NY - Pictures Only Edition

I am hopelessly late with this post, so it's going to be pretty much pictures only.

So this one is of M on a deck a couple of days before Hurricane Irene went through the area.

And this one - a few hours before the hurricane. Notice the difference? Yep, this gave us (mostly Grandma, really) something to do. We (mostly she) were busy clearning the yard and lemme tell you, it never looked this nice!

Then there was also plenty of baking with Grandma (she's trying all those no-gluten recipes). M actually created his own recipe for a crispy cracker-like bread and mixed dough. Then we baked it and, surprisingly it was very good!

We did spend a few days post-hurricane without electricity, which at my parents' house also means without water. And M did get sick. But all's well that ends well. So we celebrated with a little get-together.

Also, grilled with Grandma

And tried out Uncle's motorcycle

Then one day, tired of staying in and our the house, I offered M a trip to the Bronx Zoo. And he said "NO WAY!". And that's how we ended up at the Intrepid instead.

And it was a huge win for all of us (Grandpa, M and myself) since we all enjoyed it. First, we looked at all the airplanes on the flight deck

Then we climbed all the way up to the captain's bridge for a nice view of the Downtown.

We then went to the lower decks where there was a museum with a very hands-on area for children (and yes, their parents). And as it turned out, there was a life-size model of Mercury landing capsule, complete with all the buttons and switches and all that. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you can guess what M was busy with for the next hour or so.

Nothing else could match the excitement of the capsule. Not even going onto a real submarine!

And the next day we also went fishing with Grandpa. Let me tell you, last time I went fishing, I was like in elementary school and it was boring. But this time we went to this little pond full of sunfish and in 4 minutes we caught 4 fish.

They were tiny and we were too glad to release them back. M liked fishing, but not the fish themselves who seemed to scare him with all the flapping and jumping. Plus they were cold and wet and slippery and overall not very pleasant to touch, as M noted.

Another Trip to NY

Oops, it's Labor Day weekend and I haven't posted anything new in a while. Which is too bad 'cause we've been pretty busy and lots of interesting things have been happening. For example, once again we are in NY visiting my parents.

We drove up here almost 2 weeks ago. That was an eventful week for all of us. It started with an earthquake in Raleigh. Then we were busy packing and preparing the house for Hurricane Irene. Then it was time to drive to NY. Once again, we chose the backroads over I-95, partially because we wanted to make it a 2-day drive, not 1-day. It's more relaxed and more pleasant that way.

Driving through the mountains in western VA we noticed something great, the Blue Mountain Brewery. It was about time for lunch anyway and the place looked amazing - fermentation tanks with local brews, a huge veranda with fantastic views, a promise of cold fresh beer and locally-grown organic food.

Afterwards we pressed on and in another hour or so arrived at just about our favorite stop of the entire trip, the Frontier Culture Museum. Let me tell you, it's worth a trip in and of itself! I think this was our 4th visit there. So we figured we'd spend just a couple of hours there this time. I was actually a bit worried that our stop would be too short since, as it turned out, the African Village was closed in preparation for Hurricane Irene. Well, we ended up staying there for not two, not three, but almost five hours!

In fact, the visit turned into a great treasure hunt game for M. He found lots and lots of little treasures - a bit of washed wool, a feather out of a rooster's tail, wood shavings, a real iron nail that was made just for him and many many more exciting things. He petted a cat, fed chickens, tried his hand at carding, weaving, getting water out of a well, playing Jacob's ladder, etc. In short, it was awesome.

After a night in a crummy Best Western somewhere in Frederick, MD, we drove to Hershey, PA. I've been meaning to take M to Hershey for a couple of years. This time we were going for sure. Nothing could stop us, not steady rain nor threat of a downpour from the approaching Hurricane Irene.

I didn't realize how huge Hershey was! There's a ton of stuff there, in and around the factory. You can spend a whole day having fun and then, on Day 2 hit the Hershey amusement park next door. But we only had about an hour or so.

What I had in mind was to go on a little 15-minute World of Chocolate ride and create our own chocolate bars. Of course, the exit from the ride was through a gift shop and so it took us some extra time. But then we were on our way and arrived at my parents' house just 3 hours or so later.

