На прогулке. Ароша поднял веточку и молотит ей по забору, приговаривая:
– Уходи прочь, уходи, уходи! Ты нам не нужен! Мама, я прогоняю прачА!
– Кого, врача??
– Нет, прачА!
– Не поняла, грача что ли?
– Не. ПрачА! Уходи, Прочь!

Комментарии по поводу машины родителей:
– У дедушки была Хундаи. Она поломалась. Он купит новую машину по имени Тойота.
– Нет, Арошка, они Ниссан вроде планируют купить.
– А я думаю Тойоту!

– У Шублика была Хундаи, и он её утопил.

– Мама, это что за машина?
– Это Лексус.
– А эта?
– Это Хонда.
– А эта?
– Это Мерседес.
– А где Хундаи?
– А вот и Хундаи.
– Ну наконец-то!

Зашли в аптеку за зубной пастой. Арошка захотел новую щётку. Сам сделал выбор из двух предложенных мной вариантов. Когда мы заплатили за щётку и я её вручила Арошке, он блаженно улыбнулся и произнёс:
– Мамочка! Спасибо большое за подарочек! Мне она так драаавится!
Когда мы пришли домой, он поспешил сообщить Дане о своей новой покупке:
– Папа, мы в аптеке щёточку купили. Розовая мне не подравилась. А почему?
– Не знаю, Арошка. Ты мне скажи. Может, эта была красивее?
– Она плакала в магазине. Чтобы её купили! Больше не плачет.

Aroshka is 26 months old today.

We’ve made a lot of progress with а potty in the last few weeks. He’s been going on the potty at home when not wearing anything at the bottom for quite a while now, but somehow underpants threw him off and he kept peeing into them. A few weeks ago, however, we conquered this issue, so it was time to go diaper-free outside.

The first day it was just one accident after another, but on the second day, surprisingly, things have gotten much better. We still have to change outside at least ones every few days, but he mostly tells me when he needs to go, and I am really happy with our progress. He still sleeps in diapers, and I think it might be a while before he’ll be ready to take them off at night.

I also started giving him probiotics a few weeks ago, and they seem to help to regulate his digestion. We’ve made an appointment to see a specialist in regards to this (at some point he started doing #2 too often), but this is another thing which helped me not to be afraid to go outside without diapers.

Arosha is doing very well with his language development. His vocabulary is growing and syntaxis is getting more complex with each day. He only speaks and understands Russian for now, but I hope that by kindergarten he’ll have at least some rudimentary English as well. I try to speak English to him sometimes, but he does not like it and just plain asks me to stop. He also does not like watching cartoons in English, although when Danya and I watch morning news in English during breakfast, Aroshka does not protest.

At this stage in his development, his loves asking questions about the opposites (not sure how to better frame it). For example, I would say:
– Ароша, этот дядя очень хорошо стрижёт. (Arosha, this guy makes great haircuts).
– А кто плохо стрижёт? (And who makes bad haircuts?)

– Ароша, посмотри какой большой автобус! (Arosha, look how big this bus is!)
– А где маленький автобус? (And where is a small bus?)

He is still a quite adventurous eater. Mussels? Miso soup? Seaweed? Spicy carrots? Chili soup? No problem, mom! He especially likes going to restaurants, although usually he is too active to sit too long in one place, so I usually have to eat fast and then walk around with him.

He started waking up at least ones a night almost every night after having a cold a few weeks ago. I usually give him milk and tell him one short fairy-tail, and he goes right back to sleep. I just hope that it will stop at some point. Not that it’s really hard to do, but sometimes it takes me up to half an hour to fall back asleep, and when I have to get up twice, that’s an hour taken from my precious night rest.

Aroshka is also at a stage of a strong attachment to me. He always wants me to be close, and gets upset when we leave him even with his grandparents (we do it sometimes for half a day on Saturdays). We’re not planning to send him to a daycare for now, but if we did, I thing he would have a very hard time adjusting. I just hope that when he gets a little older, separating from me will be easier for him.

One of the things that Arosha really likes right now is hiding under our big bed comforter. I pretend that I look for him everywhere, and then eventually he shows up and I “find” him. Laughter always follows. He also loves to jump on our bed, but he wants me to jump with him (I pretend that I’m jumping though). He usually asks me to say the verse about “horses” (I add an extra verse about “кошки” (cats)):

Далеко, далеко
На лугу пасутся ко…
Кони? Нет, не кони!

Далеко, далеко
На лугу пасутся ко…
Козы? Нет, не козы!

Далеко, далеко
На лугу пасутся ко…
Правильно, коровы!

Пейте, дети, молоко —
Будете здоровы!

Arosha also loves running around, preferably on grass, whenever we’re in the open space. He wants me to catch him, and if I’m not fast enough, he will slow down and even fall to improve my chances.

He really misses his friend Evelina. She left to visit her grandparents at the end of August and will not be back until the beginning of December. Aroshka asks about her often and tells me that we should invite her over when she comes back. He does not socialize with other children on playground, and if he does, he prefers older girls — up to 2 years older than him.

Arosha also got his first professional haircut this month. I already wrote about it, but just wanted to say again that to my surprise it was quite an enjoyable experience.

Aroshka also really likes his daddy’s iPad. We’ve downloaded a bunch of games for him. I don’t know if they have any educational value, but nowadays electronic devises like that are necessary evil. I limit his media time as much as possible, but we let him play a little almost every day. His favorite games include things like washing virtual dishes, or helping a toddler to go to the toilet, or doing virtual puzzles, or feeding monsters by picking up food from a refrigerator and then cooking it using different kitchen utensils. If you know any good games for 2 year olds, please leave a comment.

Arosha knows his colors pretty well. His favorite is definitely light green (салатовый). He loves light green clothes, light green potty, light green balloons, etc, etc. The other day we went to an eyeglass store to get my glasses fixed, and after looking at all the different frames and sunglasses, he picked a bright light green one and suggested that we buy it.

We went to Brooklyn botanical garden this Saturday, and Aroshka had his first encounter with cacti. Despite Danya and I telling him not to touch them, he did. Moreover, he picked the worst possible one to touch — there were no visible spines, but after he touched the cactus, we discovered a lot of micro-spines stuck in his fingers. Aroshka was not happy about this, but I think that it was a good lesson (he remembers his experience).

Overall Aroshka is a great kid. He is smart and funny and spirited. There are daily challenges of dealing with him of course. He pretends not to hear me when I ask him to do something that he does not want to do, and sometimes after repeating the same thing gazillion billion times to no effect I have to either threaten him with some action (if you would not stop playing with a water fountain, we’re going home!) or yell.

I try to control myself and not yell at him because I don’t think it’s effective, but sometimes I just can’t help it. To his credit, he usually tells me “Mama, don’t yell at me” (мама, не кричи на меня) and it almost instantly calms me down.

Arosha still very much likes when we read books with him. He became much more patient when it comes to longer stories. He definitely has his favorites, but I try to introduce new stories whenever he lets me. Right now among the stories that we read the most often are “Краденое солце” Чуковского, сказка “Как цыплята солнышко искали”, сказка о снегурочке, “Дракон Комодо” Д. Биссета, “Жил на свете слонёнок” Цыферова, сказки Сутеева о зайце и яблоке и о снеговике. Well, and many other ones!

Today was the last day of September, and it was sunny and beautiful. I am happy to write that it did not go to waste for our family. The three of us plus Danya’s parents went to Sandy Hook in NJ.

We left shortly after 11, and it took us about an hour and a half to get there (it would have taken us a bit less time if we did not have to stop twice for Arosha’s bathroom break). At the park itself we stopped in three different places.

The first one was on sandy beach. Aroshka climbed onto some old concrete barrier which ran alongside the beach, and had a lot of fun walking back and forth. He also liked sand, beach vegetation, and seashells and did not want to leave.

Our second stop was at Fort Hancock, which is located on the Sandy Hook peninsula. Danya and his dad took a few pictures, Aroshka and his grandma laughed and ran around playing hide-and-seek, and I just felt extremely happy being with all of them someplace outside of Brooklyn.

