Izzy's First Boy-Friend

Friday, July 31, 2009

Isabella's been at the same Russian family daycare for a little more than a year now. Being that she is half Russian, we really liked the idea of her picking up on Russian at a early age. But we wonder how much good this environment is for her. She speaks less Russian than she speaks as a Russian FOB! But I digress.

From the very first day she made friends with a Russian boy named Sacha. They are the same age, but developmentally quite a but apart. He's still not speaking coherently in either English or Russian. Everyday I ask Isabella about her day and who she played with. Our conversation goes something like this:

Me: How was your day?
Isabella: Good

Me: What did you do today?
Isabella: I play with Sachik, Wiolet (Violet), Ben...who else? Uh...teacher, Noya, and Ethan. Ethan is brown skin.
(Ethan is a cute African-American boy in her class. She has never before remarked about the color of his skin until recently. Sacha's Russian nickname is Sachik, like Ed's is Edik. Isabella's is Isabelka or Isabelitchka. And I think mine would be Lyditchka.)

Me: What else did you do?
Isabella: Noya cry. She get time-out.

Me: Why did she get a time-out?
Isabella: Because she hit me she get time-out.

And so goes our daily conversation. On Wednesday when I dropped off the kids, Sacha and his mom pulled up behind me. Isabella gets out of the car and screams, "Sachik, I like Sachik!" She runs out and they run to each other an both ye out each other's name. When they meet they hug and kiss. It was the most adorable thing ever! His mom and I laughed as they embraced.

She's too young to understand the concept of boyfriend/girlfriend. So Sacha is just a boy-friend.

Video: Ethan Crawls?

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

It finally happened. Ethan has decided it was time to crawl. He sort of scoots and drags.







PS. Don't you just love his army fatigues, especially with the fist. It's like he's a poster child for some army recruitment ad.

Trip to the Beach

A few weekends ago we took the kids to Washington Beach, near Marina del Ray. It was crowded, but the weather was perfect. At home it was around 100 degrees, but the beach was a nice 77 degrees with a great breeze. It was an absolute perfect beach day.

I can already tell that Ethan will be much more of a water-loving kid than Isabella. Not to make comparisons, but Ethan loved sticking his feet in the cold ocean. He was laughing and screaming for more. Isabella stayed on the sand as if she were chained to go only so far. We all had a great time.




4th of July

Tuesday, July 21, 2009



Unlike most people, we went to the desert to spend our 4th of July. It was a sweltering 108 degrees of extreme dry heat, but we were happy as can be. We rented a great house in the Twin Palms area of Palm Springs. It had the best amenities to make us happy all day long. We found them through Craigslist, but they also list through VRBO and all the other vacation rental sites. I would recommend this house to anyone.

pool - check
misters - check
air conditioning - check
sound system - check
privacy - check

We had so much fun all day in the pool. And believe it or not, we even used the jacuzzi with the heat set at 98 degrees. It was a nice vacay.









We kept Isabella up for the fireworks, which we were able to see from the deck of the house. Isabella was too scared to come outside to watch, but she cheered on.

We just started feeding Ethan Cheerios and Isabella loves being the helpful big sis by feeding Ethan. Of course, Ethan never rejects her many, many offerings.