Summer is So Crazy

I thought that once summer is here we were going to be sort of bored, looking for things to do and friends to hang out with. After all, many home schoolers we know follow the traditional school year. For example, our preschool co-op is over and done with 'til September and so it the Math Trek. Rrrrright......

Over the last couple of weeks we've been very-very-very busy with the capital "B", dashing from one thing to the next and being late just about everywhere we'd go. Plus we're not exactly taking a whole summer off either. We study a bit each day, mostly through reading books and talking about stuff. But also I've been teaching M to read. He knows most letters and reads very short words. Anything longer than 4 letters puts him off. But I think it's just a matter of practice.

So we practice, although not as much as I'd like. This is us playing the "5 marshmallows" reading game. It's simple - I write 5 syllables on paper cups, turn the cups upside down and hide a mini-marshmallow under one of the cups. When M opens his eyes, I tell him "The marshmallow is under... "му" (for example). Now he has to find the right cup by reading all the syllables. No guessing! If he gets it wrong, I get the marshmallow.

For this game he likes assembling all his little toys and "sharing" the hard-won marshmallows with them, giving each one a bite to eat. So it takes us a while to get through all five marshmallows. But it's fun and it works.

He's still heavily into putting together various contraptions. The new twist is he might want to sketch it out first. So he takes a sheet of paper and a red marker (gotta be the red one!) and carefully draws two vertical lines for the body, a jumble of wires in between (some squiggly lines), a few gears (small circles), and caps it all off with a head - an egg-shape with no facial features.

This is M assembling a refueling station for his new Star Wars toy (thanks, Grandpa!). The droid starfighter took forever to fuel up 'cause it needed "three million and fourteen gallons" of fuel. No matter since Darth Vader and the minions were patiently waiting.

Finally, this is M in the Contraption Room at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. It's an awesome room that is full of spare parts to build the basic simple machines and put them together into Rube Goldberg-like contraptions. I'm in love with this room! In fact, I want to scale it down just a little bit and re-create here, at home. Maybe next school year.

M didn't like it at first 'cause it wasn't a robot-making room. But after some sulking and whining, he said, resignedly, "ok, so then let's build some machine" and we started. He was particularly fascinated with pulleys. In fact, that's all he wanted to do for almost 40 minutes - explore pulleys. So we put a little contraption together. Then I started adding to it - a ramp here, a lever there for the plastic ball to negotiate. I thought it'd be interesting to M, but he was way too absorbed with the pulleys and hardly paid attention to my creations.

We've also been going to pools. Yes, the real ones! M finally got into a big pool and now it's a challenge to get him out of it when it's time to go home. Plus I got him a floating vest and we usually borrow inflatable arm bands from a new friend, Yura. Wearing all that M proudly negotiates water all by himself. Now he's actually asking me for swimming lessons! Yay!!!! No pictures of this part 'cause I'm in the water with M and Chris hasn't had a chance to come with us yet.

Studying Grossology

This was actually one of the first things we did after getting back from NY. We went to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences to check out the Animal Grossology exhibit (it's still going on for another few days).

I think that what stopped us before was the fact that although the museum admission is free, this particular exhibit is not. And it's not exactly cheap either - $8 for adults and $5 for children. Except, of course, that M is only 4 and all those under 5 get in for free. And so we went.

We got there a bit too early and had a chance to walk around checking out NC flora and fauna. M usually doesn't care, except for the giant whale skeletons hanging from the ceiling. But this time he was interested in owls, especially in the small one that he dubbed "Owly" after Mr. H. Hiram Bish's little Owly. (If you are not familiar with the story called "Pinky Pye", you might want to run to the library right away. M can listen to this story over and over. He then pretends, in his usual fashion, that H. Hiram Bish, the famed ornithologist, is staying over at our house with his Owly. He also tends to call our cat, Xander, Pinky Pye).