The third stop was close to the Northern tip of the peninsula. There is an observation deck with a beautiful view of the Verrazano Bridge, the southern shore of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

It was around 3 PM (Aroshka’s normal nap time) when we finally got into the car and headed home. Since everyone was hungry, we stopped at one of the local rustic restaurants, Bahr’s Landing. This place had a beautiful view of the water and a good selection of seafood along with a seasonal Octoberfest menu.

We got clam chowders/lobster bisque and mussels to warm up, and a variety of Octoberfest meals as our main courses. Everything was pretty delicious, but as usual the main meal portions were too big. This restaurant reminded me greatly of our Maine trip.

Aroshka slept almost all the way home, but was cranky for over an hour after we got home since his nap was too short for his liking.

All in all, we had a wonderful day. It felt as if we drove much farther from Brooklyn than we really did.

On a side note, I am very proud of Aroshka in terms of his control over certain bodily functions. He was diaper-free all day today, and he only peed in his pants ones in the car (luckily, we put a absorbent training pad on his car seat, so it did not get wet). We started going diaper-free outside about a week ago, and he is doing better and better. He even told us that he needs to do #2 while we were outside today, and to me it is a big accomplishment!

This Saturday Aroshka has got his first “professional” haircut. We did not really plan it, so I did not have a chance to stress out about Aroshka’s reaction to a hair salon.

After our daily ouside time, Danya picked Aroshka and me up from a playground, and we went to a barber shop. The plan was to simply get Danya a haircut, but to our surprise Aroshka said that he wants one too. His hair was cut twice before by his grandma, but never by a stranger. In the past I worried that electrical trimmer would freak him out (as was the case with his daddy), but apparently our boy is fearless.

Not only Aroshka did not cry or resist, but he quite enjoyed it too. Danya’s barber, Artur, was great — he was explaining everything to Aroshka as he went and overall made him feel at ease. Of course, the promise of candies at the end of the procedure also helped matters.

The haircut cost $10. In comparison, the adult’s one is priced $13 at the same shop. Considering that it takes more effort to work with the child, I think it should be the opposite.

The funny thing was that Aroshka kept saying stuff like “как красиво, дядя!” (how beautiful) from time to time, and enjoyed getting a new look overall.

Danya made a long video of almost the whole thing, but of course you don’t have to watch it all.

We didn’t really have any plans for the long weekend and were thinking that we’ll end up spending it in hot, humid and noisy Brooklyn. But on Wednesday I had a strong urge to just get away and unwind a little bit from what seemed to be a barrage of bad news and annoyances that has been getting to us in the past month. So I opened Google Maps, navigated to Catskill region and typed in “lodge” in the search box.

We didn’t want to spend a lot of money — our favorite cabins in Pocono run $1,200 for 2 night stay. I looked through several sites and saw a place that looked like it could work for us. Their website didn’t have rooms available, but a call turned up 2 free rooms, next to each other with a single queen bed in each for only $95 a night. Even though the place had very mediocre ratings on review sites I figured — how bad can it be?

I booked it right there on the phone for a two night stay. Even if the place turned out to be bad, we wouldn’t be spending too much time indoors anyhow as there were tons of parks around and things that we could do. That was a good call on my part. Now we had a family getaway set for the upcoming weekend and we would be staying in Catskill Mountain Lodge in Palenville, NY.

The drive to the lodge on Saturday morning ended up being much better than expected. We only got stuck in some mild traffic outside of the city and got to our destination in a pretty decent time. On our way we stopped by a Chinese buffet which was a new experience for Arosha and a well forgotten experience for the rest of us. Arosha liked picking and tasting a large variety of food — even though he might end up not liking something he never minds to try — anything and everything.

The lodge turned out to be just fine. The owners were pretty friendly. They instantly checked us in and even gave us a refrigerator free of charge once we requested one to be put in our room — mainly for Arosha’s milk. The interiors were pretty dated, but rooms were clean and side by side to each other — as promised.

There was a what looked like a nice pool on the premises, but we never got around to trying it out. Either way — the people who leave bad reviews are just not living in the real world — don’t expect to get a five star Hilton when you’re paying $95 a night on a holiday weekend. Just be realistic and you will not be disappointed.

We decided to spend a second half of our first day exploring a nearby state park — North-South Lake Campground. This place was familiar to Alena and myself as we discovered it back in 2003 while spending a weekend in the region. In fact, we liked it so much that we ended up bring the whole circle of our friends here — twice — for camping.

I wanted to take a couple of pictures of the lake and everyone else just wanted to go for a walk. At some point Arosha managed to escape far enough from Alena and by the time Alena realized what was going on Arosha made a run for the lake and took a complete dive fully clothed. Alena seemed distressed, Arosha was ecstatic. At this point she just took off his clothes and let him have at it.

My picture taking though didn’t go too well. I was taking long exposure shots while forgetting to block off the viewfinder. As a result all the photos ended up being overexposed in the center of the frame. I had a couple of normal shots which were OK, but all long exposures are junk. But it was a good end of the day nevertheless.

On the way back to our lodge we stopped by Kaaterskill Falls and I took a couple of photographs that I ended up liking. And by this time there were practically no people there as opposed to the time when we were passing them on our way to the park. It was a long weekend after all. Everything was crawling with people.

We finished our evening off with a dinner in a steakhouse located on the lodge premises. The restaurant actually had a live jazz band inside, but it was a bit too loud — we wanted to be able to have a conversation during the dinner, so we opted for a table outside. Since the sun was down at that time the temperature was very pleasant and we still could hear the music just at the right volume.

My steak was very good (a filet mignon) as was Alena’s duck. My parents decided to try a ribeye and a New York strip and while they were not bad they weren’t as good as my choice. We started the dinner with baby clams in garlic souse and topped the whole thing off with a nice bottle of red wine.

Overall it was a very good start of a nice little trip except for the fact that Arosha kept needing a diaper change about 10 times a day which is not normal at all. At the end of the day his butt hurt so much that he couldn’t sit which was putting a damper on all our moods.

Our second day was even simpler than the first. After waking up and eating a breakfast (sandwiches, eggs) that we brought with ourselves we decided to find an orchard and do some fruit picking. But at first Arosha went for a ride on a set of ancient swings and carousels that were present on our lodge territory.

On our way we were stopping at numerous yard sales and then we stopped by a supermarket to buy some ointment for Arosha’s butt. At that supermarket Arosha ran off from us and my dad ran after him. Apparently at the end of that chase my dad fell down pretty hard while trying to avoid Arosha who fell down in front of him. That was quite unpleasant for everyone.

Finding an orchard wasn’t a problem. There is a number of them nearby and we picked the closest one to our lodge. Even though their website hasn’t been updated since 2011 we decided to take our chances and we lucked out. First of all this orchard was huge — they had rows and rows and rows of apple trees covered with apples and basically no people at all. A very different experience from our last fall.

I think Arosha took a bite out of every kind of apple that orchard had and it had a lot. We picked 2 full bags of different kinds of apples and then 2 small boxes of raspberries. Arosha of course was picking raspberries right into his stomach. I tried a few too. Raspberries and apples were delicious. The staff was very friendly and we bought a liter of their fresh apple cider which also was very delicious.

Then we ate lunch at some local spot that we stumbled upon accidentally — thin crusted pizzas. Everyone liked these very much. At this point we didn’t have any more plans so we started driving home. However on our way I saw a sign toward a historic lighthouse located on Hudson. We decided to make a small detour and stop by.

It ended up being a very nice hike along Hudson shore through the luscious woods. This was the first time when I actually touched Hudson waters. My dad also showed us a plant that he used to show us when we were kids. It has small bean like things growing on it and when you touch it they explode with their seeds. Alena saw it for the first time and every time one of these would explode at her touch she would scream loudly and jump about 2 meters (almost) into the air. Arosha also enjoyed popping these things up.

Even though the hike was nice we didn’t get to our final destination. There was a high tide and it flooded the final part of the path. We did see the lighthouse, but could get close enough for good photographs. The hike was still worth it. I’m glad we did take that detour.

