Portrait of our child. Week 7.

“Toddler’s first encounter with the magic of fall”

Yes, I present you with another picture of Danya and the leaves, because there is nothing more precious for me than watching my child discover the wonderful world of nature.  I feel like we humans are quiet disconnected from nature these days and our kids need to spend as much time as possible outside, getting dirty, discovering every little stick, insect and flower.  Danya instantly becomes more calm and attentive when he’s outside, so no matter how hard it is to get him dressed and ready to go out, it’s still worth it to me.

The leaves are fallin’, fallin’ to the ground

 

 

The days are shorter and darker so every minute of sunshine that we get, we try to savour. Today was first sunny day in about two weeks.  Even though Hurricane Sandy didn’t do a lot of damage here when compared to coastal cities in US, it was still incredibly rainy and windy.  Even though my goal was always to take Danya outside at least twice a day last week there has been a couple of days that we just stayed in.  And I didn’t feel a bit bad about it.

Danechka is walking now, so it’s so much more fun to be outside with him.  He still wants to hold our hand most of the time, but we don’t mind.  Better hold his hand than chase him around!

He is also talking! Some of his favourites are “To eto?”(What’s this?), “Ti kyda, kyda?”(Where are you going?), “Chika, ti kyda?”(Chika where are you going?”, “Da”(yes), “Papa”(Lamp/Streetlight), “Whooo-oooo”(owl), “Pau”(cat), “Oooof”(dog), and of course “Ti-ti”(boobies) 🙂

Me and Sasha are in the midst of our studying, I have a month and a half until I finish my masters, and Sasha is almost done half of his internship and will be switching clinics very soon.  It’s chaotic at times, but we’ve got to do it, we have no way out of it but to be strong.  We are really grateful for the help from our family, we really could not manage what we are doing now without them.  Sasha’s mom and grandma and my mom are amazing, they always help when we ask them and it’s so rewarding to watch their relationship with Danya grow and watch him open up to them.

Sending lots of love as usual,

Lesya

A day in life

I’d thought it’d be fun to record what our days are like, so I can look back and remember in the future.  The photos are not all from the same day, but since our days are pretty much alike, they still represent our typical day. Let’s begin.

We wake up around 8 or 9, or even 10am if we’re lucky.  Danya goes to sleep at a different time every day and sleeps for about 12 hours (don’t be jealous, he still wakes up every two hours to eat), so I can always predict when he will wake up.  We get up, wash our faces and go into the living room for some playtime and breakfast.

After breakfast we *try to* brush out teeth and either go for a morning nap or head out the house for some adventures.  Today for example we headed into the Early Years Centre next door (it’s literally 5 minutes walking from us!).  This morning there was a program for kids from birth to five years.  There were only two babies and the rest were “big” kids, and Danya really enjoyed watching them play and interact.

By the way, how creepy is that last picture? Too creepy if you ask me or Sasha.

After playtime Danya enjoyed some animal crackers sitting at the same table as all the kids.  Big kids were actually making fun of him because he was banging his plate on the table and stealing yogurt and crackers from nearby kids.  So cute!  We were done at 11:30 am and headed outside into our park for a short walk for me and an outside naptime for Danya.

Today I found this neat blue robin egg just lying there on the ground. There was no birds or nest around so I just transferred it out under the nearest tree.  I tried to look up on what I could do to save that little bird in the egg, but internet said that it was too late to do anything. Sad.

After we came home it was lunchtime.  Today I’ve had brown rice pasta with zucchini with mushrooms and sun-dried tomato sauce with some spring greens salad.  Do you hear yummy?  After I ate we had some more playtime and some more naptime for Danya and me.  I’m usually not so lucky to have Danya nap twice a day, but I scored today!

