Our New Adventures

With Carson always on the move we are definitely having some new adventures. Our living room no longer resembles a living room. It looks like a war bunker. We move all the chairs from our dining room table along one open side and then we place his saucer in front of all the wires. The room becomes a fortress to hold a little somone in. And still half the time he magically shows up at my feet in the kitchen. He is constantly trying to stand and getting braver. I've seen him remove his hands from the coffee table and turn his upper body completely around to the chair behind him (while standing). Every once and a while he'll let go and try to play with his toy standing but falls pretty fast. Also, new development as of tonight, he can climb stairs. So I came home to a living room that looked even more ridiculous because Karl had moved the coffee table in front of the stairs. Carson climbed up a couple steps to the first landing. We are going to need to figure something out to let him roam free but not make an obstacle course for us all day. Here's just a picture of Carson checking the computer wires for me to make sure they're all connected right.

Church is an adventure all on its own. We are at the 9 to noon slot and Carson likes a 10 am nap so that is awful. He won't fall asleep in our arms anymore (which is actually our doing since we worked really hard for him to put himself to sleep in his crib) and we don't have a mobile car seat anymore for him to sleep in. So we carry him around and keep him up until he's basically falling over. He also eats cereal at 11 am so we do that real quick in between Sunday School and RS/PH. But that only takes 5 minutes so we're not late to our classes. But the poor thing's schedule is so haywire on Sundays. Getting Carson to sit on a lap for 3 hours is impossible. He just arches his back and squirms and screams till you put him down. I watched a 1 year old play at her mother's feet with a few toys for the entire hour of Relief Society. When I tried that with Carson it was a disaster. He explored every inch of that room with in a few minutes, tipping everything over possible, ripping some ladies papers before I could get them, etc, etc. So Sundays aren't fun. He'll usually make it through sacrament meeting happy, but then it's usually one of us sitting in the lobby while he crawls around. We take turns. I don't understand how other kids just sit on their parents lap with a toy...Carson wants none of that. He wants to explore.

This Sunday, Karl and I had a particular moment that was just a glimpse of life to come and we both had a good laugh. (It's probably not that funny, but I laughed). Karl and I are running around Sunday morning trying to get ready. Whoever gets ready first will usually just start on Carson and then the other joins in when they're done. Karl was done first and I showed Karl what outfit to put Carson in. He got him ready and I joined in just to get his bag together and throw everything in the car. We made it to church right on time and sat down. Carson was standing on the seat backwards basically screaming with glee at the people behind us. It was about half way through the meeting when I looked at Carson's outfit a little closer and noticed that his pants were on backwards. They were cotton (so no zipper) but pockets and a little fake fly. I just started laughing, knowing that it will probably happen several more times in our life.

Karl had President's Day off so we took advantage and drove down to Tucson to see these caves Karl heards about. Kimberly orignally had class so we stopped by just to see her. Then as we were leaving she called and told us she decided to skip so she came with us. The caves were in Colossal Cave Mountain Park. The caves were pretty cool. Lots of stalagmites and tites. Carson did pretty good but seemed to whine whenever the guide stopped to talk for a bit. There were also a few times he decided he was really happy and just shouted "da da" for 5 minutes. Hope the other tourists enjoyed our sound effects. Karl and I decided we probably wouldn't go back though...we've seen cooler caves. But definitely somthing fun if you're bored in Tucson. We packed a little picnic and ate afterwards and then drove home in time for me to go to my class that night. So pretty fun day.

Well, that's all for now. Any suggestions on how to make it through 3 hours of church with an 8 month old would be helpful.

Love Kasey

Other Updates

I was so consumed with the family health right now I forgot to mention other Carson updates. While being sick, he had a new tooth come in. (I can't remember if I mentioned he got his first tooth over Christmas break). Anyway, he now has his two bottom teeth. He likes to pull on them with his fingers. It looks quite painful to me. It's hard to describe - it's like a snap but with a finger and tooth instead of two fingers. He also like to chew on everything to hear the sound his two little teeth make. He can pull himself up to standing now. This means everything goes up two more feet and the crib goes down a level. He can now reach real hard and get everything on top of the coffee table. The gnawing + pulling himself up = little teeth marks all over the inside of the top rung of his crib. Very classy! He's become really interested in books lately. He used to just like them because he could slap them and make noise. But now big picture books he'll just stare at and make excited noises. So we're taking advantage of that and trying to read to him a lot. Although he's not really into word books yet, just pictures. I think he gets bored. If he's tired, he'll sit through a short word book with me. With him being sick, his appetite went way down, but it's starting to come back. We've started him on some little cracker stick thingys thanks to Karl's mom (I think they call them biter biscuits). He absolutely loves them and will sit in this high chair for a good 20 minutes working on that thing - which is great for me when I want to clean the kitchen. He's been making the "da" sound for awhile but is recently obsessed. He'll say "da, da, da" for an hour while playing. We're trying to associate it with Karl but he thinks we're just funny. Oh, he's also developed this little sense of humor with in the last few weeks. When we play or do something silly he'll give us a little laugh. Or he does it randomly and who knows what he's laughing at. With in the last two weeks there's been a lot of development. It's like nothing for a month and then all the sudden he's doing a ton of new things. This second picture is just an example of how he climbs on absolutely everything.

A Little Better

Hey All - things here are going a little better. Carson isn't nearly as stuffy and Karl's feeling well enough to start helping out again. Unfortunately Karl missed a whole week of work so he's bummed about that. While Carson was sick I kind of spoiled him in that I rocked him to sleep each time because I didn't want him to cry and get more stuffed. So now we're reaping those rewards. And by rewards I mean punishments. He's also such a momma's boy now (hopefully it will go away soon). He's fine when I'm not in the room but when I come in and he realizes I'm not holding him, he immediately crawls to my feet and just cries and pulls on my pants till I pick him up. In the night, he wakes up and then won't go back to sleep unless I sit in his room till he is completely out. The minute I leave, he screams. So last night we let him cry it out. He screamed for 30 minutes without slowing down at all. After 2 hours of Karl trying, me trying, holding him, letting him scream, I just brought him into our bed because I was way too tired - it was 4 am and I don't function at my best then. So I think he's well enough to break this habit but it is not going to be fun.

I went to a "Meet the Firms" night at ASU. A lot of the large accounting firms come and recruit. I was a little nervous to go because the career fairs at BYU were just out of control - way too many people competing for attention, shoving resumes in the recruiters faces. But this was much better. First of all, it was just accounting firms so not as big. I was also there early so the crowd wasn't huge. So I just made my way around and it wasn't that bad. I also met some firms I really liked (and some I think really liked me). So now I have to submit a bunch of applications and they also took my resume so we'll see. I'm not quite sure what size of firm I'd like to get my experience at - but I think I'll apply everywhere and then see what my options are. A bigger firm is going to have more prestige, a smaller firm would probably have a more flexible schedule for me though. We'll just see.

Our ward is taken over by babies right now. We had 5 baby blessings today. Then sacrament took extra long because of all the people visiting. By testimony time there was only 10 minutes left. Crazy.

Oh - my blog is different because I tried to change it and then I lost everything. Anyway, I got it back but lost a few things. So then I just changed it to one of the templates they have available.

Kasey