Wedding reception and 3 Months - 6 more to go!

This Saturday Stephen and I went to a wedding reception of one of Stephen's oldest friends. Stephen met the guy on the second day of college in Auburn back when they were 17 or 18 years old. The guy and his wife both work in Antarctica for 6 Months out of the year and come back to US for the other 6. This was not their actual wedding, they got married in Antarctica back in December. So they were holding a reception here for all their family and friends. Unfortunately, I managed to forget my camera once again and so do not have any pictures of the reception. Hopefully, they will post some online and I can post some here.

When we got home I realized that it was the 16th of May, which meant that I was exactly 3 months pregnant based on the first day of my last period. Woo-Hoo! Only 6 months and 1 week to go or as my ticker keeps reminding me - 189 days! :) Here is me at 3 months pregnant (please ignore the double chin and crazy half-smile, it was almost midnight and I had been on my feet, in those heels, for 6+ hours. Actually, I almost cropped my head out of the pictures :) )


Oh, and the number one silly reason I love being pregnant is....... boobs! Which any gal that has not been blessed with ample cleavage will tell you is ALWAYS a bonus! ;)

My Mother's Day in Pictures...

First thing in the morning, I got a beautiful card hand-delivered by this charming boy:

If you enlarge the picture, you can see "Mom" written on the envelope, that made me tear up :)

After a quick breakfast, we decided to head to the Atlanta Zoo. We went to the Petting Zoo first - Daniel was not too sure about the goats. He found the perfect hiding spot though:

He did come out a little bit, but still would not touch any animals.

Here I am in my super preggy dress. I love making myself looking even more pregnant than I am :) Anybody can relate? Or am I just crazy?

Daniel was fascinated by the giant pandas. This one was taking a nap

And this one too :)

And than my camera died :( I was not happy with myself! Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time seeing all the different animals. Daniel was so funny, when he would see an animal, he would point at it and then look up at one of us and make sure that we saw it too. We went ahead and got a year membership. We think Daniel is at the point where he can gain a lot from going to the Zoo often.

I loved my First Mother's day last year, it was so special, but Daniel was only 2 months old and really too young to participate (although he did give me a card). This year was so much more fun, Daniel is getting to be so interactive and fun, he even "signed" the card for me. Maybe next year he can draw me a picture! And next year I will be the mother of two, which will make the Mother's Day that much more special!!!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

As crazy as it sounds I am going to celebrate my second Mother's Day as a mother while being pregnant with our #2. Woo-Hoo. I never thought about it , but this is my second pregnancy in two years! Two years ago I was not even pregnant with Daniel!

I want to wish my Mother, grandmothers, Stephen's Mother and Grandmothers, our aunts and cousins a Happy Mother's day! May your day be filled with many pleasant surprises!

My Mother and I (Mom is 25 and I am 14 months old)

Mom and I (I am about 13 months old)

My Grandma Inna and I (about 2 years old)

My Grandma Inna, my Aunt Marina, and I

And here is the first picture of Daniel and I upon arriving from the hospital (Daniel is 3 days old)

Daniel is One Year Old!

Happy 1st Birthday, Daniel!

Yes, it is true, we have a toddler! Pretty crazy, isn't it? I am supposed to be a baby myself. :)

To say the least we had a crazy, busy, fun, and exciting weekend. This year my Birthday was not very exciting for me - you've heard this story before. Daniel's Birthday was completely different! I felt like a 6-years old on a Christmas morning! I had organized a few different events, parties and get-togethers. I am going to split them into a few different posts to make them simpler to read.

On Daniel's Birthday Stephen's parents John and Monnie drove in from Shreveport, Louisiana to visit and celebrate with us. We were so happy to see them. They have not seem Daniel since Christmas, and that is a long time at his age! Unfortunately, my mother was not able to be there when John and Monnie got here in the evening since she is taking English classes 5 times a week. Daniel did not remember his grandparents, but it did not take him long to warm up to them and start playing around. We had so much fun opening presents and hanging out.

