One Plus One....

Yep, Tyoma's figured out some basic addtion. Thank  you Youtube and vintage Sesame Street!  Today's big breakthrough was adding one to a number to get the next number up. Tyoma correctly added 1 to the numbers 1 through 45 today, about four times in a row.  He's really had numbers on the brain all this week!

His spelling is about the same, 1-10, about a third of his colors plus his usual stuff (20-30 words). This is pretty cool, but not as cool as him playing with a little girl at preschool today! When I came to pick him up, they were playing with felt letters together. He was actually paying attention to her and waiting his turn! Yay Tyoma!!!

Snow Again

Why do snowstorms always occur on Wednesdays? It was predicted that we'd get 5-8 inches today. I swear we got fourteen.  The snow started up before dawn, fluffy sweet stuff, falling gently. I started shoveling at 10:30 and I swear six inches had fallen already (news said three). When I left to pick Tyoma up from preschool at noon the snow was wafting down in big white sheets. The roads were so blanketed in snow as to be indiscernible from the landscape. 

Am I grateful that preschool is within walking distance? You bet! Not that I'd walk. Anyway, Tyoma fell asleep like an angel so I had plenty of time to shovel snow. What work!  A third of the way through I called Tennisfiend and asked him to pick up a snow blower on the way home! Actually, the problem isn't the snow, which is rather pleasant to shovel, it's the ice beneath. I slipped and slipped as I struggled to move the increasing bulk of snow out of the driveway. After working for almost an hour, a neighbor with a snow blower finished up for me. Gratitude!  Especially since I was getting tired of shoving  all the snow over to Tennisfiend's side of the driveway!

A Day of Doubts

I had such a crazy day with Tyoma. He skipped his nap, third day in a row and was into almost everything. All the limits I tried to set resulted in tears and meltdowns. He refused to eat good food and cried for cookies and ice cream. Ack!!! I felt that I was such a bad guy, "No, no, noing!" all day long. I don't believe that he was feeling unwell, unless of course, his teeth were troubling him. Perhaps a case of too much energy and too little opportunity to burn it off? Or maybe a reaction to another change in our household?

I took him to the mall to run around for a bit and this seemed to help. He looked like the happiest kid in the playground. What a relief. Sometimes it's hard to know when to be firm and unyielding and when to cut a sick kid some slack. Bottom line: cookies and ice cream are not food groups (until you're 20!). Before he became the devil baby, he spent part of the morning putting on Grandma's boots (which I kidnapped) and stomping around. On Flickr, you can see all four pics, which boldly feature "keep out of this" gates.

Happy Birthday Grandmam!

You would have been 101 today! I still think of you and miss you! You would be so pleased to see Tyoma and could probably answer all sorts of questions that I have about bright little boys!
 

Piggy Back!

I just wanted to share some cute pictures:
 
 Two cuties!!!   Looking exceptionally Russian in this picture!   We finally got Tyoma to wear something on his head! Grandma's Northface headband!

A Little Vacation

Fontessa has taken off for a week in Philadelphia to visit with friends. Her visit has been very restful for everyone, excepting, of course, for the colds and tummy bugs that continuously plauge us.

I'm glad for the little break. It keeps us from getting on each other's nerves.

It feels as if everything in the house is smoothly regulating itself. What a relief to have sold our home in NM! I hope that soon all will be resolved with Tennisfiend's company in NM as well. Ahhhh!

Tennisfiend Gets Baby Ready For School

 We were woken up at 2:30 this morning by Tyoma. He discovered that the new crib bumper I installed was absolutely horrifying at night. It took me ten minutes of fiddling to untie the damn thing. Meanwhile a dazed Tennisfiend took him down stairs to give him some jello. As I cursed and struggled with the fabric ties, I began to feel more and more nauseated. By the time I finally settled the baby down to sleep, I felt practically incapacitated by nausea.  I rousted TF and asked him to whip me up a glass of some stomach medicine his mom had brought from Russia--she knew that I kept picking up tummy bugs from Tyoma and thought it might help.

So my next few hours were spent fretting that the unknown medicine would kill me in my sleep, especially since my belly had began to cramp painfully (naturally subsequent research revealed that the substance is as harmless as charcoal).  At 6:20 when TF came in to wake me, I told him I was sick and that he would have to get Tyoma ready for school by himself. You never saw a more shocked look on his face! It was as if I had told him that he needed to amputate my left leg with a butter knife. To add to the comedy, he was wearing his favorite hoodie backwards. I felt miserable enough, I didn’t even laugh. I fell back asleep, after answering a dozen questions and reminding him a dozen times to not forget Tyoma’s blankie.

