Valentine's Day - 11 months

This is the 11 month update in point form:
- He is a climbing monkey! The stairs where we are sitting were easily conquered. Sophia loved stairs equally much at this age, though she had hardly the same vigour for climbing onto chairs, beds, and sofas as Christopher has shown.
-He says something akin to "tack" (thank you) when giving and receiving. Call us crazy if you may, but we have noted on numerous occasions that he will hand us food or a toy and say "ta". What a polite little garçon.
-On the topic of give and take, as polite as it may seem to say "ta", he often steals from his sister without asking. This leads often to conflict, but that much we expected. What we didn't expect is his affinity for pots and pans. He is constantly pulling those out of their drawer and making a real racket.
-Finally on the give and take topic, he seems to want to give back too. We are offered his toys and food, among others. I have to admit, mushy beef stew tastes better than it looks.
-He is extremely active. At the moment he is climbing up onto the bed for the 8th time in the last 10 minutes. Time to go distract him to his sister's toys instead. :p

Happy Birthday Sophia

Christopher would be remiss if he didn't wish his big sister a happy 3rd birthday.

Two Against Two

So it has come to this: us versus them.

Now that Christopher walks, Sophia has recruited him to her side and the battle has been staged: Kids vs. Parents.



They play well together. Too well.


Add to it that he has been intermittenly sick throughout January, he chews on everything and is a inconsistent and light sleeper then you can understand why his parents have become tired.


At least we are bigger.

Walk Like an Egyp... (er, check that) A 9 Month Old!

It is dark.  December in Sweden is like trying to use a spoon to find the bottom of the soupbowl. One can try and try, but the soup will just keep filling in the gaps. Streetlights, in this case, try in vain to cut through our murky darkness but it is all too encompassing to defeat. With no moon, low cloud cover and a meager 6 hours of daylight, one might think we are bit light deprived.

But our light in the darkness, besides the candles in the hair of the local Lucia, is Christopher's first steps.  

Gingerly, he will let go of the chair or table he may be holding, then, first a little step with his right foot, a balance correction, perhaps a deep-knee bend, and just when you think his bum will hit the floor he is up standing straight again and taking a quick three steps. We shook our heads and even rubbed our eyes in disbelief the first time. But apparently it was more than just a one-off occurance. He is on to this whole walking deal. It will be easier this way to chase after his sister. After all, she does have a two year head start.

Quirky Coincidence: our kids think seem to think that early December is the most appropriate time to start walking - in fact,  almost to the day!

Side-step Boogie

In the mid-1970s, there was a line dance called The Hustle that became famous with help from, among others, the film Saturday Night Fever.

Frankly, I cannot exactly recall the look or steps involved in the Hustle, but when I see Christopher, now 8 months, standing at the table's edge and side-stepping his way left and right, I can't help but whistle a bit of 70's disco music.

In fact, there are a few occasions where I have a habit of singing to myself when he does things. In the early 90's, a rap group called Culture Beat had a big hit called Mr. Vain. Christopher's pre-occupation with his own image leads to a bit of humming of that 1993 tune. Mirrors tend to get a lot of attention if Christopher is around.

Consistently, when he pulls himself up at the table's edge or on chairs it leads to my signing of Bob Marley & the Wailers Get Up, Stand Up. Moreover, getting him to sleep by rocking him in my arm is naturally an AC /DC song; For Those About to Rock (We Salute You).

Perhaps there should be a music anthology to accompany Christopher's childhood. I'm already convinced that there will come a day when he will say: "Dad, you were strange!", to which I will start singing the Doors' 1967 song People are Strange.

Quick Enamel Developers

One tooth, two teeth, how about six!

Christopher has won the tooth lottery. Tooth number three arrived last Monday, Oct 14. Teeth four, five and six showed up simultaneously today.

He's been rather cranky and perhaps the gum-buddies are to blame.

Sophia set the precident. She too got a mouthful off pearls rather early, though never do I recall three coming it at once.

Needless to say, he is drooling and chewing on everything around which he can get his mouth. Sleep is sporatic, at best, yet on the upside, he seems to really like this whole chewing concept.
Last weekend, we went on a road-trip to Karlstad in western Sweden. On the trip home, the thing that made Christopher most content was to sit in his car seat and eat crackers. Go figure.

What A Difference A Year Makes!

Back in July, I commented about how the horses and their foals had been put out to pasture in an area near to where I work. The young foals were testing their legs and would prance around their mothers full of energy.

Well, I suppose the attempted analogy has now become rather obvious.  Our little foal is bustling around his parents on all fours and getting into all kinds of new trouble here in our little pasture.  So much of the first months of his life were about the basics; eat, sleep, diaper-change. Within only a few weeks, he took his 6+ months of passiveness and decided that it's time to move - and really move, at that.

Just under a month ago, he began to make the first motions towards crawling forward.  As he has caught on, it has meant a new form of "babywatch" as he now motors around the apartment. Not to be content with just crawling, he has added the pull-myself-up-on-anything and -everything feature to his repertoire, so long as it doesn't fall back on him first.  All and anything is acceptable to be chewed on, so long as he can get his mouth around it.  It takes a new kind of awareness and endurance to keep up with him.


Actually, these strides seem all the more monumentus today in particular due to a rather special anniversary.  It was one year ago that we were at Akademiska hospital in Uppsala for an ultrasound.  

When I post a blog update, I tend to be cautious about using too much hyperbole and/or clichés.  We are not the first people to experience the development of a baby.  It is just simply that at particular intervals we recognize how very drastic the change has been.  To look in a mirror and compare our own reflection with that of one year ago would show few overt differences.  Conversely, to put a black and white ultrasound picture side-by-side with this little boisterous boy says volumes.

To now be cliché and sing "what a difference a year makes..." or use superlatives such as "Christopher is a talented boy, taking brilliant new strides at a phenomonal pace"... or to blankly say, "he crawls, he laughs, he is a happy boy" are all the same.  Instead, the better picture to illustrate is that it is in fact we, the parents, as the metaphorical mother horse.   We are close behind our little foal, with a gleem of pride and an eye out for danger, as he bounces, plays and discovers his world.