But back to the Animal Grossology. It was awesome! Let me list the main attractions there (the ones that M spent most of the time on):

1. The burping and farting cow - M spent a combined total of 40 minutes watching how this mechanical cow moved food between her 4 stomachs. He moved the levers and pushed buttons and checked whether the cow was chewing the cud and lifting her tail in proper order. He called it all "helping the cow digest" [помогать корове пищеварять] and took his job of "digestion helper" [пищеварятельный помошник] very seriously.

2. The Penguin's Pooping Party - the story, as told by a penguin, is short and gross - he invited some zoo animals to his party, but they came, pooped (party poopers, get it?) and disappeared, leaving steaming piles of dung behind them. The penguin then asked for help in identifying those party poopers - a rabbit, a bird, a wild cat of some sort, and an elephant - and matching them to their excrements - 4 walk throughs and countless retells on our way home.

3. Vomit Slurping Fly - a giant fly that talked his feeding habits quite openly and with a New Jersey accent - M listened to the whole lecture, although I think he was fascinated by the fly itself.

4. Transfusion Confusion game - the premise is simple - Nurse Gross has to prepare animal blood for transfusion to various animals (mostly insects, inverterbrate and spiders). But she needs to figure out which blood has to go to which animal 'cause you know different animals have different colored blood (red, white, or blue - very 4th of July, really). Players must help the nurse or else she'll be on permanent bedpan duty. M played this game at least 10 times.

5. A video of a tapeworm travelling through intestines - M watched this video a couple of times without aparent interest, but since then he washes his hands better for sure (and so do I, so do I).

6. Slippery Sea Slide - at the end of the exhibit, there was this submarine for the kids to play in. But it also had a slide shaped like a sea snake (or a sea worm). So you enter the worm's rear end, climb through a narrow twisted passage, then slide down and emerge from its mouth. A very unsettling experience for adults. But the kids - M and his little friends who came with us - loved it.

The exit was, of course, through a gift shop. I considered buying a T-shirt with "World's Most Endangered Fieces" on it, but M wanted a small toy mouse instead. The mouse was tiny (think cat's toy) and very realistic. M held it gently in the palm of his hand, talking to it about this and that. We exited the gift shop and went to see the dinosaurs and talk about their poop (bigger than elephant's for sure!)

Week 7 - Science Museum

If I remember correctly, that's when we went to the Liberty Science Center in NJ. It was a cold and windy day... And I had a head cold or something like that. So my memory is a bit fuzzy when it comes to the details.

First we took the train to Hoboken, NJ. A real-life double-decker train (guess which deck we were on) that moved snail-like from one station to the next until just over an hour later it reached Hoboken.

Usually this train is empty on Saturday mornings (or was it a Sunday morning?). But not this time. Hoboken was having a pre-St. Patrick's day parade and drink-fest that day. So every platform was full of drunk revelers and the train cars were choke-full, standing room only, after just 3 or 4 stops. Good thing we got in at the first stop and had to get out at the last one. The downside - spilts beer all over the train and some drunks chanting "drink up-drink up-drink up" for like 30 mins straight.

Why did I have to take M's car seat with me, you ask? 'Cause we weren't going to take the train on the way back, but instead ride in a nice BMW car. But here's M familiarizing himself with the local real estate market while waiting for the train.

Before going to the museum we stopped by J's place (my brother's girlfriend who sacrificed a huge chunk of her day to be our cab driver. Thanks, J!) She has this awesome dog, Guinness. Isn't he adorable?! And he is super smart too and very nice with kids. So not only did M get to give him some treats and play with him, but also was able to walk him for a little bit (with our supervision, of course).

Finally, the museum... What can I tell you? It's awesome and huge and absolutely overwhelming. Full of people too, but I s'pose everything is on a weekend. So we went to almost all the exibits except for the Sensory Tunnel one. I didn't think M would've liked it (they warn you to prepare for 10 minutes of crawling on all fours in a sensory maze in pitch dark). And I didn't feel all that well to drag him through it on my back. Maybe next time.

But him and Arkadiy did go on a space roller-coaster simulator. And tried their hands at controlling a mini-excavator. And drilled for oil. And dredged the Hudson River. Plus we got to see all sorts of interesting things about germs, watched an operating theater in action (a banana was getting staple-ectomy done by a couple of 6-year olds).

