Eye candy :)

Now I stand most of the time.
Sometimes I stand by myself a couple of seconds, too!

Doctor Jennifer gives me an injection.

Right before bedtime

Just a moment before it all fell into the floor :)

¨

AND GUESS, WHO'S GOT 7 TEETH!

10 months! (picture heavy)

Our happy little Mohican :)

At 10 months, Erik:
* Weights 10540 grams
* Measures 72,5 cm
* Has been crawling for several weeks now

* Can stand up against furniture - or me
* Loves to walk with support
* Is still breastfed but only a few times per day - mainly between 3-7 AM
* Loves the bath time with his big sister

* Continues to be a good eater. At the same age, Jennifer weighted 2 kg less than Erik, while being almost as tall as he. Jennifer, on the other hand, has never been a big eater - at least not after 6 months of age when we introduced solid food. Today Erik most often eats as much as she does - at the age of 3. And I wouldn't say he eats supersize portions. Here we really need to think, what's normal for Jennifer and what's for Erik. They are SO different when it comes to food.
* Loves to bite my shoulder when he sits on my hip. He bites HARD. He also fancies my other body parts and I have bite marks that look like snake bites here and there. Nevertheless, he is clever enough not to bite when he is being breastfed.
* Tries to say "tack" ("thanks" in swedish) - "tah-tah," he says. Cute!
* Is getting pretty good at going to sleep in the evening and can self soothe, at least until early morning hours. At that time I just want him to fall asleep ASAP so I pick him up from the crib and nurse him back to sleep as we co-sleep the rest of the night. It works good for us right now. He goes to sleep at 8PM and sleeps until 7-8AM, waking up 2-3 times. During daytime, he has his first nap around 10:30AM as we walk to the daycare to pick up Jennifer. He usually only sleeps around 30 minutes or so. In the afternoon he sleeps somewhere between 2-5PM. Sometimes he sleeps really well, about 2-2,5 hours, sometimes only an hour.

* Loves to swing

* Has got his BCG vaccination which is developing perfectly

November is one of the worst months of the year here in the South of Sweden. The weather is really ugly, being windy, rainy, cold and dark as there is no snow here yet. The days are so short and the trees are naked. We have raked the most of our cherry tree leaves past weekend and there is only a little left for this weekend ahead - if it won't pour the whole time. I wish we could pack our bags and fly to Mumbai...

If you look closely, you can see our cats in their outdoor fence in our backyard

Jennifer has discovered baking and I try to do that with her as often as I possibly can. It's a lot of fun! I wish she would eat what we have baked though, which she rarely does...

Jennifer also has pretty quickly learned how to play Memory. This is a daddy-princess thing. They often play Memory after dinner. I love to see them do that.

Today, as we were walking home from the prescool, Jennifer said she wanted me to take pictures with her and Bessie. I got some fantastic photos, I must say. Jenni is so big now that Bessie trusts her not to be that kind of a terrorist that Erik is, hence she really loves her attention. 

We tried to take a family picture couple of weeks ago. It wasn't the easiest thing to do. We need help with getting a good one!!!

Sending a lot of love to you all. Tons of baby dust to those who still are on the bumpy road of infertility. I deeply hope you will be able to snuggle your own babies soon!!!

Jennifer 3 years!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SWEETHEART! 

You're 3 now!!

Our birthday-girl with the owl-hat she got from her best friend, She LOVES it!
Thank you,  Alexander (and his mommy and daddy)!

Jennifer helping mommy with preparations

Erik, looking handsome on big sisters birthday party.
Walking is da thing :)

Princess with her new toys. No time for posing :)

A post-party picture from tonight, right before bed-time.
Both kids acting really tired in their own silly way.  

9 MONTHS!

Our little Viking is 9 months. It's incredible, truly!

Erik has 6 teeth. He is still in high level training in order to start crawling properly, BUT he is definitely on the move. If I sit him down at his toy box, I can be sure of finding him several meters away from it and probably not sitting any more. He is very good att turning around in sitting position, comes easily up to crawling position, can move backwards but has just not taken this first step forward. We are waiting with great excitement! :) He also has truly discovered and LOVES to walk when we hold his hands. I think this is his favourite thing right now.
He is more and more expressing himself with "mamama" and "dadada" and similar sounds. He also says "heeey", especially when he sees our cats or dog. He loves when we imitate him and laughs so easily. He's our chubby happy boy. Even now when he has got a slight cold from me (I have been way more sick than he or Jennifer), he eats and sleeps quite allright. Despite my constant coughing. Somewhere around midnight he usually wakes up and we co-sleep after that. It works best for us as he is not weaned yet. He loves both breastfeeding and co-sleeping, hence, right now I'm happy that he sleeps in his own bed until I go to bed.

 Erik loves toys on wheels. His favourite thing at the moment is a truck that I once bought for Jennifer and which she loved aswell. It plays more than 12 different sounds and melodies. But I think Erik likes it because of the wheels. He loves to sit and roll it forward and back. Today we also rolled the car between us - so much fun. He can not push it properly yet but he knows how to clap on it so it rolls away bit.

Erik loves bath-time. He splashes so the floor is wet and laughs a lot while doing it. Jennifer and Erik always bathe together, something they both appreciate very much.

Tomorrow it's time for his BCG vaccination (against tuberculosis). Hope his immunization process goes as smoothly as it did for Jennifer.

