Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Arosha Video Update

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.

In: Family, Life In General Tags: Arosha, Santa, story, talking, video
Time: 18:35 Comments: 2 Comments Post a Comment

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Sunday, September 30, 2012

First Time at Barber Shop

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.

Arosha at the barber shop for the first time.

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.

In: Family Tags: Arosha, Artur, barber, haircut, video
Time: 20:38 Comments: 2 Comments Post a Comment

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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Complicated Word

So I’ve been pestering Arosha by trying to make him say a word that consists of at least 2 different syllables. He has been saying mama, papa and baba for a long time now. For the other word he just picks the syllable that the accent falls on and keeps using that. So I’ve been teaching him to say a word duck (utka) with no luck.

Yesterday I come home and get the news with a video bonus. Alena has been talking to my parents and they were speaking out my name. Arosha heard it and started repeating it. Alena got her phone out and made a video. So of all the words the first word with multiple syllables he started saying is my name.

In the video he is not quite sure what he is saying, but today when I ask him what my name is he keeps replying correctly — Даня.

In: Family Tags: Arosha, speaking, video, words
Time: 19:40 Comments: 1 Comment Post a Comment

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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Arosha Video Update

We haven’t posted any Arosha videos in a while. So here are 2 brand new ones from yesterday filmed by Alena.

Here Arosha is playing with IKEA net for toy storage. He finds it hilarious when Alena pushes this thing over to him. Got to watch it with sound to hear all the laughing.

And here he is playing with Shublik. Listen to the song that happened to be playing in the background.

In: Family Tags: Arosha, playing, Shublik, video, YouTube
Time: 14:37 Comments: 3 Comments Post a Comment

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Thursday, July 28, 2011

Frozen Broccoli

Alena read somewhere that kids like to chew on frozen broccoli when they are teething and decided to try it out. Arosha was making all kinds of funny grimaces when he got a taste of that broccoli. In the end he decided that broccoli would be better used to its full potential if it was feed to Shublik.

We're good at sharing. Especially when it comes to frozen broccoli.

Our walking keeps getting better and better. Crawling has pretty much stopped altogether. From wobbly zombie to wobbly chicken to little human? Are we there yet?

In: Family Tags: Arosha, broccoli, Shublik, video, walking
Time: 15:39 Comments: 4 Comments Post a Comment

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Людмила says: Subscribed

August 8, 2011 @ 04:25

Ароша из всех вас самый рачительный хозяин – нечего на всяких котов тратиться и покупать им мясо за немыслимые деньги! Пора приучать котов к вегетарианским изыскам!Вначале брокколи, потом морковочка, а там и до листьев одуванчика дело дойдёт. какая экономия!

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Friday, July 22, 2011

Arosha Video Update

Time for our regular Arosha video update. We’ve uploaded a pair of video clips to YouTube. Here they are.

This video we recorded today. Arosha has practically stopped crawling and prefers to walk everywhere. He is able to walk pretty good distances without falling now and does it very often. Unluckily for us all the time that we decided to record the video of him walking resulted in a face-plant. These happen pretty rarely as he is pretty good at landing on his butt if he loses balance, but they still do happen from time to time. His walking progress is remarkable though.

This video is a bit older. It’s from the time that we went to a picnic with Maruks. Arosha really loved Emma’s tricycle. Although that ended in a minor accident as well, as it often does when Arosha is involved.

In: Family Tags: Arosha, tricycle, video, walking, YouTube
Time: 16:09 Comments: 2 Comments Post a Comment

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Thursday, July 7, 2011

Arosha: Video Update

Of course the biggest news is that Arosha has started walking. Today he was standing near our living room table like he often does and then just decided to take off and walk over to TV. I ran and grabbed my phone to get it on video and we managed to convince him to repeat it two more times, although the first one was the most impressive one. The two that we got on video he walks like a little wobbly zombie.

And here is another video from almost a month ago that we never posted on the blog — Arosha and his two favorite “words” at the time — krya aka “ka” and moo aka “uuuu”.

In: Family Tags: Arosha, ka, moo, video, walking
Time: 14:18 Comments: 3 Comments Post a Comment

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Monday, May 30, 2011

KRYA Video

Here are 2 videos of Arosha producing his favorite sound for the time being — “KRYA”! The funny thing is that he seems to understand that this sound is associated with ducks (as opposed to dogs, cats, cows, etc) as you can see from the second video.

He does say “KRYA” a lot, especially if he likes something — a yellow plastic bag from the Chinese fast-food place received a revered “KRYA”, and the Christmas balls which found their permanent home on the ceiling lights in the corridor invariably get a “KRYA” in the last few days. He says “KRYA” to the people he likes, and sometimes he says “KRYA” just because he feels like saying something. Anyhow, enjoy the videos! I know I am EXTREMELY biased, but I can’t get enough of little Aroshka saying “KRYA” or “KA” and keep asking him what sound does the duck make multiple times throughout the day.

In: Family Tags: Arosha, krya, milestone, talking, video
Time: 21:50 Comments: 5 Comments Post a Comment

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Sunday, April 17, 2011

Arosha Update

When Arosha turned 8 months old we didn’t really post our usual monthly update. However we did have a pair of videos taken 2 days before April 8th. The thing is that he managed to learn to crawl, sit, pull up and stand within a matter of 2 weeks or so.

The videos are already outdated. He easily sits by himself, unsupported now and crawls much faster. But we figured that it’s better to post these late than never.