After naptime we had some more eating and playing (I know it sounds like all we do all day and you are right).  As soon as I see that Danya gets tired we do our sleeptime routine: bath, book and a lullaby.  And then hopefully the baby is off to the sweet dreamland and we adults have some time for ourselves.  Sasha usually either studies or plays soccer and I work out, browse the web, blog and drink tea.

And that’s pretty much our day.  Our days change pretty much every week.  As soon as Danya masters something new, the whole schedule goes CABOOM! and we’re off to something new.

Have a great weekend,

love,

Lesya

The only thing missing was Chika

Last week has been unpleasant.  I had this strange headache for almost five days, where I couldn’t function at all, I just wanted to lie in bed, but we all know with a baby that is pretty much impossible.  The weather has been pretty grimy as well, so I didn’t feel that bad for not taking as many walks as we used to.  Then the week got even worse when we had to drive Chika off to Sasha’s parents on Thursday night.

Last Friday’s weather has been wonderful, so right after Sasha returned from school, off we went to the park right down the hill from our buildings. This has probably been the first time that I was in that park without Chika.  It was sad, but on the other side me and Sasha noticed how relaxing it is when you don’t have to worry about Chika running attacking another dog or running away while chasing a squirrel.  But we still miss her. Like crazy.

It’s so beautiful right now. This is probably my favourite time of the year – the leaves are just starting to open up on the trees and all the greens are so fresh, so bright.  Everything is waking up.  The birds have finally arrived from their winter adventures in the warm countries and are busy building nests and having babies.   Bees and other insects are busy building new colonies and finding those first spring flowers.   Sometimes it’s good to realize that the world is far beyond what you see.

Adventures on Niagara Escarpment

This beauty is only 45 minutes away from us.  School finished early for Sasha on Thursday so we took our chances with Danya and took a little road trip out of the city to visit the Niagra escarpment. We’ve been there only once before, maybe three or four years ago when we decided to mountain bike there.  Unfortunately it didn’t work out then as Sasha brought his father’s bike which had the worst seat in the history of bike seats and you couldn’t bike more than a minute on it, don’t even dare to go into the mountains with it.

Danya lasted for maybe half hour in the car after which he started crying like crazy because he wanted to come into my arms, he was sick of being strapped in the car seat.  But fifteen minutes later we finally made it and it was soo worth it, one of the most enjoyable nature walks I’ve had in a long time.  Some of the highlights of the trip were definitely turkey vultures which were circling around us for the most of the trip, probably thinking if Chika would be a good dinner.

Most credits for the photographs go to Sasha, he really amazes me with his ability to make some really cool shots and he’s got ideas that I could never have imagined on my own.

Snapshots of spring

Well, hello there!  I’ve been out of this territory lately.  Danya was sick for the whole week and just now has started to get better.   Poor baby was first irritated by two top teeth coming through and then to that was added a high fever, an ear infection, a stomach virus and then an adverse reaction to amoxicillin we were giving him.  I’m not really sure if he had all these things but doctors did diagnose him with all of them   It’s incredibly hard to watch my baby be sick and not be able to take away his pains.  We did our best though – we held him, sang to him, tried to keep his fever down and stayed home for almost the whole week, even though it was Sasha’s only week off for I don’t even know how long.

Our weather has finally gotten back to normal, it’s not that hot as it was two weeks ago.  Today was incredibly beautiful outside so out we went, armed with a baby in a backpack, Chika on a leash and me with our camera.  I was trying to play around with the aperture setting of our camera today as I have been shooting on manual for way too long.  Sasha has joined us on our walk later on and we returned home together.

Well, hello there Ms. Spring!

We are so glad you are finally here!  We are mesmerized by all the gifts you brought along with you – sunshine, warm temperatures, songs of the happy birds, and knowingness of what is to come soon – flowers, green leaves, shorts and summer dresses, fun days at the lakes, camping (? hope so!), day trips to new and old places, oh I can’t wait!

But for now we are just happy with what we’ve got: sunshine and happy babies playing in the grass for the first time in their life.