Auburn Reunion

I am so behind on my posting! Again! We were so busy this past weekend. Daniel turned one on Thursday, we had lots of visitors, parties and fun. But about this later...

First, I want to write about a wonderful party we went to a little over a week ago. When we moved to Atlanta, Stephen reconnected with his friends from Auburn. On March 7th Candice and Eric had a party at their house for the Auburn friends and their families. There were so many nice pictures from the party, that I decided to create collages. (You can click on each collage to enlarge it and see the pictures in more detail.)

Candice and Eric have a beautiful house with an UNBELIEVABLE deck. If they ever want to sell their house, I would buy it right away just for the deck! The deck has many different levels with recessed hot tub, fire pit area, dining area, hammock, play area, etc. It is huge! And perfect for parties.


Eric built a zip-line for his children, Stephen and I wanted to play around on it too :
Here are we around the fire pit table making s'mores, drinking beer and hanging out. Daniel was a perfect baby the whole day. He got tired, so he took a little nap on his dad's chest. He woke up after a little while and was so cuddly and warm. He does not usually let us cuddle him for a long time, but during that evening he was content with just sitting on our laps and flirting with all the ladies (of course ;) ).
Candice set up a Chocolate Fountain for all to enjoy. Kids definitely went to town on it. I am not sure if any of them slept that night :)

F-R-E-E (with a catch!)

F-R-E-E (with a catch!)

to the first 5 people who comment on this post will get something made by me! Lucky you!

My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

• I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
• What I create will be just for you.
• It'll be done this year.
• You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a joke or a book. It may be poetry or an article on cleaning your home. I may do you a favor. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
• I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.
  

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

Little fish

In the Fall I looked and looked for a good swimming program for Daniel. We tried a few before settling on Atlanta Swim Academy. If you live in Roswell or Marietta, I highly recommend it. Unfortunately, we were able to take only one lesson before Daniel's chronic ear infection started. And after he got the tubes, he had a sinus infection. So it was not until last week that I was able to go to the pool and get our lessons restarted. I took Daniel by myself for our first class, and it was wonderful (no picture from that one since I was in the water with Daniel and I do not want anybody to see me in my swim suit anyway ;-) ).

My mother is an avid swimmer, she is one of the best swimmers I know. Even before Daniel was born she talked about the importance of swimming for babies. She emailed me a bunch of articles advocating early introduction of babies to water. So I thought it was only fair to let her take Daniel swimming. Our swimming pool has a "one child - one parent only in the water" policy, so I stayed on the edge of the pool and took about a hundred pictures. I am going to have to restrain myself from posting too many :)

Our little boy is just like his mommy - loves the water:

"I want to jump in again, but first I need to get out":

"Here I go":

"I can swim AND check all the girls out":

Another attempt at getting out of the pool:

My mum grabbed a noodle from the side of the pool and Daniel would swim around without being supported, it just might be that we have a Michael Phelps in the making :) (I wish!)

It's nap time

A few days ago I left Daniel in his room just before his nap time. I went to get his pre-nap bottle ready. When I walked back in I saw this (I put the blanket on him). He slept like this for over 2 hours. Silly boy! I guess when it is time to sleep, it is time to sleep!

Atlanta Aquarium

WARNING! Way too many pictures!

OK, I am finally coming to the end of my posts about my Birthday Weekend. As my friend Lera was staying through Tuesday, I decided to take her to downtown Atlanta and show her some of the local sights.

After taking a quick tour of CNN and walking through the Beautiful Olympic Park, we went to the Atlanta Aquarium. And everybody if you are ever in Atlanta, make it a point to go to the Aquarium. It is HUGE and so beautiful. And Daniel really liked it. He was smiling and pointing at all the different fish the whole time.

These first couple pictures are dear to me because they are the first I have of Daniel standing all by himself (leaning on the glass)

These jelly fish were magnificent!

These were some type of eels, they grow to be 16-18 inches long and live like this:

Daniel was not sure about this giant fish at first, but warmed up pretty quickly:

This tank is either the largest or one of the largest in the world, it holds 6.3 MILLION gallons of water. Visitors can take scuba diving or snorkeling excursions in it. I want to do it so bad! A group was taking a tour of the tank when we were there. This is one of the instructors, I guess he was taking a rest ;-)

This tank was huge too, I liked this picture because there are reflections of two of the beluga whales on the surface:

They had a few petting pools, here is the one with sea anemones. They felt rubbery:

The piranhas looked suspended in the air:

This was a small tank with some of the most beautiful plants and a few small fish:

Daniel was fascinated with these alligators:

There seemed to be a million of multi-colored small fish in there:

I like the reflection of the rocks in the surface

My brother, Vladimir

OK, I have started this post and abandoned it many times. I am going to try to finish and post it today finally.

