Last Saturday we went to the Bronx Zoo. It was the third time for Danya and I, and the second time for Aroshka. We had such a great time!

The Zoo itself is very big and has a lot of animals. It’s on the expensive side compared to Staten Island or Brooklyn ones (cost us $15 for parking plus $30 for each adult), and it’s a pretty long drive for us (1+ hrs), but it was totally worth it.

We arrived there shortly after 12 p.m. and proceeded to watch giraffes, peafowl, hyenas, and some other animals. We then took a shuttle ride, which Aroshka absolutely loved, and went to see gorillas.

We did not take a stroller for Arosha — he actually did not use stroller a single time in the last few months, but took his beloved scooter instead. It was funny how many times people commented on how cool his method of transportation was.

There were a lot of people, including lots of children of all ages. Saturdays are probably busiest at places like this, so it is to be expected.

We then went to look at lions, okapis, bears. At this point everyone got pretty hungry, so we stopped for a short lunch break. Arosha and I got vanilla ice-cream, and Danya ate hot dog and some french fries. Aroshka also ate a banana and some carrots which I took with me.

We wanted to show Arosha elephants and rhinos, and the only way to do it was to take a Wild Asia monorail tour. The line was long, but we’ve decided to wait. Danya was standing in line at all times, and Aroshka and I were free to move around. Arosha managed to put one of his feet into deep water, so his shoe and sock were soaking wet. I took the dry sock from his other foot, but was not sure what else I can do to fix this. Danya suggested that we put a plastic bag on the sock, and then put a wet snicker on. This combination worked well, and Aroshka did not complain about this adjustment a single time.

So after about an hour wait, we finally boarded a train. The tour itself was not long — probably 15-20 minutes. We saw Pzhewalski’s horse (which Danya identified right away), a tiger, different kinds of deer, gaur (world’s largest wild cattle), red panda, Asian elephants and a rhino. It was a nice tour, and I am glad we took it. I don’t think that I ever saw a rhinoceros before.

By the end of the tour Arosha was pretty tired, so we decided to take a shuttle back to the parking lot. Unfortunately, there was also a line, so we figured that it’ll be quicker to get there on foot. It was a good decision, since we passed by a bug carousel, and it was a huge hit with Arosha.

Despite his exhaustion and a prospect of another wait line, he definitely wanted to take a ride. Luckily, the line was moving pretty quickly, so soon enough he mounted a big green-and-yellow caterpillar. You should have seen how excited he was when then carousel started moving! He really-really loved it! When it stopped, he did not want to leave, but the stuff member told us that if we wanted to take another ride, we’ll have to wait in line again. I guess, rules are rules, so we complied. Aroshka definitely wanted to do it again, so we waited.

After the second carousel ride, we resumed our course to the parking lot. We stopped by the lions again, and were rewarded by a magnificent roar.

We left the Zoo close to 5 p.m., and Arosha fell asleep in the car. We concluded our day by getting some take out Uzbek shish-kebab.

I often like taking photographs out of my window. Today is one such day. The day seems to be gloomy, rainy and dark, but somehow I lately tend to like days like that. I think that is because I’ve been at a lot of amazing places during days like this — Sequoia National Park and Yosemite in California, Arental Volcano in Costa Rica. Instead of gloomy and dark I see fresh and serene.

Plus the scene itself is very colorful. New-born leaves of such pleasing green color. Bright yellow school buses freshly washed by rain. People going about their business and bright pavement reflecting everything around in the crystal clear puddles.

P.S. Technical details — single shot capture with 3 stop GND filter to keep the sky from blowing out.

We had such a wonderful weekend. The weather is getting better — it gets to high 60s during the day — so it’s a pleasure to be outside.

We spent almost four hours on a playground by our building on Friday morning. Aroshka played with his bff Evelina, and he was just so happy, so joyful, that it melted my heart. Evelina was acting strangely around him in the last few weeks — did not want to play with him and was saying that she was scared of him. I don’t know what was the cause of it, but when she changed her mind, he could not be more excited to be around her.

