Bus training

Misha starts school this fall. He has his evals the next couple of weeks, but he will definately get in. I think Ira is going to have him ride the bus, which will be fun for him.

Yesterday, I took him and Baba Liza for a test run to her ESL class which starts today. The bus runs right down the street with a stop around the corner from our house, so she wanted me to do a dry run with her to show her where to get off and how the system works. We decided to take Misha along for the fun of it. He had been cooped up inside all day. As soon as we got on he started grinning and when the bus took off, he started laughing. It was only a 5 minute ride, but he was giggling the whole way. When we stopped to let someone off, he complained and signed "more".

Recently, Misha has had some behaviors toward Baba Liza. I am not exactly sure why, but he has began to show some aggressiveness towards her. For instance, he likes to hit her on the arms and on the face. In any case, Misha doesn't hit hard, but its the fact that he is. He also has tried to bite her arms. The other day, Baba Liza was telling me about him trying to bite her. I told her that he may try to gum her, but he doesn't bite. Misha heard this, walked up and tried to bite her. Kinda blew me away. Whenever I see this behavior he does get a verbal reprimand telling him that he should not hit or bite and that it hurts. And I make him sign "sorry". He usually comes over and tries to hug/snuggle after that, but sometimes he gets really offended and starts to cry. And he cries and cries and cries. I am not sure if its affection of some sort, and attention getter, or that she doesn't reprimand him when he does. It's not like he doesn't like Baba Liza. He hangs around her all day. She takes him for walks and takes him outside to play, and really takes care of him well. She scolds him but less severe than I would or Ira. I think I need to make sure she consistently reprimands him from now on so he will learn not to do that. The last thing I want is for Misha to develop any kind of permenent aggressive behaviors.

Hep-bi beh beh

Last night, we went to a birthday party for the daughter of one of Ira's acquaintances. I think I may have seen her once. They held in a local park with broad spans of lawn, a fish pond, a couple fountains and the like. They had some Russian food I haven't tried in quite a while: plov (rice, meath, carrots cooked stir-fried) and the equivalent of a chebureika (meat filled pastry). Quite tasty. When they hauled out the cake for the little girl, they gathered the kids and sang happy birthday.

Immediately after finishing, Misha signed "again" and "music" and I asked if he wanted me to sing happy birthday. He then sang to me "Hep-bi beh beh". I was drop-jaw shocked. He has tried singing before, but this was the clearest. The rest of the night was having him repeat it. Amazing.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the Thanksgiving point discovery park. It had a bunch of flowers and some other things for kids to do, but the highlight was the wading pool. It had Noah's ark in the middle with various animals, elephants and goats that blew water, and Noah and his wife. Misha loves the water. Whenever we pulled him out, he squawked tried to get back in at every chance. I didnt want to go in and tried so we just used his monkey harness. Didn't help though. Some little punk kid walked over and kicked water all over me. I didn't even know him. I have the leash to Baba Liza so I could film him. He was so upset when we had to leave.

Bloomin' Misha

Misha has been blooming again.

I mean, that he has been making some great progress on his speech. Instead of laughing at us, he actually tries new words and sounds. Side note: his signs are progressing as well.

He picked up "cookie" about a week ago. Ira just thought he might be able to pronounce it and sure enough, he did. Yesterday, I was lounging on the couch and Misha was sitting on my belly and I ran him through the English alphabet. A bunch of the letters were garbled or not pronounced very well, but that was the first time he has sat there for so long and been willing to try new sounds. Of course, he got tired of it as soon as I got to the Russian alphabet.

Hopefully I will get un-lazy and get a blog with a vid of Misha from a recent activity this evening. We'll see.