Star Wars Playdate

It's been super-hot here every day this week and we've been trying to stay indoors as much as possible. But Monday wasn't too bad which was great 'cause that was our official Star Wars Playdate day with our homeschooling group.

Let me just say, the mom who came up with the idea did an amazing job organizing the whole thing. They even had time to bake Star Wars cookies!

We all got together at a local park. Everyone was encouraged to bring their Star Wars toys and dress up. M finally had his dream realized - all his friends brought their light sabers and were allowed to have as many battles as they wanted. Aside from almost non-stop light saber battles, there was some hard-core jedi training. It included Nerf gun practice, insignia making, light saber crafting, learning to navigate dangerous fog-filled jungles of Dagobah.

The capstone of the event was an epic battle - all the little kids against 2 teenagers who volunteered to be the bad guys (in exchange for a chance to handle dry ice).

It was super awesome! It also helped that a day before the playdate I scored this paper mask of Darth Vader for $0.25 at a Kids Exchange Sale. M was so thrilled. He put the mask on right away and walked around the house, breathing noisily and humming the Imperial March which is, of course, Darth Vader's theme.

He wore the mask as the playdate as much as possible, but insisted on being on the side of good. You see, his Vader is a rehabilitated one who's nice and even "helps Mama wash dishes".

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.

Birthday in Charlotte

Last weekend we were in Charlotte, visiting our friends whose son was turning 3. I had to drive both to and from since Chris is still on crutches. Somehow we managed to get lost on the way to Charlotte AND on the way back. This worries me a bit considering our upcoming trip to FL.

Anyway, the weather was kind of weird with very strong winds and rain. At least there were no tornados in Charlotte. We mostly stayed indoors and ate delicious food prepared by Sveta. When the weather improved we would go outside into the yard and the kids would run around.

The most surprising thing to me was that M made a complete turn-around from his usual attitude toward getting wet or running around barefoot. Actually, he spent most of the weekend without shoes or socks, running on wet grass, playing with sand, and stomping in the little puddles.

Even when we went to a little playground, he wanted to run around a fountain without shoes stopping once in a while to test water temperature.

On Saturday the kids were busy for a little while dyeing eggs. M selected one egg, put 3 stickers on it for the eyes and a mouth, and spent quite some time trying to chat it up (as usual, I provided the voice-over).

The next day was M's little friend's birthday. Lots of balloons and new toys to play with. The weather has improved enough and the men were out grilling. Then it was time for a birthday cake and for our drive back.

New Year's Pix

Better late than never, I say. For the New Year's celebration we drove to Charlotte to see our good friends Lana and Patrick. Staying over at their house is always lovely no matter the weather. They are just the best hosts and their little boy is so cute and fun and shares his toys really well (at least he does with M.)

I just hope that we're being half as awesome the guests as they are - the hosts. Chris, Patrick and the boys spent a lot of times in the backyard and at the nearby playground while Lana and I chatted and I pretended to help her in the kitchen.

Lana is an excellent cook. Seriously, she intimidates me. She bakes French baguettes every day and beautiful-looking delicious cakes - on a whim. And did I mention that the table is always beautifully laid out for EVERY meal?

In the evenings the boys played with PlayDoh (a huge hit with M, all of a sudden) and watched some 'toons. And after they got sent to bed, the adults had some extra desserts and tea and watched movies on Netflix. Oh, and the husbands were so awesome sitting through the entire "Irony of Fate" in Russian with no subtitles (neither of them speaks Russian)!
Seriously, if they ever decide to open a B&B, I'll be the first one to book a vacation there!

Our Christmas 2010 - The Parties

Parties as in more than one. Our good friends invited us over for a Christmas Eve lunch. They have two kids. One is M's age and the boys have been friends since before their first birthdays. Our friends also invited another couple and their 3 boys. So we ended up celebrating Christmas Eve in a houseful of boys. Actually, it was super-awesome.

The boys were all different ages, from 8 all the way down to 18 months. And that always works out very well as the older ones help entertain and keep in check the younger ones. Having some Christmas-special cartoons on the big screen TV also helped. We, the adults, spent absolutely delightful 5 hours chatting and laughing and drinking wine and relaxing and babying the youngest kiddo.

But lest you think that the boys were glued to the TV, they also tore through the toys in the living room, playing with all the Lego blocks and toy cars and trains they could find. It was a fairly warm day and they spent a big chunk of it outside on the playset. And when it got darker, they got back inside, rounded up a ton of cardboard boxes of all sizes and climbed, jumped, crawled, built and demolished to their hearts' content.

Since we had the big holiday meal the day before Christmas, Chris and I didn't feel like re-creating the whole thing at home the day of. Instead, we opted for a nice brunch - turkey bacon, scrambled eggs, and pineapple pancakes were on the menu. Yum! Such a great idea! I really think we should do it the next year thus eliminating (or rather re-scheduling) all the fuss, stress and dish washing that comes with cooking the holiday dinner.

On Christmas Day our friends, the same very hospitable and patient couple, invited us all back for after lunch. Again all the kids were there and mostly played outside, including in this awesome sandbox that Santa dropped off the night before.

Memorial Day Weekend in Charlotte

Last weekend we took off to see our friends in Charlotte and to have an excuse for me to shop at IKEA. IKEA shopping didn't go too well though. We bought everything on my list which was just a bunch of small things. And we bought one thing that wasn't on my list but that we really needed - a small metal round side table. Well, guess what? I went through self-service checkout lane and, trying to keep one eye on M and the other one - on the checkout display, I ended up forgetting the darn table. I did pay for it, just forget to grab the box. That was on Friday afternoon. I didn't discover it until we came back home and unpacked on Monday evening. Urghhh...

