Klaus is Walking!

Happy Holidays everyone! Hope you are all getting into the season like we are at the Parkes household. The tree and decorations are up. Klaus helped and loves the tree. I put all child friendly ornaments on the tree this year so I let him take the ornaments on and off the tree all the time. He gets a kick out of that. Our family portraits came in finally so we are getting prints and Christmas cards made for everyone. We are actually almost done with all our shopping. Wrapping is started, but there is still some to go.

Klaus didn't have too many new milestones last month, so this month he is making up for it. As you can see from the title of this post Klaus is now walking! He took his first steps by himself on 11/12/11. He just shook my hand off and walked about 5 steps to the table in his playroom. Now he is getting better at walking longer distances, navigating obstacles, turning around without holding onto something, and just standing without holding onto something. He still doesn't just take off and walk to where he wants to go. Crawling is still more efficient for him, but he will very soon be a full-time walker. (I'll post a video at the end of this blog of one of his earlier practices if you haven't seen it yet.) In addition to walking, he can go up and down steps on his hands and knees. He never gets to try it without supervision, but he doesn't need help to get up and down. He even knows to turn around at the top of the stairs and go down feet first. It is a great way to wear him out so he sleeps well. His sleeping schedule has been off for the past couple weeks. Looks like he is wanting to switch to just one nap a day, but we haven't got the timing quite figured out yet. Mama is ready for him to get back to some kind of predictable schedule.

We are still adding to his sign language vocabulary. It has slowed down his vocalizing for a while I've decided, but he communicates well and will catch up talking before long I'm sure. Some of his favorite new signs are cheese, coat, hat, and tree (usually in reference to the Christmas tree). Shea and I finally got his new big boy room finished, so he is moved out of the nursery. His new room is orange, green, and blue with a stars theme. He loves the new room and had no issues switching. It probably helps that we moved all his furniture and the crib into the room and got new items for the nursery. Daddy and I were a little sad the night we moved him to the new room. Having him out of the nursery really reminded us how big he is getting. He is also getting a little taller, so we finally had to turn his carseat around to face forward. His little legs were getting scrunched in the rear facing carseat.

That's about it for Klaus's milestones for now. I hope to take him to some fun Christmas events this month and get some good pictures. I only have a few weeks left before I have to divide my time between him and his sister, so I'm trying to do as much with him as I can these weeks. Baby B is doing good. She is healthy, growing, moving lots, and pretty much right on schedule. I'm doing good; I'm just getting huge and starting to get a lot of aches and pains in my back, hips and legs. I can't believe how soon she will be here! Now that I have Klaus moved and settled, I need to work on getting the nursery put back together and getting her clothes and things in order. I'm starting to feel a little nervous about how I'm going to pull off being a mother of two. But Shea and I are starting to get really excited to see her and hold her! I hope Klaus likes her!

Well, I think that is about it for now. Lastly, I just wanted to send out a quick (and belated) thank you to the people who sent Klaus money for his birthday. I finally got it all deposited into his 529 College Savings Fund today. I'm very excited that we will be able to provide Klaus a nice nest egg for college with all the gifts from family in addition to our contributions. Thank you again! Enjoy the holidays everyone! I probably won't post again until after the new year.