January 5, 2009 marked two years anniversary of my younger brother Vladimir's death. We celebrated his memory with a dinner at my mother's apartment. This post is very hard for me as I never really was able to grieve fully or express my thoughts about my brother.

My brother had a terminal disease from birth. It occurred because of a gene mutation in utero. If non of the parents are carriers (and mine are not), there is about 1 in 36,000 chance that a child will be born with that disease. The disease ended up causing cancer and taking my brother's life at 24 years of age. Unfortunately, up until a few years ago I was not aware of his disease, and when I was little I did not understand and was very jealous of the preferential treatment that I felt he was getting from my parents and grandparents. I am slowly trying to forgive myself for teasing and picking at him when we were little. I just did not understand! I do not know if it would have been any different if my parents would have explained his condition to me. In Russia, up until this day, the doctors do not speak to patients directly, they speak to the closest relatives first, and the relatives decide how much to tell or not to tell the patients and other people. In fact, my brother himself did not know about his disease or the cancer as it started and progressed.

When Stephen proposed to me in January 2006, I knew that my brother was getting sicker so I pushed to have the wedding as soon as possible so that he would be able to be there. He was sick at the time of the wedding, but he was there and him and his wife were a part of our wedding party. He passed away about 7 months after the wedding. It was very special to me to have him around and help us celebrate my wedding.

Unfortunately, since I left home in 1995 (I was 15 at the time, my brother was 13), we did not keep in close contact with Vladimir. We saw each other and hung out some when I came home for vacations, spoke on the phone once a month or so, but we did not communicate often. The though of that makes me very sad. I lost so many years with my brother, and I cannot change that. I am trying to forgive myself for this too.

Vladimir was a very kind soul, I do not think that he ever harmed anybody or caused any pain. He was lucky enough to meet a girl that he fell in love with and marry her. They had 2.5 happy years together. I went to their wedding and he was on top of the world.

I just reread the above and it all feels so dry and unemotional, I feel like I did not express even tenth of my feelings in what I wrote. I am just not good with describing what I feel I guess. I might have to write another post about this, or maybe at least attempt it. I will leave you with this picture, taken at my wedding. I think it depicts how we felt towards each other. This is one of my most precious memories...

First Haircut

About 10 days ago, I decided to trim Daniel's bangs. I figured how hard can it be. I just needed to trim a few hairs that were getting in his eyes. So Stephen sat Daniel on his lap and i got the baby scissors that came in the baby grooming kit and a little comb. I thought that I could do a quick snip before Daniel would notice anything. Not so fast, Sasha! :) Scissors were NOT cutting the hair and Daniel was NOT having any of it. Stephen and I were both surprised at the strength in that little body!

OK, take a break. Entertain Daniel and try to make him forget what just happened. I ran and got the adult scissors and Stephen decided to hold Daniel's head this time. Here we go again. The minute Daniel saw the scissors he started screaming as if we were slowly cutting his skin off. He was NOT NOT NOT happy! So while Stephen was trying to hold his head, I grabbed some hair and cut. To say that the result was horrible is to say nothing at all. I grabbed too much hair and cut it too short. One side was much longer than the other and crooked all over. At this point Daniel was screaming like we slowly cut off all his skin and now were putting some salt on it. I do not think I heard him scream like that EVER. So we decided just to let it rest and see what it looks like the next day.

When I went to get him the next day, I almost cried. My poor baby, momma butchered his hair! I tried to get out the scissors again but at the mere sight of them Daniel would start going into hysterics. So we decided to take him to a barber shop to get his hair cut. I figured that they are professionals and would know what to do with a baby. And to my surprise, Daniel behaved like a perfect baby, he never cried for a second, just sat and played with the toys that the lady gave him and looked around like he knew what he was doing.

Checking out his surroundings before the hair cut.

(Look at those rolls and dimples)

In the process, oh, so serious

Faux-hawk:

Doesn't he look like Elvis?

Daniel, Momma would like to promise you something. I will NEVER-EVER try to cut your hair ever again. The $17.99 is so worth your hair looking nice and me not having to torture you!