Где обедал воробей

А точнее, чем обедал воробей:

Our Victory Garden (или Скучаем по даче)

We have a large backyard - a third of an acre (I'm guessing about 12 соток?). But it's overgrown with ivy, brush, and tall pine trees (то, что кажется называется мачтовые сосны). The benefits are many - no need to mow grass, smells of fresh pine, lots of birds and squirrels. But of course as far as the entertainment goes, the backyard is useless - dark, uneven ground, no grass, lots of mosquitoes the size of a hummingbird.

At first we thought about doing something about it. But with one and a half jobs between the two of us and the scary economy, we decided to postpone this project until some unspecified later date. Instead, we're going to concentrate on a more manageable front yard.

The big plan is to take the old trees out - they are ridden with some desease anyway and plant fig trees and blueberry bushes instead. There's also some talk about a miniature pomegranate tree and flower beds. Of course, first we need to borrow a chain saw from one of the neighbors...

In the mean time, we decided to start our own vegetable garden. Oh, the dreams of self-sufficiency, even if for only a couple of weeks in summer. Is there such a thing as partial self-sufficiency? Not having to pay $1 for each red pepper, $3/lb for decently-tasting tomatoes, and $2 for each eggplant would save us a bundle. Plus we would finally have very fresh, great-tasting, organic produce!

But since the backyard conversion is out of the question, we started very small with 3 small raised beds right in the front yard. So we're gonna put some tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cukes, and some herbs.

We already cleared up the area (Mark was helping to pull out weeds). Chris put together 3 frames for the beds (again, with Mark's help). And I'm busy germinating the seeds. I used Chris's old Army T-shirt to soak the seeds in. So quite literally we are beating swords into plowshares (перековываем мечи на орала).

Now Chris is turning one of the beds into a cold frame and we're thinking about where to get cheap uncontaminated top soil (we don't have nearly enough compost to fill all the beds). So far it's a pretty expensive project! But Mark loves it and it promises to be a lot of fun (as long as we don't have another bad drought this year).

Getting ready for a parade

Mark loves to drum. This is his new thing! He grabs drumsticks and his plastic toy drum and says "Я банить" (барабанить) - I drum. And then he walks around the house doing just that - drumming. He especially loves it when someone else joins him in his little parade. As you can imagine, the cat is going crazy (and he thought that tail-pulling was bad).

The Big Neville

This is the Big Neville. It is missing a few wheels and some small details got broken off. That's what happens with a toy that gets carried everywhere, sent down slides, banged on many a hard surface, and launched down the stairs. Here's Neville's story.

Mark, barely 2 years old, knows the names of pretty much all the trains from Thomas the Train stories. His first most favorite train (MFT) was the green Percy. Soon it was replaced by a succession of others - Annie, Clarabel (he pronounces it Ka-bel), Salty, Rusty, Duncan, Gordon (Go-nooon!), James (Debs), Henry and, of course, Thomas. Thomas stayed Mark's favorite for quite a while.

Then, on his birthday, Mark got a big train with a light and sounds, from Arkadiy. Mark immediately named the train Neville. But of course, Mark already had another Neville in his toy box - a small wooden one. So to make it clear, Mark calls the new train the Big Neville (Bolshoy Neville). He carries Big Neville with him everywhere and keeps it by his bed. You think I'm making it up? Here are pictures:

First thing in the morning, getting ready to change the diaper.

Getting dressed:

Watching cartoons:

Having a mid-day snack (had to change the shirt):

Clay-modeling at an arts class:
Putting toys away and getting ready for bed:

More birthday pictures

Some more pictures from Mark's birthday weekend. The weather was great - unbelievably warm for February (oh, but we are paying for it now!). So we all spent lots of time outdoors - at the playgrounds and parks.

Of course, evenings were spent in the house, playing with all the new toys Mark got for his birthday.

Birthday Bash - Mark is 2!

Ok, the original birthday bash was cancelled because Mark was sick. So instead of a party with 4 toddlers, their parents, and Mark's grandparents and uncle, we had to settle for grandparents, uncle and Mark's best friend - Maeli (and her parents, of course). But of course, it was lots of fun nevertheless.

The original plan was to have a train-themed birthday party. So that explains the cake. But the gifts weren't limited to just train stuff. Sure, Mark's got a radio-controlled train (from Grandpa and Grandma), which he promptly named "Debs" (James) and a small black train (from uncle Arkady). This black train, which Mark quickly started calling Big Neville (he also has a small Neville), edged out Thomas (unheard of!) and is still THE MOST FAVORITE train and is taken everywhere.

Other toys included the Pig's Barn from the Word World cartoon (Pig is Mark's favorite character!), a play kitchen (now Mark cooks kasha, soup, and muffins, all with lots of butter), a few Russian-language books, cartoons and Elefun (still unpacked this one). So Mark is super-busy and entertained with all these new toys! Thank you very much for all the toys!

On the day of his birthday, Mark woke up early and didn't nap at all. So he was ready to crash by about 6pm. But we had to keep him awake because we were expecting guests over - Sean, Stephanie and Maeli. Well, he barely stayed awake. But once Maeli came over, he's got the second wind and partied until 8pm. So he set a record for staying awake for over 14 hours straight.

Riding horses at Dead Broke Farm

For Maeli's birthday Stephanie and Sean wanted to take her to ride a pony. Steph found out that there was this Dead Broke Farm over in Durham Co where they had 20-minute pony rides for toddlers. Off we went. I didn't think that Mark would want to even sit on a pony. After all, he doesn't even want to sit on his little tricycle (even when I offer to push it)!

But I was wrong (you just never know with this boy). He loved sitting on a pony and petting it. Then he got a bit bored waiting for the ride to start. But once we took off, he just kept smiling bigger and bigger smile. And he sat well in the saddle too. At first, we had a problem since he kept holding onto his Thomas the Train and only used one hand to hold onto the saddle. But once he got into the ride (about 10 seconds later), he just gave me the train and placed all his attention on the pony.

And it wasn't one of those carnival rides either, where poor ponies go round and round in a circle like 100 times. No, this was an honest trail ride, first on the dirt road and then on a woodsy trail and back on the dirt road. When it was over and he was off the pony, he wanted to go again. This time, he got to ride a big horse! Again, he loved it! And afterwards he got to pet the dogs and the cats that live on the farm.

When it snowed

So the weather's been crazy lately. One day it's really cold, way too cold to even go outside. And the next day it's warm enough (low 50ies) that you see college students in T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. But we did get some snow, lots of it actually, and it stayed for a couple of days. As a matter of fact, we had a big snow storm. Most of the places were closed and people were encouraged to stay home. I didn't need much encouragement since I really can't drive in the snow.

Mark hated snow at first. I took him outside and he immediately objected - it was too cold, too white, too snowy. Then again, he refused to wear his snow boots and mittens. Chris got a little blue plastic sled, shaped like a flying saucer and we tried to take Mark on a ride. He tolerated it for a little while only because he really did not want to walk in the snow. But every time snow touched his fingers or got on his coat, he whimpered.

In the late afternoon, after the snow stopped falling, we went to the school yard to let Mark sled down a small slope. Again, he did not like it, this time refusing to even sit on the sled. And he normally loves all sorts of slides.

But the next day, when I took him to the daycare, he warmed up to the idea of playing in the snow and even helped build a snowman. By the end of the third day, he kept asking to go see "sneg", bravely walked in the deepest snow under the pine trees, and tried having a snowball fight with Chris. But it was too late - the next day all the snow was gone.

Let's call Baba

Mark LOVES making phone calls. Ok, not so much making calls, but asking me to call people. His favorites are Baba (Grandma Rita), Didi (Grandpa Yuri), and Maeli. He doesn't actually talk on the phone - get very silent if you ask him to say hi. But he just loves knowing that Chris or I are talking to one of his most favorite people. Here's a pretty typical video (I didn't know Chris was shooting it) of me talking to Baba.

Holidays

Ok, I do know it's been a while. As usual, things are just getting out of hand crazy-busy here. I only get to work in the evenings, after Mark is in bed. So that's what I do. Then at the end of my very long day, I'm way too tired to even think about writing a quick post, much less about uploading pictures (takes too long). Besides, we don't even take that many pictures any longer.

But of course, with all the holidays, we got some nice pictures. First there was a party at Mark's day care. If you don't know, it's a small at-home daycare and all the children there speak Russian. They had a giant Christmas tree nicely decorated with hand-made ornaments. There was a puppet theater, lots of crafts, a small tree for kids to decorate, and even appearance by Снегурочка and her favorite северный олень.

Mark didn't care much for most of it though because right away he got to a big red choo-choo train that was set out under the tree. He ended up playing with that train for most of the party.

Then there was Hannukah. We went to a special Hannukah story-time at a local Barnes&Noble where a rabbi told the kids a Hannukah story about a boy making latkes. The story was fun, but the best part of it was that rabbi Aaron juggled through it. Hard to explain, but it was really great. Next year (yes, he does it every year) I'll be taking a video.