In the middle of September we visited a Viking market close by. It was a lot of fun, a great day outdoors. Jennifer enjoyed horseback-riding, as always :) She is already so stable on the horse back, sitting straight and keeping the balance.

As Erik is growing, Jennifer and he associate more and more. Jennifer really tries to entertain him or to involve him in a game. It's cute but we really must watch them carefully as Jennifer can be somewhat tuff on him sometimes when he doesn't do as she hopes him to do. But they do have a lot of fun together already!

Our treasures in a treasure box :)

Jennifer has given Bessie some extra attention lately.

She is just to CUTE, this little person! She talks very well now, correcting us if we say something in a silly way. Jenni is very caring. For example, she currently asks me every day how my throat is doing :) For couple of weeks ago, she quitted having her afternoon nap. She just wouldn't fall asleep anymore. It felt like an era had come to its end, a bit earlier than I thought. And she never even asked if I was ready to skip my afternoon rest!

She grows so quickly - on Saturday she will be 3 years. Incredible. 3 years ago they put her on my chest as she took her first breath of air. 3 years ago we planned to get pregnant again very soon. I had the most perfect uterus and was happily unaware of my cervical cancer that was obviously there, waiting to be diagnosed. So much has happened since that day. So much indeed. We have achieved so much!

Some serious practicing here...

Here we go!

Look, no hands!

And the second idea of today :)

Oh, they put me in Jennifers bed?!

Ammmm....

gotta have.....

.... a big bite of her bed :)

Thanks, grandmother!

As promised, here are the results of Eriks nurses visit. His hearing test was performed with good results. His development is good and he weights 9910g and is 71cm tall. Our nurse noticed that he is very verbal with a great variety of expressions :)

I got a wonderful parcel today - from my mother. She has knitted  new winter hats for Erik and Jennifer, a throat warmer for Jenni and socks for both kids. Jennifer was so so happy!

Look, mom, there is a boll on the top of my hat!

Yeah! New socks too!

Ready for the winter!
A funny fact: when I was little, I used to have a hat like this, only with other colors :)

8 months!

Erik with grandpa'

Our big boy is getting bigger! Happy 8 months birthday, Erik!

Erik still has his good appetite, which is very much appreciated by his mother. The only time he eats poorly is when he is teething. He has just got his teeth nr 3 and, of course, there is more to come. I believe, nr 4 is just days away.
Our little Viking now also can clap his hands. It is adorable and so so cute. Of course, he can not do it on command yet but he does it very often and seems to like it :)
Standing is the "in" activity right now. He tries to take small baby steps aswell as we hold his hands. As it comes to crawling, he has learned how to move around his own angle and also how to move backwards. But he is not raising up on his knees yet. So stange, since Jennifer crawled when she was 6 months and was already standing up against furniture at his age. But believe me, it is totally ok that he takes it easy. I love that he doesn't hurry with his development like Jenni did. Especially since I don't get to experience this again with a new baby.
Erik has a wide assortment of different sounds. He says "bababa", "tatatata" and "nänänä". But the only one which is annoying is the sound he makes with his throat sometimes, especially at nights when he sleeps. It is a very loud high pitch inhaling-sound. We have spoken about it with his pediatric doctor aswell as our friend/doctor who has ears, nose and throat as her speciality. It is probably laryngomalacy, meaning that Eriks throat tissue, cartilage, is a bit soft yet. This phenomena is supposed to dissapear soon but it makes sleeping next to him a challenge. Both of us, but especially Agne, wake up when he makes this noise and for my dear hubby it is often hard to fall back asleep. My brain seems to kind of "sort it out" as a familiar sound that doesn't need my attention and obviously, I am sometimes able to sleep through it.

Double up with afternoon naps

Erik really loves to be around our fury friends and they are loving him back :)

I just love this picture :D

Tomorrow it is time to visit our nurse again. It will be interesting to see whether Erik will join the 10kg club already. I will return with news :)

Our little girl has now been totally nappy free in 1 week! I am so happy for it and I believe, so is she. Of course, we do have accidents but far from every day.
Jennifer got her very first face painting the other day. I kind of thought that she would back off from getting it  but she really wanted to be a tiger and loved it. Also, washing it of in the evening was performed with no tears involved.

Our little tiger prompted on sitting in a baby chair at grandpa´s as she was having a snack.
She knows that her daddy used the same chair when he was small!

Jennifer had her second haircut past week. She has not had much hair ever since she was born and it has been growing very slowly - especially her bangs. Still, since her first haircut in Mumbai in January, it had grown enough for needing some loving and tender care after the summer. She was so good, watching "Shaun the Sheep" on my iPhone, just like in Mumbai (her request).

Jenni has kind of disliked toothbrushing and even though she perfectly understands that this is something that must be done every morning and evening, she has been running away, trying to make it a game (so we hopefully would forget about it). The other day, I told her we have to find the 4 tooth-trolls in her mouth so they won't dig holes in her teeth. So now she really loves it. :) We have named her tooth-trolls Pelle, Pia, Kalle and Kajsa and I'm hunting them around with the toothbrush. In every corner of the mouth I finally get one of them and take them out, telling them not to come back into Jennifers mouth. But they are back each time we brush :) Next week we will visit her dentist and she really looks forward to it thanks to us looking at the dentist room pictures and speaking about the chair, lamp and the dentist who wants to count her teeth. Hopefully tooth-trolls have not made any holes in her teeth and the dentist will give her a high five for being such a good girl.