Battleship

"Mom, I have more red pegs, and Tima has more white pegs. And that kind of makes sense, because I get more hits, and he gets more misses."

But, today for the first time, the boys played Battleship without anyone helping Tima. This made for a remarkably restful morning...although to get to that point we had to go through the being-punished-for-hurting-each-other stage. It's fun that Danya likes to play games, but I am very excited to have a pair that can play with each other!

Math in the genes?

A few weeks ago, Danya started double digit addition in his math book. It was well presented, with the ‘ones’ column in red and the ‘tens’ in blue. I started reading the instructions in my teacher’s manual, which step by step would teach him the ideas, but he cut me off.
“I get it, just let me start!” he said, bouncing up and down in excitement.

I didn’t really believe him, but I figured that after he made a few attempts he would be more teachable. But no, he did every problem correctly, with great joy. After a week of such problems, one day he was so excited when he saw a problem that had a 54 in it. “It’s going to be over 100!” But, alas, the total was less than 99. He doesn’t know that all of the sums are purposefully less than 100 for now. And he was very disappointed. I wrote out another problem for him, 51+52. He didn’t pay attention, and answered 101.

He also loves it when many problems on the page have the same answer. One day there were three in a column that made 10. Another day, five problems in two rows added up to 11. The excitement! However, he makes more mistakes when he’s wanting to have the same answer over and over again.

I guess he thinks about numbers a lot. Lying in bed one day, he asked Eric, “Daddy, is 2 minutes equal 120 seconds?”

Danya counts minutes when he’s bored during naptime. He’s all alone playing, while the rest of us are resting. Sometimes, he wakes me up at the end and gives me a piece of paper with numbers written consecutively 1 to 38. “Look Mom, I counted 38 minutes!” I felt a little guilty when I imagined him sitting and watching the second hand going around for so long. Math skills, right?

How is Ella doing?

That’s everyone’s first question.

Ella is doing much better. I’m still keeping her and myself on a dairy, peanut and apple-free diet. And she’s still on the reflux medicine that she started in the spring. But her sleeping patterns are much, much better! After we returned from the Black Sea, I decided to start weaning her. Unfortunately, just the thought of it made her more clingy than ever! But bit by bit, we’ve cut back from 7-8 feedings to 2. And actually, this week I’m trying to make that 1 ½ . She whined and complained a lot, especially from 4-6 pm, for about a month. But then we cut out the lunchtime feeding. As long as I wasn’t around she did fine. But the third day, when I was at lunch, she threw a fit! She wouldn’t eat or drink anything, just screaming and signing ‘please’ to be breastfed. I just took her to her room to put her down for a nap, and she finally calmed down in my arms. I figured we could try again, and lo and behold, she sat in her highchair and ate her lunch with no complaining. It fits her general pattern of making a big protest to make sure that I’m not convincible. But once she’s sure I won’t give in, she’s fine. For another week, she didn’t have any problems, and even stopped the 4-6pm whining as well. I give her about 4 oz of soy milk, which she rarely finishes. And she drinks some juice at snack time with her babysitter. After her nap, she’s usually happy to sip water from a cup. So I’m hopeful that the emotional neediness component of her feedings is receding.

It’s been easy to merge our dinner and bedtime feedings, since she usually goes to bed pretty quickly after dinner. And this week I’m trying to cut that feeding a little shorter. Hopefully in the next few weeks, we’ll be down to just a morning feeding. She used to be fine in the mornings until 8. And if I slept in, she’d eat breakfast with the boys without complaining. But lately she’s been a lot fussier—the boys can’t entertain her for an hour like before, and I usually go to her before 7:30. Maybe that’s because she used to get a late evening and midnight feedings, and now she’s actually waking up hungry. But I hope we can transition her to a cup of soymilk for breakfast… we’ll see!

On the nap front, I’m surprised that she’s still taking two naps a day. But I’ve been waking her after only an hour in the mornings, since in the afternoon she is easily disturbed while napping. Many days, she wakes up when Tima comes in, and then neither of them goes back to sleep. No morning nap will be quite a transition, since that’s when I do homeschool with Danya. But, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it!

Tima

“You know what, Mom? I saw a movie about Birdie. And you know what, Mom? Charlie was there, and Isaac, and all the kids. And you know what, Mom? In the movie… Birdie had a dog, named Sweep. And you know what, Mom?”

[Danya looks at me, rolls his eyes and gives his best imitation of an indulgent smile. He whispers, “I think this is a made up story.”]

