11 months old and first steps

One day late, but our little girl is now 11 months old. She's such a big girl already, she seemed to have grown since we left. She giggles at everything, is still very clingy (but I can't say I don't like it: having been away from her for the last week, I'm enjoying it for now). She imitates all the little things we do. She's a pro at putting things into containers and then taking them out. She "reads" books and turns pages... we're not going to mention that she may do so holding a book upside down! She's now mostly on all table foods, meaning she eats "real" food and is a pro with her straw cup (in fact in a week or two I'm planning to start giving her milk in a cup to get her off bottles soon). She now walks holding on to only one hand. Which brings me to my other point: first steps! The night before we left for Mexico, Sasha actually took 4 little steps without any support from me to papa! It was the cutest thing ever!!









Oh, and yes, we're back. We had a blast on our vacation, although we missed our little Sasha terribly! And she had a blast hanging out with her grandparents and auntie and uncle (and so did they). I'm working on a post all about it (complete with pictures) now, I'll post later tonight.

Pro-pictures (June, Marine Park)

Back in June, we had some professional pictures done of Sasha (a friend of a friend is starting out in baby photography so she offered to do some for us, she is absolutely amazing and so fun - her name is Katya Lum, if anybody's interested). I've had a preview of the pictures earlier and they were fantastic (I was going to post the link, but it had our last name in it, and I honestly did not feel comfortable putting that out there for everyone to see).
The photographer did send us a disk, but there seemed to be nothing on it (I blame computers for that mistake), then she was away on vacation, and we just finally got the good disk yesterday. We absolutely love the pictures, they came out great! Which creates a bit of a problem when it comes to posting them, since I cannot possibly make you guys sit there looking at 130 (or so) pictures of my kid. So I've uploaded them onto my picasa, but here are just some of my favorites. Enjoy! And as always, click on the pictures to view larger.

























This was actually the first time she stood on her own for a few seconds - so darn cute - look at that concentration!






If you like what you see, head on over to my picasa and check out the rest of them (picasaweb.google.com/ylevina/SashaJune09)! We're planning on going to Katya's studio in the city sometime in September for some more pictures!

My water baby

This kid of mine LOVES water, and who doesn't like splashing in water fountains on a hot summer day? And that's exactly what we did on the playground today:









This is what she looked like on our way home - she was completely soaked so I had to let her ride in just her diaper.
P.S. I'm working on another post with a lot of pro-pics that we had done in June. I just go the disk and going through them now, they're all great, so I'm picking which ones to upload. Hoping to post when Miss Sasha goes down for her nap later this afternoon, stay tuned!

Teeth!

To make up for lack of Sasha pictures in the past week (!) I am posting these two completely adorable shots of her new teeth.

Here you can only see the four incisors, but this picture is too funny not to include it!


Here you can also see one of the side incisors that are coming in now. She now has 6 teeth, two on the bottom (still) and four on the top (these are taking their sweet time coming in, so she's constantly chewing on her frozen teething rings, well and anything else she can get her hands on)

Weekend recap and getting ready for our trip

We had a crazy crazy weekend (when was the last time we didn't?) Saturday, we went out for grandma L's birthday, Sunday was grandpa A's birthday, so the kiddo was very out of sorts by the end of it (woke up at 6am this morning - granted, we had a crazy storm last night, so that may have had something to do with it). We also had our last swimming lesson on Saturday, it was a little sad, she really enjoys swimming, so I think I need to sign her up for more lessons come September.
I packed a lot of Sasha's stuff for her stay with her grandparents when we go to Mexico this Friday. Haven't really packed our stuff yet, I have a feeling we'll be doing that on Thursday night. I have to be honest I'm a little nervous about leaving her for 6 days (mom, if you're reading this, I'm not nervous that you won't know how to do something, I trust all of you completely; I think I'm more nervous about being away from her for so long!) We're dealing with some pretty bad separation anxiety lately, where if I'm in the room and Sasha sees me, she will only want to be held by me, when I'm not around, she's perfectly happy hanging out with anyone else! In fact, we attempted to go to Outback tonight and she absolutely refused to sit in a high chair, she had to be held either by me or papa. So I hope she'll do better with her grandparents and auntie Anna once we're gone...

Happy birthday, papa!

Today is Yevgeny's 25th birthday. We're so happy to have you as a father and husband, and, most importantly, a friend in our lives! I couldn't imagine our lives without you , you're awesome and we love you. Cheesy, but true.

Happy birthday, sweetie!

My incredible climbing baby

Sasha woke up from her nap a bit earlier than usual today and as we were playing on the floor in the living room I went to grab something in her room. I came back no more than a minute later and this is what I witnessed. Think she's too young to try out for Cirque du Soleil?









"Mission accomplished!"

Please note that this was in no way staged, the only thing I "helped" with was moving her stroller out of the way. And I have no idea how she got in there in the first place!

Straw cup success!

Our little Miss Sasha has been refusing to even try to understand her sippy cups, she'd just chew on them. Needless to say, I was not too thrilled about that, it's been over 4 months since we started trying to introduce them. I finally decided to let her try a straw cup, and what do you know, she figures it out on the first try!




She even let me taste some of her juice ;)


"No, please, no more pictures or videos!"

Puppy love!

I finally got some cute videos of Miss Sasha and her puppy (we call him Tobik), she just loves him, it's so adorable. And she tries to imitate dog barking sounds (or at least I'm completely convinced that that's what she's doing). Enjoy!



And in this one (for those who don't speak Russian), I'm first asking her if she'd like to dance - we've been dancing the entire morning - and she gives me a blank look, but when I ask her to kiss the dog, she does!

Another tooth and new tricks

That's right, folks, the kiddo is cutting yet another tooth! It's almost through already, you can feel it through her gum. It's another top incisor - on the right.
In other news, she's been kissing her pound puppy dog when prompted, it's the cutest thing ever!! And she's trying to imitate dog barking when I say it to her. I need to get these two on camera and post them, they're hilarious!