And in the evening, Aroshka, us and Alex went to Brooklyn Heights. Danya wanted to take a few pictures of the Freedom Tower, which is near its completion, before its ready. He and Alex went on the promenade, and Aroshka and I went to a small, but very cozy playground.

Danya’s pictures did not come out well because of the haze and not ideal lighting conditions, but Aroshka had a lot of fun. There were a lot of toys, a big sandbox, a bicycle, and other new and exciting things. There were two benches colored like taxis, so he made up a whole story about us driving to the airport, flying to Dominican Republic, and then staying there in the hotel (the metal patch on the ground was our airplane, and the area adjacent to the slides was our hotel room).

Afterwards we ate at some diner, and went home.

On Saturday Aroshka spent most of the day with his grandparents, while Danya and I took care of some chores and then had a dinner at Al Di La. We have not been to that restaurant in almost three years — there are always lines, and up until yesterday we did not want to waste time waiting. The food was nice (I ordered risotto as always), but it was quite noisy inside. We came back home just in time to put Aroshka to sleep. Even though he had a wonderful day with Danya’s parents, he still was just so happy to see us. You should have seen that big smile, and the way he ran to hug us. He told us that he missed us very much and that he loves us very much. He is just so sweet, and I just hope that he will always have such a pure heart.

And today we went to another playground in the morning, and he played with his other friend Danielka for over an hour, and then Danya picked us and his dad up and we went to Bay Ridge (after washing our car — we wanted to show Aroshka machines that wash cars).

First, we walked down the pier, where Danya took a few pictures of the Freedom Tower again (but it was super-hazy again). And then we went for a walk to a Narrows Botanical Garden which was just a few blocks away. There were a lot of blooming flowers, mostly tulips, in the garden, and Aroshka wanted to smell them all. He was like a little bee, sticking his nose in one flower after another. His face was covered in pollen afterwards. He also enjoyed just running around in the grass, especially up and down a little hill. We spent total of 4 hours outside today, and he got so tired by the time we got home, that he even refused to have lunch and went straight to bed.

So this was our weekend. We are going to Linka’s Birthday party later today (after Arosha’s nap). I hope it’ll be fun too!

A small update on recent events of our life — two pretty much separate stories. First one is the fact that Tanya — Alena’s friend from university days in Minsk — is in United States again. While the first time she was here for a tourist visit with us, this time she is here for work. We kept planning to visit her for several weeks now, but stuff kept getting in the way. This time around it was our car.

On Monday morning I got into our car to go to work. The car didn’t start from the first try, but did after a second try. When I got to work it did the same thing at a gas station near my office. In the evening I decided to leave earlier, in case it doesn’t start and it had no trouble at all. On Tuesday morning all was good as well. So thinking that it was some one time fluke I stayed late at work on that day and to my dismay the car would not start no matter what I tried at the end of the day.

Usually the most typical problem is a dead battery. But all the electronics seemed to work just fine. Lights were on, sound system played music well, but the engine would not even try to turn over. My dad had to come out and get me. We got home close to midnight. I spoke with Geoff and he very kindly suggested that I should leave my keys on his desk and he’ll try to sort things out in the morning, so I wouldn’t have to come out and not be able to get back again — I couldn’t ask my dad to make so many 140 miles long trips.

I was dreading having to deal with getting the car towed. But I guess luckily for me the car started in the morning when Geoff tried it, so he dropped it off at a local Chrysler dealership and it started having starting problems there, so at least they could start on troubleshooting the issue. Now here are two things — the car has 83,000 miles on the odometer. This was the very first time that it gave me any kind of trouble at all. When we bought the car we bought an extended warranty that runs out at 85,000 miles. I thought this extra warranty purchase was completely useless and kept thinking that warranty covering something was really a myth. I was glad to have been proven wrong.

So the dealer called me and told me it was a starter and the car would be ready on Thursday morning. My dad drove me to work again and when we got to the dealership we saw a bunch of mechanics hovering over my car with manuals — never a good sign. They replaced the starter, the car didn’t start. The suggested they get me a rental car (also covered by warranty) which I had not choice, but to agree too. It’s never cool to give up your car for a car that’s worth less than half of yours — bare-bone Jeep Compas. You just get too used to little niceties. Anyhow, since I’m not in Norwalk until Monday they agreed to let me keep the car until then.

