Hi

Lars is with his Grandma Bjarnson. He loves to wave at everyone and everything. It is pretty cute. This week has been a milestone for Lars. All of a sudden he is just hungry and is ready for 3 meals a day. Here is his first experience with noodles and a veggie cheese sauce. He loved it and ate quite a bit, which I thought was great until it made him so constipated today that he hasn't been too happy. He loves to feed himself and is his usual method of eating.

where has all the time gone.

My days seem like a crazy running together of never quite getting anything done. Really, Where has all the time gone? As I am sitting here thinking of what has gone on, my mind becomes all blurry. So here is what i do remember

I am down to only babysitting 3 days a week, which is a schedule I am much more fond of. The days I don't babysit, Lars and I go to the park and either walk, run, or play on the swings. As you can tell on the picture below with his cousin, he loves the swings. He is going to love amusements parks when he gets older.......he loves swinging high and you can toss him in the air or swing him around any which way and he just laughs. He seriously has no fear.


He has 4 teeth and only wants to eat what i am eating. In order to get him to eat his food I have to hide in my bowl and feed it to him with an adult spoon, while he is also holding an adult spoon. Such a big boy. And he would much rather have real looking food vs pureed foods. So i make him a lot of curried sweet potatoe fries (baked w/o oil of course) but seasoned with curry and garlic. They are so delicious i usually make a bunch of them so i can eat them too. I have started cooking peas for him with mint.....odd combo?..............just try it. stick a bunch of mint in the water you steam your peas in. Fantastic! or even better make split pea soup with mint in it!! yum yum. It has been fun to make all his baby food.
He is 30 inches long now and his weight gain has started stopped accelerating at such a fast rate. he was 19 lbs 3 months ago and as of last week he is 20.4 lbs. But with how chubby he was before he still looks healthy and chubby still. He is crawling around so fast and is scaling furniture. He will definatly be walking soon. He loves to play and gets so excited when he sees other kids that he says hi to them (literally says hi many times and then squeals in delight)and starts waving both his hands.

My sister in law and i started a garden. It was my idea but she is the one with the backyard. So we plotted it out. and then we decided to start growing them indoors and then we would transplant all the wonderful vegetables into our garden after the first frost. We found a cool class held through the county about gardening and our indoor veggies grew really well. So 2 weekends ago we transplanted all the spring veggies and then planted more seeds straight in the ground. Well she told me last night that all the veggies we grew indoors and then transplanted have not made it but all the seeds planted are blooming and thriving...............So next year.......we are only planting seeds straight in the ground....it was much easier anyway!
I can't wait for it all to grow......strawberries, onions, carrots, radishes, beets, corn, peas, green beans............and more. we still haven't planted the summer veggies and fruit......that will be done in May.
Lars and i went to the zoo on monday, which was fun. he did great and loved the animals. and he and i fed the giraffes.......i'll post the picture when i can find the camera. Giraffes tongues are like 2 feet long and them come out and you put a cracker on it. Suprisingly it wasn't very slobbery.

Negotiation Generation

I was at the library to get a book on parenting and found 2 awesome books I wanted to share.
I totally recommend both. they are awesome
"How to behave so your children will too!" by Sal Severe (i heard about this one from a friend giving it as a baby shower gift) It is a great book on how you can become a proactive parent. It explains how you can act differently to your childs responses to create better behaviors in your child. It works on raising a cooperative child while still giving them age appropriate freedoms. Very positive book. I love this one because it discusses what i as a parent can do in creating more harmony in my home.


"Negotiation Generation" Lynn Reeves Griffin (a friend told me that when she read a book about "stop negotiating and start parenting", it changed the whole outlook on raising and teaching her 2 children. I am not sure if this is the book or not but it is awesome. It Talks about how we have become a society that instead of setting clear boundries for our children we negotiate with them and end up with our children in control of everything and how out of control our homes become. She sets up clear positive ways to set boundries that are age appropriate and following through without feeling like you are punishing your children when they test their boundries.

