Physical Exercise
February 2007, Magnus is 7 months old

One of Magnus' favorite exercises (although it exercises the daddy much more than the baby) is to be held upside down.
Another is to be tossed up into the air, then he laughs and laughs. This, unfortunately, there is no picture of, because the mommy is too busy being nervous, saying things like "be careful, honey..." from the sideline to even think of a camera.

However, most of the exercise Magnus does, he does on his own. He spends the majority of his day moving around on his own now, and he looks like he has all he needs to start crawling on hands-and-knees save for the actual forward movement. He is still restricted to pushing himself backwards across the floor. Not for lack of trying, however. He will get there any day now.


Moving around can be quite fun. Sometimes he falls on his nose, but mostly that is just fun.


He is a tough kid and rarely cries when he bumps into something.


Sometimes exercise is really streneous. This is once after babyswimming when he did not wake up from being taken out of the car and carried upstairs. He did, however, wake up during my photo session...


It's a big house and so much to explore...


"Now, how is this crawling thing again... I got my knees in the starting position. What is next?"


Push-ups are supposed to be healthy. Much easier this way.
Why are you laughing? I didn't see you doing any push-ups lately?


97...98...99...


Below, a man with a mission!! His entire being is focused on reaching that toy, but it just doesn't happen yet. What is missing!?!?!

Magnus and friends
December-February, Magnus is 5-7 months old

Magnus has some friends here and there that he sees every once in a while. It is very different to be with other babies than to play alone at home. Sometimes there is disagreement who can play with which toy (however at this age, disagreements mean staring hard at the other fellow trying to figure out why he doesn't let go), other times the other baby just takes what Magnus has, and sometimes when the other guy is older it is hard to keep up with the level of game going on. But it is all adding to the experience pool of a rapidly developing little person.


Here Magnus is visiting Jonas who is pretty much the same age. "Somehow this Jonas wants my chewing thing, but it is my chewing thing. I'm just gonna hold on to it"...


"Okay, then, let's share - you play with my toy and I'll chew on yours instead. It's kinda fun to play with this thing that's so different from my own".


Here Magnus is visiting next-door-nabour Sivert, who is 1-2 months younger. While Sivert is not yet so eager to be on his stomach, Magnus refuses to be on his back.


"Wow, Sivert, you have a really cool sweater, I just want to look and look at it".


Magnus also has a good swedish friend by the name of Lucas. Lucas is quite a bit older, but he is nice and shares his mommy Tezz with Magnus for a while.


"Wow, daddy, I also want to have a ball like this at home. This is fun!"

It is not always easy to play together when their physical abilities are so different. But Lucas is very eager to try. Once there is an agreement on who gets to be on top, everything is better.

"Yeeehaaaa, horsie. Faster! Faster!"

Eating and drinking
January-February 2007, Magnus is 6-7 months old

The popularity of porridge has been a bit up and down, the primary source of food is still mama Muna's breasts, yumyum. Magnus caught a cold in January, after which his apetite went down noticably. Also, Muna has been experimenting with giving him different kinds of tastes to see what he likes.


It turns out he likes to drink water with his meals now, however not like this picture shows. He loves his spill-proof watercup, but only for chewing on. He has still not discovered that it is possible to get any water out of it yet, so any drinking water is served by spoon.

We found that he likes banana a lot, however after a while his desire for this also diminished. I think he noticed it was not good for him eventhough he liked the taste, because it made him constipated. It took us a while to make that connection, but Magnus found out first anyway.

One day we went to ikea and purchased a baby chair for him. He is almost steady enough to sit well, and with an inflatable pillow to help support him this works great. For some time he has been complaining when left alone on the floor while we were eating anyway, so it is good that he can share the meals with us now, sitting at the grown-ups table.


Here is our very first meal together at the table (not counting the times when he sat in a lap), Magnus is having his porridge while we are eating gratinated pork.


At the grownups table there is also better chances of getting grown-up food. He recently received his first taste of bread, and turned out to be fun as well as tasting good. Here Magnus is anxious to receive his breakfast bread ("min første leverpostei"...) - gimme gimmme gimme, I just love this liver-stuff!!


