CoffeeAnn

Tonight my mom and I were recalling the previous thing Dominic said about Mozart.. It was already dark out and Dominic said: "Mozart?! Oh no! It's so dark out! Maybe it's a bed time?.." Obviously, Mozarts don't walk around at night :)

P.S. My mom is leaving the day after tomorrow after staying with us for 2,5 months. We all are going to miss her a lot..

.. occured 2 days ago.

Sad part. On the way to the open house of the new school Dominic is starting in a week, he fell and hit the wire fence with his lip. There was lots of blood and he couldn't calm down. Thanks to my friend Sofia, we put a bandaid on him and cleaned him up. I drove him to the emergency room and they said he needs one stitch. It just broke my heart to see the needle going through his skin and to find out that he will probably have a scar for life. I could have prevented it, I could have stopped him... He looks better already but it's going to take a while to heal.

Happy part. Sophia started walking on her own! She made couple of steps from my mom to me, and then she was just letting go all the time, standing up on her own and making couple of steps! When I tried to record that on the video, of course she was not doing it :) She is really excited now and only wants to walk now!

Sophia has 5 teeth now - 3 on the top and 2 on the bottom. She is going to be 1 year old - it's so hard to believe!
Dominic is becoming more and more interested in music. I bought him a CD with Mozart on it, he really likes it! He keeps asking "What's that, mama?" when different instruments are playing and he pretends to play on them!
One day, when we heard somebody walking outside the house, I asked: " I wonder, who that might be" and he said: "Maybe Mozart?!" :)
Last week Dominic graduated from his very first preschool, and in September he is going to start a new one with his swedish friends Jacob and Simon. That should be fun!
Can't wait to buy a piano so I can teach him how to play... They say 3 is the best age!

"Linon" for lion, "goining" for going, "booms" for baloons.. Every time I decide to write it down, I can't remember all the things that he says :)
He also said "Happy Mother's Day" yesteday!

Sophia got her first tooth today!!! Can't remember when it happened to Dominic.. Should have started this blog earlier ;)

I just love the fact that from where we live you can just jump in the car and be in the mountains in less than an hour! And even though it can be raining here, it's a winter wonderland in the Cascades! I went 4 times skiing this season, twice on the night skiing till 10 pm! It was absolutely amazing - no lines, fresh powdered snow, beautiful views!
This Saturday we decided to let Dominic play in the snow one more time this season, so we went to the same place (Snoqualmie pass) but went to do something different - tubing! It's basically sliding down the hill on the tubes (something like tires but made specifically for this!). Dominic just had a blast! Even though it was snowing and I thought he will just get wet and upset, he enjoyed it so much! He didn't want to go down by himself, so either I or Dave would go with him. There was even one lift with hooks which drags the tube and a person in it up the hill! It's pretty slow but after running up with the tube and Dominic couple of times I started appreciate it :)
That's how it looked like: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davebarn/3354978986/

Dominic calls her "baby Fia" and me and my dad called her "Joe Cocker" one morning because she had very rough voice after waking up ;)

Dominic said today: "Mommy, try this hat on!".. I am speechless.

Ok, it's not exactly school but Dominic has started his first EVER daycare! It's only 2 times a week for 2,5 hours but it's the VERY first time, when he is by himself (without me or Dave) with other people (that aren't his relatives) doing fun things and learning! The palce is called The Story Book center - they teach kids literacy and communication skills, and even give some books to read at home!
Dominic is very excited about the whole "going to school" thing! When we first told him he is going to school, he was by the door in a second (it was 10pm), all ready to go, saying "Bus! Me bus!". Apparently, he thought that he was getting on one of those school buses :) Unfortunately, I had to tell him that for now he will go with mommy in the car, but he still keeps saying "Bus!" as soon as I mention school :)
He completed his first art "project" - a paper plate folded in half with some finger-painted stuff all over it. I am keeping it and putting it in a frame :)

Our little girl is growing so fast! She is already wearing 9-month-old clothes and she tried some puree for the first time yesterday! I think she was ready for a long time to try some REAL food, so she just swallowed the whole jar in 5 minutes and was asking for more screaming out loud :)
She also grabs everything that is in front of her and tries to put it in her mouth, including her fists! She likes being on her belly, she is swinging from one arm to another when doing it.
After a couple of times in the swimming pool, she learned how to hold on her breath when I put her under the water after saying "Ready! Steady! Go! BUBBLE!". We get lots of attention in the pool because of that, everybody is asking how old she is and how she learned to do that :) So I am giving away free consultations on infant swimming :)

The big guy turned 2 on the 28th and we had a bigger than expected party. About 10 kids plus the accompanying parents and enough other adults to get to 30! Kinda against the 1 kid per year of age birthday rule... House seems to be able to handle the chaos and there were toys everywhere. A little Nemo at the end settled a few down.