And we finished the day at the same steakhouse at our lodge. This time we decided to simply go for burgers with a round of beer. And again it was nice and thus our second day came to a conclusion.

On our last day our main objective was to get back home and hopefully avoid getting stuck in a lot of traffic. But before leaving Catskill region we decided to make one last stop near Ashokan Reservoir — the main source of drinking water for New York City as it turned out.

The lake was beautiful with somewhat menacing looking clouds and dark mountains on the horizon. We walked along the shore and I took a number of long exposure shots, remembering to close off the viewfinder this time around. I ended up with a good number of photographs and some of them came out well.

All that came to an abrupt conclusion when a police officer approached us and informed us of the fact that we were trespassing. Turns out that there were indeed signs hidden in the bushes stating that you can only get down here with a proper permit, which we obviously didn’t have. Luckily for us he was a nice guy who ended up just giving us warnings and asking us not to do it again.

And that was pretty much it. We got into the car, stopped on our way for lunch and got all the way home without many problems, while Arosha slept. It ended up being a really nice Labor Day family getaway.

Вчера я почти час читала Арошке сказки перед дневным сном, но он засыпать не желал, и на мои уговоры не вылазить из кровати не поддавался. В результате я пригрозила:
– Считаю до трёх. Если на счёт три ты не будешь в кровати, получишь по попе.
Ароша начал пищать, но в кровать не пошел. В результате я его шлёпнула (не особо сильно, но обидно) и уложила в кровать. Вышла, смотрю на монитор и слышу такую речь от плачущего Ароши:
– Я бедный-пребеееедный! Мама, не обижай меня!
Спать он так и не пошёл. Ну что ж, бывает.

Еще из воспитательного. Недели две назад Арошка никак не соглашался укладывать раскиданные по всему залу шарики в корзину. Ни уговоры, ни попытки превратить уборку в весёлую игру, ни угрозы, что пока не соберет, гулять не пойдём, не действовали. В результате Даня рассердился и сказал, что шарики выбросит. Он сам сложил их в корзину и отнёс в машину. На этих выходных Ароша слушайно увидел корзину с шариками в багажнике. Далее мы услышали такую речь:
– Оказывается, папа не выкинул в мусор… Оказывается, папа в машину унёс!
Кстати, “выбрасывание” шариков имело эффект. Ароша намного более охотно убирает игрушки, когда я его об этом прошу (сам он инициативу пока проявляет крайне редко).

Еще у него теперь любимая продружка Эвелина. Как-то мы играли на площадке, и Эвелина с мамой должны были вот-вот подойти, о чём Арошка знал.
– Где моя Велина? Где моя Велина? Не могу дождаться.

This year we had a very small celebration for Arosha’s birthday — actually several small celebrations. On Saturday evening we went for a dinner to an Indian restaurant in Bay Ridge — he loves going to “eestauans”. Before getting into the car we took a couple of photographs which came out well.

I probably left a lot of things out of my previous post about the new things Arosha does, so I’ll add a couple more here.

By now he knows some colors pretty well — red, blue, green, yellow, pink and orange. I’ve been trying to get him to remember some, but he didn’t seem to show any progress. And then one day he just started naming them all properly.

The breastfeeding has completely stopped. So if you give a child enough time they will self-wean without any stress for the child or the mother. For us it happened in phases. First he stopped asking for it before he goes to sleep (day and night) and two or so weeks ago he just stopped asking for it in the morning.

He likes to play games with imaginary things. For example he always tries to feed me all kinds of vegetables (like onions) when I bathe him by extending his hand with fingers closed like he is holding something, even though the hand is empty. He tells me what he is giving me. He does these kinds of things often.

He also likes to say something that he knows is not right and looks at us with a smile waiting for us to correct him.

He was really afraid of the shower for most of his life, but lately he is turning it on himself and tries to get under it against his fear. Washing his head was always a big deal that used to involve a lot of crying, but now he will turn the shower on, close his eyes and get under it. He knows to wait for me to tell him that it’s OK to open his eyes when the shampoo is gone.

He loves drawing a net on his chest with iodine solution (our parents used to do this for us when we would get sick as kids) before going to sleep. Usually it’s his reward for washing his head with shampoo. I love seeing the anticipation on his face and the giggling when I start drawing with a q-tip.

He always talks about something. When we got into the car to go to the restaurant he kept commenting on the whole thing: “Мы едeм на папиной машине. В истаан (рестаран)! Се вместе!” His pronunciation is not great, but Alena and I can make out pretty much everything he says.

Or with colors the other day:
– Ароша, какого цвета эта буква?
– Синяя.
– Правильно. А какого цвета эта черепаха?
– Си… Ой, пепутал (перепутал)! Зиёная!

He likes playing on iPad. We bought him several interactive books where he has to perform somewhat complicated actions and I’m amazed with how quickly he figured it all out. For example there is a page where he has to feed the kids. The kids imagine a cupcake that they would like to eat which consists of 3 parts — a cup, cupcake itself and a topping like a cherry or a grape. And he has a bunch on ingredients of different colors that needs to pick the right ones from and build this cupcake. He does it very well.

He also likes playing with a bunch of puzzle boards that he has. There are shape, animal or number cutouts that he has to fill with correct pieces.

He also loves making us use the stairs most of the time. So we have to go down from the 7th floor and back up to the 7th floor only via the staircase. At least we keep repeating the number of the floor to him, so by now he has learned some numbers as well.

Also we prefer to never tell him false things and try to shield him from everything. For example he hates going to the doctor. But we prefer to tell him right from the start where we are going instead of hiding it from him up until we get to the office. This way he is slightly upset, but he knows that if we tell him that it’s not going to hurt — then it’s not going to hurt.

I can go on and on, but these are probably the most memorable things that he does that we don’t want to forget. Kids are a lot of work, but they sure are great!

Today our little Arosha has a birthday — he is turning 2 years old, or will do so at 10:10pm to be more exact. He typically is a very healthy boy, but it happened so that several days ago he caught some virus. He is not feeling very well and can’t really eat because of the rash inside his mouth caused by this virus. We saw a doctor and she said that time is the only thing that will help.

I want to wish my little son to recover quickly and to always be healthy. We, as his parents, will do everything in our power to help him to grow up a happy child and to achieve all his dreams. It’s hard to put into words how much I love him. Our lives changed very much since his arrival. We can’t do a lot of things that we were able to do, we don’t have as much free time. But in turn he unlocked so many emotions inside of me that I didn’t know I have. I think only becoming a parent makes you really understand.

He is talking very well now. He started putting sentences together several month ago and by now he is pretty good at it. I thought that children are capable of dialog at age 3 or so, and I never expected him to be able to have a conversation before he even hits two. I love taking a day on a weekend and going with him to some place new to him, be it a zoo, a bridge, a farm or anything else. He has so much to experience and I can show him things and it makes him happy.

And when he is happy I’m happy squared. Every time when I think about this little human, my face melts into a smile. I love him so much. С днём рождения, сыночек! Happy birthday, my Aroshen’ka!

P.S. We wanted to take Arosha to Toys-R-Us and for ice-cream today, but now that will have to wait until he heals.

Арошке уже без месяца 2 года. На улице жарища, поэтому мы каждый день наслаждаемся водными процедурами: балуемся с фонтанчиком для питья, надуваем водой и бросаем на землю специальные шарики (water bombs), купаемся в бассейне, бегаем под большим фонтаном то на нашей, то на дальней площадке.

На прошлой неделе бабушка Оксана подстригла Арошкины кудри, а то они совсем уже длинные отросли. У него, кстати, в районе лба волосики до сих пор не очень-то растут — интересно, изменится ли это с возрастом, или такие очертания причёски останутся на всю жизнь.