And we went outside for a breath of air and a great photo op, but just for a few seconds - it was windy and M wanted to get back, like RIGHT AWAY. Oh, and also created giant soap bubbles and attempted to control a neuclear reactor, a hydroelectro station, a wind turbine and something else equally awesome with lost of buttons and levers and lights (I think it was a laser beam).

All said and done, by 5pm (the closing time), we found ourselves in the museum's store. M wanted some more Space stuff, but I put my foot down and said he could get 1 small thing that was not space-themed. So instead he got himself a hex bug. But I'll talk about this separately since it's so cool.

Then it was time to walk Guinness again and head home. Needless to say, M fell asleep half-way. He was actually so tired that he didn't wake up when I moved him from the car to the bed and changed him into PJs.

The next day he wanted to paint something. Here's what he painted.

The description that he gave me: "Mama, this is something glassy with stinky beer and it fell on the floor and broke into lots of pieces. And then here is a big germ!"

Week 6 - Too Much Space

This morning started off with M telling everyone in the house his last night's dream:

"I flew into Outer Space in a space pod. And then I launched a whole lot of satellites into orbit. And even Darth Vader. And then Darth Vader started shooting at the rocks on the Moon."

Oh, and M doesn't pronounce "th" yet, so it comes out as "Darhhh Vader". Super cute!

And that pretty much sums up the theme of this week - rockets, cosmos, astronauts.

We did get snow again on Monday. Fortunately, my brother was here to help digg us out. This is getting really old and I can't wait to get back to Raleigh and its 70-degree weather.

M was so busy helping his uncle to clear the snow, build with blocks, and then going to my uncle Victor's birthday, that he didn't do much space stuff.

Then there was Tuesday. It started off with M building a rocket. Unlike all the previous ones where I'd help him put it all together, this one was all his work. From the choice of spare parts - cardboard tubes from toilet paper and towel rolls, a wine cork, cut-up paint chips, stickers and lots of sticky tape - to the design, to gluing/taping it all together, it was all his work!

He even came up games to play with his rocket. One was "Rocket Landing on the Moon" and the other one - "Rocket Landing on a Wild Planet".

That same day we went to my aunt Sofia's to enjoy birthday dinner leftovers (delish!!!) and M got to play with his cousin (or second cousin? I can never figure these things out in English).

It was a great playdate - they played lots of different games, listened to stories, helped Grandma Sofia bake a cake, ate it, played some more, watched cartoons... Total success.

Wednesday was pretty much the re-run of Tuesday. We started by building another toilet paper rocket. Then went to play with M's cousin at Grandma Sofia's house (more yummy food).

Then there was Thursday. My parents had to go to the Russian Counsulate in Manhattan and we tagged along. Well, not like I care much about the counsulate. But it's just a mile or so from the Museum of Natural History. Hello, Hayden Planetarium!!!

I expected parents to get stuck at the counsulate for 3-4 hours (not an unreasonable expectation), but they were done in just 2. Aparently, the place is becoming more efficient if not less rude. So we had just enough time to catch a show at the planetarium, then watch the Big Bang pre-show. Then M ran around the Rose Center of Earth and Space (spending most of his time in the Space part of it).

Then I managed to get him into the North American Mammals exhibit for a few short minutes. Yes, I did have to bribe him, promised him to stop by the gift shop next. At the gift shop he said that he only wanted "things about cosmos" and ended up choosing an Apollo Program poster, a DVD called "Visual Encyclopedia of the Universe" and a set of tiny plastic astronauts that also included Skylab, Apollo 13 control module and the Moon rover.

We got home just in time to watch Discovery's last launch live on NASA TV, whole 40 minutes of it (including pre-launch coverage).

Since then it's been nothing but "space stuff" around here. From pretend-play to building an elaborate launch pad to inventing more rockets to dreaming of Darhh Vader shooting moon rocks from the orbit.

Ah, we also built a volcano this weekend (if you're wondering about the pinkish color - it's Olympus Mons). And we made a seed collection for M to take up to the ISS so he can grow veggies hydroponically and surprise NASA.

And that was Week 6. Just three more weeks to go.