Christensen Family

Soren can never hold still.  He likes to climb on everything he is suppose to sit in and leaves a trail of drool behind him.  Shortly after we had put Soren in his walker he wanted out, but still wanted to play with his toys so we just laid him on top of the walker to play.  He does this with everything.  He won't want to lie underneath his play mat, rather he wants someone to stand him up so he can hit the toys.  The same with his little reclining chair, he wants someone to stand him up so he can grab onto them.  Sitting just isn't good enough anymore, it'll be nice when he can stand by himself-I'll definitely get drooled on less.




Here are some other videos of Soren not wanting to sit!
Lastly, for the grand finale. . . Soren trying to crawl.  He is getting really close.  The other day he took three crawls in a row and I think he would have taken more but me and Todd started cheering and shouting which startled Soren.  I have the video camera at the ready so I can get it on tape and show everyone when he finally does crawl.  This morning I spent about an hour pushing toys away from him in hopes he would crawl with the cam-corder in my hand.  Soren likes to do his own thing despite what we want him to do, and these videos were all I was able to get because he started rolling to his toy.

Before Todd's party last Friday, me and Soren had to pick up the house while Todd was working. I was down the hall doing laundry and had that feeling someone was watching me, this is what I saw.
I know the title of this post is "Todd's birthday" but really it should say "Todd's birthday with special guest Soren,"  because we're obsessed with our baby all of Todd's b-day photos either have Soren in them or are solely Soren.  I think we should all be honest with ourselves and admit it's more fun(and interesting) to look at pictures of Soren playing with ribbon than it is to look at a picture of Todd opening a card. Before the peanut butter party we had our own little party where Todd opened all his presents and Soren helped or maybe Soren opened the presents and Todd helped . . .
Soren wants to know what's so funny.  He doesn't laugh anymore just because we're laughing, we have to convince him now.  He doesn't look amused here.

I'm already counting on grandparents giving Soren plenty of Christmas presents this year and my plan is to tell Soren the wrapping paper is from us, we'll definitely be the favorites.





The batteries really did die but thanks to the power chord the party kept going.  Well, I don't have too much to say about our family party-so here are the rest of the videos.
On to the peanut butter party.  This was a great and terrible idea.  Me and Todd spent all day baking and preparing for it and I'm one of those cooks who tastes and eats along the way, so by party time I was already sick of peanut butter.  We made a Reese's peanut butter cup ice cream pie, buckeyes (peanut butter balls), peanut butter blossom cookies, and then friends brought peanut butter cups and another peanut butter pie.  To cleanse our palettes between peanut butter courses I also made caprese salad on tooth picks.


Don't judge on the decorations I had really big things planned, but I'm learning that with a baby it takes more than double the time for everything.  Soren was not very helpful that day.  Everyone left the party sick, so you know it was a good time and I definitely woke up with a peanut butter hangover.  Todd is a lot more tolerant to the stuff, I wanted to gag when I saw the Reese's commercial and Todd ate peanut butter blossom cookies for breakfast.  Happy 27th birthday Todd!

It seems that Soren is already displaying a myriad of talents mostly in the form of cooking.  Every time we're in the kitchen making something he always wants to help.  Here he is helping us make fajitas for the missionaries, and in this case by helping I mean not crying and demanding attention.
 Speaking of entertaining himself, yesterday Todd gave Soren the empty milk jug to play with and he loved it.  Being extremely creative this morning, I decided to add rice into the milk jug to make it a more entertaining toy (and because I hate basmati rice, I thought this would be a good way to get rid of some of it before someone tries to make me eat it again!), but of course Soren didn't want my homemade gallon rattle.  Rather, he went for the bag of rice and played with the plastic for over 30 minutes.  By no means did I stop him, I figured rice covered in drool is a good reason to throw it out.


Last week Todd made oatmeal raisin cookies with his mini-me/sous chef hanging on to help.  Here is Soren making sure Todd has the right measuring cup and holding on to the oatmeal lid because he just likes to hold things.
Now Soren and Todd are double checking the dough to see if it's ready to go in the oven.

Looks like a little more oatmeal is needed, don't worry Soren has got it covered.  Unfortunately Soren didn't know how to put the oatmeal in the bowl and ended up throwing it like confetti.

And of course, the clean up is left for me.  Although I don't mind because the cookies are always so good, and for the past two years I've become use to piles!  Like father like son
It's great that Soren knows how to make cookies now, I should learn from him and probably start helping in the kitchen more rather than taking so many pictures.  Last time I made cookies I baked all the moisture out of them.  It only took 5 hours of being out of the house with the stove on to do this, Todd says there was smoke, but I didn't notice which is probably why I burned the cookies in the first place.  I may have forgotten about the cookies but at least I remembered the important things-the baby and diaper bag!