Oh! Sole Mio!!!

Recently Misha has been trying to sing. What's funny is he doesn't do too bad, all things considered.

It all started about a year ago when we were are a birthday party for the daughter of a friend of a friend of a...dunno, somehow connected through the local Russian (Ukrainian, Uzbek, Ossitian, Georgian, Krgyz, etc) chain. I went cause they promised me yummy food. Anyway, when it came time to sing "Happy Birthday" Misha, who loves music, signed, "More". After a few times of me doing that, he made his attempt which I blogged about a when it happened here.

A month or so ago, Misha started singing another song from a russian movie and engaging us to sing it for/with him. The song starts, "Mama! Mama! What am I going to do? Mama! Mama! How am I going to live?" (translated losely from the russian song). Misha will try to get you to sing by getting in your face and singing, "Mama, Mama". The fun thing is that he gets the notes right.

His latest is the first part of "Angels watching over me" a gospel song. It goes "All night, all day angels watchin over me, my lord." He gets the tune right again, although he needs to work on the words more. It comes out more as "Aouu yay, aouu yay". But the point is that he is trying and I was thinking that this could be the key to getting him to talk more.

Little Dentist Shop of Horrors

Misha went to the dentist yesterday. He had a bit of decay on one molar and we thought it best to take him in. The other kids went in too. Asya has a canine that is coming in slowly through the gum, Kiril may have had some gunk but didn't, and Dasha had a little brown spot they drilled out and filled. He looked at Misha first, but decided to save his for last, so he got to watch the other kids go under the lamp. He was watching intermittently, signing "ouch" occasionally, and complaining the whole time. Then it was his turn.
The dentist, who is really good, sent Ira and the kids out. I got into the chair with Misha. I put his feet in between my legs, held, his hands against his chest with one hand, and held his head with the other. I thought I would be humane and also closed his eyes. He screamed the entire procedure which took just a few minutes. It's bad enough trying to brush his teeth, but this was torture for him. They didn't even have to deaden him. But he got a little revenge. A couple times he was able to chomp down on the dentists finger. Not that he did it on purpose, but hey...whatta ya do. He has been complaining to us about it ever since. He points to his mouth and lets us know that he knows it's all our fault that the mean ole dentist got a hold of him.

In other news, Kiril got baptised on Saturday. Yay. It was a fun day. We delayed it so that Baba Liza could attend. It went well. Kiril was excited. He got baptised with his friend Conner. And we had a banana split bar afterwards to celebrate.

I am working on putting tile in the master bath this week. Wheee. Will be so glad when it's done. Can't wait to be able to use my own bathroom and shower again. Also started biking to work again. Not too shabby after a break of a few months.

School has been good for Misha. I think it very helpful for him to be in a different environment, with different people, and a different regime. So, for 4 days a week he misses his nap. The bus comes a bit before noon and brings him back around 4. Nap time is usually around 11 a.m.. So, when he doesn't get his nap, he tends to get a bit sleepy around dinner time. The picture is after trying to wake him up for a few minutes. It took several more and sticking a plate of food under him in order to rouse him enough to eat.

But school has been good. He really enjoys riding on the bus. They send a laminated page home everyday with a report. It has the snack options he had (sometimes those are visible on his face), the activities he participated in that day, and with which therapists he had time with. At the end an option explaining what kind of day he had. Misha has never come home with anything but "I had a good day, today." He has started another round of gains. Ira noticed that he was able to put pegs toys in the foam holes without problem. He has picked up several words and sounds. He tries to sound out the letters he studies in class. He even signs more. When we went outside the other day, he started signing something and it took me a minute to understand that he was signing "snow". He also tries butterfly which is a difficult one. The other day, I was lounging on the floor doing homework with the kids. Misha crawled up on my back and was sitting there bouncing. Baba Liza asked where he was going and he answered with a sign. She didn't understand it, but repeated it for me. He was signing "horse".

All tuckered out

It's been a trying few weeks. I am ready for a break of some kind. Although today it feels like the break is going to be my knee.

We recently put an offer in on a short sale house. In the meantime we listed our own house. The geographical difference is about 4.7 miles. So hopefully, we would find a buyer and get the bank to sell us the new one at the same time.

We are also trying to get our house presentable. This means fixing chips in the paint, leaky faucets, packing up some of our stuff, etc.

This couldn't have happened at a worse time. I have projects deadlining at work and am working from home in the evenings to try to get them done. Which means that in addition to dinner, homework, music, and work, I also have honeydo projects every evening. And inevitably while trying to fix one thing, I broke another. Sigh. Then work can't figure out what projects are the important ones so they switched. Sigh. And I am not sleeping enough. Yawn.....sigh. But I do realize there are worse things that could happen.

