New Year party #1

Today, we went over to my parents' house to celebrate the coming of the new year with my sister and her boyfriend who won't be able to spend the day with us. We had a lovely lunch and exchanged presents (yay, I love presents!)

Calling boys already??




Opening her presents from auntie Anna and uncle Andrey - a giant bag of mega blocks!


Look at this fancy pink car!!


Building things with papa


Y and uncle Andrey played a little too


Ta-da! They built this wonderful tall tower... which the kiddo knocked over in less than two seconds ;)


And of course, no party is ever complete without some dancing!

First snow of the season

So we finally got snow on Saturday. Haven't had a chance to go out and play in it until yesterday afternoon though... turns out, it's not such a bad thing. Sasha wanted absolutely nothing to do with the white stuff! In fact, she freaked out and cried a little, holding on to my hand as tight as she could once we got out on our balcony. Sigh. I did take a few pictures, although she looks less than thrilled in most of them.

"Um, ma, what is this??"


"Nooo, get me back inside, where it's dry and warm!"


I even attempted to make a snowman - this is the best I had time for, lol

Our tree is up!

We went out on Saturday (it had just started snowing so it was nice and quiet out) and got a nice little tree... well, it looked fairly small when we were picking it out, not so much when we brought it home. It fits wonderfully, it's just that we were hoping it'd be smaller, mostly because we were afraid of what our little Miss Sasha might do to it. But I do have to say that she's done surprisingly well with it - she mostly wants to touch the tree and take off the ornaments, but we're working on it. For the most part, she just ignores it, which is frankly so strange, since it's big and green and you can't possibly not notice it!
Anyway, here are some pictures from the weekend:



Sasha "helped" decorate the tree


...then took a break to dance!


This is Sasha's 2009 ornament - "dancing with daddy" - it's so cute I had to have it when I saw it at Hallmark (besides it was 50% off)


This is a tree ornament Sasha made - well she painted it (along with herself, her highchair and everything else within her reach) and I cut it out


Sasha inspecting the job


...adn putting the topper on the tree

A little update on us

I just thought I'd update on how Sasha, as well as Y and I, are doing. Little Miss seemed to have passed on her lovely cold on to me and then her papa. We're getting better (I think), although I'm not too sure we're going to be going to our swimming lesson tomorrow. Y got over it pretty quickly, but Sasha's and my noses are stuffy now (at least there's no more running mess!)
We're hoping to finally get that tree (non-Christmas - I'll explain at some point later) this weekend. Then we have planned to go out with my cousin, his girlfriend and her daughter to see the pretty pretty Christmas lights. Then a friend of mine is coming over on Sunday; so we better get better by then, huh?
And a few pictures, just because I couldn't leave my faithful readers (all six of you ;)) without any pictures:

Trying out a box from my new boots - she fits perfectly!


Too cool for school ;)


Helping me cook in the kitchen


Trying on grandpa's hat


Miss Sasha LOVES cuddling and playing on our bed!

15-month check-up

We had Sasha's 15-month check-up at the pediatrician's today. She needed to get the second part of her flu shot. Well, she had a runny nose since Sunday night, but we thought we'd go in anyway, if for nothing else, to just get her checked out. The dr. said it was probably just a bit of a cold (besides cutting a bajillion teeth at the same time!), so we decided to go ahead and do the flu shot. Now I'm starting to doubt that decision... while she's been acting fine and only a bit more clingy than usual, she has no fever; but it was such a battle to put her down for the night. Now, she's usually great about falling asleep: she babbles for a bit and falls asleep on her own. Today it took us a long long time with plenty of tears (the poor little thing) and me finally rocking her to sleep. We'll see how she is tomorrow; I'm really hoping it's just a fluke and she's fine.
Sasha is still at 30" long (or is it tall now that she gets measured on the big kids scale on the wall?). She did however seem to lose 1 lbs since our last visit, since she hasn't been eating all that well lately, again due to those teeth. It is absolutely no big deal and the dr. even said that kids tend to eat less at this age.

This kid REALLY likes curtains, I guess...

Sasha loves playing with, behind, and underneath the curtains in our living room. I think part of it is that our windowsill is really low and she can easily lean on it and look out the window, but boy, she has such a blast "hiding" behind the curtains and then running out. These were from a couple of days ago:







Ta-da!!

And these are from today:





See what I mean about the windowsill?


And this picture is from back in May (so Miss Sasha was 8 months old or so), when she'd crawl up to the curtains and play with them! Countless hours of entertainment!

Fun day with grandparents today

Today, we went to Y's parents' house to celebrate Chanukkah. Sasha had such a wonderful time running around, playing, reading, and being silly with her grandparents. It was very sweet to watch!

Reading with grandma A.


Dancing with grandma L.


Silly face!


She wanted to share her tangerine with grandpa L.


I just thought this was a silly shot: she was obsessed with that fruit tray and kept stealing fruit from it and bringing it to somebody!

Happy Chanukkah!

Today we celebrated Sasha's second Chanukkah by lighting our brand new menorah (the old one that I loved so much broke a couple of months ago). Tomorrow's we're heading to Y's parents' for some more celebration.



Sasha was very curious about the candles, so naturally she wanted to touch them. Her hand was promptly pulled back....


See how she's pushing Y's hand away in this shot so that she can attempt to touch the candles again? Love it!

Some pro-pictures

We got our pro-pictures back yesterday and I just wanted to share some with you. We thought they turned out ok, but I think the photographer overdid it with the backgrounds. Next time we're definitely going to try to do an outdoors photoshoot, so that we can capture more natural and candid photos. But here are some of our favorites:








And some "birthday" (though slightly belated) photos:

15 months old

Sasha is 15 months old today! It seems like this month has gone by much faster than the last few, not even sure why. She's such a big girl already. She babbles a lot, seemingly saying full sentences, still in baby-talk, then waits for a reply to say another long sentence. She's figured out that she can walk backwards and is having a blast with that: she can take sometimes up to 10 steps that way, then walks forward and backwards again!
She now says 7 words (papa; mama; am - when she wants to eat; tapochka - shoe - to anything that goes on your feet, be it a shoe, a boot, or a slipper, and tries to constantly put shoes on her feet; pupok - belly button - which, in her interpretation, of course, sounds something like "kapuka" - but she means it and points to it every time; glaz - eye - it sounds like gaah; and dai - give me - stretching her arms out for the desired object). She "barks", when she sees a dog. We're working on body parts and other animal sounds with her now too.
She looves dancing and comes up to me throughout the day, points at my computer and does her "dance" - that's how she asks for music! She loves sitting and playing with papa in the evenings while I prepare dinner and clean up. She's cutting at least 3 (that I can see anyway) molars right now, so it's not fun for anyone involved; hopefully they'll be all out soon and we can get back to normally eating and overall happy kiddo!
Here are some pictures from today's "photoshoot" - didn't get too many, she was very very grumpy in the morning.

Kisses for Tobey


Looking for her "kapuka"



And here she is exactly a year ago today for comparison: