What's new with V.Talia?

With her eight month birthday around the corner, Violet has been absorbing the outside world at warp speed.  Here are some new things she has learned:

-She can now say 'baba' (grandma) and 'papa' (dad).  Even though she probably doesn't know what those words mean, she is excited to see us oooh and ahhh when she says them.

-When people start singing 'ladushki, ladushki' (pat-a-cake) she claps happily

-While she hasn't quite grasped waving she does open and close her hand when someone says, "bye, bye".

- Crawling also seems to be right around the corner as she has mastered rolling over to her tummy and pushing off with her legs.  Once she gets the arms down, she will be ready to go.

-She tried bread for the first time and my oh my, she ate it up (literally).  In fact, she was so excited to eat it that while holding a piece in each of her hands, she tried to stuff both pieces into her mouth at the same time.

Speaking of pat-a-cake, the Russian version is called 'Ladushki' and beyond the first line, which says, 'Ladushki, Ladushki' I had no clue how this nursery rhyme went.  This prompted me to Google: Ladushki and lo and behold was the rhyme with the full lyrics in Russian, along with the English translation.  I have to say, only the Russians can come up with something this nutty.  

Ладушки, ладушки

Где были?

У бабушки!

Что ели?

Кашку!

Что пили?

Бражку!

Кашка масленька

Бражка сладенька

Бабушка добренька!

Here is my favorite part.....the translation!

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, 

Where were you? 

At granny's! 

What did you eat? 

Porridge*! 

What did you drink? 

A little home-brewed beer** 

The porridge is buttered, 

The home-brewed beer is sweet, 

Granny is kind!

While all the American kids are singing about baking a cake as fast as they can, the Russian kids are gloating about how they got to go to their grandma's and drink some home-brewed beer.

In the next installment of funny Russian nursery rhymes I will discuss the looping rhyme about the Pope who killed his dog because it ate his meat.

Violet is 7 months!

How is this possible? She was JUST born!

Here are some recent pics of the little cookie monster.

Aruba, Jamaica...Ooo I wanna take ya!

We just came back from our first family vacation and it was fantastic - even though I didn't love Aruba itself.  Let me clarify. It's not that I disliked Aruba, because it's hard to dislike 85 degree weather, palm trees and perfect swimming conditions.  What I thought it lacked was an element of uniqueness as it was overly catered to American tourists.  At each turn was a strip mall that contained either a large supermarket or a fast food chain.

Aside, from being a somewhat generic beach destination, I thought our first trip with Violet was great.  She was on her very best behavior and handled flying like a pro.  Although my hat does go off to the three children sitting behind us.  They ranged from age 2, to about 6 or 7 and didn't make a peep the entire flight.  We later learned that their mom drugged them with Benadryl to keep them quiet.  Parenting at it's finest!

While in Aruba, Violet swam (see video below), tried new foods (strawberries, melon, and even a little chocolate) and played with her new BFF Audrey.  Violet and Audrey shared toys, laughed, high fived and demonstrated their knowledge of facial features.  Audrey was excited to show everyone where their eyes were, while Violet was just excited to try to poke people in the eye.

We stayed in a two bedroom apartment where the bedrooms were separated by a living room and kitchen.  This was PERFECT for traveling with two young kids who were often sleeping/napping.  It allowed us to continue enjoying the vacation by drinking and playing cards into the wee hours of the night.  One of my favorite parts of the apartment was having a washer/drier.  Since this has been missing in my life for the last 30 years, all I wanted to do was wash clothes.  I came home with a suitcase full of perfectly smelling and clean clothes.  Ahhh, the little things!

There were some skeptics (and I won't name any names - MOM) who felt that there was no reason to drag a 7 month old on a vacation, but I am glad we didn't listen.   It was actually the perfect age, because she isn't mobile yet, so we were able to plop her into the stroller where she often dozed off while we enjoyed 2-for-1 happy hour on the beach.