Our Little Russian Peanut

SERIOUSLY... has it really been over a week since I posted? Didn't I promise (like a girl scout promise) to blog more frequently now that we're getting things figured out? Well, apparently, I'm not a good girl scout. Will these two random messy face pictures help you forgive me? (Spaghetti or a donut anyone??)



So much has been going on! I had the pleasure of meeting Karen and Kerry for dinner last Thursday night. They were headed to Atlanta to catch their flight back to Kemerovo City to go to court! Congratulations to them! Their 10 days were waived and I'm pretty sure they picked up their daughter today (haven't read blogs yet!). Andrew loved his new friends. At the end of the night, as we were saying our goodbyes, he insisted on a group hug.

In an effort to tire the child out this weekend, we took a walk after the rain cleared and then Saturday morning we went to M0nkey J0es (a bouncy place). The boy had a TON of fun and was a bucket of sweat 50 minutes later when we left. Best $10 every spent!

Paka!

Becky

Imagination is a great thing. Andrew has a very active imagination and loves to play pretend. He also likes to take the ordinary and turn things around a bit! He makes us laugh all of the time with his silliness.

1. "No barking with your mouth full!" to my little boy sitting at the table, barking with a mouth full of mac & cheese

2. "We don't put spaghetti in our eye" as I glance over and see Andrew very steadily holding spaghetti in the air and laying it on his eyeball

3. "No touching other people's peet-kahs (Russian for his boy part)" as Andrew decided he wanted to see if anyone else had one and ran around the kitchen trying to find out for himself

:-)

P.S. Pics are from a day at a local park that I'm just now getting around to taking off the camera.

6 years ago today Keith and I were dancing to "To Make You Feel My Love" by Garth Brooks from the movie Hope Floats at our wedding reception. Alex was 10 years old, a mouth full of braces and was a hit with all of the bridesmaids. Andrew wasn't even a thought, yet now we can't imagine life without him.

It's been a weekend of milestones - Alex's first Homecoming dance with a GIRL (gasp!) and our 6 year wedding anniversary! We took Alex to his friend's house last night to meet up with 2 guys from his school and all of their dates. They all looked so wonderful. As I was looking through the pictures today, for the first time I realized how grown up Alex is becoming. I got teary eyed thinking that he only had a year and half left of school and how quickly the time has gone.

So, I know you all are dying to know what we did for our anniversary! Well, my sister, step-mother and I did some meal planning while my dad hung out with Andrew. I wasn't sure what Keith was doing - I was hoping he was enjoying the quiet and was watching football but instead I came home to a clean house, all of the laundry done and dishes put away! The BEST anniversary gift ever! Funny how, your first few years, you want jewelry or things like that and now that we have a toddler around I just want something to be cleaned! :-)

We know it's important for us to still have time to ourselves, it just didn't work out this weekend. We're hoping to go on a date night either next weekend or the weekend after. We're trying to figure out we want to go and what we want to do! So many restaurants we haven't been to since we've been back. We might just spend the day restaurant hopping or something. :-)

Well, I'll leave you with a few pictures!

Andrew "found" the moon and was telling Alex and Lindsay that he was going to REACH IT (with his rocketship which is apparently parked in our backyard - haven't found it yet)!

Toodles!

Becky

Hey all!

I've been tagged a few times and boy this one was a hard one! I just had to write a bio for work and it's really hard to talk about yourself.

Without further ado, here are 6 random facts about me:

1. Milk. I hate milk. I used to love my mother’s macaroni and cheese until I saw her make it – never ate it again. If I pour milk into a cereal bowl, I have to hold my breath so I can’t smell it and I never, ever will empty milk down the drain (especially expired milk). I prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla because it leaves less of a milky taste in your mouth. I love cheese and mashed potatoes and other things made with milk but refuse to “picture” the process that has gone into making them.

2. I’m a control freak. I like to be in control of pretty much everything. The exception to this rule is deciding where to eat when we eat out. Can you be a control freak but not like to make decisions? I think I like being in control post-decision making. Wow... I'm odd.

3. I hate, hate being tickled. It makes me want to cry. On the same note, I love Halloween, but I hate haunted houses or having someone sneak up on me. In college, we went to a haunted house and a person jumped out from behind something and touched one of us. That was it for me – I wasn’t sure if I was going to cry or wet my pants. :-)

4. If sleeping was an Olympic sport I could totally win the gold medal. Last Friday, around 7:15, I was laying on my bed trying to will my headache away when Andrew and Keith came in the house. Andrew saw me in bed, climbed up with me, undressed, got under the covers and said night, night. I told Keith I would be out as soon as he fell asleep. At 10:30 Saturday morning I woke and realized I was by myself. Knowing that I am a gold medal contender, Keith let me sleep as long as I needed to. Granted, prior to July 8th (Andrew's Gotcha Day) I was a much better contender for the Gold Medal. Now I'm lucky if I sleep past 7.