Long story short, they ended up replacing the starter, the fuse box and some transmission sensors which finally fixed the problem. All that got resolved only at the end of Monday, which caused me a lot of stress. But all in all, I did have a temporary car, the warranty covered it all and I have my car back in a working order. Hopefully it will stay this way.

Back to Tanya now. This time we decided not to let this car issue stop us from visiting her. We installed our “Costa-Rica” child seat into our Jeep and using Google Maps on iPhone as navigation successfully arrived to the hotel where Tanya was staying with her mom and her 2 and a half (approximately) year old son.

It was a nice visit. We talked a lot about different topics — work, travel, kids, kids, kids. We went out to a local Outback restaurant for lunch, helped with some grocery shopping — Tanya doesn’t have a driver’s license which makes things very hard for them there, even though the company that hired her would cover a rental.

Aroshka played a lot with Antoshka. With went for a nice walk around a lake and they would run around and picked up all kinds of sticks, cones and other stuff. Arosha kept pulling Antosha by his hand in all different directions and Antosha on one hand wanted to play with Arosha, but on the other hand seemed to be kind of afraid of him. So when Arosha would run away on his own Antosha would say — let’s play together. When Arosha would come back Antosha would run back towards his mom and stick with her. All in all I think they had a good time as did we. We will definitely do this more. Tanya is in US until the end of the year I believe.

We are planning to invite Tanya for a weekend to stay with us as they are very much bored in New Jersey with no car. While big cities have robust public transportation systems for the most part, in rural America you can not do anything without a car. So there you go. This concludes my update for the past week.

P.S. Sadly I somehow managed not to take a single sharp picture of Tanya. I was running around with my manual lens and I think I lost some fast focusing skill since I haven’t used it in a couple of months.

Tonight we finally got first snow of the winter that actually stuck to the ground. Arosha kept asking Alena over and over throughout the past weeks when the winter would arrive already. So we all dressed up and went for a walk. It’s nice to have a playground right across the street.

Arosha had a lot of fun. He climbed all the structures in the park and took a ride on every single one of the slides in the park. All of them were extremely speedy because of the snow. Later on a couple of other families came out, but all the slides were snow free. Arosha did a thorough job. It was a fun evening.

Today Arosha and I got our haircuts at the place that I’ve been cutting my hair at for the past 15 years. It’s a typical old barber shop where everybody knows your name and a guy who knows how your like your hair cut — Artur. I think a lot of my local friends still get their haircuts from him or used to when they lived around here.

Arosha got his second barber haircut here as well — his first ever two were done by grandma. We’re surprised by his patience. He can easily sit there and follow directions given to him by Artur and let him do his job without a problem. He talks and listens about the process. And of course there is an anticipation of a lollipop that all kids get at the end of the cut by the shop owner.

Here is a couple of videos from the last several weeks. One is Santa visiting Arosha on New Year. The first thing Arosha said when he saw Santa was an inquiry as to the whereabouts of his grandpa. He kept asking and wouldn’t go talk to Santa until somebody explained to him that grandpa was tired and he lied down for a short nap.

Second video is Arosha making up a story about himself and his friends. Some parts he takes from his own life, some from the books that we read to him and some are just completely made up. Note his ability to sit “calmly” in one place.

Вот и наступил Новый 2013 Год. Честно говоря, не очень чувствовалось предпраздничное настроение. Может быть из-за того, что в этом году, так же как и в прошлом, совершенно не было снега?

А отметили мы очень хорошо. Традиционно у Даниных родителей. Кроме них с нами там были тётя Лиля, Лина с Лёней и Игнат с Викой и Алиской. Вобщем, народа собралось довольно много. Еды наготовили просто ужас сколько — одних салатов, наверное, штук 10 если не больше, плюс три горячих блюда, плюс блинчики с икрой, плюс холодное! Вобщем, я даже всё и не попробовала.

