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!

Favorite Foto Friday

Anyone has an insight into what he was thinking? Please share!

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. :)