But the visit itself was great. The boys (M and our friends' 2.5-year old) played together most of the time and didn't get into too many squabbles.

On Saturday we all went to the town of Waxhaw for a stroll. It's always nice there, at least in the old historic part of town. This time we went to a small farmers' market, watched a cargo train go by, had a coffee break at a local coffee shop (that's where I saw this awesome headline in a local paper).

The boys behaved well enough that we even stopped by a couple of antique shops. After a short stop at a broom-making store (it's like a museum there - very interesting and the owner weaves brooms while chatting you up) and a long one at a used books store, we headed back to the house.

The next day we all went to Charlotte proper. I've never been there before and didn't expect it to be such a pleasant city to stroll around. The museums are aplenty, but pricey. We went to the Museum of the New South - a very interesting place and very kid-friendly. So kid-friendly, in fact, that it was hard to get the boys out of there on time.

We also walked past the B0A headquarters building(s). Lemme tell you something - if you have any doubt about whether BoA is an evil organization, just take a look at their building and a piece of sculpture adorning the small plaza in front of it. I guarantee you won't sleep for a couple of nights. Another urghhh!

Ah, we did go to a couple of parks. One, the Freedom park, was especially nice and I think we could've strolled around it for hours. And they have a playground too. And on that playground they have a REAL steam engine! The kids can go inside and look out of the windows and pretend to be the drivers. M flat out refused to leave the park declaring that he wanted to stay there for the rest of the day and be the engineer.

In the evenings, after putting little ones to bed, we watched artsy movies (ok, OSS117 was an exception), drank red wine and ate delicious chocolate cake that my friend Lana makes so well. Oh, and she also speaks French (in addition to Russian and English). So on our first evening there we decided that she'd try to teach me some French. It was fun, although after some wine I definitely had problems concentrating on the grammar.

Chris and Lana's hubby, Patrick, grilled one evening. Actually, Chris grilled 'cause Patrick said he needed to learn from a real American (Patrick is Belgian). Check it out - doesn't Chris look really manly and all-American next to this big shiny grill?

But What About Socialization?

That's what I get asked a lot when I mention that I plan on homeschooling M. I dunno, honestly, but so far we aren't suffering from lack of it. It's not like we stay home all day every day. And everywhere we go, there are people of all ages and we get to interact with them in various settings and in many different situations. Which, I think, is a more wholesome and balanced socialization that being in the same room with 20 other kids the same age day in day out.

Several times each week we have playdates with M's friends. Sure, for now it's more of a one-on-one playdates, but hey, he's only 3 years old. 3-year old don't play as a group. Instead, they end up either playing alone or with just one other playmate.

We do have a huge sharing problem though. I mean, as long as we're out and about and the toys aren't M's, he will take turns and share. But inviting anyone over to our house is simply not possible. I mean, we do invite kids over and sometimes things go just fine, especially if it's an older child (they seem to be more patient and understanding) or girls (since they aren't too eager to play with blocks, trains and many other of his toys).

Back Online

Finally, my Toshiba is back online. Its original AC adapter gave up the ghost almost 2 months ago and I just got around to ordering a replacement. Well, ok, it's more complicated than that, but I don't want to bore you with the details. The main point is that once again we are a two-laptop family!

So, I'm trying to catch up on a lot of things, all while watching the Victory Day celebration live from Moscow thanks to RT On Air. I'm planning on staying up for the Victory Day Parade, but it's still more than an hour away (it'll start at 10am Moscow time which is 2am EST) and I'm not sure I'll stay awake that long.

Anyway, as promised, here are the highlights:

It's strawberry season here in the Piedmont! So last weekend our good friends - Kelli and her 2 little boys - went to pick strawberries with us. Or rather we went with them since Kelli drove us all in her new mini-van.

The kids picked strawberries, ate a bunch too, petted the goats, played on the playground and generally had a great time. Did I mention, there was a big red tractor there too?!

While we were busy enjoying the berries, Chris was hard at work demolishing the lower part of our deck. That's where we're going to build a cool little playground for M. That's one of our new 3 projects.

We, and this time it was all 3 of us, went to the grand opening of a new Art Museum. The museum is, as far as I understand, is pretty striking, with lots of very cutting-edge features and excellent collection of art (I'm not even pretending I understand much about art, but I did pick up a museum brochure and read it).

Of course, that was the day M. chose to stay in PJs all day. Well, what can you do with these 3 year olds, right! At least he changed out of his rubber boots that he wears around the garden.

And speaking of the garden, we started seeing some produce coming in. First - radishes (spicy, but not woody or bitter), lettuce (very tender) and that's about it for now. We planted lots of tomatoes, some cukes and squash and sweet peppers and also various herbs.

Tomatoes are doing very well. Some are supposed to get up to 9ft tall! Wow, we figured we better build some kind of support for them. And then we started building (it was the other one of our new 3 projects). Ok, by "we" in this one I mean Chris. He planned the whole thing and built it in 3 evenings. And let me tell you, it's probably the prettiest tomato support I've ever seen! My hubby has so many unexpected talents! I also planted some vining flowers and beans between tomato plants.

M. came down with a cold. Even though it only lasted a couple of days (not counting some lingering cough), he gave us quite a fright. As our pediatrician explained, there are fewer summer colds than winter ones, but the ones that are around are much more severe. Well, leave it up to M. to get aquainted with every little cold virus that happens to float his way! Hopefully this is the last one for a while though 'cause him being sick every 3 weeks is getting ridiculous.

And that's all, folks!