Send your own ElfYourself eCards

After the wife picked me up from work yesterday, we were riding home and she was explaining that she has Misha try different sounds while they ride around in the car.

With a bit of prompting, Misha proudly pronounced "Sh-sh-sh-kol-ya" (russian word for school is shkola). Then she asked him who was in his class. He replied, "de-ti" (deti = children). For the rest of the ride home, he continued spouting out those words. Of course by bed time, he would only say, "kol-ya".

While I brush Misha's teeth in the evening, we sing the "ABC song". He does fairly well alternating letters with me. He still gets hung up on "L-M-N-O-P" though.

Misha updates

Couple of quick Misha updates.

Misha has strung two words together finally. He began recently to say "Baba Cindy". That is a great leap for him. He doesn't even sign two words in a row generally. He surprised the nursery workers the other day when he told them "on" for some toy he was playing with.

Misha is also more receptive to new books. He occasionally will bring a new one over.

Praying is still going strong. I need to look up some more signs for him to expand his prayer repertoire.

He and Nikolai are quite the odd couple. They can be seen playing the piano together, or sitting at a table playing with stuff at the same time, but then they start taking toys away from each other and smacking each other (Nikolai hits harder than Misha does). Typical sibling relationships. And when Misha is getting changed or going to bed, he never fails to remind one that he thinks that Nikolai should go too.

20 Questions, Part II

My interrogating Misha on his day has started to pay off. It's quite exciting, actually.

Yesterday, I picked Misha up from nursery. He was happy to go, of course. Really a good thing. He is happy to go to nursery and happy to leave. No complaining, either way. Anyway, I digress.

As we were leaving nursery, walking down the hall to the room where Ira teaches, Misha pulled his hand out of mine and stopped. I stopped as well. Misha then started signing to me. He signed "play", so I confirmed/asked him if he played in nursery. He responded verbally with "ball". Then he signed food, so I asked him what he had for snack. He usually doesn't respond to this one without prompting, but this time he signed "crackers" and said "nana". That is marked improvement.

This is unique in that he is not asking for something. He is volunteering information without prompting. This is great.

Monkey see, monkey do

As an aficionado of music, Misha will jump through hoops to listen to music he likes. Alisa reported the other day that Misha had tried to play a CD in the stereo. He must have observed Kiril doing this cause the downstairs is often turned into a discotheque.

Evidently, he procured a CD from one of the disc books hanging around. He walked over to the stereo "blowing" on the CD. Misha is working on blowing and so far puts his upper-lip over his lower and blows down. We are still working on that. Then he pushed the Open/close button, and put the disc in . It wasn't in correctly so it didn't close all the way, so he further attempts at getting it to play were foiled. But it's just another case at how observant Misha really is.

20 questions

Misha is enjoying his school experience. He is progressing steadily in their curriculum and that is nice to see. So when I get home from work, I try to get some interaction going by questioning him on his day. There is kind of a format on getting Misha started with these kind of things. This usually involves prompting him with pointed questions that I generally know the answers to.

So it started out with something like "Misha, did you play at school today?" And Misha would then sign "play". Then we continued on to the next question.

Now I ask Misha what he did and he will sign "play". I can then ask him what else he did and he will answer. I am still prompting him about doing puzzles and color sorting but since neither of us know the signs for those, it's hard to get him to do that one. But I will ask him about his lunch and what he ate.

The same tactic I approached when teaching him to pray. Sometimes I would/will ask the kids who would like to pray. Misha started answering "Yah!" (russian for 'me'). So I started verbally "assisting" him to pray. Then I thought, "Wait a minute, he can sign!" and so I started trying to teach him some signs for praying. At first, it was all prompt, but lately he has got a hold of the concept and is doing stuff on his own. This usually cracks the kids up. For instance, last night he was in the "thanking" part of his prayer. He signed "thank you" then "food", then "mama", "food", and then said "Baba" (grandma), said "Mama", "Bya-bya", and "Ga-ga" (see last blog). Then we bless the food and he signs "Jesus" and said "Amin'".

So now I need to work on my signing vocab, so that I can teach him some more school and prayer words.

Misha strips!

I was thinking of what kinda picture to post with this, but it didn't think I would risk doing a search for something along the theme while on a lunch break at work. So this one will be without an image.

The good news is that Misha is beginning to undress by himself with some verbal prompting. It's easiest with the pajamas. They are loose and stretchy and he manages to get them off without much problem. We are also working on getting dressed with some hand-over-hand help. He seems to enjoy this especially when it's his Elmo clothes.

I recently found Elmo's Adventures in Grouchland for a couple bucks and brought it home. Misha loves Elmo, but hasn't quite warmed up to this yet. He watches a bit, but then wanders off.

Misha is making progress in school. He is learning color sorting and puzzles, which he seems to enjoy doing according to their daily progress reports. The new school is a good thing.

Misha and Nikolai are still trying to work on their relationship. There is a bunch of toy sharing issues and book sitting issues (Nikolai sits on the books Misha is looking at), and parental attention issues. But Nikolai is also starting to see in Misha a playmate...or play thing. He has started grabbing Misha from behind and hanging on. It is certainly entertaining to watch.

Misha's bedtime routine includes me telling him that it's time for bed and him starting on a list of people he thinks should also be in bed. It goes something like this:
"Misha, time for sleep." (This is after putting him in bed and singing a song or something)
(Misha signs "sleep)
"Be-be."
"Nikolai is already in bed."
"Elmo."
"Elmo is in bed, too."
(Misha thinks for a minute)
"Baba." (Baba Liza)
"Baba will go to bed in a minute."
"Mama."
"Mama will go to be in a while."
"Ga-ga." (???imaginary friend???)
"Ga-ga is in bed already."
"Bya-bya." (???too???)
"Bya-bya is asleep."
(Misha starts again)