Food

Keiton has finally learned to eat soiled without gagging and making himself throw up. It still happens on occasion but it is not the norm. We discovered this after Brielle had given him several cheerios from her stash. He is also starting to reach over from a sitting position into a crawl position or half crawl but then he doesn't know what to do. He gets around but only by rolling, spinning and scooting backwards. He hasn't figured out how to pull himself yet.

Brielle seems to recognize Jesus and is often pointing to his picture and pointed out three pictures of him today at church. After nap we have a little ritual. I go to get her and she is pointing at the Chinese dolls that sit on her dresser. When then go pick them up and she looks at the oh so carefully and then we put them back for the next nap.

 Just being silly. This this a little top to keep her sippy cup from spilling when we are on the go. She gets it out of the drawer and crawls around the house with it in her mouth like this. She also is very ticklish on her inner thighs. especially when daddy does it.

Sharing a green smoothie with mommy!

 

Brielle loves this CD player and can put the CD through the narrow slot. He usually has her tongue out when she if focusing. 

Understanding

Brielle is really starting to understand words and meanings. She defiantly knows her name, Keiton, bottle, food, are you hungry, no, daddy, and some times head and eyes. She is figuring out her world and can be found stacking blocks 5 and 6 high, pulling out the bottom and top of a bottle and placing the top on the bottom and then trying to drink it. She often entertains herself and Keiton with games of peekaboo. She will crawl behind a wall or couch and then pop her head out and they both will laugh. She is figuring out how to manipulate her world and get what she wants. One of her tactics is to through tantrums. They are not usually very effective for her. She has started to take 2-4 step regularly throughout the day. She started to give daddy 5s today. She love Keiton and will off ten bring him a toy and even share her Cheerios. She also teases him and acts like she is giving him a toy and he will reach and try to take it and she will pull it away and laugh. She is our little food beggar and even after she has eaten a large meal will come begging to whoever is eating for more.

Keiton is getting stronger all the time and is our little content guy as long as he's rested and fed. We love our worried little man.

family visits

 We loved having Grandpa Pete come visit as well as Trevor, Lauren, Bryce, Dallin and Clair. When Grandpa arrived and come in to see the babies they both stared at him like he was from another planet for several minuets. It was really fun. Then however did warm up to him.

We loved having our first full house and can't wait to share the family get togethers at our house with are extra room

While Dad and Trev where here are New to us refrigerator arrived and thanks goodness! With a lot of finagling they were able to help us make it fit. It is the first update of our kitchen.

11 and 7.5 mile stones

Brielle

* walking in between furniture. Has even taken 9 steps into the middle of the room
* Can stand with no assistance not even her hands. She just goes from sitting to standing by rolling up her leg and top of foot.
* Points to what she wants and know exactly what that is.
* throws tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants
* gets jealous of Keiton's attention at time and will push or slap him.
* shares her toys with Keiton especially when he is sand.
* trys to feed herself with bowl and spoon and has even found the top of a bottle and a spoon from the diaper bag and feed Keiton imaginary food right into his mouth.
* shacks her hed yes when she wants something
* can stake blocks one on top of another and has put puzzle pieces in their spot a few times and can drop a play cd disc down a slot into the player.
* continues to love to play with people and other kids especially chase and hide and seek/peak a boo
*  is a big helper and can be found wiping the floor with a paper towel or scrubbing the carpet with a spit up rang and even wiping Keiton's chin.
* LOVEs to pull eveything out of drawers and baskets and only puts them back in so she can pull then out again
* pulls out the bottom up a bottle and the top of a bottle and puts the top on the bottom and trys to drink it before the top falls off

Brielle put this necklace on herself,

Keiton

* He has become mobile and can really get places by rolling back and forth and scutting backwards on his tummy. He has pushed himself into some pretty tight corners.  But over all his happy to be mobile.
* he is loving soiled and its a good thing because I think I'm producing less
* he continues to drowl like crazy
* he explores new territory by scratching at all new serfaces
* he like to flap his arms and slap the floor,books,doors,ect.
* he loves faces and is often reaching to touch anyone's face how is holding him.
* is getting much better hand controlle and can reach and grab anything he wants in a fair radiance around him.
* can easily go from a sitting position to his tummy
* does full plank and is starting to pull his knees up a little.
* says mamama and dadad and bababa
* He also recognizes his name

Happy New Year

During the Christmas Holiday we did our first update in our new home. We had one closet to share between the two of us in our master bedroom and then there were things under the bed in another chest of drawers and shoes hanging and banging behind the door that drove Dave crazy. So after a lot of thinking and reasearch I came up with a new design for our closet to maximize the space. We now get like 3x the amount of stuff in our shared closet. We are loving it.

