The Zoo
One of the Seven Sisters visible from the zoo
More info on the Seven Sisters here.
Sign reads: Be careful! Animal is dangerous!
They met...
...grew fond of each other...
...and decided to run away together.
And then mommy decided it was time to go.
Violet…
LOVES blowing bubbles
AFRAID of trampolines
LIKES eating "straw bears" (strawberries)
ALWAYS wants to walk by herself, without holding mommy or daddy's hand
IMITATES what we do and say
LOVES to draw with her water paints, esp. with her tongue sticking out
PLAYS with flour when mommy is baking
LIKES wearing her new sunglasses
Violet is getting so good at talking. She says short phrases, and does a lot of repeating of what we say. Her most common phrase right now is, “What’s that?” She says that all the time, even if she knows what something is and she even uses it when asking who someone is. We are working on the phrase, “Who’s that?” with her. She surprises me at times with certain phrases she says to herself that I have told her in the past, like, “Be careful, Violet.” Yes, she says that to herself now. “Shut the door!” “Hi, mommy.” “Almost done.” And she has gotten really good with, “Thank you, mommy.” Sometimes when one of us has just left the room, she says, “Where’s Daddy or Mommy?”. One cute thing right now… after singing with her, putting her down for bed and saying goodnight, she has been saying, “Bye Mommy, Bye Daddy”. And yes she has been picking up Russian too.
She is such an affectionate little girl. She is always giving us hugs and kisses and shows us love all the time.
She can be really silly at times and even knows when she makes people laugh because she’ll just keeping “hamming” it at times. One weird thing my family does, well my one odd brother Jason does with Micah, is to talk using a silly voice, really stressing the r’s. Its hard to explain, but we have done that voice ourselves just being silly and she has picked up on it. Now she does it with us when we are being silly and at other times by herself just to make us laugh. If you don’t understand, maybe I’ll try and get a video in the future.
There is so much more I could write, but I just wanted to give you a little bit of what our little 2 year old has been up to lately.
Violet is our pride and joy and we are so excited about welcoming another baby into our family soon.
Pictures in the Park
This past week I went to Tsaritsyno Park with Violet and my friend Tanya. We had a nice time walking slowly around the park while taking pictures.
The last day of school all older Moscow school-girls get dressed up to officially say goodbye to childhood.
At school, in the first and ceremonial part of the celebrations, teachers hand out high-school diplomas and say some nice words about their students.
After that the school-leavers go out to party with their classmates.
Traditionally, on this day Russian girls wear old-fashioned Soviet style school uniforms: short brown dresses with white aprons, white socks and big white bows. Later they change into evening dresses.
But the outfits are all part of a long standing tradition, with black and white uniforms representing the standard attire of school students supposedly in pre-Soviet times, in the period of the Tsars. It should be noted that Russian teenagers are in fact very fashionable, but for this one special day they put away their designer clothes and embrace tradition.
After that, they walk around the city, bathing in fountains, taking pictures of each other and generally enjoying themselves.
Read more info about it here.
Six Sandowiches 