!

Carsten is 9 months now; we went in for his check-up yesterday. His weight has changed very little since he started crawling and climbing he is only 20 pounds 14 ounces (still pretty big), but it is only 50^th percentile! He was always between 80^th and 95^th the other 8 months of his life! He is 27 ½ inches long and is 40^th percentile, which is normal for this little guy.

The end of February my Dad, Mom, and Christian came for a visit. We didn’t know Chin was coming, but they surprised us. Carsten was scared at first and cried for about 15 minutes. He is quite the Mama’s boy and I love it! We went out to the city of Lake Elsinore to visit Michelle and Paul Hayes who moved here from Washington a few months ago. We did lots of shopping! We also went to Disneyland; it was pouring rain some of the day, but it was still a ton of fun! While they were here my mom helped us give Carsten his first hair cut! He was very wiggly so it didn’t turn out super straight but it looks so much better than it did. He also started getting his top front teeth while they were here. We had so much fun with them and we can’t wait to go visit this summer!

Carsten is such a fun little guy. He loves to crawl and has started pulling himself up on everything. When I sit down on the floor to play with him, he climbs all over me.  He likes to hold onto the couch and walk back and forth.  He loves riding in the shopping cart, everyone talks to him and he smiles back. He makes the sweetest noises I have ever heard. He loves to talk all day long and I love to listen to him; his favorite times to talk are during bath time, while eating food, during story time, and as he lies down to go to sleep. He also has started to make noises that sound like words Jake and I will repeat over and over to him. He loves to give kisses, especially to Mom!  He will come up and climb on me and then open his mouth and put it on my cheeks or lips, I love kisses. We just think he is the cutest baby!

Carsten sure loves to eat! He will eat just about everything except green beans. This other day Jake was eating lunch before he went to school. Carsten crawled over, pulled himself up on his high chair and just stared at me. I buckled him in and he waited patiently for me to get his food out of the cupboard, when it was in sight he got so excited. This little guy could eat all day long if I let him.

This past weekend was so much fun! Friday we went window shopping at the mall so that Jake would have some ideas for my birthday. When we were walking around we saw that an Auntie Ann’s Pretzel shop had opened and they were giving out free pretzels the next day. Saturday we were pretty lazy, but eventually got ready. We went back to the mall to get our free pretzels which were delicious!  When we got home we decided 83 degrees was warm enough to go swimming. Carsten got to ride in his little red buggy which he loved. He found is especially fun to reach out the sides and splash. After a little while we took him out to play and he was splashing like crazy. I was definitely wet then I wanted to be! Sunday was typical except for the fact that it was 94 degrees outside. If it weren’t Sunday we would have been swimming!

Carsten's first big bruise from falling!