In: Family Tags: Arosha, crawling, months, sitting, video
Time: 18:45 Comments: 7 Comments Post a Comment

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Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Arosha Laughing

Here is the video I mentioned earlier. Alena is making some silly sound and Arosha finds it hilarious. He smiles a lot these days, but laughing out loud is still pretty rare. Be sure to watch this with sound.

In: Family Tags: Arosha, laughing, playing, video
Time: 14:50 Comments: 4 Comments Post a Comment

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Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Arosha Walking

Not quite walking, not even close yet, but he seems to enjoy trying. And he smiles and giggles a lot too. Watch in 720 HD if it doesn’t play that way for you by default.

In: Family Tags: Arosha, smiling, video, walking
Time: 14:42 Comments: 4 Comments Post a Comment

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Friday, December 10, 2010

KVN 2010

Majority of you either forgot or never heard of this old Russian game (TV show) that is going to turn 50 next year, but Alena and I keep watching it still when we get a chance. Today we were watching the 2nd semi-final game of 2010 and this year at the end of last round each team was supposed to finish with a short video clip.

We found to be well done and pretty funny. You do not need to understand Russian to watch them, but I’m not sure if they are going to funny for our local friends — give it a try. To those who do know the game though — you might enjoy these as much as we did.

First one is a link to a video done by a team from Kazakhstan. The setting is that Gusman is visiting Kazakhstan and this is his video. Probably makes it funnier when you know who Gusman is. I couldn’t find the link to the clip itself, so just scroll to a 2nd half of it.

The next one was our favorite — done by a team from Krasnodar. This one probably should be funny to everyone. If you’re going to watch only one of these — watch this one.

Another one worth mentioning is the one done by a team from Omsk. It’s not funny, but is well done and is interesting.

In: Life In General Tags: clip, funny, KVN, video
Time: 20:22 Comments: 4 Comments Post a Comment

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Sunday, January 10, 2010

Shublik Videos

Here’s are 3 shorts clips with Shublik being Shublik, that I promised to post earlier this week.

Here he’s playing with a birthday balloon. First couple of days he was terrified of it and would hide at a first sight of the balloon. He kept trying to attack the thread, the balloon would get pulled down, bounce back up and make a sound hitting the ceiling. He eventually got used to it and kept running around the apartment with a thread in his teeth. One day we found the balloon stuck under our bed. How? I don’t know.

Normal cats are usually pretty afraid of the vacuum cleaners. This one is always trying to attack ours. He doesn’t mind being vacuumed either.

And this is just Shublik running after his favorite toy — a feather, or rather what’s left of it. He finds it more fun to rip the feather out and run after a little red thing that’s left — I guess it’s more challenging that way. Feather is too big and too easy to catch.

In: Life In General Tags: balloon, cat, feather, hunting, playing, Shublik, vacuum cleaner, video
Time: 22:37 Comments: No Comments Post a Comment

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Friday, September 25, 2009

Blu-ray Player

On Sunday we finally decided to make the next leap in the realm of home video entertainment. We were in a local BestBuy and almost bought a Blu-ray player. I’ve been thinking about getting one for a couple of weeks already and the main reason was the falling prices of Blu-ray movies.

You see, we tend to add movies that we liked to our collection from time to time. Originally, when DVDs used to cost around $15 for the movie and BD would cost $50 there was no interest. But when BD came down to $18 for the same movie I started feeling that buying a DVD was becoming silly to save $3.

Of course to make that argument work one needs to have a player that can play said BD movies. My research led me to 2 top players from LG and Samsung — BD390 and BD-P3600¹ respectively.

For some reason I was leaning towards LG, although I think Samsung is equally good. Of course thanks to my iPhone I checked the price² on Amazon. So after running around with LG box around the store, we put it back where it belongs, went home and placed an order online.

It was delivered yesterday and I was eager to hook it up. Even though our TV is over 10 years old it still supports 1080i playback, but that’s not really the most interesting thing. One of the main reasons of us getting this player is of course Netflix.

It took us only a few minutes to set it up and to get a movie from Netflix to play on our TV. I couldn’t really tell a difference between this and DVD quality-wise.

This is the moment when I had an epiphany — why would I want to buy a disk now if I can just play anything whenever I wish from Netflix? Never quite felt this as profoundly as at this moment. Of course the answer right now is that Netflix doesn’t have everything for instant watch, but for how much longer will that be the case?

Although Samsung has a higher end BD-4600 it has a really weird form factor and doesn’t really add any benefits for the added cost. [↩]
BestBuy had it for $349 + tax, Amazon had it for $285, no tax, free shipping. [↩]

In: Gadgets & Gear, Home Sweet Home Tags: Amazon, BD, BD390, BestBuy, Blu Ray, DVD, home, LG, Netflix, Samsung, video
Time: 11:05 Comments: 3 Comments Post a Comment

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Monday, August 3, 2009

Yellowstone Trip Video

Here’s our trip video compilation. These short clips were taken with the use of iPhone 3GS and I’m very glad we were able to do it. Some of these things just can’t be captured fully enough with photos alone.

Be sure to click the “HQ” button to see it in high quality. There are also captions in English included. If they don’t come on automatically do turn them on.

In: Travel Tags: road trip, video, Wyoming, Yellowstone NP
Time: 13:08 Comments: 3 Comments Post a Comment

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