Вчера мы ездили с Даней и Арошкой собирать малину и чернику на ферме в Нью-Джерси. Бурного восторга не было, но в принципе ему понравилось и было интересно. Лично я получила удовольствие, хоть и не так много как в прошлый раз когда мы собирали с Даней ягоды, потому что на этой ферме везде висели знаки, что ягоды есть нельзя, а так хотелось время от времени последовать Арошкиному примеру и засунуть себе в рот вкусную красную малинку. Мы хотим обязательно сьездить с ним через месяц-другой на сбор яблок — думаю, там будет даже веселее.

После фермы мы заехали в гости к Арсену и Лене, и очень хорошо провели остаток дня. Арошка плавал в бассейне, и два раза умудрился улететь в прудик с рыбой. К счатью, там было неглубоко, но я немного испугалась. Первый раз за ним присматривал Виталик, а второй раз я сама. Когда он был со мной, то я бросилась в прудик (глубина там, наверное, пол метра), подскользнулась на камнях, и тоже промокла с ног до головы. Постфактум вся ситуация кажется довольно комичной, но когда он туда бултыхнулся (и я-то, главное, была в 3 сантиметрах от него, но за руку не держала) и ушёл под воду с головой, было не до смеха.

Арошина речь продолжает развиваться. Словарный запас пополняется, грамматика улучшается. Он довольно часто стал использовать личные местоимения (дай мне, я пошел). Я заметила, что он намного комфортнее себя чувствует, когда я разговариваю с кем-то по-русски, а не по-английски. Наверное, непонимание речи его сердит. Я вот хочу пойти с ним на “музыкальные” занятия (45 минут раз в неделю), где преподавательница не разговаривает по-русски. Мы уже ходили на одно такое занятие, и ему там понравилось, и не понравилось одновременно. Я надеюсь, что чем больше он будет слышать английский язык, тем спокойнее будет к нему относится и тем лучше будет понимать. Некоторые родители советуют показывать ему мультики по-английски, но они ему не нравятся, да и всё же дома хочется делать упор на русский язык.

У Арошки явно есть чувство юмора. На прошлой неделе мы вернулись с ним вечером домой от бабушки и дедушки, а Шублик вытащил его пижамку в коридор.
– Смотри, Шублик тебе пижамку приготовил
– Ха-ха-ха-ха-ха (минуты 2-3)

А вот меня пару недель назад рассмешило следующее. Мы читали с ним книжку со следующим текстом:

Кто в джунглях кричит громче всех, угадай?
Конечно же, Ара — большой попугай.

Дальше следующий диалог:

– Арошка, кто громче всех кричит в джунглях?
– Папа
– Папа?!
– Нет, мама! Мама-гай!

В какой-то момент у нас были большие проблемы с дневным сном, а вернее его полным отсутствием. Теперь я поняла — если Арошка спит слишком долго утром (до 8 часов и позже), то днём он скорее всего спать не будет. А если просыпается как обычно (6:30-7:00), то уложить его можно. Спать он вечером идёт где-то в 21:30, а днём укладывается между 15 и 16 часами, и спит 2-3 часа. Часто при укладывании спать приходится в конце на него ругаться, когда методы “по-хорошему” (чтение книжек, рассказывание сказок и т.п.) не работают, и он упорно вылазит из кровати и ломится в дверь.

Ест Арошка неплохо. Он до сих пор очень любит рыбу, гречку, котлеты. Из овощей он очень хорошо относится к стручковой фасоли, цветной капусте, кабачку, помидорам, огурцам, луку, морковке. Картошку он ест стредне, хотя катофель фри (я иногда запекаю Дане на ланч в духовке) с острым соусом он лопает за обе щеки. Раньше Арошка обожал авокадо и хумус и был готов их есть хоть каждый день, а теперь ест их только по настроению. Еще он начал пить коровье молоко. Наверное, секрет заключается в том, что я сдалась и стала добавлять в него немного сладкого клубничного сиропа (совсем немного). Он выпивает от 1 до 3 стаканчиков в день, что, наверное, неплохо. Еще я в последнее время постоянно варю компоты из свежих и замороженных ягод, и он их тоже пьёт с удовольствием. Я делаю их довольно кислыми (для Дани я обычно в стакан подсыпаю немного сахара), но он не возражает. Еще он каждое утро с нами пьёт чай с лимоном.

Грудное молоко Арошка тоже до сих пор пьёт по утрам, хотя изредка бывают дни, когда он о груди забывает (например, сегодня).

Еще Арошка обожает играть с Даниным iPad-ом. Мы там поставили ему 3 интерактивные сказки — “Красная Шапочка”, “Рапунцель” и ” Гензель и Гретель”. В каждой из сказок ему надо выполнять различные задания (поливать цветы чтобы они росли, сортировать драгоценные камни по корзинкам, закидывать овощи в суп, кормить младенца молочком и т.п.), и ему это очень нравится. Сказки эти идут у него под кодовым названием “девочка”, и несколько раз в течение дня можно услышать от него следующую фразу: “Я хОчу девочку! Я девочку хОчу!”

А мне очень нравится, когда он ласково называет меня “мамаська”, а т. Оксану “бабуська”, “бабачка” и “бабуля”. Вообще Арошка становится как-то ласковее с возрастом. Он обожает обнимать Даню по утрам, когда тот еще лежит в кровати (Арошка залазит на наш матрас и всем телом на пару секунд обнимает то его ноги, то попу, то спину). Еще Арошка стал меня иногда покусывать — не особо сильно, но чувствуется. Это у него тоже от любви похоже.

А еще Арошка до сих пор вспоминает Даниэлку почти каждый день, хотя, похоже, скучать стал уже немного меньше. Больше близких друзей-подружек он не завёл, хотя из всег детей выделяет Брианну (она через месяц уходит в садик) и Симошку (они переезжают на Staten Island). Мне немного его жалко, но что поделать.

А еще мы на прошлой неделе начали пускать его дома без подгузника. Первый день он пару раз написял на ковёр, но потом стал довольно хорошо ходить на горшок (и по большому тоже). Мы ему, конечно, еще часто напоминаем про горшочек, но всё равно это уже прогресс. Правда, если одеть на него подгузник, то он практически никогда не просится на горшок сам, и отказывается идти, когда мы спрашиваем если надо. Я планирую закрепить результат и попробовать его потом пускать дома в простых трусиках. Ну а еще немного погодя будет тренироваться на улице, благо сейчас тепло. Он на улице пару раз просился пописять, но это капля в море по сравнению с тем, сколько он дел делает в подгузник.

А в заключение хочется как всегда добавить, что мы очень любим нашего Арошку! Он приносит нам столько радости каждый день!

Aroshka is 22 months old! Only 2 to go until he is two. He is growing and developing so fast!

He can communicate pretty well now. He forms 3-4 word sentences quite often (“музыку папа включил”, “Шублик ногу укусил”, “папа дай щетки две” и т.д.), and he would repeat pretty much everything that he hears. Just a few examples of the things that crack me up (it’s in Russian, since we almost exclusively speak Russian to him):

ёлки-палки (услышал от бабушки)
Шублик-бублик (это уже от нас)
тётя-Мотя (это от няни Даниэлки)
дядя-Мотя (а вот это самодеятельность)
баки-каки (покакали собаки — сам придумал и тащится)
говый нёд (иногда путает и говорит это вместо “нового года”)
гуть-муть (это от моей “груть-шмуть”, когда он невовремя о ней вспоминает)

Of course, his pronunciation is still far from perfect (for example, he says “nee-pooh” instead of Winnie Pooh or “abaka” instead of “sobaka”), and he does not make all the sounds yet (no “R” or “L”), but I can understand him in most cases. It’s so great!

One of his favorite questions in the last few weeks is “Эта што?” (What is that?). Every time he sees something of interest, he would point at it and ask “eto chto”, and it’s so much fun to name things for him and try to explain what they are for. Just the other day I put my neti pot in the bathroom (I had a major cold which I am still recovering from), and just as expected, he spotted it right away and asked what is that. Well, long story short, he ended up pouring half a jar of salt in it and was very proud of himself for helping his mommy in important business of nasal irrigation.

