Friday, June 20, 2003
Dear Alex,
You finally came back from your first vacation without Mommy and Daddy. You had a lot of fun with Dyado Nasko and Baba Roumi, and then a bit more with Mommy before we came back. I had a very interesting conference experience -- it's probably the only time that I'll be staying in a cabin in the mountains while going to work near the beach. We were at one of the Cuyamaca State Park campgrounds, staying in a cabin built in 1933. We had reservations, of course, but somebody already lived there permanently. Thankfully, he was just a mouse and didn't claim one of the bunks. He did claim the paper bags our food was in -- the first night was rather noisy as he carefully chewed a semicircle under the left handle of each bag. The next night we left the bags in the car, and all was quiet. You hiked quite a bit during that trip and slept really well, so well that you didn't hear the mouse at all.
The trees didn't really have eyes and arms, but you were a bit worried about that when we made the trek to the bathroom after dark. The fire we had the second evening helped a bit, but I think you were still worried about the mountain lions (I guess I shouldn't have told you so much about them :-).
Now we are all back and you are enjoying the brand new playground in the back yard.
Love,
Mommy
Dear Anna,
You recently had your first solid food (well, relatively solid), and you seemed to like it quite a bit. Here are a few moments from your first encounter with non-milk food (other than that booger you managed to eat earlier).
Love,
Mommy
You finally came back from your first vacation without Mommy and Daddy. You had a lot of fun with Dyado Nasko and Baba Roumi, and then a bit more with Mommy before we came back. I had a very interesting conference experience -- it's probably the only time that I'll be staying in a cabin in the mountains while going to work near the beach. We were at one of the Cuyamaca State Park campgrounds, staying in a cabin built in 1933. We had reservations, of course, but somebody already lived there permanently. Thankfully, he was just a mouse and didn't claim one of the bunks. He did claim the paper bags our food was in -- the first night was rather noisy as he carefully chewed a semicircle under the left handle of each bag. The next night we left the bags in the car, and all was quiet. You hiked quite a bit during that trip and slept really well, so well that you didn't hear the mouse at all.
The trees didn't really have eyes and arms, but you were a bit worried about that when we made the trek to the bathroom after dark. The fire we had the second evening helped a bit, but I think you were still worried about the mountain lions (I guess I shouldn't have told you so much about them :-).
Now we are all back and you are enjoying the brand new playground in the back yard.
Love,
Mommy
Dear Anna,
You recently had your first solid food (well, relatively solid), and you seemed to like it quite a bit. Here are a few moments from your first encounter with non-milk food (other than that booger you managed to eat earlier).
Love,
Mommy
Friday, June 06, 2003
Dear Alex,
This is my first post to you (or about you) here. You are away from home without us for the first time, visiting Dyado Nasko and Baba Roumi. I hear you are having a lot of fun. You told me on the phone yesterday that you made a new friend at the beach. I really liked the pictures from your camping trip, especially these two:
I thought it would be nice to paste some of the old notes I have lying around. There are too few, but hopefully we'll remedy that soon. There is certainly more than enough to write about, you little mischief maker.
10/18/2001
Let me start by saying that this should have started a long time ago. But I'll do my best to remember. Alex is in the tumultous age between baby and
big boy. I almost wrote innocent baby, but he never really had this innocence people often attribute to babies and children. Naivete and lack of experience, certainly, but it seems from day one he had a mission to fit as much mischief in every single day as is humanly (babishly?) possible. I think the
first great achievement was in May this year, on a wonderful weekend when dyado Nasko and baba Roumi were visiting. We had gone to the lab for
something, and as we slowly made our way back to the parking lot, Alex saw that, which I had so diligently worked to obscure on the way there -- the wonderful pile of green goose poop in the middle of the sidewalk. The excitement was obvious, although he worked hard to hide it. He knew goose poop was Forbidden, and that made it infinitely more tempting. So instead of taking the brute force approach and simply running to the object of his desire, he decided to decieve, probably the first concious decision of the sort. So on he walked, seemingly oblivious to the delectible pile. Once everyone was safely past the target, he suddenly stopped, and, with his back to the poop, exclaimed "Kola!", which in Bulgarian means car, and is one of the few words he knew at the time. True enough there were a few cars in the parking lot at that moment. They had also been there the moment before, without provoking the kind of enthusiasm streaming from the boy now. Just as all the adults looked to see the cause of all this excitement, Alex did a quick turn and was racing back to the wondrous pile as fast as his little legs would carry him. But the adults weren't so easily fooled, and inches from his goal, the little deceiver's feet left the ground. There was no plan B, he was only 14 months, after all...