Dominic had help blowing out the 2 candles (a monkey and a lion) and managed to eat one of the monkey ears later. He got the 2nd one this morning after promising not to um-um it.

Thanks to everyone for coming out. I had a great time and I hope Dominic didn't hug your kid too hard :P

- Dave

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Just found her  - great stuff! Yulia Brodskaya

Dominic's language is becoming more and more advanced. He already says "me chair popa" which means "I want to sit on that chair" (popa in Russian means butt :)). He says "hock" which means "hot". Also today I asked him how many babies his mama has (pretty tricky question, don't you think? ;) ) and he said: "Two baby"! I didn't even know he knows the word "two"! He can also point at different colors, sort different objects by color, build big towers out of everything, point at all the animals in the books.

So there, kids are growing REALLY fast :)

It's been almost a week that it started to snow in Redmond.. And not just some usual for this area sprinkles, but SNOW!!! The schools were closed, our road that's pretty steep is closed as well. That's the downside...

On the brighter side, though, kids are having a blast with all the sleds and snow balls and all the snow fun! I have NEVER seen this many people outside just walking around, chatting with each other.. All the Christmas decorations on the houses suddenly started to make perfect sense! It's just magical!

It's good we have a grocery store we can walk to - kind of like a winter adventure! We went  all 4 of us, and our danish "off-road" stroller came in handy! 

Dominic saw some kids sledding outside, he gave it a try as well and he loved it! I think it's time to put the young Barnebey on skiis this season! :) I wonder if they make ski boots of his size (8)?..

When I took a bus back from the store I walked to, I looked around and saw lots of other people like me with the grocery bags! Instead of driving, people actually were taking a bus to shop! Isn't it what we all are trying to do here? Walk more? Drive less? Be more healthy? Use less gas? etc etc...

Maybe all this snow storm is not such a bad thing after all... ;) 

Here is the great short movie! Thanks, Akve, it just made my day!

Today we went to the pool with kids. It's Sophia's second time and she loves it! I tried to put her under the water couple of times. She was shocked to begin with but didn't mind afterwards :) We are trying to teach her not to be afraid of the water just like we did with Dominic. He is like a fish right now! He puts his head under the water and.. stays there! Makes me scared but he is perfectly fine - catches his breath and all. We started with him when he was 3 months old and since then he just loves it! That's how it all started.

He also says "tree", "truck" (that's his favorite), "bed", "book", "baba" (for both babushka and sheep), "car", "why" (which means "water"), "gara" for girl, "rock", "baby" for his little baby sister and any other child even older than him, "bukh" for falling, pacifier, garbage and many other things (go figure :)).
Also he started singing! His favorite is ABC song, he doesn't say the letters, he makes them up. I do have to admit, he has a pretty good musical ear for his age, I can actually tell what he is singing, he holds the pitch and sings really loud! :)

Couple of days ago we cut his hair REALLY short, so now he looks like this.

U menia 10 avgusta rodilas devochka Sophia! My vse absolutno schastlivy i.. ne znaem, chto s nej delat :) Ona takaja malenkaja i hrupkaja! 

Ura-ura! V sredu papa priezhaet v gosti na mesiats! Ja tak soskuchilas... Vse vremia proigryvaju scenu, kogda ja budu ego vstrechat v aeroportu, kak my vse nachnem obnimatsa i pokazhetsa, chto vremia ostanovilos... 

Ochen interesno posmotret na ego reaktsiju, ved pervyj raz za okeanom! Ja dumaju, gody sovetskih idej "U nas - horosho, a tam, u kapitalistov - vse ploho" ne proshli darom. Kakogo zhe budet ego udivlenie, kogda on uvidet, chto zdes vse takie zhe liudi, i detki rastut, i vse zanimajutsa svoimi delami.. Nu razve chto mashyn bolshe.. Da i voobshe vse bolshe! I na velike mozhno katatsa s menshej opaskoj, ne tak, kak v Kieve... Nu pravda, do Danii im zdes daleko - velosipednyh dorozhek pochti net, velosipedisty v tseliah bezopastnosti chasto vyezhajut na trotuar - peshehodov zdes namnogo menshe, chem mashyn :)  

Hm, nado chto-to pridumat s hudozhestvennym oformleniem moego LiveJournal.. Ni u kogo net kreativnyh idej na etot schet? :)