Crawling! (sort of)

At about one week shy of 8 months old, Bjorn has at long last achieved forward motion! He's been up and rocking on hands and knees for several months, but before today had not managed to move forward more than an inch or two. He's still not crawling with his tummy up off the floor, nor is he doing the classic "army crawl" that Leif started doing at 6 1/2 months, but rather an interesting move that I call "the worm." It doesn't look very comfortable (since it involves flopping forward onto his tummy repeatedly), but it gets him where he wants to go!

A conversation with Bjorn

 At 7 1/2 months old, Bjorn can be quite chatty when he is in a good mood!

A conversation with Leif

Every now and again, I try to get a video of Leif where he actually says more than three words so I can have some documentation of how his language skills are developing over time. This video was taken in early December, when Leif was 2 years and 9 months old. Among other things, we chatted about Fraser School, where he has been attending preschool two mornings a week since September. He loves it there!

Christmas video

We just got around to loading our videos from the past couple months onto our computer, so it's high time to post a few :-) . Here's one from Christmas Day out in Cottage Grove, featuring Bjorn getting a bow stuck on his head (the sorry fate of many babies on their first Christmas, I imagine) and Leif oh-so-carefully balancing a Matchbox car on the branches of the Christmas tree.

Merry two weeks and two days after Christmas, everyone!

Legoland

During the cold winter months, the Mall of America has become a common destination for Aaron and Leif on weekend mornings when they are in search of a warm place to spend some time while I enjoy a bit of peace and quiet (or freelance work time...) at home and Bjorn naps. Leif particularly likes playing with the blocks at Legoland -- and, lucky for Aaron, he doesn't seem to have quite caught on yet to the fact that it is in fact a store, and his role as a preschooler is supposed to be wheedling for Daddy to buy him something before they leave. For now, at least, he's content to play for half an hour or so building a tall, tall, tall, tall tower.

Bjorn meeting Great-Grandma B.

 

As I mentioned in the Christmas post, we were especially happy that Leif and Bjorn's Great-Grandma B. (Thelma) was able to travel to Minneapolis to spend the holidays at the House of Brynolf once again. Back in June 2012, Thelma celebrated her 95th birthday with a festive gathering in Buffalo, NY, of her four sons and most of their spouses, children, and grandchildren, but unfortunately we were not able to make the trip since Bjorn was just six weeks old at the time. Bjorn and Thelma hit it off famously at Christmas, and Leif (as well as the rest of us) enjoyed seeing his Great-Grandma again!