5. When I was a kid I was playing doctor and decided I needed some nose medicine. I shoved rocks up my nose – far. I don’t really remember what happened after that – maybe they had to be flushed out?

6. I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. So why didn’t I go to college for it? My parents were both teachers and I wanted to do something different. I’m now in the IT field and while I love resolving issues and figuring things out, I would still someday love to teach. (This coming from the person who knows she’s not cut out to be a stay at home mom but who instead thinks she can handle 30 of them??)

Now my task is to tag 6 others.

The nominees are (sorry if you've been tagged already! I had a hard time remembering who was tagged!):
Carolynn
Lea
Laura
Adrian
Carey
Mary

If I tag you, here are the rules!!!
1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random facts about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the taggers know when your entry is up.

Some times, as a parent, you do something that you think is funny and will pass, yet it comes back to bite you in the behind again and again. Kind of like when your child says something you know he/she should NOT be saying but you laugh anyway which just prompts the child to say it again and again. Well, my darling husband has created a situation, shall we call it, that comes back to bite us every single day and it is my duty to not only exploit my proud parenting moments, but his as well. :-)

Let's first explain the history here. While in Russia with Andrew, our translator took us to a beautiful park on one of our days off. It had lots of different play areas, a duck pond and a small bird zoo (or something like that). At one point we passed a little “cartooney” (that is now officially a word in case you were wondering) area with colorful statues. One of the statues was a weird shaped house and a guy inside. Our translator said it was “Bobugeea” (pronounced Bob-oo-gee-ah) who is in a lot of Russian fairytales as the old wise man. Andrew knew exactly who it was, except he called him Bobugah (pronounced Bob-oo-gah).

From time to time he would bring up Bobugah and he thinks the conductor on Thomas the Train (don’t shoot me – I don’t know his name yet) is Bobugah. They must look alike. Little by little Bobugah turned into Andrew’s imaginary friend of sorts. If I had a towel on my head drying my hair, I was all of a sudden Bobugah. It was really cute.

So, one night we’re at Chik-fi1-a and Andrew is up in the slide tunnel. He is having a grand old time and Keith decides to bang on the bottom of the slide – expecting to get a giggle or a “Papa! No!”. Well, Andrew comes down the slide with an shocked look on his face. He looks at Keith and smiles expecting him to own up to it. Instead, Keith throws up his arms and says “What was that??”. In his defense, I’m pretty sure he thought Andrew would run over and laugh or something, instead he refused to go back on the slide. It was at that point that I knew there was no turning back.

We got him to go back up the slide (yes up, not down) but only with us sitting at the bottom to make sure the culprit didn’t come back. Who is this culprit? Why, Bobugah of course! From that point forward, Andrew is scared of Bobugah. Every once in a while he’ll wake up in the middle of the night because of Bobugah (most likely a cat at the door or the air conditioning kicking on and off). More and more, everything gets blamed on Bobugah. “Andrew, did you just throw your bread on the floor?” Wide eyed, split second response – “BOBUGAH!”. The other day he was in my car and was looking through his photo album of pictures from Russia. He pulled at one of the plastic pages and ripped it out. I heard the noise and turned, didn’t say a word, and he is a puddle of tears saying “Bobugah” through his sobs.

We’ve told him time and time again that Bobugah is in Russia or that he’s not allowed in our house or that Keith talked to Bobugah and he is going to be nice now. No dice. I have opted out of the middle of the night crying since I had no hand in this. I remind Keith quite often that he made his bed! :-) It’s an ongoing joke in our house because Keith seems to “remember” the chain of events at Chik-Fi1-a much differently then I do! Just last night I even had Alex helping him remember what truly happened. I know, down the road, Keith will be able to turn the tables on me (probably because Andrew will learn a bad word from me or something) so I'm getting my jabs in while I can! :-)

So, we’ll see what Bobugah does tonight. The poor guy is getting blamed for a ton and being an old wise man, I think he's probably quite offended! If anyone knows or has a link to the true spelling/meaning/story about the Bobugah fellow, let me know. I’d love to be able to share some happy Bobugah stories with my little monkey!

Later!
Becky