There were a few quotes i wanted to share.
This first one is about when she does her workshops, she asks for volunteers.
"If you volunteer to assist me, i ask you to join me on stage and stand facing me. There's a chair behind where you're standing. The directions are simple: just do what i tell you to do as i tell you to do it. Are you ready?
"don't stand. Stop looking at me. Don't sit down. Stop looking at teh audience. Don't turn to your right; don't turn to your left. No laughing"
As the exercise progresses, you're likely to feel flustered because you can't seem tochoose the right thing to do, or to do anything right. Some volunteers laugh because they're embarrased they can't seem to figure out exactly what i want them to do.
At first the directions seem simple enough, but the reason they're difficult to follow is because they're really a two-part exercise for your brain. First you must figure out the opposite of what i've asked you to do. then you have to actually do this opposite action. There's no question about it: whether you're a parent or a child, directions are clearer when phrased in the positive. "sit down. Look at the audience. stand up . look at me. turn left. turn right.""


The other point that they made, which I thought was very interesting, is that it is harder today to parent than it was in our parents and grandparents day and age. Back then people had generally the same values and morals. But because everyone has such differing values today it can be confusing to parent and confusing for the child why he isn't allowed to do something that others may do.

Anyway........i totally love these two books and totally recommend

Love Being a Mom

Lars will be nine months next week. Kind of hard to believe. Time has flown by so quickly, and yet i cannot imagine what life was like without his giggly smiley self. When he was only a few weeks old a friend asked it if was like Christmas morning every morning to find him in our lives. It was the perfect description for our bundle of joy. Now, nine months later, it is still like Christmas morning most every morning. (we do have the occasional nights when sleep decides not to visit our household) Every night when he is curling up in my arms to fall asleep or When he wakes up happy as a clam,(no matter how much sleep he had during the night) and we listen to him in the baby monitor playing and talking to himself, waiting for us to come get him, or during the day when he laughs out of the blue at nothing, my breath catches in my throat and i am amazed at what a wonderful blessing he is. It is hard to imagine having another one a perfect as Lars is. He doesn't whine when he wants my attention. He crawls close to me and flops on his tummy wiggles his feet in the air and open and closes his fist saying "I want you! I want you!" He gives a little "hey I'm right here" squawk and waits until i pick him up. In the mornings we bring him into our bed and play with him and lately he has started to roll over and give me kisses and then roll over and give Corey kisses. He will do this over and over again like a game. It is hilarious to watch because his mouth will be wide open forming a nice big OOH as he comes at you for a kiss. They are usually extremely slobbery and you must have a rag close by to dry your cheeks and chin off, but oh so worth it! He has taken to cuddling with his head on my shoulder in the cutest. He also loves books and loves to turn pages on books. This is great for church because i can keep him mostly still through most of sacrament meeting reading and turning pages. Lately I have noticed him to be very sensitive and caring. When Chase cries Lars will look over at him with the cutest expression of "what is the matter" and he usually crawls over to lay his head on chases chest or head (whichever one he reaches first) and tries to give kisses.
He loves people (although lately he has been a mama's boy, but if I'm around he loves playing with other people. He also loves little kids and watches them intently when they are around. On the bottom shelf of our entertainment center i have put his toys and some VHS videos (i didn't have any other place for them and i don't mind if he tears them down to play with, which he does) he found the video "Annie". he pulled her off the shelf and started talking to her and laughing like he was having a great time. it was hilarious. he does the same thing to the picture of the baby on the diaper box.
He loves to cook and i am convinced he is going to be my little soux chef. If I am in the kitchen he much come in to see what i am doing. he would rather play with my cooking utensils then his own toys. Most of the time when he comes in he wants to be picked up at some point to look (very intently) in the pots to see what i have made. i usually give him a giant spoon to hold so he doesn't grab for the hot pans and he reaches out with the big spoon and wiggles his hand as if he is going to stir what is in the pan.
He loves music and dancing and we often listen to his favorite CD "Dog Train" which is the most awesome CD we have for him (thank you Margaret). Corey and i love it just as much as Lars and frequently are found singing the songs from it.
All in all.............I love being a mom. even though what I accomplish each day doesn't seem to amount to much and the housework usually gets put on a back burner while we are playing and since Corey works evenings dinner never gets made anymore...........it is so worth it to be playing with Lars and enjoying his happy and joyful company.