And neti pot is a bad example — who the hell knows what it is anyhow? He asks about simple things like twigs, hooks, pebbles, straws, fences, etc. I guess, nothing is trivial when you are this young!

By the way, we measured him on June 7th, and he was around 36 inches (91.4 cm) tall. He still weights around 27 pounds, just as last month. I think that it’s OK that he did not gain weight since he seem to be growing and developing just fine.

We had quite a sad event a little over a week ago — Danielka (Aroshka’s best friend) went to daycare on June 1st. They’ve been friends for a while, and they played so well with each other almost every single day. I think Aroshka understood that she went to daycare, because he asks about her much less than when she was available. But I think that he misses her, because he does not want to go outside to play anymore (not like before at least), and he is more eager to get back home. I hope he’ll start playing with other children on playground, but for now he pretty much keeps to himself.

I love the way he calls me: mama Ayonka. I am not sure why he says Ayonka and not Ayona — maybe, he figured it in associations with “AroshKa”. He also started calling his grandma baba Asyanka (Oksanka), which is also very sweet.

He took new liking of books these past few weeks. There was a period of time when he just would not let us read anything to him (although describing of pictures was OK), but now he enjoys some stories too. Among his favorites are “Мойдодыр” and “Федорино Горе” by К. Чуковски, “Котёнок по имени Гав” by Г. Остер, a few Russian fairy tales (Колобок, У страха глаза велики, Маша и Медведь) and a bunch of very short stories about proper behavior (рассказы про Аню и Митю) from his beloved “Великая книга о зайке”.

We’ve run into a small issue with putting Aroshka down for a nap in the last week. After the nap breastfeeding was gone, we were fine for a little while, but then it started to get harder and harder to put him to sleep during the day. It takes me up to an hour and multiple attempts to leave his room, so sometimes it gets really frustrated. I just hope that this is some sort of stage and it will pass sooner rather than later. It’s kind of cute though that after each story I tell him, he asks me “asedny raz mama” (one last time mama).

All in all it’s been a fun month! Our building’s pool is opening next week and I am looking forward to enjoying it with Aroshka once both of us are fully recovered from the cold.

Last Wednesday Aroshka forgot to ask for his favorite “gut’” (breast) before mid-day nap, so I tried to put him to bed without. I failed in a sense that he did not nap at all that day, but then after he did not ask for “гуть” in the evening, I was able to put him down to sleep without it. He hasn’t been nursing before sleep since then, although he still drinks my milk first thing in the morning.

Now let me tell you. His whole life he’s been nursing before going to sleep, and he started to verbally ask for it since he was around 13-14 months. Just before last Wednesday he would always (and I mean ALWAYS) say “гуть, спать” (breast, sleep) while we were putting on his pajamas after the bath. Before last Wednesday I could not imagine just how it could be possible to put him down to sleep without nursing.

The mere thought of weaning was terrifying to me because I thought that Aroshka will not give nursing up without a fight. I read TONS of people’s advice and experiences on weaning, but I did not want to force him to abandon it. I know it’s best to let children self-wean, but my plan (mostly because of cultural reasons) was to stop or be near done with breastfeeding by Aroshka’s second birthday. So anyhow, I tried no to stress too much about it and just deal with the situation as the time gets closer to August.

When I was thinking about weaning, I was not sure which feedings to cut out first. Some people were saying the night one should be the last to go and some that it was the morning one. I was and still am so relieved that Aroshka made the choice completely on his own. Breastfeeding was one of the things that I really wanted to do right, and I did not want to traumatize my little boy in some way by forcing him to quit when/if he was not ready.

Our nap/night sleep routine has changed to reading books instead of nursing. I ask him to go to bed, and he asks me to cover him with his blanket, and then I just read a few of his books to him. The current favorites are short stories about Winnie the Pooh, although for today’s nap I was reading to him about the kitten named Gav. I have to say though that putting him down for nap is a bit more challenging now than before (he skipped a nap altogether twice in the last 9 days), but he mostly goes down without a fight.

He mentioned nursing a few times in the last week, but was always content after I told him that the milk is gone (except for the morning). Usually when he asks for it that means that he is either hungry or tired, so eating or going to bed always helps.

I think that I could have cut his morning feeding too with some small resistance if I wanted to, but I just do not see a reason to do it just yet. There is not much milk left anyhow, plus I think it is still beneficial for him both nutritionally and emotionally. He pretty much does not drink cow’s milk (only in his morning cereal, which he does not eat daily), and eats very few diary products overall. I don’t think it’s a big deal, since I am trying to include a lot of whole grains, vegetables, fruits, eggs, nuts and healthy meats into his daily diet.

We are not done with the breastfeeding yet, but we are close to the end of this wonderful journey. I am so happy and grateful of how things have turned out so far. The best advice I can give to anyone who is new to this is to trust yourself and your baby and to educate yourself as much as possible. I did not know much about breastfeeding before Aroshka was born, and I think it contributed to the initial stress of it. Breastfeeding is not easy in the beginning, and quitting it can also be somewhat stressful, but it is a very rewarding experience overall. I am both glad and a little sad that we are nearing the end of it with Aroshka.

Сегодня Арошке год и 9 месяцев. Я ничего не писала в прошлый раз (мы как раз были в Pocono Cabins), так что это записи о его достижениях за последние два месяца.

Где-то месяц назад Арошка научился прыгать! Еще он стал лучше ходить и бегать. У него до сих пор немного косолапая походка и мы даже ходили с этой проблемой к ортопеду. Он сказал, что особенности Арошкиной походки связанны, если я не ошибаюсь, с разворотом его тазобедренного сустава, и что эта проблема должна разрешится сама в течение нескольких лет. Он сказал, что никакие специальные упражнения, массаж, обувь и т.п. ему не нужны и не окажут никакого эффекта. Может быть, мы сходим еще к одному ортопеду для подтверждения диагноза.

Еще Арошка научился вылазить из своей кроватки, так что мы сняли одну из её боковых стенок. Теперь ему легко самостоятельно выходить из кровати, и соответственно в неё забираться. Мы боялись, что такой переход каким-то образом повлияет на качество его сна (особенно первоначально), но всё осталось по-старому. Мне кажется, что намного более сложным будет переход к засыпанию без груди.

Ароша всё лучше и лучше говорит. Он уже иногда составляет простые предложения. Например, “Аёша дёт гудять” (Ароша идёт гулять), или “Машу теть хОчу” (Хочу смотреть “Машу”), “Аёша атина зин аки” (Ароша на машине едет в магазин за очками). Его лексикон растёт, а произношение улучшается. Например, он научился говорить Аёша, деда, Генка (Даниелка, раньше было просто Ге), агушка (лягушка), сюшка (сушка), бака (собака), атинка (машинка), каси (краски), кой ночи (спокойной ночи), ну и многое многое другое. Он пытается повторить практически все слова, которые слышит.

Он до сих пор обожает мультфильмы про Машу и Медведя. Новые мультики он может смотреть 3-4 раза подряд в течение нескольких дней. Интереса к другим мультфильмам он пока не проявляет, ну а я его в этом особо и не поощряю.

На прошлых выходных он меня выручил. Даня спал, я была в туалете, Арошка игрался в зале. Я поняла (в самый неподнодящий момент), что туалетная бумага закончилась, и попросила Арошку мне её принести (он знает где она лежит, потому что практически каждый день вытаскивает её из шкафа и “прячется” на освобождённой таким образом полке). Арошка понял что я от него хочу, принёс мне бумагу, со словами “на, мама” вручил её (я открыла дверь по этому поводу), и ушел обратно в зал. Вот такой молодец.

Арошка очень любит играть в прятки. Прячется он обычно за штору в зале, на полку в шкафу, за дверь в спальне. Как правило при этом он приговаривает “я-уа”, что значит “потеряла” (мама Арошку). Он очень любит подсказывать, где он спрятался. Напрмер, стоя за шторкой в зале на мой вопрос, куда же пропал Арошка, он может сказать “ку-ня” (на кухне). Когда я пойду искать его на кухню, он тоже побежит на кухню чтобы понаблюдать за поисками. Ну а если я его очень долго не буду находить, то он подойдёт ко мне поближе и скажет “Вот он!”

