Miscellaneous

Did I actually spell that word correctly?

Ok, here's a quick post because we have tons going on, and I wanted to share it with you all. 

Saturday was so much fun at the wedding!  I can't wait to tell you about it!  And, yes, we did learn a lot!  And Julia was BEAUTIFUL!

 Yesterday Isaiah and I had a great time with our friend Deanna!  We ate some yummy burgers before Isaiah and split a piece of really good chocolate cake (and yes, split, as in each ate half is an appropriate phrase).

This morning we're heading out to Novgorod with some friends to spend the night and do some site seeing.  Since we're traveling with friends, I think even the 4-hour bus ride will be fun.

Thursday I have a lesson as normal.  Friday Thomas has his lesson.  Saturday I have a lesson.  Saturday night we have Bible study.

Whew! This is a busy week!  Hopefully we'll get some unexpected fun Tot School done for A week while we're on our adventures.

And my last random comment--I received an email from one of my new "bloggy friends"; and I'm hoping you know who you are because I don't want to throw out your name for the world to see!  Anyway.  It is now lost in cyberspace somewhere, and I didn't even get to read all of it! :(  I would love to know what you have to say, so if you read this, and you would like to try sending it again, I would love to actually get to read beyond the first 10 words this time.  I love making new friends.

All right y'all!  Have a great week, and I'll "see" you in a few days.

Tot School-S is for...

Isaiah is 37 months old

...the 2nd letter of Isaiah's name, of course!

We have this foam alphabet set, so I pulled out the "S" and let him play with it.

Scooting!  We have this scooter board that Isaiah used to crawl with, but he's really too big for it now; it slows him down.  Since his sitting has improved so much, I put him on the scooter board this way, and off we went all around the apartment.  He loved it!

Snack

If you can guess what kind of cereal this is, then well, you can guess what kind of cereal this is.  Sorry, no prize comes with the box this time.  We did however use the contents for our snack a couple times this week.

The original idea was for Isaiah to put the little stars on the big S and then eat them, but well, that didn't work.  Instead I covered the S with stars, and he ate the away to find his letter of the week.

Self-portrait.  Here are some of Isaiah's attempts at a self-portrait.  I held the camera while he pushed the button, I'm not quite that trusting to let him do it completely on his own, yet!

Sorting.  We tried to clean out the school supplies cabinet.  We made some progress.

Stickers.  This was the first time Isaiah has used stickers.  I think that he liked them.  

Shirt, shorts, socks, shoes.  Aunt Beth, Uncle Jason and Jake gave Isaiah this puzzle, and all the pieces were labeled with S-words!
And speaking of socks, Isaiah is really into helping to dress himself lately, which is lots of fun.  He'll even try to put his socks on himself, which is really hard for him.

Strawberries!  We read The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear several times.  We even ate fresh strawberries, which was very exciting and helped it feel a little less like winter.

We also went shopping and shared some soft-serve ice cream.  We talked about shiny and silly hats when we read Old Hat, New Hat.  I had wanted to make some silly hats, but we ran out of time.  But we did plenty of other silly things which involved lots of smiles and giggling and rolling around and dancing!  We also went for lots of walks in the sun on our sidewalks that aren't as slippery with snow now!  Saturday we celebrated a wedding, which also involved walking around and seeing lots of statues (come back for the explanation of that one in another post!) and lots of fun silliness!

Lately I've been wondering if what I'm doing is helping Isaiah, well, for different reasons.  Tonight as we were riding the metro on the way home from church, I heard a little "ssss", "sss", "sss" over and over.  He wasn't reading "S" from a sign or anything (Russian "S" looks like English "C"), he was just saying the sound of the letter.  I then realized that he was saying words with the "s" sound better than he had before we started focusing on the letter!  I thank God for this encouragement to me.  I'm excited to see what will happen during A-week!

Check out the other great ideas at different Tot Schools over at 1+1+1=1.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

Dear Grandpa,

Today is your birthday.  I love you very much.  Thank you for letting me sleep in your office when we come to visit.

