Karsten: 11 Months -

I honestly thought about just copying/pasting Kate’s 11 month update and putting it here for Karsten (replacing the pictures, of course). That’s how much these sisters are alike. God is SO in the details. From their development to their tiny attitudes, these girls were meant to be sisters!

So yeah, Karsten is 11 months old. And by the time I post this, she is already a week into this 11th month. That means in just 3 more weeks, she will be ONE. Where in the WORLD has the last year gone? A year ago, we had NO idea that this little girl would be joining our family and changing our world. Now it’s hard to remember life without her.

What is she up to?

Well the biggest thing is – walking! All. Over. The. Place. Girl is on the move. In all of 3-4 days, she seriously went from taking a step or two, to walking nonstop. She can stand herself up all by herself (without having to pull up on anything) and can stop, lean over and pick something up, and then stand back up and keep going. So she has it down.

And she LOVES praise and attention. When she first started taking steps, we’d clap for her and say “Yay Karsten!”. She loved it and would get so excited. Now, after she walks to where ever she is going, she will stop, plop down, and then clap for herself.

She is still sleeping pretty great. She’s been a little “off” the past few days and doesn’t want to take her morning nap. So then she ends up taking an earlier afternoon nap and then going to bed early. I hope this new schedule doesn’t stick around because this Mama doesn’t love the early bedtimes. It means I get to see her that much less between getting home from work and putting her to bed!

She seems SO much bigger to us, but she still wears her 9 month clothes perfectly fine. 12 month dresses and onesies fit her too, but 12 month pants are really just too big. She’s still in size 3 diapers.

She now has FOUR teeth. (See those top two poking through on the picture above?) At 10 months old she just had one lonely little tooth that had barely popped through. About two weeks ago this girl was extra fussy for a few days. She just couldn’t be satisfied with anything. She had some pretty bad diapers and diaper rash. Turns out, three teeth were coming through at once. I think that would make anybody fussy. So now she has 4 teeth (two top and two bottom).

She is still such a Mama’s girl, and I’m still not complaining. I’ll take it! The whole walking thing has really added to it though because she can get to me so much faster. I’m becoming pretty skilled at doing things one handed while holding a baby.

She is still getting 3-4 bottles a day, about 6-7 oz each time. And baby food 3 times a day. She is finally starting to eat more real solid type foods, instead of only pureed baby foods. I think it must have been a texture thing because she did not like anything chunky at all for a while. She had green beans a few weeks ago and loved to pick them up and eat them. She eats nearly any kind of bean (baked beans, pinto beans, etc) and loves mashed potatoes. And puffs. But what baby doesn’t like puffs?

She hasn’t added a lot to her vocabulary. She’ll say Mama and Dada, of course. And “Hey” and “Bye”, and waves along when she says them. She says “Uh oh” and will purposefully throw her puffs on the floor and say “Uh oh.” And she will say “Woof”, as in, Georgia Bulldogs say “Woof”. Think Daddy had anything to do with that? Ha!

She has the curliest, prettiest hair and I just love it. Since my hair is stick straight, I’m learning how this whole curly-hair thing works. It usually has pretty ringlets for the first half of the day, and then she takes a nap (and pulls on her hair when she is tired) and that’s the end of the little ringlets.

She is a lover of music. At church, we just have to walk into the auditorium and she’ll start bouncing and clapping. We typically keep her in the service with us for the very first song, since she loves the music so much. This morning, she bounced, clapped and “sang” along with the song with so much enthusiasm, the people in the row in front of us turned around and were laughing at her. At home, when the TV is on and some type of music starts playing, she’ll start clapping and bouncing along. Such a funny girl.

Big sister is her best friend and her biggest enemy. They have a love/hate relationship for sure. They love to play with each other, and Karsten still gives Kate the biggest smiles of all of us. Kate has started calling Karsten “Little Nissy”. We tried to explain that it’s “Little Missy” but Kate adamantly disagrees, so “Little Nissy” it is.