Ouch!

My mom says occasionally that Misha reminds her of E.T. He has a little scrawny neck with creases of skin like the picture. This week, he also figured out a word we have been working on forever. I am not sure if it was a motor skills thing or he never made the connection, but he is finally signing "ouch". And, he seems to have made the connection with things that hurt. For instance, when I was getting him into his car seat this morning, I must have sat him wrong or something cause he started to "pain" whine and when I asked him what was wrong, he showed me "ouch". When he went for a walk with Ira the other day, he kept wanting to go into the street, but she would stop him and tell him that there were cars that drove on the street. Ira has explained this before and also that he could get hurt. So she was surprised and pleased when he signed "ouch".

I am excited for Misha to get the next two Signing Time DVDs next week. He has been watching and enjoying thoroughly enjoying 1 & 2. I think he is in a state of mind to pick up some new ones.

Ira made me take her up to the Living Traditions festival in SLC. Basically it consists of me loading the puppet theater into the van, driving her up, setting up the theater, doing puppet shows with her for 3 hours for a bunch of rowdy school kids

Misha vs. Demothenes

Misha has been having an interesting week. Some switch has been thrown and he is more willing to try new words. He still just laughs at us most of the time, but he picked up a couple of old words and a new one.

He has also been very attentive to usage of words we are using in sentences. If we mention the word "dog" even when we are talking with each other an not him, he will say "av-av". Or when we say "car" he will do a raspberry. The other day we said "liniya" (russian for "line") and he started repeating (not unlike E.T. in the movie) "anya! anya! anya!". Then, the other day we were at mom's, I think and were talking when he started to say "aabee" for cousin Kobe. He was so excited that he kept repeating it. He also decided to remember that he used to say "Elmo" and "Alanna" -- "am-ma" and "a-ana".

I have such hopes that he will learn to talk and be able to communicate better with us. He is learning signs and makes some up, so we get the idea of what he wants or at least a good idea, but it would be cool if he could do much more. At this rate he might. Maybe I should try the pebbles in his mouth....well, no, he would just swallow them.

Slow but sure progress

Having a 1p36er, you never know what to expect. So whenever Misha does something new, it's always a pleasant surprise, even when you have been working with him on it forever.

Misha's fine motor counselor(?) from Kids On the Move decided that the once a month visit was too often. Ira has been doing such a good job with him that every other month was as much as he needed. Woohoo! We have noticed some improvements in this area but it's nice for a confirmation. For instance, he started stacking blocks...by himself. After working with him for over a year on this (probably closer to 2 years), he finally decided to do it. He also figured out, and has developed the muscles needed, how to turn the key on a cookie tin/music box we got last Christmas. Albeit, he can only turn it a bit, it's still the best fine motor skill yet.

Misha has also started to "run". It mostly involves a faster, arms-in-the-air, version of his walk, but it is a large improvement for someone we weren't sure was going to walk with out braces or other assistance a year ago. He runs when he is excited, just for fun, or when I tell him it's time to change a diaper.

Words are still one of his biggest challenges. He has his set of words that he "likes" and sticks with those. Then he either ignores us when we ask him to try other words, or he laughs at us. And he seems to pick up a word, but drop another sometimes, as if he gets bored with it. His newest words are "uck", "eenya" and "bee-bee" for "yuck", "liniya (line)" and "baby". "Line" is Ira turning one of his sounds into a word and using it when he is scribbling.

We also graduated him from his crib to a toddler bed. Which means that every night, I have to move him from Kiril's bed to his own. And that as soon as I put him to bed, he crawls right off to play. But, the transition was smooth.

All in all, he is progressing slowly but surely and is a "golden" child.

P.S. The picture above is of Glen Cunningham, whose legs were severely burned in a fire when he was a child and was never expected to walk unassisted, let alone become one of the fastest runners of his time.

The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men

Being usually poor and having a father that taught me to do things myself, I usually attempt to do things myself when possible. And so I have done with mixed results. Saturday was my biggest foul ball ever.

I have had a coolant leak for a while. It drips and drips and I have had to add fluid or water ever once in a while for weeks now. Finally, we figured it was leaking from my coolant sensor. So, I pulled it out and broke it putting it back in and bought another and put it back in. I thought that my have fixed it but, to no avail. Then dad said I should try putting some teflon tape on it. So, last Saturday, I decided to give it a whirl. I removed the sensor, put some tape on it and proceeded to put it back in.

Now understand, the location of said sensor is to say the least awkward. To remove, or install, the sensor, I had to use a deep socket with a long extension cause a regular ratchet had to large a head. Also there was only a 70 - 80 degree opening wherein I could turn the extension. And with the other junk in the way, the extension is out at a 45 degree angle. So needless to say a tedious job and kind of difficult to judge how things were going. Tighten a little, reposition the socket, tighten, reposition, tighten, etc... I was making good progress when suddenly I heard some dripping. Wait...dripping???...there should be no dripping!!!

I looked down and sure enough, I had fluid dripping underneath the car. So I whipped out my flashlight to look at my work area and saw a long silvery crack running vertically out of the socket for the coolant sensor. @&*#& #**#*@!$ !!!!!@*!$$!@
I broke my bloody car!!!

Actually, I am fairly proud of myself. I didn't scream, yell, swear (well, I sort of swore in russian...I said "The devil take it" which is somewhat like dammit), and only gave the bumper a slight kick to show the car who was boss. After all, who could I get mad at??? I was the putz that broke it. It was ALL ME!!!