Кстати о еде. Лично я готовила три салата (пока Даня и Арошка гуляли), и получилась очень удачная шуба. Чтобы не забыть в чём секрет, быстро напишу какие были слои: картошка, майонез, селёдка (но тонким слоем!), сладкий лук, майонез, морковка, яйцо, майонез, свёкла, майонез.

Начали ужин мы где-то в 20:30, но не в полном составе. Лёня работал допоздна, и они с Линой пришли уже после 22 часов. Пили шампанское, провожали старый год, вспоминали что в нём было хорошего (плохое-то какой смысл вспоминать). Главное, что вспомнилось, это отпуска, рефинансирование квартиры, ну и в принципе отсутствие каких-либо новых серьёзных болезней. Арошка с Алиской тоже пили “шампанское”. Мы хотели купить им десткую безалкогольную версию, но не нашли; суррогатом послужил газированый розовый лимонад. Алиска-то, конечно, знала что именно она пьёт, а вот Ароша думал, что в фужере у него было то, что надо. Пластиковые фужеры для детей мы купили заранее, Арошка сам выбирал — себе зелёный, Алиске красный.

Мы решили не дожидаться полночи, и вручить детям подарки пораньше, пока они еще не такие уставшие. Д. Боря переоделся в костюм Деда Мороза и с мешком подарков позвонил в дверь. Алиска сразу поняла в чём дело — она еще до представления услышала, что мы планируем сделать. Ароша не был уверен кого же именно он видит. Видно, в его детскую душу закрались смутные сомнения, потому что он практически сразу же начал спрашивать: “А где наш дедушка? А где наш дедушка?”, и успокоился только тогда, когда мы сказали ему, что дедушка устал и прилёг отдохнуть. Алиска была очень рада подаркам, а Арошка пока что был к ним довольно равнодушен (все подарки были запакованы в праздничную бумагу). Единственное, к чему он сразу проявил интерес — это конфеты. К его счастью, в коробочке оказались не только нелюбимые шоколадные, но и вкусные карамельки с леденцами.

В этом году Арошка дождался-таки 12 часов. Правда, едва-едва. За 5 минут до Нового Года он совсем подкис и начал проситься спать, но я взяла его на руки и под мои рассказы он встретил его вместе со всеми. Спали мы у Даниных родителей, так что после питья шампанского мы сразу отправились укладываться. Несмотря на поздний час, мне пришлось просидеть с Арошкой почти до часа ночи (я пробовала выйти пораньше пару раз, но он вставал на кроватке, сильно плакал и звал меня).

Потом раздавали подарки взрослым. Я в этом году, как и хотела, получила кучу всего полезного для кухни — чугунный казан (La Crueset signature enamel cast iron dutch oven), чугунную же сковородку, рисоварку для сладкого тайского риса, разные стаканы (а то у нас их всего 2 дома оставалось), многоразовую пробку для бутылок. Еще мне досталась маечка, зеркальце, качественное мыло, фигурка змеи, календари. Дане подарили разноцветные носки (он сам хотел) и линзу для фотоаппарата (некоторые из мелочей, перечисленных как мои подарки, были для нас обоих).

Даниному папе мы подарили iPhone, чему он был очень рад, а Даниной маме пару тёплых тапочек от Ugg (к сожалению они ей не подошли, так что мы сейчас в процессе подбора нового подарка). Лине с Лёней от всех нас достался пылесос Dyson, т. Лиле мы подарили сковородку, а Вике с Игнатом соковыжималку. Арошке мы в этом году угадали с подарком — набор для игры с пластилином ему очень понравился, и детские (не игрушечные) вилка с ложкой тоже оказались очень удобными (еще мы подарили ему книгу про одного из полюбившихся ему героев, слонёнка Бабара, но не могу сказать, что он ей сильно впечатлён).

Спать мы пошли где-то в 2:30. Арошка, несмотря на позднюю укладку, встал в 7:30.

А вообще хочется пожелать нам всем счастливого 2013 года. Пусть все будут здоровы, пусть сбудутся заветные мечты (или хотя бы одна мечта), пусть будут интересные путешествия, пусть будет много удачных и радостных дней. Побольше нам любви, терпения, доброты.

