Sonja's on the move!

Sonja has really got the crawling thing down now! She has really taken off in the last couple of weeks. It is really cute how she can go everywhere now and you can tell how proud she is when she comes peeking around a corner or through the door. Of course we can always hear her coming (shuffle, shuffle, pant, pant, giggle). She also follows me all over the apartment when she gets tired or hungry. The tricky thing is trying to keep the kitchen floor clean because if there is a Cheerio to be found, she'll find it! In addition to her crawling, she also flaps her arm and says "Ba-Ba" (bye-bye for those of you who don't speak baby).

Sonja turned 9 months old this week and is doing great. She was 22.5 pounds and 29 inches long. Overall she is a very healthy and happy baby. We all have come down with colds in the last couple of days, however, but we seem to be getting better.

I put this dress on Sonja on Sunday totally expecting it to still be quite roomy. I was quite wrong! I can't believe all of the stuff she's out-grown already!

Linnea has been busy packing her suitcase for Sweden. So far, she has only thought of packing toys and I try to explain to her that she'll probably need some warm clothes too, but I don't think she really cares! Anyway, we are still enjoying our time here in Minnesota, although have I told you how cold it is? Brrr! Definitely colder than New England so far.

Below are a couple of pictures of Linnea and Emma enjoying the Christian Community Fair we went to a few weeks ago.

Somehow I don't think Linnea or Emma imagined Larry and Bob would be so big in real life!

As Promised!

So a new development in the Erickson household is that Linnea dresses herself nearly everyday. It's always interesting to she what ensembles/combos she comes up with. Yesterday she wanted to wear her fast running shorts. Well, it's too cold to wear running shorts in November in Minnesota (especially since it's been flurrying on and off for a couple of days now) so she suggested wearing her apple leggings underneath. Creative. And then a purple flower shirt on top with her favorite yellow polka-dot sweater over that.
Today's outfit is shown below. She did manage to put everything on herself, including the tights but needed help getting the skirt on the right way.

Sonja on the other hand, believes that she doesn't need any clothes and prefers to hang out in the nude.

OK, she does get dressed sometimes, like days when we leave the house. ;-)
Of course we have many cute outfits that we wear at least something cute at least once a day.

Sonja likes to think that she can stand all by herself, which she can once you prop her up and give her something to hang on to. And then eventually she'll plop back down. She is however, getting very close to crawling. I witnessed it last night and Linnea saw her do it today, but Matthew has yet to see it. She has also started feeding herself bits of solid food. So far it's been Cheerios and sweet potato. She loves feeding herself and it quite proud when she does it. Pictures of that will be coming soon.

So, anyway, that's about all for now. Below is the picture of Matthew in the puppy costume on Halloween, as promised. Enjoy! And following that is a little video of the girls. I apologize in advance because it's at a 90 degree angle and I don't know how to flip it.

Halloween Fun!

Halloween is such a fun holiday. This year Linnea dressed up as a fairy (shown below) for the harvest party and a princess for actual trick-or-treating. Sonja and I stuck with the fairy thing for both events. Matthew did dress up as a giant purple dog, much to Linnea's excitement. I have to include that photo in a future post.

Mom, it's a little chilly out here for a fairy...

And here the girls are all dressed up...

Sonja really enjoyed waving her wand all over the place. She did wack herself in the head a couple of times and didn't even seem to mind too much. But doesn't she look so cute?

So I am always trying to remember cute things that Linnea says to relate to you all, and I am pretty bad at remembering. But today there were a couple of gems. At brunch, she turns to Matthew and says "Daddy, I met your girlfriend at Schwedish class". Apparently she was the one in the yellow shirt. Then surprisingly, she met his "boyfriend" as well. Just so you know, Matthew took her to Swedish (Schwedish in Linnea speak) class last week, and any girl or boy friend is automatically a girlfriend or boyfriend. I still found it quite amusing.
And then this evening Linnea was telling me that daddy's other name is Peter Panties... I don't know where she came up with that one, but she's obviously not cutting Matthew any slack today!

Sonja is just about crawling. It's going to be any day now. And she loves getting out of the house whether it's going for a walk or going to the grocery store, she's always excited about going on outings and seeing what there is to see. Oh, and did I tell you that she's got 2 teeth down on the bottom. It's really cute. She's only used them on me so far, much to my disapproval, when she's tired of nursing. She's really pretty vocal, blabbing all the time and usually has a big grin on her face. Now if I could only get her to stop waking up every morning at 4 AM!

Fall is Finally Here!