It was a miserable weekend wondering how much it would take to fix it, followed by a miserable Monday knowing how much it would take to fix it, followed by miserable (hasn't ended yet) realization how much it did cost to fix it. Ira has let me off easy with only some good natured salt-in-wounds remarks. After all, we weren't going to use that $800 bucks for anything important.

Silver lining (i.e. half hearted attempt to make myself feel less stupid) -- chevy's have a problem with the manifold gasket. Eventually, it would have to be changed to the tune of $600 when it cracked and the manifold developed a leak. Now I have the updated gasket. I also got a "free" oil change. A thermostat tuneup, and my fluid swapped out. And I learned an important lesson...again: Working on cars sucks.

It's not me, so it must be you

Life is crazy. I know this cause I live in it and I am not crazy. Therefore the craziness around me must be incidental, and therefore not my fault. That's my story and I am sticking to it.

Dasha went to get her kindergarten shots today. She got two in each leg and didn't even cry. She was immensely proud of that and that she got Tweety-bird band-aids. She is quite the dancing princess and is generally very pleasant except when she decides to be whiny. And homie (papa) don't play 'dat.

I nearly had an Ivan the Terrible (among other things is known for killing his son in a fit of rage) moment with Kiril this past weekend. I wont elaborate on a blog (family who haven't heard the tale can call or chat me for details). But nevertheless, he was close to death. VERY close to death. Luckily for him I resorted just to being loud and gave him a light whap up side the head as a what-were-you-thinking gesture.

Asya is very busy. I think she will do well with a college schedule cause she has something like it now. She takes too long on her homework and is the last kid in bed every night. She was also invited to participate in this year's Feis in SLC with her dance troupe. It will be expensive, but probably a lot of fun.

Misha is still the funnest kid around. He keeps progressing sometimes in leaps, sometimes in bounds, sometimes in baby steps. When we try to get him to say new words, he usually just laughs at us or says one of his backups.

Ira is pregnant and that says most of it. She is in the potty, or on the way to the potty half the time now. The other half is spent saying how much she is tired of the potty.

The houseguest is still around. Ira happened to mention that she really didn't want to have a houseguest in the first place but wanted to do it for personal humanitarian growth. My question was why I had to suffer for her personal growth.

We are looking forward to Nikolai's (or Fyodr's...fickle, fickle Ira) grand entrance. It should nicely fall sometime between the Highland festival and the Feis. Then it's back to less sleep, more diapers, and church will get even more fun with two wiggly worms.

My computer died at work today. Nothing worse than spending a day at work trying to get another system working to be able to do your work. I left without it being up. And the dummy IT guys we pay to take care of this kind of stuff were an hour late. I hope they grabbed the right computer.

Peace out.

Not Irish, but I do love bangers

This weekend was the St Patty's day parade in SLC. Asya's dance group was slotted to perform, so it behooved me to drive everyone up for the festivities. A couple notes for next year:

• Dress the kids warmer (yes, I should have listened to Ira).
• Bring ear plugs for all for the siamsa afterwards.
  
• Bring some lawn chairs for the parade.
  
• Figure out a way to be there for the bagpipes, cause that's the only real fun I get out of it.
• It may be expensive, but set aside some funds for food there. It's darn tasty.
  

Speaking of which, Kiril really wanted a "hot dog". And I really wanted one too. So I stood in line a while to purchase some fantastically overpriced Irish bangers (sausages). Although I hate standing in line, it turned to my advantage. The vendor, it seems, had failed to get their food handlers permits so they were unable to serve hot food. But, since we were in line, they decided to give us the bangers for free. Yum.

In other news, Asya came home with an award the other day. In spite of us having to get after her all the time, and forbidding her from taking her books to school (cause she reads in class instead of doing her work), she succeeded in placing in the top 10 percent of readers in the nation on her standardized tests. Must have her old man's genes.

Misha has made some great progress in his fine motor skills. Yesterday the KOTM guy, Mark, was there working with him and while we were discussing stuff, Misha stacked three blocks on top of each other by himself, without prompting. We have been working on that stuff for ages. Misha has also started "dancing". He leans his head to one side and starts circling. It's great fun to see. I'll have to film it and post it later.

Houdini does it again

There are certain things that Misha REALLY enjoys. Cheese, bath-time, animals, and playing outside. With the mom either busy or ill this past little while and with spring fever evidently kicking in, Misha always enjoys outside time.

Yesterday I came home feeling somewhat ugh. The flu has run it's course through my family these past couple of weeks. I don't know if I got the flu or a cold bug, but yesterday I decided to come home early from work and rest. Feeling a little achy. When I got home I tried to rest in my room, but the wife, who still has a nice cough, wouldn't let me rest, so I relocated to the living room, taking Misha with me.

Alisa was doing her math homework, the Houseguest was doing something at the kitchen table. Misha was playing around. Kiril and Dasha asked if they could play outside to which I responded to the affirmative. Like all kids their attention to detail lacks something significant, and when the left the house, the front door was not securely shut.

I fell asleep finally but was rudely awoken. Kiril motioned me over to the front door. When I stood up and walked over, I beheld Misha in the arms of a strange couple. They had retrieved him from the center of the semi busy street just to the north of my house. Being still a bit groggy, I got my semi-profuse thanks and tried to figure out how it had happened seeing as how both Asya AND the Houseguest were sitting in view of the front door. It turned out that Asya had even closed the door when she saw it open.

This is the second time Misha has escaped and headed that direction. The first time, I was in the shower and Ira was surfing the net when the cat (who is not currently a housecat) appeared. She went to investigate and saw the door open and then went looking for Misha who was nearly to the same road.

Gonna have to buy a bell to tie around that kids neck...or a ankle monitor. Geez.