Yesterday a bit of a miracle happened — Lenchik stopped by. I can’t remember for sure, but I think that I haven’t seen him since the end of 2007. He stopped by once in 2010 when Arosha was one month old, but I was at work that day. It’s always great to reminisce and recollect some of the old shared memories — and we do have a lot. After all, we did grow up living in the same building and were friends ever since. Lenchik himself has a collection of great new stories — as always.

And Alena wrote a couple of words as well:

Yesterday we had a visit from Lenchik. We have not seen him in a while, so it was very nice to catch up. He was always a big (tall, strong) guy, but it seems that he’s gotten even bigger since the last time I saw him — I guess its a combined effect of being in Marine Corp and getting older. Aroshka really liked him, as he actually likes all our friends. Too bad Lenchik can’t visit us more often.

Lenchik, come by more often. We’re always glad to see you and your big smile around here. Misha told me today that Lenchik stopped by his house afterwards as well. He was very happy to see him as we were.

P.S. Lenchik has reached a level of Sergeant. Good progress, but he has a bunch more to go.

We’re making good use of free time by having a quite active long weekend. Alena and Arosha usually go out for a walk to a local park and spend 3-4 hours there every day. Since they are pretty tired of the same park over and over again, we try to find a new place for a weekend every time we have a chance.

Today we decided to drive out to Staten Island to Snug Harbor Park, but because of the holiday the park was closed. Same thing with a small Staten Island zoo. We looked at the map and went to the closest “green” area. Clove Lakes Park turned out to have a lot of territory and no fences to close. Naturally this ended up being our park of choice for the day.

Arosha was very excited about going into the woods. We think that one of the reasons is that all the tales typically happen in the woods. And of course a new place is always fun.

He picked up all kinds of old sticks and branches, dug in the leaves, “cooked” shish-kebabs for everyone at a picnic area, poked at different kinds of forest mosses and mushrooms growing on old logs.

It was a short, but refreshing outing. On the way there and back Arosha kept everyone amazed by his good vision and incredible knowledge of ALL the makes of cars that can be found on the road. He kept calling them out before we could see them and unmistakably identifying the makes. I hope one day he will show the same curiosity towards letters and learns them as quickly as he did the car makes.

As those of you who know me well know that I’m very much into politics. I follow political news, events and the last year was very fruitful. I just wanted to leave a couple of words about the most memorable of those events in this election cycle.

First there was a circus of a Republican primary. Each candidate would get their 15 minutes which would end in a scandal and the candidate would completely fade and become irrelevant. At the end there were 2 guys standing — one with a huge money advantage who was campaigning for the past 6 years and a guy whose 15 minutes of fame turn came just at the right time. The primary kept dragging on and on and ended up pretty much how everyone expected before it even begun.

Next big thing came when Mitt Romney picked his running mate. There were a lot of safe choices, but he decided to go for a gamble and went with one of the more radical guys in congress who was still mainstream enough not to end up the 2nd Sarah Palin. The gamble didn’t seem to pay off in the long run. There was no usual bounce in the polls and we all now know how the whole thing ended.

After that followed conventions of both parties. The only thing that really stands out in memory is an amazing speech by Bill Clinton. Everyone who I know who listened to it was glued to the TV screen for the whole duration. Big Bill still got it. I donated $100 to Obama’s campaign right after it.

I don’t want to get into politics of things since nobody will ever agree with each other. The worst thing about Mitt Romney’s candidacy for me was not so much his radical views (at least the words coming out of him during the months preceding October were), but the fact is that after all this time I have no idea what the guy really believes. Only one thing was obvious — he will say ANYTHING that will help him achieve his goal. All throughout I had a strong feeling that his sole reason for wanting to be a president was another trophy to put on his wall of achievements.

Nate Silver provided a fascinating resource to read. It was interesting to watch how the guy who was doing math was being accused of being a liberal propagandist. In the end it seems that Nate nailed the election perfectly. The last pre-election map that was published by him had Florida in pale blue and it still is not decided, even though it looks like it will go to Obama. On his chart of most likely outcomes 332 was the highest peak for months and 303 was the second highest. Thank you, Nate, for you great work. Now I have to wean myself of the addiction of checking 538 every 30 minutes.

