"When I was a Kid ..."

Like all little kids, Misha says some funny things. Last night while working diligently on a picture, he told me, “When I grow up, I won’t be a kid anymore, and I will say, ‘When I was a kid, I drew this!’”

In the car a while ago the radio was on, and he said, “Mom, I don’t want that song, because I have a song in my throat and I can sing it.”

And a few weeks ago, he really enjoyed watching the Bee Movie. It was quite educational, too. After it was over he said, “I wish I was a bee and I had wings and I could pollinate the flowers!”

I like how Misha creates verbs:
“I don’t like bugs because they itchie me.”
“Then we have to cold ‘em up!” (about strawberry-yogurt freezies)
“First you have to flat it.” (play-dough)
“Daddy, don’t be sick anymore! Stop sicking!”

At night, he wants to read a lot of books. He emphasizes this by saying, “I want to read every each!”

When I wasn’t having any luck blowing up his balloon, Misha said, “I’m going to give it to Daddy because you can’t do it. You’re not big enough.”

His concept of geography is really coming along. He knows he lives in Brookings. He also knows he was born in Kyrgyzstan. He also knows we live on planet Earth. (He asks about the moon and so I explained that we live on a planet, and he knows that our planet turns so we can share the sun with the other side of the world, like Kyrgyzstan.) We got a ride from my co-worker awhile ago, and Misha got to meet her daughter. After asking her name, the first thing Misha said was, “I live in Brookings on Earth!” (Truth be told, it sounds like "Erf.")

He also knows it takes a LONG time to drive to Sioux Falls. And that Grandma Kate and Tanya both live VERY far away, so far that you have to take an airplane. He says, “How come Grandma Kate lives so far away and Tanya lives so far away? I’m not far away – I’m right HERE!” And he knows that Kyrgyzstan is even farther away – all the way on the other side of Earth! ;-) He loves to look at our big wall map and Grandpa’s globe and see where different people he knows live. He can find the little red country that starts with a K that is Kyrgyzstan.

He's also quite the artist. Here he is posing after drawing his self-portrait. See the resemblance in the following two photos? He even drew hair, shirt sleeves, and fingers on himself, which I don't recall him doing before.

Misha likes to lift up my shirt now and talk to his baby brother. He tells him how he wants him to come out so he can play dragons with him. :) He likes to give my belly lots of hugs and kisses - here he is kissing my six-month pooza. He wanted to use our camera to take a picture of the baby inside, but I told him my camera wasn't that special. Only the doctor's camera can do that.

After about two months of ice skating, he's a regular little ice king. He's good enough now to glide on the ice, which means he falls more, but he loves to chase us!

You can see how speedy he's gotten:

Owies and Trumpets

Sorry it's been such a long time between posts - we've been busy! Josh had his gall bladder out the day after his birthday. The first week was difficult, especially with Misha often forgetting how delicate daddy is (ouch! poor Daddy!) and with some bad nausea/vomiting that seems to be tapering off a bit this week. Hopefully he'll only continue to improve. The operation, as Misha describes, went like this: "The doctor cut daddy with the knife and now he has owies and they GLUED them! Now he doesn't have a gall bladder!" We talk about how Daddy is recovering a little more every day and pretty soon he'll be able to play like before (wrestling and the like). Misha says, "And when Daddy gets better, we can do strong hugs and WRESTLE! Daddy's getting stronger and stronger!" He says soon Dad will be able to lift dressers and beds -- amazing how a little surgery can make one into a superhero. :)

Misha has also become very interested in trumpets.

Upon hearing that Grandpa had a trumpet, he immediately wanted to see it and play it. Amazingly, he could actually produce sounds, over and over! It takes considerable effort, of course, but he loves it. To make things a little easier for Misha and a little quieter for the listeners, his grandparents bought him a shiny silver toy trumpet to play, although he still wants to play the real one when we're at Grandpa's. Here's a video of Misha playing on a trumpet belonging to his second-cousin-once-removed (or something), Josh.

We recently watched the Sound of Music, and Misha loved it. When I told him that this movie featured the yodeling goat song, he dashed downstairs to get his singing goat. After the first five minutes of the movie, he asked, "But where is the goat?" I told him the goat didn't come in for awhile. Five minutes later .... "Where's the goat, Mommy?" But he was by no means bored with the movie - he watched it all intently and loved the songs, especially the goat song. (We didn't watch all the way to the end though, because I remember not liking the end when I was little.)

Our snow is slowly, slowly melting away. Meanwhile, Misha loves to climb on the piles and dig with shovels with the neighbor kids.

He also likes to get his bike out every chance he can - which means pushing pedals with booted feet, grabbing handlebars with mittened hands, and getting Mommy to push him out of slushy spots and ice patches. We have even made it around the block a few times!

It's always a blast to play inside of a giant box!

Grandma got him a "baby brother doll" and a magic bottle of disappearing milk. He really likes it. :)

Reenacting the "yoga tree," as he learned from playing Wii Fit with Jenna.

Here are some more clips of Misha reading - he loves to sound out letters that he sees on covers, signs, etc.