Еще Арошка очень любит “ездить” на своём кораблике в магазин, и привозить мне оттуда разные продукты. У него уже неплохо развито воображене, и он просто сжимает ручку в кулачок, словно что-то держит, и даёт мне это что-то, одновременно сообщая название продукта (хума (хуммус), люк (лук), яба (яблоко), сир (сыр) и т.п.).

А еще Арошка просто обожает нюхать разные специи. Он ежедневно перенюхивает всё у нас на кухне, ну а открывание баночек со специями у бабушки с дедушкой дома является обязательной частью вечерней программы развлечений. Арошка запомнил названия многих приправ (карри, кумин, чеснок, корица, перец, итальянские травки, корица, гвоздика, лавровый лист, паприка, кориандр, базилик). Я не уверена, ориентируется он по запаху, по баночкам или по виду самих специй — наверное, по всем трём составляющим одновременно. Произношение у него, конечно, не идеальное, но часто можно понять (кумин, каи, безил, пеиц, гика, снёк и т.п.).

Лучшей подружкой Арошки по-прежнему является Даниэлка. Чем старше он становится, тем больше может с ней активно общатся. К сожаленяю (для нас), через 3 недели Даниэлку отдают в садик (она на 10 месяцев старше Арошки). Думаю, она там хорошо приживётся, так как она очень развитая, общительная, добрая девочка. Арошка без сомнения будет скучать, да и я если честно тоже.

Еще Арошка обожает сидеть за рулём. Даня иногда даёт ему порулить в нашей машине, и счастью нет предела. Еще мы каждый день ходим кататься на детской машинке (стоит 25 центов за небольшую “поездку”), которая стоит возле местной пиццерии. Рядом с машинкой есть еще и лошадка, так что Арошка катается и на ней тоже. Ну а после катания мы обязательно заглядываем в местный зоомагазин, где Ароша любуется рыбами, черепахами, зайцами, хомяками, попугаями, каким-то там дракончиком. К счастью, владелец магазина очень дружелюбный и не против наших частых визитов.

А вообще взрослеет Арошка очень быстро. Вот еще совсем недавно невозможно было ему вымыть голову без слёз. А теперь он понимает, что надо закрывать глаза, и хоть большого удовольствия от мытья головы он не получает, но и истерик больше не закатывает. Ну а еще Даня после данной процедуры рисует ему на груди йодную сеточку (он почему-то обожает когда ему рисуют сетку), и это его примиряет с неприятной частью купания (обычно мы моем Ароше голову раз в неделю).

Ест он по-настроению, но в принципе как и прежде пробует практически всё, что я предлагаю. Вот недавно я готовила довольно острое блюдо со свининой, картошкой и капустой, и боялась, что он не сможет это есть. Смог, да еще и с удовольствием! Он практически никогда не отказывается от рыбы, причём ест её в любом виде — и запеченную в духовке, и жаренную, и в супе, и консервированную, и даже просто солёную. Ест он рыбу, в основном лосося, несколько раз в неделю. Мы решили покупать более дорогую рыбу выловленную на Аляске (wild King Salmon), так как пользы от неё несомненно больше, чем от рыбы, выращенной на ферме (пока что я заказала 5 фунтов, и уже два раза из неё готовила).

Ну а закончить эту записть хочется признанием в любви. Мы очень очень рады, что у нас есть такой маленький, любознательный, смешной человечек, и очень очень его любим!

Yesterday we came back from our third trip to Mountain Springs Lake Resort. It’s a beautiful place in Pocono Mountains that offers very cozy cabins, located on the lake and surround by forest, for rent. It’s not cheap, but is well worth it.

The cabin (#41) itself ended up costing us a little under $900 for 3 nights. There was a total of 6 of us — Alena, Arosha, Maruk, Alina, Emma and I. We split all the costs in half which made it much more affordable. The overall total expense for each family came out to $594.

I like this place so much because it is such a non-worry vacation where one can really relax. There is not much planning involved beside making a reservation for the cabin and getting there — and it’s only 100 miles away. This seems to be the only type of vacation where I don’t end up driving myself crazy by becoming a nervous wreck a day before.

We drove out at 12pm for 4pm check-in — even though we got there quite a bit earlier, they had no problem giving us the keys to our cabin. We picked this time specifically for it to coincide with Arosha’s day-time nap. And luckily for us Arosha did fall asleep soon after and slept for hour and half — pretty much all of our drive there.

We did all the shopping with Maruk on the first “morning” right after we got there. There is a number of huge supermarkets around it, Giant being the closest — a much more pleasant shopping experience than that of a shopping at any of the Brooklyn places.

We filled our shopping cart with all kinds of organic things to be grilled. We ended up with $225 worth of food and proceeded to eat pretty much all of it during our stay there.

Our daily dining regiment consisted of early light breakfast (yogurt and tea), hamburger brunch, shish-kebab lunch and skirt steak dinner. Ever meal included a number of side dishes such as salads, fried pineapples, grilled onions, seared collard greens, squash and pumpkins. One day we grilled salmon steaks and shrimp.

Everything was super-delicious and we are very grateful to Maruk for doing most of the grilling.

The lake itself was no more than 20 meters away from us. Kids enjoyed playing in the sand and the playground.

Arosha found one of his favorite objects on the playground — a юль (руль — steering wheel) and a slide which would propel him at freakishly high speed down — it was made of some very “slidy” plastic.

I slept rather well during the nights — we brought our own blanket and didn’t have to deal with typical hotel type multilayered deal that I always hate. Arosha slept in his portable bed which he likes quite a lot, but he kept waking up several times a night. Sadly he did the same thing at home this night, but hopefully it will pass soon.

In the evening after the kids would go to sleep we would sit around a fire and drink tea, hot-chocolate and eat some fire-toasted marshmallows. I myself stuck to tea, but Maruks loved their marshmallows big time.

It was a great getaway spent in a small circle of family and close friends. I enjoyed it a lot.

I think about writing something about everyday things quite often, but keep putting it off. I guess if there was something grand to talk about, it’ll be easy to come up with the words, but my life at this point is pretty ordinary. And you know what, this is a good thing!

Nonetheless, here are some things I want to jot down.

Green Tea and Milk

When we were in Japan I realized that I am quite in love with green tea. I drank it in huge quantities there, and ever since returning home I consume about one and a half liters (or more) of this fabulous drink per day. I used to drink all my teas with milk (yes, ALL gazillion billion kinds of them) because to me they tasted too watery and flavorless without dairy. Japan changed this, and I am quite happy about this development. I went from consuming 1 gallon of milk per week to about 1/4 gallon — I even stopped buying milk for myself, and just drink from Aroshka’s carton of whole organic milk. Aroshka is not big on milk drinking by the way. He gets some in his morning kasha and with his evening tea, but that’s about it (we’re talking about cow’s milk, not mine).

I also realized that I like Japanese green tea in particular. I drink other kinds of green tea as well (jasmine, rose, pear flavored ones are among my favorite), but when I ran out of the teas that we brought from Japan, I knew I had to get more of them. Luckily, you can get almost anything with the help of the Internet nowadays. I ordered three different kinds of green tea from Hibiki-an, and 8 days later a package from Kyoto has arrived. All I want to say for now is that two teas that I’ve opened — Organic Gyokuro and Organic Genmaicha Matcha-iri — are excellent. I might write a bit more about the teas and my favorite tea-maker (Danya’s New Year present) in a separate post.

What I am also happy about is that Danya likes Japanese green tea as well. He prefers to drink black tea with lemon and sugar, but he drinks green tea straight up, which in my mind is an additional bonus (he really has a sweet tooth when it comes to drinks).

Arosha’s Crib Escape

A few days ago Arosha has figured how to climb out of his crib. Luckily, we saw it on a baby monitor, and were able to stop him from completing the grand escape unsupervised. Here is a short video of his technique.