I wanted to add a couple of pictures from 10/15/01 from our outing to Maple Lake, where of course we enjoyed the maples in their full autumn glory (and I also lost the cap for the camera, but found it among all these leaves...)
9/17/2002
Hey, what a gap! Fun story today...
I was asking Alex (2.6 years) various things about his day at daycare, and at some point he got tired of answering (not unusual), made a little pouty face, and said
Alex: "Leave me alone!" (this is also normal)
Me: "Why? Did I say something wrong?"
Alex: "You hurt my feelings!" (this is new to me)
Me: "Oh no, I'm sorry, do you want to talk about something else? How about puppies?" (I'm trying hard not to laugh; his face is precious at this point)
Alex: "I don't want to talk about puppies. Puppies aren't real!"
Me: "Why do you think they aren't real?" (driving is a bit hard at this point)
Alex: "Because I can't talk to them -- they say Woof! Woof!"
Me: "Oh, and are kittens real?"
Alex: silence... "Yeah"
Me: "Can you talk to them?"
Alex: "Yeah, they say "mieao!".
We were almost home at this point and got distracted by the marching band that was practicing in our cul-de-sac (it was a surreal commute).
1/2003
Alex and I were discussing the solar system, and I was demonstrating how the Earth (a marble) rotates around the sun (an orange). Alex was extremely attentive the whole time, he even took the orange and marble and started rotating them around each other and repeating my explanation about the seasons.
Since he's been interested for a long time in why the sun goes down at night, I then proceeded to explain how the Earth rotates around its axis. He was still
holding the orange at this point (I had the Earth/marble). For several seconds he had this superfocused expression, and I was thinking, wow, look at his brain absorbing all this so quickly, what a proud Mommy I am!
Then he looked up excitedly with his eyes shining with realization, held up the sun/orange to me and said: "Can I eat it now?"
Needless to say, that was the end of the lesson. And we did eat the orange/sun; next time I'll use inedibles for my demonstration.
That's it for now... I miss you and can't wait to see you next week.
Love,
Mommy
This is my first post to you (or about you) here. You are away from home without us for the first time, visiting Dyado Nasko and Baba Roumi. I hear you are having a lot of fun. You told me on the phone yesterday that you made a new friend at the beach. I really liked the pictures from your camping trip, especially these two:
I thought it would be nice to paste some of the old notes I have lying around. There are too few, but hopefully we'll remedy that soon. There is certainly more than enough to write about, you little mischief maker.
10/18/2001
Let me start by saying that this should have started a long time ago. But I'll do my best to remember. Alex is in the tumultous age between baby and
big boy. I almost wrote innocent baby, but he never really had this innocence people often attribute to babies and children. Naivete and lack of experience, certainly, but it seems from day one he had a mission to fit as much mischief in every single day as is humanly (babishly?) possible. I think the
first great achievement was in May this year, on a wonderful weekend when dyado Nasko and baba Roumi were visiting. We had gone to the lab for
something, and as we slowly made our way back to the parking lot, Alex saw that, which I had so diligently worked to obscure on the way there -- the wonderful pile of green goose poop in the middle of the sidewalk. The excitement was obvious, although he worked hard to hide it. He knew goose poop was Forbidden, and that made it infinitely more tempting. So instead of taking the brute force approach and simply running to the object of his desire, he decided to decieve, probably the first concious decision of the sort. So on he walked, seemingly oblivious to the delectible pile. Once everyone was safely past the target, he suddenly stopped, and, with his back to the poop, exclaimed "Kola!", which in Bulgarian means car, and is one of the few words he knew at the time. True enough there were a few cars in the parking lot at that moment. They had also been there the moment before, without provoking the kind of enthusiasm streaming from the boy now. Just as all the adults looked to see the cause of all this excitement, Alex did a quick turn and was racing back to the wondrous pile as fast as his little legs would carry him. But the adults weren't so easily fooled, and inches from his goal, the little deceiver's feet left the ground. There was no plan B, he was only 14 months, after all...
I wanted to add a couple of pictures from 10/15/01 from our outing to Maple Lake, where of course we enjoyed the maples in their full autumn glory (and I also lost the cap for the camera, but found it among all these leaves...)
9/17/2002
Hey, what a gap! Fun story today...