Give me your tired, your hot, your hungry masses yearning to breathe free.

She made it...finally. Tuesday morning, we made the trek up to SLC with all the kids, some relatives, and extras to a theater near the district court for Ira's Naturalization Oath Ceremony.

So with some excitement and a little bit of sadness, she raised her right hand, repeated the oath and woohoo, is an American Citizen.

I gotta say though...it was torturous for me. What I will say is if you have the opportunity to participate in the future...leave smaller children home.

Unfortunately the balcony in the theater was about 90 degrees. The kids were dying. While we were supposed to be there promptly at 9 am. they didn't start until around 10 am. So she was sitting with the rest of the applicants, I was up in the overhot balcony with 6 hot, bored, hungry kids. At least until Mom showed up and relieved me of one of them. Then I had only wiggly Misha to take care of.

Once it started, it was fairly short and well paced. Part of the delay may have been the pregnant lady who went into labor and was administered the oath outside, then sent off in an ambulance to the hospital.

We celebrated by going to McDonalds cause the kids were starving, the Russian store cause Ira wanted to, and the stayed at home. I even got a nap. It was bliss.

All aside, I am glad we have hit this milestone. Now we can invite Baba Liza and she can get a green card. Yay.

Misha update: Misha is saying "hot"...more like "haa", but he is using it appropriately. He is also using "uh-oh" appropriately like when he drops something (intentionally or not), when someone else drops something, or when I start counting. He also started mimicing Kiril's lament, "Oh, man!"

Awww, NUTS!

Asya and Kiril just finished up their short but highly successful career as amateur balleraunts (I am guessing at the PC non-gender version of ballerina). With a couple months of insanity, practices and lessons 4-5 times a week, and a week of running them to and from the Covey Center, I am glad it's over. I don't remember it being this much of a pain when I was a mouse 20 years ago. And I am sad to report that I don't remember it being so awful. Saturday, we decided to buy tickets and go watch it (support the kids). The theatre was nice enough...it should be, it's new. Just as it started, it began to slide downhill. Right off the bat, they started hitting us up for donations. Just a bit irksome, especially considering that the lessons are outrageously priced, they charged us $40 dollars in participation fees, the cheapest tickets were 16$ a seat, and the makeup for the week cost us around $100. The music was from a CD that had seen better days. It was really annoying to hear it chirping as they will do when dirty or scratched. The performances were lackluster. Some of the kids were better than the "professional" dancers. And poor poor Asya. It is not uncommon for a ballerina to biff it on stage. But if it was going to happen, it was going to happen with Asya...and it did. Fortunately, she popped right back up and continued on with the performance. It was a fun thing for them, and I am glad they had the chance, but next year, I think we will take the kids to Ballet West or go see "A Christmas Carol" at the Hale Theatre.

Today we were snowed in pretty good. The roads were all slush. So much for going to IKEA. I cleaned the walks 3 times. The last time, I got Misha dressed and dragged him out with me. He hates playing in the snow. He is just like "Randy" from A Christmas Story. Once he falls, he can't get back up and starts calling for "Hep! Hep!". After I got the walks cleaned off, I took him for a walk around the block. He seemed to enjoy that much more and was even upset when we finished even when he lost his boot a couple times and was walking in the snow.

Ewwwww!!! And Gonna Have To Watch More Carefully

The other night, we were in the middle of our weekly routine. It was after dinner. I was on the floor holding Nokolai helping Asya with Math while Iggy was drawing. Ira was reading with Dasha. Baba was off at her ESL class. As I glanced around the room, I noticed Misha under the end of the kitchen table on the carpet. Next to him was a 3/4 empty bottle of ranch dressing from Costco (that means big bottle). After dinner, it had been about 1/4 empty. The half he had anointed the floor with was being swirled around and around with his pudgy little hands. As soon as he noticed we were wise to his caper, he started to eat it. Ira grabbed the camera and recorded the moment for posterity. Here it is for your viewing pleasure. Just tilt your head to the left.


Misha is starting to run. He can actually gets some good bursts of speed on those scrawny legs of his. I realized that we need to be more observant with him. We stopped at Target to grab some shoes for Nikolai (lost one of his last weekend). As were were loading everyone in the car, Misha, who was standing next to Ira, turned and bolted. Luckily Ira caught him in time cause he was headed right out in front of a car. We bought him one of those Monkey harnesses. It works well...when we remember to bring it.