I was afraid that unless we do something, he might hurt himself while climbing out. Our friends told us that they just forbade their daughter from climbing out and she listened. I doubt that this approach would have worked with Aroshka (he is not mature enough and is pretty stubborn). Some people put some sort of tent on top of a crib, and it prevents toddlers form climbing out. I am not ruling out this option yet. And some people just transfer their children to a toddler bed. We decided to go this route since our crib is convertible, and so far the first two nights were normal. We had some issues with nap the first day (he did not want to fall asleep and kept climbing out of the bed), but today he napped happily for 3 hours.

To be honest, I am much more concerned about Arosha’s transition from nursing-to-sleep (or almost sleep) to NOT nursing-to-sleep. This has been on my mind for at least a few months now, but I am still not sure how to best approach the transition. He just loves to nurse, and I don’t know how to help him to learn to fall asleep by himself. I hope that in the next few months he will become less and less attached to nursing (and by the way, I believe that my milk still has a lot of great stuff in it), and I’ve decided to wean him around his second birthday (I don’t think that he well give it up by himself).

Books

After reading a very favorable review of “The Magicians” by Lev Grossman, I’ve decided that I would enjoy it too. It was OK, and I even bought the sequel, but somehow I can’t bring myself to read more than a few pages of this book at a time. I am not sure why Grossman’s magical world did not suck me in, but the fact remains that I am not drawn to reading, so it’ll probably take me another month or two to finish “The Magician King”.

TV

We’re re-watching Star Trek: Enterprise now. We watched it over 5 years ago for the first time. Sadly, my opinion about the show did not change — it’s not bad, but it does not come close to other Star Treks either (we did not watch the Original Series, so I am not talking about them here). This show is not too engaging or thought-provoking, but it is relaxing nonetheless. Too bad I know that they’ll screw some characters at the end (we’re at the 3rd season right now).

Sometimes, when we have dinner early, we watch “How I Met Your Mother” or “The Big Bang Theory” on TV. Those shows are pretty funny, and I usually enjoy watching them. We might watch them on DVD when they finish filming them.

What I would really like to watch is “Mad Men” or “Game of Thrones”. We watched the first four seasons of the “Mad Men” last year, and I really loved this show. I think we’ll hold off from watching the rest of the show until it is fully finished. As for the “Game of Thrones”, we did not watch a single episode, but we heard a lot of good things about it, so I have pretty high expectations. Since at the moment only one season is out, we’ll hold off watching this one for a while as well.

My Weight

I’ve mentioned before, but I’ve lost some weight since our Japan trip. I used to be around 172-175 lbs in November, and now it’s 158-160. I love being on a skinnier side of my weight spectrum — the clothes look better, and I feel more confident about myself overall (especially when I have a touch of make up and freshly washed hair). Yay to loosing all the baby weight and then some! I think that the weight loss is a combined effect of green tea drinking, overall healthy eating, running after Aroshka and breastfeeding. And I started to sleep more in the last 5-6 months, which is great too.

I think about having another baby pretty often. Not that we’re planning to yet, but it seems like every other girl I know is expecting. The news about future babies make me excited, but a tad jealous at the same time. Is there ever a good time to have a baby? Is it every easy?

Я уже больше месяца ничего не писала про Арошку — даже очередной пост по поводу 19 месяцев пропустила так как мы как раз были в отпуске. А он развивается прямо на глазах.

С момента нашего приезда из отпуска у него появилось желание самому есть ложкой. Вот уже несколько дней кашу на завтрак он ест самостоятельно (что для меня является огромным облегчением, ибо раньше кашу он частенько есть оказывался вообще), а так же пробует есть ложкой обед и полдник. Он еще не определился с тем какой рукой ему удобнее, и время от времени перекладывает ложку то в правую, то в левую руку. Из кружек и стаканов он пьёт уже довольно прилично, и даже из моей огромной чайной чашки (конечно, если она не полная) у него получается пить хорошо.

Еще он начал лучше жевать — ему нравится самому откусывать яблоко или сладкий перец, а еще он любит орехи (пока мы давали ему орехи пекан, грецкие и кедровые). Правда, он частенько выплёвывает разжёванные яблоки, перцы и орехи, но кое-что иногда и глотает. Мне кажется, это происходит потому, что разжевать достаточно мелко он их не всегда может, а глотать большие куски, к счастью, у него никогда не было охоты. Ну а иногда он слишком сильно набивает себе рот, и тогда тоже всё выплёвывает.

Еще Арошка каждый день всё больше и больше говорит двусложные слова. Из последнего:

доть (дождь)
и-ка (Лида)
ша-па (шапка)
ге-га (деда)
ка-па (пока)
у-ка (ухо/утка)
пай-на (пальма)
ма-на (манго)
дё-ма (идём)
та-у (устал/встал)
мой (домой)
мо-е (море)
сёк (сок)
э-ма (Элмо)
се-у (сел)
тюй (поцелуй)
Бой (Боря)

А в Доминикане ему понравилось, хотя последние дни он время от времени просился домой. Само море его не особо впечатлило, но несколько раз он купался с Даней с большим удовольствием. К бассейну он тоже был довольно равнодушен, а вот пляжные души его совершенно покорили. Как только мы приходили утром на пляж, Арошка начинал свою песню: “дю-дю-дю-дю” (душ-душ-душ) или “па-дю-па-дю” (купаться под душем). За все 10 дней нашего прибывания на курорте я, кстати, не видела под душем ни одного карапуза Арошкиного возраста, что лишний раз доказывает какие разные всё же детки с самых младых ногтей.

Еще Арошке очень нравилась вечерная танцевальная программа для детей (дети разных возрастов танцевали на сцене с воспитательницей). Сперва он не решался подойти к остальным детям, но к концу отпуска выходил на середину сцены и даже немного танцевал. К сожалению, у него не было возможности посещать сие мероприятие каждый день из-за не совсем удачного для нас времени (слишком поздно вечером).

А еще Арошка полюбил мультик про Машу и Медведя. Мы смотрим 2-3 серии почти каждый день, благо они легкодоступны на YouTube. Он даже начал иногда смеяться как мультяшная Маша (причём он именно осознанно пытается её пародировать) — тоненько и с подвизгиванием.

А еще Арошка обожает мне помогать заваривать чай. Каждое утро после питья молока он бежит на кухню со словами “тяй-тяй” (чай). Я даю ему специальную ложку, и с её помощью он пересыпает нужное количество чайных листьев в заварник. Как правило часть заварки оказывается на полу, но это ерунда. Потом я закрываю ситечко крышкой, и он его какое-то время держит, наслаждаясь то запахом чая, то шелестом, которые издают листья когда Арошка трясёт ситечко. Ну а потом я наливаю в графин с фильтром свежей воды (так как всю отфильтрованную воду я выливаю в чайник), а Арошка следит за процессом фильтрации (он то открывает крышку, то дует на воду, то пытается усесться на графин). Частенько всё заканчивается тем, что мне приходится изгонять Арошку из кухни и вытирать разлитую на пол воду.

Ну а Даниэлка по-прежнему остаётся его закадычной подружкой. Они с удовольствием играют вместе, и когда Арошка был в отпуске, она даже немного хандрила (может, конечно, это просто совпадение).

Time flies and yet another one of our trips has come to an end. Writing about this one is going to be quite a bit easier than writing about Japan because not that much of anything has happened. It was a nice, good and relaxing family vacation.

Flying

Getting there and back was one of the things that we worried about the most. Aroshka is still quite little and this would be his first flight ever. We weren’t sure if he’s going to be able to handle 3-4 hours of being confined to a small place and if he would take all the noise and altitude changes OK.

Everything turned out to be not as bad as we thought. We didn’t have a separate sit for him — he were to fly in Alena’s lap. We had to wake him up very early in the morning to make the flight, but he wasn’t fussy at all because the ride to the airport and airport itself seemed interesting and exciting to him.