Lars' Kisses

We have been pretty crazy busy here. I have taken up babysitting a 5 month old. It has been good but it sure keeps me super busy. This week i have tried to calculate how much time i actually have to do housework and things with the two babes..............it has averaged about 2 hours from the time i wake up and lars wakes up to when chase gets here and then leaves, and lars goes to bed. That isn't much time to do much of anything.......hence i haven't posted in a while. Lars loves his new friend. Although Chase is a bit frightened of lars he is getting better to not cry when Lars squeals at him and attempts to give him kisses.

It is super cute. Here is a video that i captured of lars kissing chase.

Other than that......i was called to teach relief society........did that for one month and then they released me and called me to teach the 6-7 year olds in primary(were they trying to tell me something????) And i am on the enrichment committee where i am now leading a religious topic discussion group every month. Where do i find the time in my 2 hours a day to do all this i don't know yet........but they are keeping us super busy here. Corey just got called to be in the bishopric again....So Lars gets to come to primary with me and help me teach the lesson.(although he is more distracting to the class than anything).

ok lars thinks he is a big boy and wants to type so here is what he has to say

YJUVTRDS3E7UUIPIOREUJJ

a Late Merry Christmas

Christmas this year started out with The Cincinnati Zoo lighting festival which we went to. It was fun to see all the animals with all the lights......it almost rivals Temple Square for how beautiful and lit up it was. I couldn't find any pics of it.......not sure if I brought the camera.

Corey then had a work party on a riverboat which went up and down the Ohio river. That was fun but awefully cold. There was eating and a bit of dancing. Corey suprised all his coworkers and put on the moves on the dance floor. Needless to say he is a legend at work.
As per Bjarnson Tradition we have started getting Lars' picture taken with Santa. He did great as you could see from the picture. There was the cutest little girl in front of us in line who Lars was flirting with and she was making him laugh. Well when it was his turn with Santa she stood in front of him and made him laugh. It was great.

We then drove to Utah (36 hours in a car), moving just ahead of a big storm that dropped snow in the double digits in Nebraska, and arriving the afternoon of Christmas eve. It was wonderful to see family and spend time with them. Lars was so happy to be out of the car. Although I must say he was a wonderful road tripper. We began our trip 12:30 pm eastern time, drove all night and all day and it wasn't until 7pm that he hit his wall and was done being in the car seat. Being stopped anyway because I-80 was closed we went to a hotel and let Lars (and the rest of us for that matter) stretch out for an hour or so before we opted to take the detour around I-80. We continued to drive the remainder of the night and arrived in the valley about 11am. Quite the long trip for staying only 4 days and returning by car (another 36 hours) home. Luckily Lars was almost as patient on the drive home.
I am not posting pics of us on our trip because we look bad!! but here are highlights of our christmas. Lars looking at his first Tree and opening a present.

This pic is great with Lars Laughing!.





We did stop by Nauvoo on our way to Utah. I had never been there and it was cool to see the temple. I think we are going to try and go back when we can actually tour the place.

Who does He look like?

Who does he look like? That is the big question. One I get the most often. But honestly I am not sure if he looks like a Bjarnson or a Sloan. However, after taking this picture I got my first clue.

Can you figure out who Lars looks like?

(hint: look at the ears)

Lars is growing so big. He is beginning to crawl (he looks like a worm inching forward) and get into everything. But he is a joy and always happy. Yesterday he was punch drunk happy, laughing and giggling at anything and everything. It was hard to settle him down to go to bed. But i managed to do it without much fuss. He has learned that when he is in his bed, if he lifts up on his hands he can see over the crib bumper........that means i can't stay in there on the rocking chair anymore when he is awake trying to sleep. Darn!