yesterday, I bought a jogging stroller from craigslist (motsv. blocket). As you can tell, it works great!

Grandma, Grandpa, Aunty Jo and Uncle Rich have been here to see us. The weather was beautiful so we picked up lunch at "Gran Forno" and went to a close-by park to enjoy it. It was so nice there that we stayed for a good while.

my new car is a minivan

don't worry - there will be carseats for the kids


our little rock-star
ok, so it's not the coolest car, but it is practical. It's a Honda Odyssey and it holds up to 8 people (three car seats) or you can fold down the seats so you have a ton of room in the back. The good news is that anyone can come an visit and we can all fit in the car! (provided you only have one kid).

church group

the happy gang, or part of it any waypetra and Erik
hi horsey
we meet every tuesday and have a great time

thalassemia beta minor

our little "poopsie" is doing good

After a week of worrying, today we finally got the results of a few blood tests that were performed on Erik last week. For quite some time now, Erik has had a slightly elevated temperature (98.9-99.7F) (37.1-37.6C) so his doctor decided to do some blood work to be on the safe side. Last monday, some quick blood-work indicated that Erik was anemic and some other unusual results. Since we knew from before that Jason had thalassemia, which is a form of hereditary anemia, it was likely that Erik had the same thing. However, due to the long-lasting low-grade fever, there was a slight but scary possiblity that Erik had something more serious (such as leukemia). Also, his newborn screen showed no sign of thalassemia (and they are 94% accurate).
Well, today we were happy to find out it's "only" thalassemia beta minor.

The doctor thinks that the low-grade fever is due to the fact that Erik's bone marrow is trying to make more red blood-cells. Also, when Erik was born we opted to wait with cutting the cord until it stopped pulsating. That way, the baby gets 30-50% more blood. It's been a bad habit during the last couple of centuries to cut the cord as soon as the baby comes out. Anyway, that's why his iron stores were fine after birth and his anemia couldn't be found on the newborn screen. So happy we made that choice...

more marimekko wall art

"looks great mamma, I love orange!"


jason and Liam are visiting grandparents in Naples, so Erik and I are taking the opportunity to spiffy up our house a bit. I got this marimekko fabric at crate and barrel outlet for 4.50 a yard (retails 32$ normally). The wall piece is 36inches by 48 inches and cost me 29 dollars including 2 yards of fabric. Now the interesting part will be to see Jason's reaction when he comes home. I like to do my little projects when he's away because then there's nobody there to protest...

releasing a butterfly

Jen was kind enough to give us a monarch butterfly cocoon when we went to Butterfly world last Friday. This morning the butterfly had emerged. Releasing it was a very exciting event for Liam and Mattias.

Inspired by the marimekko fabric, I spruced up our frames that hold our wedding picture and another picture of me, Liam and Erik in the belly

open gym

every thursday we try tomake it to open gym. it's a gym hall where the kids can run around as much as they like and they have a lot of fun. Afterwards we went to holiday park playground for lunch and play

new art around the house

I put up a piece of marimekko fabric on the wallLiam worked on a piece of his own

it came out so nice it deserved a frame

Erik working on some skills

"the airplane"
"bow position"
"cobra position"
Liam showing Erik how to throw a ball
he's getting pretty good at sittingpeasLiam having peas at same age