Inside the plane itself he fell asleep almost right away and slept for a good portion of the flight. When he woke up Alena and my mom walked with him through the isles, watched some cartoons on built-in TVs and fed him some snacks. And when we had only 20 seconds left until touchdown he started complaining, asking to go home and then threw up all over himself and Alena. Luckily he was back to normal soon after.

Our flight home was OK as well. This time Arosha didn’t sleep as much, so it was harder on Alena and my mom, but towards the end he was actually looking out of the window at the little houses and roads and was perfectly fine as far as motion sickness goes.

I myself flew without a motion sickness pill on our way back for the first time in a long time. Last time I did that when we were flying from Tashkent to Moscow right before our upcoming flight to U.S. So that makes it almost 17 years. I used to get really bad during flights and just didn’t want to risk it. But it is much easier to fly without one because all of them make you very drowsy. It’s good to know that I don’t have that problem anymore.

At the airport we were picked up by a shuttle bus and we were at our resort — Iberostar Hacienda Dominicus — in 30 minutes.

First Impressions

For a number of reasons my initial impression of the resort and the personnel was quite negative. Check-in was quite a bit unpleasant because of the person handling the procedure for us. A lot of personnel that we encountered on the first day was just unfriendly and I was getting a feeling like they all were doing us a great favor by serving us food, cleaning our rooms and so on.

Restaurant reservations were especially bad. You could sit there for 15 minutes while the person who was supposed to make a reservation would keep talking on the phone like you weren’t even there. I’m not really accustomed to this kind of rude behavior. It would be unacceptable in any place in this country that would hope to stay in business for a long time.

Food and Drinks

The buffet had a rather small selection compared to what we had on our cruise or in Cancun. When I asked what kind of light beer they have I was informed that they only had 1 kind of beer overall. When I asked for a Bloody Mary I was told that I should go to one of the bars and ask for it there and I will not get it here. And as for the wine they had 2 choices — red or white.

I remember in Cancun we had a fully stocked fridge and a bar stand with all kinds of alcohol. Not that I care all that much about alcohol, but it made everything feel cheap. Our fridge had some water, the same kind of beer and a bottle of Coke.

It’s worth noting that tap water is not drinkable. Not only that, they recommend to use bottled water even for brushing your teeth. And they supposedly use some kind of processed water for cooking and serving water in dinning rooms, but we weren’t sure if that was so and it make us feel a bit uneasy.

As far as food quality goes — it was OK. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. It was just OK. It felt like they use cheap ingredients for everything and even hamburger patties didn’t taste right to me. I remember that during our previous all-inclusive experiences we had a hard time resisting eating too much. Here it was easy. Maybe that’s a good thing. Dinner restaurants were better, but they weren’t any more special that our “everyday” Brooklyn restaurants. Again, we weren’t left hungry, but I didn’t get any particular enjoyment from something delicious either.

Hotel & Resort

Our rooms we ended up being very happy with. At first we thought they were located in a bad (location-wise) building (#5), but as the time went on we realized that it was actually one of the best places for us. The best part was that our rooms were interconnected which allowed us to put Arosha to bed and go to the other room and talk and do stuff. It made it very convenient.

Both rooms had balconies which were overlooking the gardens and the ponds inside the resort. The territory was much much bigger and much nicer than that of our resort in Mexico. This place had a lot of native trees with branches looking like long threads running down, green grass, flowers, palms, pools, fountains and ponds filled with ducks, swans and a bunch of peacocks which had a really loud scream that they loved to practice at night — that didn’t bother us much thought.

It was really very nice and we used to take walks with Alena through the numerous paths and marble hallways in the evenings after Arosha would go to sleep.

Beach and Sea

I’m really not a big fan of beaches and swimming. I hate getting sunburn and I hate putting sunblock all over myself. So while my mom preferred to bake in the sun I typically prefer to stay away. However we would go to the beach twice a day and while I would normally skip the morning part I would always go in the evening — around 4 or 5pm. The sun would not be as angry and I didn’t have to use any sunblock.

The water of Caribbean Sea was amazing. It was really warm, the bottom would be sandy and without much sharp rocks and I would sit in it for an hour or so every evening. It often had some mild waves going which made it even more fun. I don’t remember when I enjoyed swimming so much and I didn’t miss a single day (except for the day when they announced the iPad, but I made it up in the morning).

Arosha

Arosha liked all the new stuff. He liked playing in the sand, some days he liked swimming in the sea, some he didn’t, he really liked the showers all around the beach. Some days he ate well, some days he didn’t eat well at all. He liked going to a kids playground — running around the slides, climbing all kinds of structures, and he especially liked spinning the “steering wheel” attached to one of the walls.

He also liked going to a kids’ dance even in the evening where they would all get on stage and jump around while some funky music was playing. He would get braver and braver each day and would get further and further away from Alena and onto the stage.

He really still is a handful though. He still wakes up early and needs all the attention of his mama. Alena spent most of her time running after Aroshka and doing things that he wanted to do, not things that she wanted to do. Feeding him still is a big chore. When he wants to eat — great, but when he doesn’t he becomes fussy and much harder to handle.

Aroshka also scared us all one day when he suddenly had a high fever, but luckily after a good night sleep he went back to normal. At about this moment all the little things that bothered me became quite meaningless and when Aroshka started feeling better I actually started enjoying the vacation.

The Good

Now reading all the stuff that I wrote above it comes off as there was a lot of negative stuff. But that’s not the impression that I want to leave and that’s not the impression that this vacation left with me. I’m just nitpicking and all off the negative stuff really wore off in the first day or two.

We met a lot of great people that work there — very nice and friendly people. Some of them work really hard to make sure people have a great vacation. The girl that works with kids starts of at 10am (at least that when we see her first) and spends her day watching after kids up to 5pm. Then she helps organize all the evening shows, does an nightly dance with kids at 8:30pm and takes part in the rest of evening entertainment up until 12am.

A lot of them work 13-14 hour days and really do make everyone feel welcome. Another guy that comes to mind — from the early morning he was running around in some costume around the beach making jokes and getting people to participate in all the activities. You could see him doing this all day long until the evening when he would take a part in a show in a theater pulling dance and acrobatic moves that I wouldn’t be able to do in my rested state. I don’t know where he gets all the energy.

So there really were a lot of good people there that made our time there more memorable.

The weather was very warm. In fact maybe a bit to warm. It was getting really hot in the open sun in the middle of the day. But it was very very pleasant to spend 10 days in “summer” during the winter. The last couple of days were cloudy and a bit rainy, but those tropical rains come and go very quickly and it kept everything cooler. Even though it was upsetting my mom greatly I didn’t mind slightly cooler weather at all.

Technology

This was the first trip that I didn’t take a computer with me in 10 years. I only had my iPad and it was more than enough. I’m happy to know that I can leave my bulky laptop at home and I know that iPad can do everything I need while I’m on vacation — which basically comes down to lots of reading and backing up and inspecting photos on a bigger screen.

The place has Wi-Fi all over the territory, but it costs $13 a day — way too expensive. But luckily they had a lot of issues with their configuration that allowed me to get on for free from time to time and sync up my reading apps on the iPad. Of course the only day that I really wanted the connection — Apple keynote — I couldn’t get on. So I broke down and paid for it.

Dominican Republic

Sadly I don’t really have any more idea of a real Dominican Republic after this trip that I had before. We really spent all this time inside a tourist zone which is nothing like the rest of the country. We wanted to take a tour to Santo Domingo, but decided that it would be too much hassle with Arosha.

Of the little that we’ve seen on our way from the airport to the hotel and back it appeared that people live in pretty bad conditions and are generally poor. Their houses look more like garages and tiny barns made out of hay. I don’t know if that representative of the whole country or of that particular part, but that’s what we saw.

I hope one day to come back and really explore the country itself.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed being with my wife, my son and my parents in this tropical paradise. I had enough time not to worry about the daily life and just wind down a bit before coming back to work. In fact it is a sign of a good vacation when you wake up on a Monday morning after, ready to go to work.

And even though I do prefer more active vacations you got to throw some of these in the mix as well. Just all the fun that Aroshka had there and watching him explore new things was worth it all in itself.