I was asking Alex (2.6 years) various things about his day at daycare, and at some point he got tired of answering (not unusual), made a little pouty face, and said
Alex: "Leave me alone!" (this is also normal)
Me: "Why? Did I say something wrong?"
Alex: "You hurt my feelings!" (this is new to me)
Me: "Oh no, I'm sorry, do you want to talk about something else? How about puppies?" (I'm trying hard not to laugh; his face is precious at this point)
Alex: "I don't want to talk about puppies. Puppies aren't real!"
Me: "Why do you think they aren't real?" (driving is a bit hard at this point)
Alex: "Because I can't talk to them -- they say Woof! Woof!"
Me: "Oh, and are kittens real?"
Alex: silence... "Yeah"
Me: "Can you talk to them?"
Alex: "Yeah, they say "mieao!".
We were almost home at this point and got distracted by the marching band that was practicing in our cul-de-sac (it was a surreal commute).
1/2003
Alex and I were discussing the solar system, and I was demonstrating how the Earth (a marble) rotates around the sun (an orange). Alex was extremely attentive the whole time, he even took the orange and marble and started rotating them around each other and repeating my explanation about the seasons.
Since he's been interested for a long time in why the sun goes down at night, I then proceeded to explain how the Earth rotates around its axis. He was still
holding the orange at this point (I had the Earth/marble). For several seconds he had this superfocused expression, and I was thinking, wow, look at his brain absorbing all this so quickly, what a proud Mommy I am!
Then he looked up excitedly with his eyes shining with realization, held up the sun/orange to me and said: "Can I eat it now?"
Needless to say, that was the end of the lesson. And we did eat the orange/sun; next time I'll use inedibles for my demonstration.
That's it for now... I miss you and can't wait to see you next week.
Love,
Mommy
Dear Anna,
Ok, girl, this won't be warm and fuzzy. You've been getting up progressively earlier every morning for the past few days. Today you thought 4:30 AM was a jolly good time to kick and squeal. And of course, when it's exactly too late for me to go back to sleep, you happily drift off to snoozeland. Have mercy on your poor Mommy and slightly less poor Daddy, please? Here is to a late morning sleeper tomorrow (hint: it's also the weekend).
Also, while I'm begging, those nursing raspberries are getting a bit out of hand -- remember that just like you, Mommy is extremely ticklish.
(Sleepy) love,
Mommy
Ok, girl, this won't be warm and fuzzy. You've been getting up progressively earlier every morning for the past few days. Today you thought 4:30 AM was a jolly good time to kick and squeal. And of course, when it's exactly too late for me to go back to sleep, you happily drift off to snoozeland. Have mercy on your poor Mommy and slightly less poor Daddy, please? Here is to a late morning sleeper tomorrow (hint: it's also the weekend).
Also, while I'm begging, those nursing raspberries are getting a bit out of hand -- remember that just like you, Mommy is extremely ticklish.
(Sleepy) love,
Mommy
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Dear Anna,
This will be our little corner for sharing your first months' and years' experiences (starting a little late!). Right now you are a jolly rolly polly little girl, almost 5 months old. You love to be naked and laugh when we are taking your clothes off. You are a great babbler and occasional singer. Well, maybe "singing" is not quite the right word, you sound more like a little pterodactyl. Your latest achievement is blowing raspberries, which is incredibly cute, except when you do it while nursing. And you do moo like a little calf just before you latch on. Also, did I mention how pudgy you are :-)? I think you probably tip the scales over 18 pounds, but I'm afraid to check. But don't worry, soon you'll have crawling and walking to keep you nice and fit.
This is what you looked like a couple of weeks ago:
Mommy has to get back to work now. I miss you when I'm not with you, but I'll see you in a few hours.
Love,
Mommy
This will be our little corner for sharing your first months' and years' experiences (starting a little late!). Right now you are a jolly rolly polly little girl, almost 5 months old. You love to be naked and laugh when we are taking your clothes off. You are a great babbler and occasional singer. Well, maybe "singing" is not quite the right word, you sound more like a little pterodactyl. Your latest achievement is blowing raspberries, which is incredibly cute, except when you do it while nursing. And you do moo like a little calf just before you latch on. Also, did I mention how pudgy you are :-)? I think you probably tip the scales over 18 pounds, but I'm afraid to check. But don't worry, soon you'll have crawling and walking to keep you nice and fit.
This is what you looked like a couple of weeks ago:
Mommy has to get back to work now. I miss you when I'm not with you, but I'll see you in a few hours.
Love,
Mommy