Mark's gift for Hannukah was a big Melissa & Doug easel from Grandma and Grandpa. Mark helped Chris put it together. Boy, he absolutely loves his easel now and finally draws with crayons (and chalk). We're going to do some painting soon as well.

Then, of course, was Christmas. Mark helped Chris make some gingerbread man cookies. He's really good at mixing things up. Sure, he's got plenty of practice helping me make his most favorite food of the moment - muffins. Every day he asks for more muffins. He actually learned to pull up a step-stool to the counter and climb it to get to the muffin tin.

Ok, back to Christmas. Lots of gifts. Mark's got a big pop-up book about trains which he now wants to read 5 times in a row, every day. That was a gift from Great Grandma Phillys. He also got a Thomas the Train book with lots of buttons that make train sounds. Plus Mark has a set of 4 minibooks about Thomas from his Grandpa Ron. And Mark got a pig from Word World (he loves watching Word World and Pig and Dog are his two most favorite characters).

Then on the last day of Hannukah Mark got a little green train from Thomas the Train set, Percy. Mark's been carrying it around with him ever since and quickly learned the train's name. Oh, and for the New Year's gift, Mark is getting a couple of DVDs with Thomas the Train cartoons.

Halloween 08

This year we weren't going to get any costume for Mark because he absolutely hated all different costumes we tried. But then at the last moment, Chris went out and bought a train engineer costume, since Mark is really into choo-choos now.

Of course, putting a costume on brought out a 30-minute-long temper tantrum. But then we went over to our friends, Sean and Stephanie, and Mark always loves going there. His little friend, Maeli, was also loudly objecting to her batterfly-princess costume. So they made quite a loud duo. Sean was dressed as The Cat in the Hat and acted totally goofy. He kept making up silly rhymes every time someone would ring the door bell. Like one of the rhymes was "I'm the Cat in the Hat/ Eat this candy; it'll make you fat."

After having a bite to eat, we all went out for some trick-o-treat fun. We walked around the neighborhood, looked at a couple of funky haunted houses and lawns decorated with big inflatables. And we saw large crowds of other trick-o-treaters. Actually, Steph's neighbors kept count and said that they had 77 kids stopping by that evening! Crazy!

Well, Mark and Maeli didn't care to walk much, so instead they rode in the little Radio Flyer wagon which we all took turns pulling along. We even took Sean's dog, Maple, with us since it wouldn't be fair to leave her all alone in the house. That was probably the only time in the recorded history, when a cat was walking a dog! The entire procession - Sean in his costume leading Maple, followed by Chris pulling the wagon with the kids in it, and Steph and me bringing up the rear looked pretty funny. The kids got lots of complements and candy. Of course, as they are too little to eat candy, we got to eat it all (after putting Mark in bed). Loving it!

NC State Fair 08

Ever since our move from FL in 2006, we go to the State Fair every year. In Daytona we had the Daytona 500 and the Bikeweek with all their hustle and bustle and craziness. And here we have the State Fair. It is really fun, there's lot of fried food that is bad for you and pretty bad in general, and it is just as expensive. So apart from not seeing or hearing stock cars or Harley bikes, we notice hardly a difference. Ok, ok, so Daytona 500 does feature a fly-over by F-16s.

So this year we went there with Mark and with our friends, Sean and Stephanie and their little girl, Maeli. And while there, we met up with Matt and Amy and their toddler, Ford. Of course, because of the little kids, we couldn't stay as long as we wanted. And we didn't go on any rides other than the ones in the Kidz Fun Park. And we barely got to see the agricultural exibits. But it was still lots of fun.
Mark walked almost all the time! And he loved the grilled italian sausage with peppers and onions and roasted corn on the cob. But most of all, he loved the Fun Slide. Now, the Fun Slide was very tall and scary.

It's party time!

Things we do here, in Raleigh

What do Mark and I do during the week? We do lots of cool stuff. Usually we follow some kind of schedule, but of course things change and we try to stay flexible.

Mondays are our nothing-special-scheduled days. Sometimes we have playdates and other times we go to the library. Other times we go to the science museum in the Downtown.

We recently started going to the Russian day-care on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mark is the youngest child there and there are usually 4-5 others. At first I was worried that he'd hate it, but I was so very wrong. He really loved it from the first day. Well, he already knew the teacher; it's the same woman that teaches his Saturday class at the Russian school. Other kids are Alex, 5; Alexei, 5; Varya, 5; her little sister, Tasya, 3; and Ella, 3. So Mark is the baby. When I come to pick him up, the kids say "Baby, your mommie is here!". But they all like him and treat him really well. I think he gets along with all of them.