I partially recovered in the afternoon and was very grateful to Fontessa for helping with Tyoma, who once again skipped his nap. I swear, we have never had so much trouble with getting sick in our lives!

Today Issss Monday, It's 10:15...

I felt such a flood of relief when our SLP called to cancel today's session. Since it was a holiday, she wanted to spend some time with her daughter. Hooray! We rescheduled for the second of February. I was so glad to not have to worry about cleaning the house (more) or getting the monster to take his afternoon nap.

So anyway, during naptime, the monster jumped up and down in his crib, saying, "Today issss Mondayyy. It's 10:15."  This was followed by, "Today issss Mondayyy. It's 10:16."  And so on until "Today issss Mondayyy. It's 10:55," when he started all over again with, "Today issss Mondayyy. It's 10:15." The funniest thing is that when he talks, he sounds like a foreigner with an odd accent. Sometimes I'd swear he was a tiny little Japanese busninessman, others that he's a German tourist. How strange, he never sounds Russian.

Hole In The Floor

This morning Tyoma decided to play post office with the return air floor registers. He'd drop a letter through the grate, say “Uh oh!” and retrieve it by removing the register. As I chatted with Tennisfiend’s mom in the kitchen, I heard a startled "Wahhh!" Tyoma had fallen through the register hole and partially into the basement below!!!

Can you believe that the bottom of the register was supported only by a flimsy piece of tacked up insulation?! Gasp!! The only thing that prevented Tyoma from smashing into the concrete floor twelve feet below was his stout backside (yay me, he inherited my big butt!)  Anyway, I was astonished, since I assumed that floor registers should be either screwed in to the floorboards or firmly secured from underneath. What home would sport huge holes in the floor that a baby could fall through?!  Yikes!

In forty minutes I had a half assed solution--I screwed in wood panels beneath all the baby-sized registers on the first floor. Problem was, I only had a single piece of 2x4 to tie into at each register, leaving everything else supported by an odd assortment of screws, nails and wood slivers.  Despite my hard work, Tyoma was so stimulated by his first fall that the registers were the most exciting things in the house. I wound up moving heavy furniture over the registers until we could rig up something better. 

From Russia with Love

Fontessa arrived from Moscow for a six week visit! I spent the better part of the day cleaning and straightening up, as anyone could predict. I sent the squirmy guy for a day at preschool so he can spend tomorrow morning with Baba. Naturally, I wanted to get him excited over the visit so I showed him some old pictures of Fontessa and chanted, "Baba is coming! Baba is coming!!!" End result? At 9:00 this evening he was jumping up and down in his crib yelling, "Ba-Ba! Ba-Ba! Ba-Baaaa!" Little Maniac!

Another ice storm is predicted for tonight, although it won't hit till 2am or so. I fretfully checked the weather and flight status info until I got the "We're on our way home" call from Tennisfiend. Poor Fontessa arrived with no luggage, since her flight was delayed in Moscow and her bags didn't make the connecting flight in Zurich. Although TF told me this on the phone, I didn't think to fetch her some clothing untill after she'd been here for a half an hour.  I frantically searched through my stuff for something for her to wear that wasn't to monstrously huge. I'm a sturdy,  tall woman and Fontessa's as petite and slight as a bird. I found some lounge wear, but was sort of like Stimpy dressing Renn in his worn sweats.

WE SOLD THE HOUSE!!!!!

It's been almost a year to the day since we put our house on the market, but we finally sold our house! The deal was congealing just as we were coping with the ice storm and power outage here. With our basement flooding and no power, the last thing we were thinking of was our sweet old place in New Mexico!! Sure, we've had more than a few "buyers" who were "very interested," but nothing ever came of it. So when our realtor called to say we had buyers, we said, "Sure" and went back to airing out our sodden quilts. Our new buyers loved our little home and took it at the listed price, minus a few repairs. Yay!!! It feels so unreal. What a huge relief it is to not worry about extra bills, maintenance, the pool freezing or tornadoes!
 
  

We won't see any money for a few weeks but we have plans to fund a little project in the basement anyway. After the flooding that floated twenty cardboard boxes, three wooden book shelves and several boxes of clothes around in circles in the basement, we decided to move wooden furniture upstairs into my "office" (my office being the partially finished and very cold room above the garage) and everything else onto shelves or waterproof boxes. Yay, Rubbermaid! It would be nice to have a mini-Ikea shopping spree and replace some of our sad Closet-maid storage that has been doubling for furnishings, but it might not work out that way. I think we'll finish painting the kitchen and living room first! Yay!!!

Farwell Mustard Yellow!!!

Yay!!! We are closing in on our kitchen project! I can't tell you how nice it is to cover up all that yellow! We are hoping to get everything painted before Tennisfiend's mom arrives on the 5th!