Meeting Uncle Eric and Aunt Linda

I have pictures to post from Bjorn's first birthday party in mid-May, but before I do that, I suppose I had better get some of the highlights from when he was 11 months old up on the blog! Catch up time....

One highlight from that month was Bjorn meeting his Great-Uncle Eric (Rick) and Great-Aunt Linda for the first time. We were happy to be able to see them while they were in town for Uncle Rick's work. Bjorn seems to have finally developed a *little* bit of stranger anxiety, so he wasn't quite his usual smiley self the whole time, but he did let both Rick and Linda hold him for a photo op without much fuss.

I Spy

I spy with my little eye...

...a camera!

GIVE IT TO ME!

Vehicle Day

Leif and Aaron's outing to Union Depot that was documented in the previous blog post was far from their only excitement on that recent weekend day. They had kicked off their long day of adventures with Vehicle Day in the parking lot of Southdale Mall, where Leif got to climb on and in all manner of vehicles, including those pictured below. When it got too chilly to hang around in the parking lot any longer, they headed over to downtown St. Paul for a pizza lunch at Cossetta's, followed by some play time at the Children's Museum. (Leif had apparently been telling Aaron all morning that he wanted to go "deliver packages at the museum"; Aaron phoned me to confirm that he was talking about moving around the big foam cubes in the pretend shipping warehouse at the Children's Museum.) The stop at Union Depot rounded out a long, fun day out...topped off by a VERY long nap in the car on the way home :-) .

Leif checks out the BIG trucks!

 

 

Behind the wheel of a sports field utility truck (Aaron's description

of this made it sound like the baseball equivalent of a Zamboni)

 



 

On the deck of a police boat

 



 

Checking out the ambulance

 

 

Cozying up to the paramedic

 

Union Depot

One recent weekend afternoon, Aaron took Leif to the newly renovated Union Depot in downtown St. Paul in search of trains. On this visit, they were only able to see freight trains, but within a year or so, Amtrak and light rail should be running to the Depot, as well. Aaron came home raving about how beautiful (and currently, how eerily empty) the interior of the building is; I'm eager to see it myself!

A conversation between Leif and Bjorn

Hopefully in another year or so, Leif and Bjorn's conversations will begin to involve actual *words*. I guess this is a start!

Leif's third birthday (video)

Yes, I realize I'm a couple months late in posting this....We're always slow to copy our videos from the video camera onto the computer. Better late than never!

Walk to the lake

After taking the kids on two walks outside in January and I believe ZERO in all of February, I was getting pretty stir crazy by the time March rolled around. Thankfully, at the tail end of February through the beginning of March, we were able to string together enough days with highs in the 30s for the icy sidewalks to begin to melt, so that it wasn't quite so hazardous to venture out with an intrepid three-year-old and a baby in tow. We celebrated the thaw the weekend after the beginning of "meteorological spring" (March 1) by taking our first family walk down to the lake in 2013.

 

Of course, this being Minnesota, on the two days after these pictures were taken we had one of our biggest snowstorms of the winter. Ah, well -- at least at this point we know the snow can't last much longer!