Food is not restricted to eating, it can also be shaken quite a bit, just in case it's not dead yet.
When Magnus gets excited he slams his head in the surface closest to him, sometimes while yelling loudly.

Mama Muna prefers that eating takes place sitting quietly without moving, since it leads to less mess. Magnus, however, prefers the opposite. One of his favorite tricks is to put his hands in his mouth after receiving a mouthful of porridge, and then wave his hands in the air finishing up by running them through his hair and face to make sure he gets a bath soon.
He has also picked up a trick that his daddy used to practice at the same age - whenever there is enough food, receive the last mouthful and just blow it out again, spraying the nearby vicinity !

Below is yet another first - yumyum waffle! About 1/2 heart went down and the other half ended up in the bib...

Winter baby
Winter 2007, Magnus is 6-7 months old

Here are some nice pictures detailing Magnus' first winter.
It is fun to see him when it is snowing in his head, he is very curious about what this white stuff is.




Here we are outside our house on a very nice sunny winter day after the 6 month doctor-checkup.


Hi everybody! I am Magnus, all wrapped up in sleeping bag and ready to go out into the freezing cold winter outside!


It has been snowing so much lately. The walking paths have not been cleaned of snow and with tiny small wheels it is harder to get places.


Snowing and snowing...


Our house the same evening in heavy snowfall (not so easy to see)


Hi again! Yet again, all dressed up warm as a polar bear. It is really nice to sleep outside in the crisp cold air


Ooooh did you see that? All that snow came down from the roof!!


Lotsa snow outside our house


But off we go nevertheless.

Now where did my hat go? Fortunately I can borrow mama's for the moment, 'cause it got so cold in the car with those doors open...

6 Month control
Mid-January, Magnus is 6 months old

It was time again for doctors visit, when Magnus had his 6-month scheduled checkup. He was doing fine in all respects, and the little problem discovered last time was already gone. The biggest thing now was his dry and reddened skin on face, hands and legs, for which doctor recommended continued use of Decubal moisturizer cream, and if it didn't help we could use the silulen cream intended for fixing diaper-wet behinds... Mama Muna flinched at the idea, same cream in the face and in the behind?!

Doctor had a tight schedule, and he got upset when it took too long to get Magnus dressed afterwards; Magnus was being his playful self and kept grabbing the inside of the clothes when I tried to put them on him, which made things difficult.

After seeing the doctor, a nurse we hadn't met before helped measure his length, weight and head size. He was now all of 8,5kg and 69,5cm. As usual, Magnus loved it here and enjoyed the whole process thoroughly.

Learning new things, exploring

February, Magnus is 6.5 months old

After new years, Magnus started becoming more mobile. He started out hoisting himself up on his arms at first, and later he would push himself backwards, effectively sliding across the floor.

With moving, he also started to experience that his toys were moving away from him... at least they kept getting further and further away all the time. So he has started reaching for things around him. When he comes up short, he becomes very frustrated, and bangs his hands in the floor.

For some time, Magnus has been sitting a little bit with support, but during January, he took a leap in development and started to bend forwards from sitting position, and it fell naturally to reach for his own toes. One day he reached them! The first order of business was to try to eat them of course.

Eventhough he still only moves backwards, he sure can get around easily. He is now walking the footsteps of Dr.Livingstone and exploring the big unknowns where no white man has ever set foot. Everything needs to be checked out, but unfortunately, it is very easy to get stuck in furniture and corners when only moving backwards. After all, Magnus is not equipped with rear-view mirrors...

He takes a strong interest in computers already.

My backpack is particularly interesting. One day I observed him backing across the floor as usual, except he was towing the backpack after him.

Everything must be explored...

Hey - I can't get any further !!!

Magnus also has shown a strong interest in reading. Or rather... what he does with his reading material is not what I do to mine, and it might not be possible to read it again after Magnus has read it, so it is usually best to make sure he has one for himself to read, one which everybody else is finished with...