Here he is with some of his presents, I am not going to enumerate all of them here, there were a LOT! Thank you Mom, Dad, and Gigi for all of your thoughtful and beautiful gifts. I am sure that Daniel will enjoy playing with the presents for a long time and will keep the keep-sakes that you got him for a long-long time!

My Grandmother Lida got Daniel this amazing slide, Daniel wants to keep sliding down it NON-STOP! He is wearing us out!

We kept Daniel up a little too late and he was NOT in the mood for the apple cake I made. We did manage to get a few cute pictures:

Baby Shower

I am still trying to catch up with all the things we did during my Birthday weekend. I think it will take couple more posts after this one to talk about all we did.

On Sunday, we went to a Baby Shower for our old friends Kelly and Tom. I've never been to a coed Baby Shower and it was a lot of fun. Kelly is due to have their firstborn son Bodi on March 23 and she looks too cute with the 8 Months big belly. Three of Kelly's best friends organized the shower and they did a very good job.

Here is Kelly (and Baby Bodi) and me:

Daniel, of course, could not miss a meal :) Stephen was trying to tease Daniel, but he was not paying attention, he had to eat. Did any of you, ladies, notice that you open your mouth when you feed your babies? Apparently, I do, my friend Lera caught it on film :)
They had a baby bottle drinking competition for the guys only. I tried to tell them to give a bottle to Daniel, but they did not, I guess they thought he is over-qualified. (The bottle was filled with water, by the way) Kelly and Tom had lots of baby-related gifts. We brought a baby grooming and emergency kit. I decided to bring a gag gift too. I brought a pink translucent negligee with feathers. Kelly and especially Tom loved it! And yes, Tom did wear Kelly's Mother-to-be tiara :)

I think Tom was more than excited, just look at his face - I think he is

thinking about starting on the second baby :)

Lera shot this beautiful picture of Stephen, I think it is awesome:

We had a blast:

And Daniel had to walk around constantly, being his precious self and flirting with all the ladies:

Happy Birthday to me!

This year there are a lot of big Birthdays in my family. First one, of course, is Daniel turning one next month, and second - Stephen turning 40 in April. Since Christmas I've been thinking and making plans for those two Birthdays. This year my Birthday was really not that important to me. I turned 29 on the 21st of February. The older I get the less excited I am about my Birthdays. Plus 29 is almost 30, and I do not know anybody who looks forward to turning 30. :) It seems like when somebody turns 30, she really becomes an adult, does that make any sense? I am confusing myself, HA!

I guess because I did not have any expectations, I had the best Birthday! A few months ago Lera, my roommate and best friend from college in Kiev moved to New York to pursue a career in broadcasting. Unfortunately, she moved to New York about a month after we moved to Atlanta. We have been exchanging phone calls pretty regularly in the last three months. And suddenly she said that she wanted to come visit, see Stephen and me, and meet Daniel for the first time. So a few days before my Birthday she bought a ticket and in the morning on Saturday we went to meet her at the airport. It is so crazy sometimes how the connection with some people just never seems to go away. We saw each other maybe 2 or 3 times in the past 10 years since I left Ukraine. But, we still communicate as as we did back when we were 17. It was so great to see her!

Mom cooked an awesome lunch for us:

And Julie danced wearing her pink dress:
Stephen invited a bunch of people for dinner and a drink at a restaurant/bar called "Book House". There were some of my oldest friends and some of Stephen's co-workers that I never met before. I had a wonderful time!

I was tagged

My bloggy friend Candice tagged all of her readers to play along and go to their Picture folder and open the fourth folder and post the fourth picture. I went to the fourth folder and it holds the pictures from Stephen's and mine Graduation from University of Alabama at Birmingham almost 5 years ago. So I decided to play along and post about it.

As fate would have it, Stephen and I graduated from UAB at the same time in May of 2004. His parents, grandmother and brother decided to come out and visit, and all of our friends were happy to come celebrate with us, so we decided to have a party. After the graduation ceremony everybody came over to a club-house at the apartment complex where Stephen lived. There were about 60 people at the party. It was such a special time for us, seeing our friends, family, some of the teachers, and co-workers all together.