 First Christmas

2011 has been a busy year for us.  We have been blessed beyond measure and are so very grateful for all the love and support we have received from our family and friends.

Here are some of the highlights from this past year.

February 2011:

We adopted a beautiful little girl.  Brielle Mira Karlsven was born on February 14^th.  We were so excited for her to come into our family. Tawni (Brielle’s birth mom) wanted us to be at the hospital with her and it was an amazing experience for us to be there for the birth.

May 2011:

Our son, Keiton Isaac Karlsven, was born on May 26^th. Brigette almost had to give birth in the car as we were stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the hospital. Dave ran into the hospital with Brielle in his arms and asked the security guard to hold the baby while he went out to get his wife who was having another baby.  The security guard looked pretty confused by the whole situation, but there was no time to explain things as Keiton was born in less than a half hour from the time we reached the hospital. 

July 2011:

Dave got a new job in Salt Lake City.  He works for RUMOR, an advertising agency that does lots of website design work.  Dave is a website developer and specializes in building eCommerce websites for RUMOR’s clients.   He really enjoys his work and is learning so much every day. 

Dave was also able to give his first baby blessing to Keiton this month. It was great to have so many family members in town that could be a part of the blessing.

August 2011:

We had been looking forward to this month since Brielle was born.  The State of Utah has a 6 month waiting period before we could legally adopt Brielle and therefore we had to wait 6 months to bless her and be sealed to her. 

Finally the day came that we were able to go to the courts to finalize the adoption and then we were off to the Temple for the sealing.  Both babies were pretty hungry by the time everyone was in the sealing room, but even though there was some crying going on, it was a wonderful experience for us to have Brielle sealed to us for eternity. 

Keiton also wanted some attention at the temple so he decided to spit up all over the sealing room carpet. 

October 2011:

The only bad thing about Dave’s new job was that it took over an hour, sometimes up to 2 hours in bad traffic, for Dave to get to work in the morning and then another 2 hours to get home at night.  Dave was leaving for work early in the morning before Brielle and Keiton woke up and then coming home in the late evening just as they were being put to bed.  That was tough for everyone.  So we decided to start looking for places to live closer to Salt Lake.

We have always liked the Bountiful / Centerville / Farmington areas just north of Salt Lake. 

We looked at a lot of homes, but were frustrated when some of the ones we really liked were sold to other buyers.  Finally we found a home in Bountiful that had the layout we had really hoped to find.  It even had a nice deck with a view and a partial view of the Bountiful Temple out the master bedroom window if you stood in the right place to look past the neighbor’s big tree.

We put an offer on the home and hoped everything would work out.

Nov. 2011

We bought our first home.  We were so excited to finally be moving into our first home.  It was a huge chore to pack all of our stuff, (We have way too much junk, some of which was still in boxes from our last move.)

We spent a lot of our Thanksgiving holiday packing up a huge trailer with the much appreciated help of family and friends.

We will miss our ward in Woodland Hills.  We met so many amazing people there and developed a lot of good friendships.  We hope our new ward is even half as good as this one we left.

Brigette is excited about all the projects she can now do on the home.  She wants to update the kitchen and Dave wants to make the deck nice for some spring BBQ’s.

Dec. 2011

We had a huge wind storm hit Bountiful and Centerville the week after we moved in.  Hundreds of big pine trees were blown down all throughout the city.  We were very lucky that the big pine tree in our front yard did not blow over onto our house.  Brigette watched out the window as the roots of the tree kept lifting up the concrete slabs of our sidewalk and driveway. 

We were without power for a couple days because our neighbor’s tree fell onto a power line along with many other trees around the city.  Overall the city estimates that over 1000 trees were knocked down in the storm. 

It was sad to drive around the city and parks and see all the massive trees, which had been growing for so many years, now blown over.  All the wards in our area cancelled Church so that the members could help with the cleanup.   Even President Eyring, who lives just a few blocks from us, was out helping clean up the mess.  

Though we were lucky and didn’t lose our tree, we did lose our back fence.  The wood posts were snapped right off at the base by wind gusts clocked at over 100 mph.

Our garbage cans blew through our neighbor’s fence. It was not a pretty sight because our 2 babies tend to fill up the garbage can with dirty diapers, so I spent some time going around the neighborhood picking up the scattered diapers.

However, there was a good thing that came out of the wind storm that we are really excited about.  Later that night when we were going to bed, Dave looked out of our Master Bedroom window and was taken away by a magnificent sight.  That big tree that was blocking our view is now gone and we have a fantastic full window view of the Mountains and Temple.

We feel so blessed.  It has been a busy, but wonderful year for our family.

We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love,

Dave, Brigette, Brielle and Keiton