Anything is a toy

So I was in my office the other day and Andrei is playing with some of his Mega Bloks and then all of the sudden I look over and....




This is fabric box that we store his toys (in this case his Mega Blocks) in which is then put into a big bookcase kind of thing in his room.

Phone Etiquette

Like most little kids Andrei likes talking on the phone. When we first introduced him to the phone he didn't realize you actually needed to talk back when someone said something to you. He thought they could see you. So someone would ask him a question and he'd shake his head "yes" or "no" instead of saying the word. However after a couple of times he got the hang of it, although until recently he would almost whisper the words rather than saying them in his normal volume.

Also like most kids he loves to push buttons. He's pretty sharp when it comes to figuring out which buttons do what and remember which ones we tell him to press and which ones not to. So he knows which button hangs up the phone and Stef calls us during the day, usually to see how things are going and then always once she's left and on her way home.

And of course I usually let Andrei "say hi to Mommy". She'll ask him a bunch of questions (mostly "yes" or "no" ones) and then she'll say "goodbye" at which point I tell him to "say bye-bye and then press the button." However, he's so focused on the fact that he gets to press the button that most of the time he neglects to say "bye-bye" and instead just hangs up on her.

So when talking to relatives I have to prep them by mentioning that when you say goodbye to Andrei you're not going to get a nice "bye-bye" back and instead just hear a click so don't take it personally. We'll be working on phone etiquette later.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter O

If you haven't figured it out yet, our child is brilliant. He now recognizes his first few letters with the letter "O" appearing to be the favorite.

He's been playing with his new Fridge Phonics toy (Thanks Kelly, Stephany, and Taylor) and is already learning the letters. Our first exposure to him knowing his letters came last night. Andrei is playing with the toy, says O, picks up the O magnet and puts in in the Fridge Phonics player. Steve and I were both surprised by this, so we rearranged the letters and asked him to show us the O again and he chose the right letter. I'm not sure why he likes O best but he does.

Tonight when we were reading his bedtime stories I asked him if he saw an O on the page, and he proceeded to point to all of the different Os that he could find. Like I said, our child is brilliant.

The Passport Story

We have lots of great "Russia" stories to tell so in this one, I'll tell you the story of the Russian passport photo of our little guy.

The day after court, we were scrambling with our translator to try and get the paperwork done so we could leave for Moscow about a week early. One of the items was to get the kid's passport pictures taken. We arrive at the baby home and wait downstairs for all of the little guys to appear but wait - there are four bundled up babies and only three families. Another family was showing up on Sunday for their court date on Monday, so their son was also joining us on our little adventure.

So the three families, translator, driver, and extra baby pile back into the van for a trip down the street to the grocery store/flea market/passport photo place. Let me try and paint a picture of the building - downstairs was a full grocery store which was packed on a Saturday night up some steep concrete stairs was a flea market type place with a bunch of little kiosks selling anything you might need with a passport photo booth as well.

So up the stairs we go with our bundled little guy and then need to take off the layers to get him into a state for his passport photo. Into the photo booth we go with a very unhappy guy, take his passport photo, dress him back in his layers, down the stairs and back out to the van to wait for the photos to be developed.

About 10 minutes later our translator comes back with the pictures, but wait there's a problem. The photographer accidentally deleted Andrei's pictures. So back up the stairs, removing layers, try to get an unhappy boy to sit still and look at the camera, dress him back in the layers, down the steep concrete stairs, and back into the van to wait.

Good News, this time the pictures are ready and here's what we've ended up with
(or is it really a young Uncle Fester?):

We're still here

Warning - this post is really just rambling thoughts, I'll try to put some organization around it, but I have to do this while I'm also trying to eat my lunch.

Yes, it has been more than two weeks since my last blog post, and there really isn't any good excuse. I've both had blogger's block and can't believe how much we had going on in May and so far in June. Andrei has quite the social schedule and keeps us all busy.

I was looking forward to May being over since that month had way too much stuff going on to keep track of what I was doing. Here's a list of what I can remember from May.

- First trip to Disneyland
- Mother's Day
- 2 friend's birthday parties
- His birthday party (first big gathering of the family)
- Oh yeah, our wedding anniversary (15 years) and I'll admit, I actually forgot the morning of the actual day but did remember later.

Now that May and half of June are over, I'm making a new commitment to blog more often so I'll stop getting the harassing emails and phone calls wondering if we've dropped off the face of the earth.

Now for the obligatory picture (this can't be comfortable can it?).

We Have Success

For the past week we've made huge strides in Andrei's eating habits. As we've mentioned before, the boy won't eat green vegetables except for avocados/guacamole. In fact, he would thoroughly inspect his food before putting it in his mouth. We finally got some spinach into him via ravioli, but other green vegetables were a no go.

The other day, when we were eating Chinese (not real Chinese but American Chinese) I was teaching him how to stab food to pick it up with his fork. Okay, these aren't the best table manners but allows the food to actually make it into his mouth and not on the floor. This was great fun for him, so I went out on a limb and had him stab some vegetables. Broccoli, Zucchini, and Carrot all went in without a problem. Mushrooms however weren't a hit.

Fast forward to Sunday dinner which consisted of cod and broccoli. I was really pushing my luck but figured with just the two choices, I had a good chance of success with the broccoli. Yep, the child went straight for the broccoli first and ate most of it. There were about three servings of the green veggie there and all but two little "trees" were eaten. The reason for success, cheese and letting him stab the food with a real fork rather than his toddler spork.

At this point we're at the whatever works stage of parenting. And this is a huge victory in my eyes.