  I like working with you.  

Thank you for taking me for long walks.

I like it when you push me 1,000,000 times on the swing.

 Thank you for telling me about baseball. 

 

Thank you for dipping oreos in milk with me.

  

Thank you for giving me chocolate.

 

Thank you for blowing raspberries with me. 

 

Did I say I love you?  Because I do.  I say your name a lot, except when you ask me to, just ask Grandma.

Happy Birthday!

Love, Isaiah

What can You Learn from a Wedding?

Today our friend Julia is getting married!  We are all very excited for her and Constantine.  Well, Isaiah doesn't exactly understand what's going on, but once he realizes that he'll get to be around tons of people all day and outside for a good bit taking pictures, he'll be thrilled.

I had never really thought about this, but attending a wedding is a lesson in cultural etiquette.  I've already learned from my language teacher that women must wear skirts or dresses, there might be women in nice pants, but that's really not cultured.  Men must wear suits with a white shirt.  If it's in the winter, you must have a nice coat, not a jacket, not a blazer, not a normal winter coat, a NICE coat.  Everyone gives flowers to the bride and groom, but NOT yellow flowers!  You can give 3 long-stem roses or a nosegay, as long as it's not yellow!  (I wonder what they would have thought of our wedding with tons of yellow roses!) Oh, and although everyone is wearing boots right now, you can't wear boots to the ceremony; ladies must take shoes to change into when they arrive.

And speaking of ceremonies, there will be 2 today.  Everyone in Russia has a registration ceremony at special locations in the city.  This registration ceremony suffices for a legal ceremony.  Since Julia and her fiance (soon husband!) are Christians, they will also have a church ceremony.  Their church rents a hall from a local Christian university, and Julia explained to me that their unsaved relatives and friends wouldn't understand that this was a church, and would think it very odd; therefore, their church ceremony will be in a large Catholic church in the center of town. (This practice is pretty common as the larger non-orthodox churches regularly rent space to other people for services or concerts.  Our church, for example rents space from a large Lutheran church in the center of town.)  Then they'll have a reception at their church hall, which a friend has been decorating so that it will look less "hall-ish".

So, after today, I'll be able to tell you what else we learned, and if we stuck out like sore thumbs!  Hopefully we'll avoid any major social faux pas.

Try This One, Mastercard

2 Hotdogs:  $0.89

1 Drink:  $0.45

1 Ice Cream Cone to share:  $0.45

Special day with Little Man:  Priceless

Tagged in a Meme

Our creative friend Esme has tagged us in a meme about kids' products.  She told us about her dry erase board that she really enjoys, and then asked us and some other bloggers to talk about a product that they enjoy, so here we go...

I had a hard time picking something that's specifically a kid product because Isaiah likes best of all to play with magazines and books and cars.  Everything else he "tolerates", then I remembered his music!

We are so excited to have found these headphones (the link shows blue headphones, but Isaiah's are just white and silver, in case you feel confused by the pictures below) just for little people!  These are Fisher-Price headphones at a very reasonable price.  This Little Man is just like his daddy in that he absolutely LOVES music!  

These headphones made the perfect birthday present for him from Grandma and Grandaddy.

With all the spurts of traveling we do, which usually involves international flights, these headphones have been a tremendous help!

And when you have to take that early flight and then drive for a while to get to Grandma and Grandpa's house, the headphones can play your special music to help you relax and sleep!

All right, so I'm now supposed to tag 5 more people to talk about a product that they love.  If you'd like to participate, please go right ahead.  I'm curious what these people would choose to talk about:

Growing Hope 

The Schwant Family

Because Momma Says So...

Will and Carrie

Memoirs of Motherhood

This is what you need to do. Write a review of any kids product, it can be a toy, a book or anything which you have personally used. Pass this meme to five other blogger friends.

