Happy Women's Day

International Women's Day, though largely unknown in America, is a big enough deal here to earn everyone a three-day weekend. Both boys had their third-quarter concerts, featuring songs dedicated to their mothers, grandmothers, and female classmates for the holiday. That meant dressing up all spiffy - here's Sebby in Daddy's bow tie, ready to take cards and chocolates to his teachers.

Misha looked adorable in his new haircut, tie, and gaping tooth hole. When the photographer snapped his photo, the photographer asked him to close his mouth!

Here's Misha in his classroom just before heading down to the performance room. Upon seeing me standing in the doorway, his face lit up.

Misha recited his poem, which was a cute one:

Temno, mne svetlo (It's dark, for me it's light.)

Zamarozit, mne teplo (It's cold, for me it's warm)

Yesli mama riadom (If mama is nearby)

Smotrit nejnem vzgladom. (Watching with her gentle gaze.)

Quite true. I remember when I was little, every night I'd ask my mom to sleep with me, and she'd stay on sitting on my bed for a few minutes. When Misha was younger, he asked the same thing, and now it's Sebby, asking in his sweet voice, "Mama, can you stay with me always?" and hugging me tight.

Sebby proudly recited his poem about inviting the girl students to a partner dance, then danced away happily with Adela.

Don't you love it how kids keep waving at their parents in the audience?

For Women's Day itself (March 8), I met up with lovely women Saule and Anara for some pizza. The kids (Misha, Sebby, and Alihan) played in the jungle-gym play place, gobbled pizza, and had a duel with what were once beautiful roses for the ladies.

With Saule

With my boys

With Saule and Anara

Traditionally, Women's Day brings bad weather, as was the case this year. Even though just two days prior we were riding bikes and scooters and basking in the presence of spring, the weather quickly changed to rain and then snow. But at least we got to make one final (maybe) snowman.

 I guess it's now obvious that the boys have no currently-fitting, non-galosh footwear.

Sebby is a bit disappointed that he can't go as fast on his scooter as Misha can go on his bike, but Misha is so good about riding slowly for Sebby, looping back, and letting Sebby decide what path to take. And when Sebby falls down in his attempts to go too fast, Misha consoles him:

And then the snow:

But it's warming up again nicely now!

Of course, somewhere in there, after February ended but before March began, was my birthday, for which I made a lovely chocolate cake with a chocolate-pudding style frosting. We sampled the frosting, and then without waiting to dig out candles, dug right into the cake. Yum!

Misha gave me a card which I thought was a birthday card, and then I realized it was a card reminding me not to forget his birthday and telling me that he would like a chocolate brownie cake. Ha! That sounds like something out of Calvin and Hobbes. 

I promised to keep up on the gap-tooth photos, so here are some more of Misha:

Making Spirits Bright

The best part about the Christmas season for me is not receiving presents - and certainly not shopping for them - but actually doing all the fun, wintery activities. "Gingerbread" houses fits right into that category. Since I had not made candy houses with the boys before, I decided it was high time to do so. We stocked up on crackers, powdered sugar, m&ms, and gummy shapes, and after a nice romp in the snow, we came inside and got to work.

Ready, set, let's go.

Misha builds his foundation ...

and then adds the roof and creates a fence. At first he was confused how he could be so good at Legos and yet so clumsy at getting goopy frosting to hold up flimsy crackers. But he got the hang of it!

Way to go, Misha!

Time to start decorating!

Sebby watched while I built him a very sturdy house.

We added the roof.

Decorating was the best part for him.

Here is my own little house, slapped together in moments between helping the boys.

Ta daaa! Three cheerful gingerbread houses.

They could be fit for "Handsome and Greta," as Misha says.

And then, why then, .... we ate them!

Earlier that same day, we spent some time outside enjoying the first above-freezing weather in a week. We visited our mini snow hill and tried out our new plastic seat-and-handle sled, which worked great! It's light-weight, cheap, small, and fast. I have since bought a second one.

Riding double had them both laughing.

Then on our way home we had to stop and make a few snow creations, because the snow was melted to the perfect stage for building.

Snow Bunny

Snow Elf

Snow Penguin

And Sebby's dinosaur egg, which he was so sad to leave at the apartment's outdoor entrance.

It can't be Christmas without making paper chains, so there you go:

And we even got around to painting our clay ornaments (made from a 2 flour : 1 salt : 1 water ratio and baked about 30 minutes) and hanging them on the tree.

We quickly realized that painting takes considerably more time than sculpting.

Misha's red elf, Misha's tree, and my green elf

Misha's Rudolph

Sebby's green butterfly

My Rudolph

Decorative photos - Sebby, Nara, and Misha on the tree :)

And you can't forget cuddling in blankets watching the Rudolph movie ...

and the excitement of receiving pretty packages in the mail. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa, Grandma Kate, and Tanya!

Bubble baths for days when Sebby needs tempting to get in the tub.

A circus performance for Mommy, starring the amazing Leaping Sebby

We've also been preparing for the upcoming school holiday concerts. Sebby will be a bunny, and I finally tracked down a costume for him today. He loves being a zaika! And he looks just like a jackrabbit.

He really loves his tail.

See how I'm jumping, jumping, jumping

Misha decided to be a tiger. I found some ears, and when I add the face paint, he'll look great.

One last project that Josh and I have spent a lot of time on these past few weeks has been a new card game for Misha. It's based on Magic: The Gathering, but we drew all our own pictures and made up magic abilities for our cards. When we finished making some 300 cards, we glued them to real playing cards and "laminated" them with thick tape. Happily, this is Misha's new favorite game and he asks to play it every day. The best part about it is that it involves a lot of reading on the cards (to know exactly what each card does), exposure to new vocabulary ("Tentacles of Tyranny," for example), and a LOT of basic math to figure out who wins battles, how much life you gain or lose, etc.

Misha, casting his spells.

Checking out his cards.

Playing against Daddy, the true sorcerer.

Naturally, Sebby sees Misha playing this game and is also very interested. Misha has spent time "teaching" Sebby this game, and even though Misha ends up playing both sides, Sebby still thinks it's fascinating. However, I decided that Sebby definitely needed his own cards, so I made him my own version of the currently-popular Flip-Along Locomotive game. It's a simple game of memory, but each pair of cards creates one train car which is then added to your own engine. Building your train as you play makes the game really fun.

Since today was Christmas Eve, we let the boys each open up one present. (The rest we'll save for New Year's Eve, when they will have their holiday vacation.) For Misha, we printed out and self-laminated two more sets of Magic cards (this time we simply printed out the actual game cards instead of drawing our own, which saved us tons of time!). He was thrilled. We gave Sebby his train game, which also turned out to be a hit. He loves having his "own" cards and he loves building his train.

Ready to open!

Sebby making a long, long train.

Playing train memory with Misha. Sebby was rather concerned that Misha was so good at this game.

So excited to find matches!

Merry Christmas!