So polls stayed pretty much in place for the duration of general election cycle. Until October that is. The first debate was devastating. Romney has reversed his views 180 degrees and Obama was completely stunned a speechless as a lot of us. With the help of Biden and 2 further debates Obama seems to have climbed out of the whole he dug for himself. I donated another $100 to his campaign after the last debate.

And then 2 days ago was the culmination of the whole thing. The evening started out slow, but ended with a resounding victory by Democrats. From the presidency to all the senate races that I was watching closely. There is no better sporting event than a presidential election night. I watched it on CNN and MSNBC.

I’m very much relieved as to how it all went down and I’m proud of the fact that majority of people (over 50%) who cared enough to vote agreed. Hopefully now our government will move closer to the center and both parties will be able to find some common ground. I’m also glad that more than a billion dollars of dark money that flooded this election cycle didn’t seem to amount to anything.

Funniest moments from election night — Fox News meltdown. Those guys really had themselves convinced that they will have a huge victory. Funniest moment from the debates — Obama on horses and bayonets. Funniest parody — Mitt Romney Style.

There are a lot more things I can say about this election, but there are a lot of people out there who already said it better: Andrew Sullivan, Rachel Maddow, Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, Sam Wang and multiple others.

Today I spent hours walking around our neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay that had to endure the passage of hurricane Sandy. I’ve never seen so much destruction. Most of the damage came from the surge of water. We were located in Zone B, but Zone A — which had a mandatory evacuation order issued — was only 1 block away.

Our building has been well prepared. It was swaying and creaking in a really scary way during the peak winds, but we never even lost power.

Our local park, along with all other city parks, has been closed.

Several large trees fell down on power lines on a block right behind our building. The wind was coming from this direction as trees on the other side of our building are intact.

Areas between the rows of townhouses are flooded.

Here water already receded to pretty low levels.

A falling pole with a transformer on top. If this doesn’t get fixed quickly enough the transformer could hit the ground and explode.

Door of several houses on Voorhies Avenue.

This used to be a local baseball field. Now it looks more like a lake.

We thought we avoided getting hit directly by this storm, but sadly we were wrong. My dad parked his car several blocks away from our building to avoid it getting hit by fallen trees. What nobody expected was massive flooding that would occur. His car got submerged under water up to its windows. The street in front of our building didn’t get flooded.

A lot of places around the neighborhood are without electricity. The traffic lights are off and everything is pretty chaotic. Continue Reading

I don’t write much because there are not a lot of things going on, but we are enjoying our summer, and here are a few things that are worth mentioning from the last few weeks.

In mid-July we went to the Bronx Zoo. It’s a moderately long drive from us, but Danya and I got kind of tired of our local zoo and wanted to show Aroshka a broader spectrum of wild life. I think Aroshka liked it — he still mentions the zoo from time to time. He remembers monkeys, giraffes, zebras, lions, bears, crocodiles. One funny moment was when he saw bongo antelope which has white stripes and asked us who it was. I said that it was some kind of antelope. Aroshka did not like my answer and offered his own version — a zebra. It’s so fascinating how little humans’ brains process information and make generalizations.

Last weekend we went for a walk on Manhattan Bridge. Aroshka did not want to go at all at first, but then he kind of liked it. He was especially fascinated by the giant clock on one of the buildings which could be seen from the bridge. We then spent some time in a little park under the bridge, and on our way home we bought gyro from Danya’s favorite Greek gyro place in the whole world (I think).

Last weekend we also went to meet Danya’s parents from JFK. Aroshka got so fascinated by escalator, that he went up and down on it in circles. The up part was working, but the down one was broken. Aroshka helped to even things out on our 4th or 5th run he pushed some red button (which was supposed to be covered by protective plastic, but was in fact not), and up escalator stopped as well. In about 30 minutes some technician fixed it, but a lot of people had to climb it with heavy luggage before this happened.

This Wednesday it was Daniel’s mom birthday. She had a very small celebration for the family this Saturday (it was us, Lina and Lёnya and aunt Lilya). Aroshka even made a toast of his own (well, with a bit of coaching from me): С Днём Ажденя бабуя! Будь арова! Aroshka really thrives in family gatherings like this. He loves sitting together with everybody at the big table, and he usually eats more than when he is having a meal all by himself.