Things I Love

Over at a site that I've really enjoyed is a Mr. Linky (an internet thingy where you write a post and then put the link to that post into the correct spots so that your post is in a list of posts on that related subject) for a post about things you love about your husband.  The point of the post was to remind us that when we are not feeling a lot of love towards someone, that perhaps the best thing to do is to begin thanking God for that person.

While my love for Thomas doesn't feel "all dried up", I have lately been less than loving.  While working through some things in my insides, I've been withdrawn and rather reactionary.  I thought that linking up with the other ladies would be doing a good thing for me and for my amazingly wonderful husband!

So here goes, things that I am thankful for in my husband:

~He's incredibly musical--he plays the guitar, sings, directs music, writes music

~He plays hide and seek with Isaiah while I'm fixing dinner (hearing Isaiah laugh so hard that he almost stops breathing brings a smile to my face)

~He works hard at whatever he's doing whether it be "official" work or a hobby, he does it with all his might

~He figures out how to do electrical work so that we can have better lighting.

~He can cook!  I like to say that I'm the cook and he's the chef of the family.  He helps out a lot with the cooking, and he's really good at it!

~He's just handsome.  I'm thankful to be married to a handsome man.

~He likes to plan trips.

~He overcomes his fears to bring us great adventure!

I could go on, but I think that he would get embarrassed reading many more accolades. :)  He's a wonderful husband and father, and I thank God for him.

See, told you he was handsome!

Getting Back Into Tot School-Lots of Pictures!

Isaiah is 37 months old

We didn't get to Tot School every day this week, but we did have lots of fun!

Isaiah has been amazing us with his new sitting ability!  He's learned how to get himself from his normal tummy crawling position to this sitting position.  He's also now perfecting a position where he sits on his knees and doesn't use his hands for a few seconds.  This succeeds in improving his balance and scaring Mama while I try not to grab at him every time to prevent his falling backwards.

Working out those hips with Daddy!

We had a fun night with our friends.  Lydia was teaching Isaiah how to take care of a doll, which of course Isaiah has no idea how to do, since he has no dolls.  And much to Mama's sadness, he doesn't even really care about stuffed animals--it's cars all the way!

Continuing with the idea of working on the letters of his name, we did imprint painting (at least that's what we're calling it).  I took a large piece of paper and folded it in half, then I painted a big I in the middle.  I let Isaiah paint wherever he wanted, then we folded the paper in half again to imprint what he had done on both sides.

Apparently paint imprints work well with two hands, too.

Then of course we tried crayons again.  He likes these crayons from Aunt Luda because they come with a cup that he can take them out of and put them in very well on his own.

I got this idea from a fun book that some friends sent us.  I haven't started using the actual book yet, because I wanted to get Isaiah used to some of the actions on a larger scale first.  Here we worked on drawing a "straight" vertical line from one point to another.  I saw we, because we did it together.

But then he actually seemed a little more interested in coloring, at least on the table.

We pulled out this awesome play-doh set (also from our thoughtful friends).  I enjoyed the play-doh.  Isaiah enjoyed taking all the accessories out of the box and putting them back in.  He LOVES doing this with everything!

Or singing into the cup. :)

We got a package!  Isaiah's birthday present from Aunt Emily and Uncle Rich arrived, and we were finally able to go pick it up!  Isaiah enjoyed trying out his new foam playmat that has numbers and letters and animal puzzles and 4 special drawing squares--perfect for drawing while playing on the floor.

Our friend Julia came over on Wednesday as we were trying out this new activity.  Our friends, yep the same ones!, sent us some great stickers that I used for a few number cards.  The plan is for Isaiah to put the correct number of stickers on a second set and then use them for matching cards.  We'll do that part this coming week.  For now we're using them for number learning.  Julia worked on the Russian; I worked on the English (and a little Russian, but naturally, her pronunciation is a little better than mine).  I just love his expression in this picture. :)

And taking an idea from RockerMom, here's one of my new favorite pictures of Isaiah.

Don't forget to check out the other Tot Schools around the world at 1+1+1=1.