Here is the fourth picture, my friend Olga made this beautiful cake for us:

And here is some more of the food we served:

Stephen and I in our robes at the ceremony:
Can you find us? ;-)

Stephen and one of his professors

Toast at the party:

My grandfather Emil and I

My Grandmother Inna and I

Somebody brought us these beautiful flowers:

This tag brought back so many memories, thank you Candice! Maybe I will go back and post some about our pre-baby life and adventures, we have tons of pictures, which you can always find at our picture archive.

Oh, and by the way, I tag everybody who reads this too. If you do not have a blog of your own, just email me the fourth picture from the fourth picture folder, I hope it is funny!!! ;)

Valentines Day (better late...)

I am so behind on my blogging. The last few weeks have been very busy and fun. I guess I should post in chronological order.

Stephen and I do not usually go out on Valentines Day, it is such a hustle to go out and fight the crowds and slow service in restaurants. This year, however, Stephen decided to take me out for lunch, not dinner and a movie. My mum had Daniel and we went to Melting Pot. OMG!!! It was so-so-so good! We had a 5-course meal that was just unbelievable. We did not make it to the movies, but went home and took a 3-hour nap with Daniel :) I felt like a giant python! Even Stephen did not want much of a dinner that night. :)

Happy New Year!

What a busy holiday season we have this year! We are celebrating 2 Christmases (sp?) and the New Year. Why two Christmases, well, let me explain. Before the Communist Revolution in 1917, the Russian calendar was shifted by 13 days as compared to the calendar in other countries. So after the Revolution the government of the Soviet Union decided to shift the calendar to correspond with the rest of the world. However, the Russian Orthodox Church leaders resisted the change and declared that the change in the calendar does not change the date of birth of the Christ. So since then Christmas is celebrated on January 7th.

In the Soviet Union religion was prohibited so people did not celebrate Christmas. Instead, a lot of Christmas traditions were transposed onto the New Year, such as, Father Frost (Santa Claus) comes and gives out presents at midnight on the 1st, fancy dinner gets cooked complete with a turkey or a duck, families get together to celebrate and exchange presents. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, many people returned to churches and started celebrating Christmas, but the New Year traditions remain. Nowadays, Christmas is celebrated on January 7th and no presents get exchanged, instead people go to church and get together for lunch or dinner.

You can read about our December Christmas in previous posts. Stephen, Daniel and I celebrated the New Year with my side of the family. We prepared lots of gifts for each member of the family, and, of course, Daniel received tons more gifts. My Mum and Grandmother went crazy! After this Christmas and New Year, we can open a toy store out of our apartment. Stephen and I really do not know what to do with all these toys, we do not have that much storage. And he still likes his old ones. Plus we wanted to keep the ones he does not play with anymore for the next baby. Thanks to the tip from Krystal, I learned how to do collages, here is our New Year in one picture:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! This is a very special Thanksgiving for us! It is the first time that we are celebrating the Holidays as a family of three. I am very thankful for our beautiful son, who brings us joy and laughter everyday. I am thankful for my wonderful husband, who is the most caring person I know. I am thankful to him for providing so well for Daniel and me, and for being such an amazing father to our son. I am thankful that my whole family lives in the US now, I love you all! I am also thankful for all my friends who helped me survive the first few months after my son's birth with almost all my sanity intact :)



This year we did not go to visit our family so I wanted to cook a true American Thanksgiving meal. I made Brined and Roasted Turkey, ham, scalloped potatoes, mac-and-cheese, salad, rolls, and gravy. To finish off we had Russian style apple cake (I just had to throw something Russian in there) and ice cream with strawberries. This is my first attempt ever at cooking turkey and it is good!!! I know it is tasty as my biggest critic really enjoyed the turkey. I was going to put a picture of Daniel eating my turkey here, but all the pictures we took today turned out crappy :(

I have got to sign off now, as it is time to go wash off that turkey of Daniel's face and hair. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!!