Well, after weeks for warm weather, Fall is finally in the air. This weekend we piled up the leaves and let the kids enjoy them.

Sonja of course is always in a festive mood!

Linnea enjoyed gathering up the leaves and then jumping into the big pile.

The kids have been off and on sick for a few weeks now. It's been tough on Sonja who seems to get everything worse than anyone else (it's that still developing immune system I guess). She sure is a trooper though, even with the colds she's still smiling (and eating)!

Well, we may not have a place to live in Sweden yet (we are still working on that), but we've bought our airline tickets. We leave January 13th on a 9 hour flight from Seattle to Copenhagen. From Copenhagen we'll take public transit across the bridge into southern Sweden where Lund in located. We've been talking to Linnea about moving to Sweden after Christmas in Washington. She seems excited about it especially since she'll probably get to go to pre-school there. And let me tell you, she's been nagging to go back to school!

The girls love being here at the Seminary and I'm loving being home with them and taking them to all the various events around town. We quite often go to the library, to play groups, on walks, and spend many hours out on the playground. We're enjoying the nice weather while it's here, from what we hear it won't last too long!

Our new home

Well, while searching for a new home in Sweden, we stumbled across this and could not pass it up! Actually, this is the American Swedish Institute ( http://www.americanswedishinst.org ) that we visited today with the girls.

They had on display the gowns of the Queen of Sweden, Sylvia, and Linnea really enjoyed getting into the spirit. She really wanted to touch the gowns, but we weren't allowed to even take pictures of them!

Here is Linnea descending the staircase like royalty.

Our Viking Princess

And lounging like all real Swedish Royalty, in an IKEA chair. Of course, she wanted to read all of the kids' books that they had (a serious consequence of not having a TV at home and subsequently going to the library at least twice a week).

We also spent some time outside enjoying the nice weather, it hasn't been over 70 degrees in days! And we're loving it!

We all got dressed up this morning for church. Sonja has quite the cold, lots of drool and snot, but was a pretty good sport especially with Big Sister Linnea to help cheer her up.

We even managed to get a family shot.

Last week we were blessed to have Matt's dad (Far Far) visit us. Linnea really got into taking pictures with his camera and she captured this great one.

And here are Kristin and Sonja trying out the new baby carrier (thanks auntie Colleen!). Matt is scared to try it though, must be the teal blue color. Can you make it in camo? Sonja does enjoy being carried in it, she kicks her legs vigorously - as always.


Among other things, we explored a little of Minneapolis with Far Far. We visited the sculpture park and had a nice evening out "in the city".

Check out those cheeks!

We were all sad to see Far Far go, but we'll be seeing him again soon!

Linnea was playing dress up again and was really trying not to have her picture taken, but we're glad we finally caught her with Far Far. (note the Nordic Track in the the background: $20 on Craig's List, 20 minutes every morning, 20 pounds lighter by Christmas - sweet!)

We made it!

Well, we finally made it to Minnesota. We have been here about a week and just finished unpacking. Today we went out for our first adventure to the Como Park Zoo! We'll start with a picture from that and then I'll back track over the last 3 weeks or so.

Linnea and I with the giraffes today at the Zoo

So, we took 2 weeks to make the trek from my parents house in Massachusetts to our new home in St. Paul. On our way, we camped for 2 nights in Pennsylvania, stayed 2 nights with my aunt Cheryl and uncle John in Indianapolis, and then spent a whole week in the Wisconsin Dells area at a resort with 6 (3 indoor and 3 outdoor) water parks! Here are some pictures of our trek.

We left at the crack o' dawn on Monday morning (August 4th) and headed for Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame

Matt and the girls in the Hall of Fame

Linnea and I outside by a statue commemorating women in baseball

Linnea tuckered out from the Hall of Fame (and stuck in really bad traffic in PA)

Camping in PA

Our rest stop in Ohio

Linnea feeding Sonja some our her first foods, sweetotatoes

Linnea loving the water. She swam like a fish and loved to dunk her head under and swim underwater!The family shot at one of the outdoor water parks
Linnea and Matt in a raft on the lazy river

So, we have been enjoying our time here so far. Classes haven't started yet for Matthew but he's been studying his Swedish diligently. I'm enjoying being a stay-at-home mom. This past week we went to the library, took walks, played dress-up at home and enjoyed the fabulous playground that is right outside our back door.

The following are a series of pics I took of the girls playing dress-up. And really, what's cuter than babies in goofy hats?

So, that is it for now. I'll try to keep you posted more regularly. We do have new mailing address info, so let me know if you would like that, cell phones are the same.
We miss you!