Zoo Day

In celebration of finally having a nice day I took Friday off and Brice and I took Karsten to his first trip to the zoo. He seems to enjoy the fish the best because he can see them swimming by in the great big aquariums but he doesn't seem to get the bigger animals yet, probably because they are too far away for him to really see. The best part about the MN Zoo is the farm because they have a whole barn full of sheep and goats and you can feed and pet them. We took Karsten out of the stroller so he could enjoy his first encounter with a farm animal. Of course, the first thing he does is reach out to grab at something which grabbed the attention of this mamma goat. She then stuck her head through the fence and proceeded to lick Karsten's hand - it was pretty cute. On our way to to the sink to wash up Karsten got licked by a great big goat - he must really taste good that the goats like to lick him! Here are some pictures from our day.

Dad, why is the goat licking me?


Dad, the turtles are swimming right in front of me!


Why are we leaving the turtles?


I don't like the moose, mom - they aren't doing anything!


Wait, the tigers are sleeping too? How come all the animals are asleep?


I also need to share these pictures because they are so funny. Brice gave his stethoscope to Karsten to play with. Do I have another paramedic in the house?




I will be working on getting some more videos posted. The newest one is of Karsten scooting across our bed. Now that he has figured out how to get from point a to point b he gets into a ton of trouble which means I still get nothing done around the house because I have to constantly watch him. He doesn't like being still for long so sitting him in his Bumbo for longer than about 15 minutes is impossible. We really need to take a trip to Babies R Us to get the baby proofing supplies. I'm thinking about getting a little fenced in area that we can set up in the living room and I don't have to worry about constantly watching him. We'll see what we can find.

Karsten turns 6 months

Somehow Karsten keeps getting bigger and older even though we have had many heart to hearts about this subject and he just seems to be defiant about it. It really does seem like yesterday when I was pregnant and waddling around the house waiting to go into labor and now somehow it's 6 months later and I have a boy who eats like a pig, sits up by himself and has started to scooch around the house (he'll probably figure out how to crawl any day now). Seriously, where does the time go?

In celebration of this milestone I will entertain you with pictures as usual.

Hanging out after church. I wish you could see it in this picture but he slept through church in his carseat and ended up with an alfalfa hairdo.


Reading the newspaper.


Picking up chicks with his new shades.


Ready for the beach in his new sunhat.


Who needs toys when we have placemats

and shoes to play with.


We are trying patiently to wait for the weather to clear up so we can spend some more time outside. Karsten loves going for walks in his stroller and I like it too because I get to teach him about all of the wildlife we have in our neighborhood. It's even easier when the ducks decide to take up residence in our bushes to nest.

We ended up deciding to put Karsten in a different daycare and he will start at the end of the month. It's going to save us a lot of money and I can't believe we were spending more than $300 for 4 days a month. I talked a little before about the new position that I interviewed for at work; I ended up not getting that one but they are moving me up into something else which I don't know if I'm too thrilled about. They want me to do this new thing half time and what I'm doing now half time.....without anything in return. Who in their right mind would even think that people would even be remotely happy with their job when there is no reward for getting a promotion? I like my job and who I work with and what I do but I think there are things where you need to draw a line in the sand and this is one of those. There have been a lot of telecommuting positions posted lately for other business segments and I decided to apply for a couple of them. If I can work from home not only will it save us daycare money but gas money and an hour of commute time for me each day which I can then spend with Karsten instead of in the car. We'll see how everything turns out.