Our Toddler

Now that we have a full grown toddler, Karsten seems to be more entertaining and troublesome all at the same time. One of his favorite things to do is racing me up the stairs when he needs his diaper changed. You see, Brice thought it would be a great idea to teach him to climb the stairs so we don't need to always be carrying him up since he is getting to be one heavy guy. Well, for about a week, all he wanted to do was climb the stairs so we had to put the gate on the stairs to keep him downstairs so we could actually watch him. Thankfully, that has worn off! He also enjoys walking from kitchen to living room and vice versa, picking up something from that room and depositing it in the opposite room where it does not belong. Example: tonight I made a pork roast in the crock pot and I was getting the rolls and veggies set to eat dinner. Well, somehow without me noticing, he got 3 spoons out of the silverware drawer, the pasta fork out of the drawer right next to me and was walking around the house with them. After finally noticing he was making this strange noise on the tile, I saw the utensils he was playing with along with two of his stuffed animals that he carries around. This is why our house is such a pigsty right now....toddlers tend to get into everything!

Recap of Christmas.....we were really busy! I took the week of Christmas off thinking it would be nice to be home and be able to catch up on a lot of things that needed them. Well, that can't happen very well when you aren't home for 4 days! I was really hoping to have a nice, quiet time just the three of us but that never happened. We did end up staying home for New Years though - we had a spread of junk food and champagne and Brice and I actually stayed awake until midnight.

We've been really busy at work lately. United is requesting a lot of extra analysis that we don't have the man power to actually complete in time which means a lot of opportunity for overtime. I've been getting to work sometimes as early as 6am and staying until 5pm when I'm not too sore from sitting on my butt all day. It looks like this is the only way I'll be making any extra money this year because we aren't getting raises this year.....

They've cut shift hours where Brice works and we'll need to see how that's going to effect us. Right now he works saturday, sunday and one day during the week. Well, we don't know if he is going to be able to get all of his hours in 3 days this next coming shift bid. He might end up working 4 days a week which would really suck because we would either have to pay for an extra day of daycare which would be really tough or Brice would have to work overnight and come home in the morning to take care of Karsten. We're hoping for the best but any prayers everyone could say for us would be great!

In conclusion, what else but pictures of Karsten?


We took a trip downtown Minneapolis to see A day in the life of an elf at Macy's. Karsten enjoyed himself for the most part, well, except seeing Santa - he's not a fan!


Karsten's first playing in the snow experience. He likes eating the snow but I guess he got crabby when his mittens got wet. Why can't they make waterproof infant mittens????


Karsten's new "perch" farther up the stairs now that he knows how to climb.


One of the three pictures we took while opening presents on Christmas. I think this is the only time he's really played with the cars that my sister bought for him....


Bathtime! Brice decided that Karsten needed a bubble beard but he couldn't get a good picture of him smiling so this is what you get. He loves bubble baths but he eats the bubbles instead of playing with them most of the time.


Who needs toys when there are empty laundry detergent bottles???


You know it's bedtime when he snuggles up in a blanket on the floor and sucks his thumb.



Karsten loves digging into my lunchbox when I get home from work. On Friday, I had an apple in there I didn't eat....well, I'm sure you can understand by the pictures what happened to my apples!


In closing, our Christmas picture. Thanks Mel for taking this for us even though we took about 30 before we got one that worked!