He loves watching the boys doing cartwheels and running and jumping around. And he doesn't just watch and laugh; he tries to imitate them too! He even started doing sommersaults (with my help, of course). He likes the youngest of the girls, Tasya. She can be a bit bossy, but he holds her hand and they walk together and even talk! So now he repeats some of the things she says and in the same tone of voice; things like "come over", "here", "there", "what's this" - in a very bossy way. Another thing he repeats after her is "ouch!" - he loves it and laughs every time he says it.

Anyway, another thing Mark does now on Tuesdays and Thursdays is swimming lessons. Of course, Mark is much too young to learn swimming, but he learns to not be afraid of water. Chris takes him to the pool in the evenings. I don't go, so I don't have any pictures. But I've heard good things about the lessons.

On Wednesdays I now take him to the Tumble Bunnies class at a YMCA. It's a bit far, but it's worth the trip. A couple of his little friends go there too. The instructors set up a mini-obstacle course that changes each time. Mark does very well, even on the balance beam. And then the kids play with a big parachute and that's absolutely Mark's favorite thing!

Then on Wednesday afternoons we have physical therapy. Mark is doing great now. He's really improving. He goes from sitting to standing to laying down without thinking twice. His balance is much better now; he crawls and climbs and goes down the slides; he twirls around and bounces; he can almost run; and he climbs up the stairs really well. We still have plenty of things to work on though.

On Fridays we also have a free day. Again we have playdates and go to the museums and parks. We try to have a arts lesson at least once a week now that Mark likes drawing with crayons and doesn't mind playdough as long as he gets to use the Fun Factory. And we try to go to the children's museum called Marbles. Also, we go to the Pullen park where we ride carousel and the train and now the boats.

A half-day at the farm

Actually, it was even less than half-day; it was more like an hour or so. I took Mark to the Russian school in the morning and then he slept for 3 hours. That’s what he does – during the week his naps are only about one hour long, but on weekends – 3-hour naps aren’t uncommon. And so we had a late start. The farm was pretty far away – on the other end of town. Also, the directions we got from Google weren’t exactly right and we kept driving back and forth looking for our turn. Finally we got to the farm at about 4pm. But it was a lot of fun. First we had Mark go on the hay mountain. He wasn’t very excited about it though, probably because there were too many other kids climbing, running, jumping and acting crazy. But he did crawl through a very long tunnel under the mountain.

Then we took him to the hay maze. I thought he wouldn’t be very interested in it, but it was just the opposite. He loved it and kept wanting to go back. He even went into the maze on his own! Then we went to the larger corn maze, but it really wasn’t all that. And most corn was already picked. And plus it rained the day before, so the ground was very muddy. We got out of the corn maze with only a couple of ears of corn and went to feed the animals. This farm had a small petting zoo with goats, pigs, and chickens. Except of course, you couldn’t pet the pigs because they bite. And since so many people go through and pet and feed the animals, they really couldn’t care less for our corn. They did love the dry corn stalks though. But what they liked even more was the fresh grass. All the goats and sheep ate all the grass in their little enclosure. So they were just too happy to got even the smallest blade from us. That’s how we kept them coming over. Otherwise, they would just stay away.

But pretty soon it got boring anyway and we went to pick cotton. Cotton-picking is a lot of fun when you only do it for a few minutes. The plants are very beautiful and it’s pretty amazing how much cotton can you pull out of a single flower (or whatever it is called). Mark really got into it. I guess he really liked that for once he was encouraged to pull and tear something. I decided to use the cotton that we picked for crafts, but so far we haven’t used any. Anyway, just as we were done picking cotton, we saw that the hay ride was getting ready to leave. We hurried up and jumped on a hay wagon. Of course, Mark simply loved it. We sat all the way in the front where he could see the big tractor. He thought that was the absolutely best thing ever, even better than cotton. Unfortunately, the girls that sat next to us didn’t think so; they kept throwing corn at the driver. Mean!

Finally, it was time to go to the pumpkin patch. Our admission price included picking one pumpkin per paying adult. First we went to the patch and tried to find a pumpkin still on the vine. It wasn’t that difficult, especially after we moved all the way to the back of the patch. But all the pumpkins were pretty small. So we let Mark find one and we picked it. But then we felt like getting 2 tiny pumpkins just wouldn’t be fair. Instead, we went back and picked another, larger, pumpkin from a ready-to-pick pile. Mark was getting tired and cranky; it was getting cold and dark. And there was really nothing left to do. It was clearly time to leave.