Another little thing that I am happy about is that Aroshka found a friend on the playground. Her name is Evelina, and she’ll be turning 3 in November. They play very well with each other, so I hope they’ll get many more opportunities to socialize. I really like Evelina’s mom, Oksana. She is a very recent immigrant from Estonia, and seems to be a smart and kind woman. She has another daughter, who is not even 2 months old, and she usually goes to the playground with both of the girls. We invited them over to our apartment once, and once to our pool. I had a good time, and so did Aroshka.

Summer Olympics has started this Friday. We watch some events, but our opportunities are limited by the fact that we don’t have a cable. Luckily, our building has an antennae on the roof, so we get some free channels, but it’s not as much as we would have liked. So far I’ve seen Alexandr Vinokourov winning gold medal for Kazakhstan in cycling road race, Ryan Lochte winning gold for US in 400m individual medley (and Phelps not getting any medal in this event, although I hope that he will get some later on), and France winning gold in 400m freestyle relay (US got silver). I really like Olympics, and I hope to be able to watch some gymnastics events next week.

Several weeks ago Artem was in our part of the world and we met up with him in our favorite place in Williamsburg — a small Asian fusion cuisine restaurant owned by our friend David — Red Bowl.

Artem had oodles of photo gear with him. We setup a flash (otherwise its quite dark in there) and Artem took a photograph of us that we liked. He was kind enough to send me a resulting file in a RAW format, which I dropped into Photoshop and spent an hour or so on it to correct certain things caused by flash as well as I could.

We thought that the end result looked decent, so we’re posting it here.

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!

I’m totally psyched! We just got back from Fort Wadsworth where we drove to this morning to witness the final voyage of Space Shuttle Enterprise strapped to the back of Boeing 747 to New York Intrepid museum.

When several weeks ago I heard about Discovery flying in the same manner all over DC I was very jealous of Washingtonians. Needless to say when I heard that the same thing will be happening over New York I immediately took a morning off from work. The flight got delayed twice because of bad weather and it finally happened today, on Friday, April 27, 2012.

When I heard about the flyover I thought that Fort Wadsworth would be a perfect location to view it from. It is located pretty high up, overlooking the bay under Verrazano Bridge and has a good view of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, although the statue is pretty far and is somewhat hard to see on the photographs taken with a normal lens.

Early in the morning I packed my gear — my usual 24-70mm lens, but this time I also took my 70-200mm lens and the 2x teleconverter that I have laying around which never gets any use. And I’m very glad I did.

We were really hoping that it will get closer to our location than the Statue of Liberty and this morning I had found two maps of its possible fly path and on both of those there was at least one pass over the bridge. Since NASA never disclosed an exact fly route I was hoping that these maps were true.

When we got to Fort Wadsworth I realized that my secret spot isn’t so secret. It was as crowded as I’ve never seen it before, but it wasn’t bad at all. There were plenty of parking spots left and we easily found a good viewing spot near the edge where I setup my tripod. Even though I knew I can’t fix the camera completely it still provided good support for those telephoto shots.

There were a couple of guys with radios who were getting constant updates. They told everyone when the plane was 2 minutes out. And then it appeared through the cables of Verrazano Bridge. I started with my 24-70mm lens to get good landscape shots of the bridge with the plane.

By the time it passed the bridge I switched over to my 400mm setup, but was quite late to get any decent shots. Nobody was sure if we were going to see it again or if it was going to cut through the middle of city on its final route to JFK.

Luckily we didn’t have a long wait. It again showed up over the Statue of Liberty — it was hard to see with a naked eye, but I could see it very well through the lens. To the happiness of all the photographers and observers the shuttle carrier did a second pass right over the bridge and I got a good number of great close up shots with the plane taking up the full frame.

I was so ecstatic that I started clapping and the other people followed too. It was a good and fun event for us, but Arosha found it quite boring. Later he is going to see these photographs and he’ll be able to say that he was there, although not too happy.

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?