“No, this really happened. We watched the Birdie movie,” Tima insists. “And you know what, Mom?”
“One more thing, Tima.”
“And Charlie was there, and you know what, Mom? He… ”


Out of the blue, Tima really wants a pet dog. One day he said, “Mom, you know what? Next to the toy store, there’s a store with real animals. And we could buy a baby dog there.” Since then, I’ve heard almost every day how much he wants a ‘baby dog’ and what he’ll do with his baby dog and what he’ll name it. One day outside we saw a cat, and Tima was overjoyed, “Look, Momma, there’s a cat we could take home!” I realized that he thought we didn’t have a cat because we just hadn’t been able to find one. After about four days of his asking continuously, he complained, “I’ve been waiting and waiting for a baby dog.” He plays with his dog stuffed animals all the time, and we read dog stories: Clifford, Biscuit, and the boys’ favorite--James Herriot’s story about two brother sheepdogs.


Tima has suddenly lost his tubby tummy. The other day I noticed that he is long and lean. His legs are still solid with muscle, but longer and straighter. Handstands are all the rage, and he’s getting better. His babysitter is convinced we need to ‘give him to gymnastics.’ But, the Russian phrase caries the true meaning of sports here. And we’re not ready to have our lives dictated by a coach who will probably be controlling and harsh. Tyotya Klava is distraught, convinced that he has a great future. But I realized the other day (while greatly enjoying the Olympics) that I’m not sure I’d want my child to ‘fulfill his talent’ even if he could win an Olympic medal. Heretical thought, you think, but I wonder if it’s really good for the athletes in a physical, emotional or spiritual sense. Where we live, and with Tima’s build, it is at least a possibility for him to thrive in such a serious gymnastics program. But I’m not ready to ‘give him’ to anyone, yet!

Raise high the torch

Aaah, the Olympics. As I mentioned above (below in the blog world) we've been watching a lot of Olympics. I guess as an adult I've never had access to Olympic viewing. Now we have two channels that show the Olympics about 20 hours a day. One channel is Ukrainian, one in Russian. But the feed is Eurosport, so we see a lot of different things. Well, when you watch from morning till evening, I guess it's inevitable that we see a lot! From my conversations with family in the States, about the only thing we've missed out on is the beach volleyball. Not too sad about that!

It's been really fun for the boys to discover a lot of different sports, and to realize their familiarity with the globe. Their general ranking of countries, according to who they cheer for is as follows: USA, Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine, South Korea, Belarus. Pretty much that's a list of where their friends are from. Danya didn't like it when the Americans and Russians played each other in volleyball. He said he was rooting for America, but didn't like having to choose. They also cheer for any country from the "Alphabet of Nations." If you've never experienced that gem, check out the They Might Be Giants podcasts. Some day, when Eric's back with our remaining computer, I hope to post a video clip of them singing it. Now whenever Japan or Qatar or any other country from the song is mentioned, they burst into their rendition.

Speaking of our computer, and Belarus, I'm able to blog because our dear friend Natasha left her computer with me while Eric was gone. She's just moved to Kiev, but returned for a few days to Minsk. Thank you dear friend!

Danya was very disappointed to learn a few weeks ago that he had to be 7 to start playing soccer with the local club. But Eric promised that he and Danya could do 'training' together. Every other day, they go outside and run laps, do push-ups and drills. Eric tries to get him to play more with the basketball, since he feels he actually knows something about that. But Danya is pretty devoted to soccer. Then, they play with any other little kids who are out there. Some kids are more fun than others. The 'little' Maxim, who is 6, has to be reprimanded often for swearing. The 'big' Maxim is much more fun to play with. Eric says that the boy's ball handling skills are better than his own. Eric says he could beat him since he's faster and stronger, but not without shifting into a gear of competition that one shouldn't use when playing against nine-year-olds! (We wonder who his dad is, since our landlord and apparently a few others in our building are professional soccer players. We see our landlord on t.v. in the highlights... our touch with fame.)

The boys are now pretending to be King Peter and Prince Caspian. Their young majesties are standing on the back of the couch and 'diving' into the 'water'.

18 Months Old, can you believe it?

Who knew that an 18 month old would be into pretend play? I guess when you have big brothers who spend their waking days as super heroes or various animals, it rubs off. Starting a few months ago, Ella would get on her hands and knees and give her cute 'ooh' bark to play along in the doggy family.

Now, she brings costumes to us, signing "please" for us to dress her up.




Once in four years, it's okay to watch tv all day, right? Especially if it's one big geography lesson. The talk is all about, "When I'm in the Olympics, I will..." Danya is commited to soccer, Tima has gone from swimming to gymnastics to diving to distance running. Ella doesn't talk much, but by her actions, we see she mostly wants to do gymnastics... or if the blue mattress is a pool then diving.