Tuesday, February 27, 2007

A new bundle of joy is here!


Yes...finally!
Our baby girl was ready to see her parents on Friday, the 23rd of February at 7:03 am.
She is 20" and 8lb 6oz.
And her name is Milana.
Welcome to the world, our little treasure!
We've been waiting for you!

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Snow! Snow!


Finally it feels like winter is here!
We had a lot of snow yesterday and lots of fun cleaning the driveway and taking the girls sledding.
I had some workout with the shovel as well, but it did not do the trick to help me go into labor.
Oh, well, still waiting...

Not celebrating St. Valentine's.

Yesterday was a holiday that we do not celebrate with my dear hubby. We do not exchange gifts, go out for dinner, or treat each other in a "special way" that day, because we love and treat each other with love and respect throughout the year.
It was so ironical that yesterday morning we listened to the WBAI program "Democracy Now" with Amy Goodman, where she talked about celebrating the St. Valentine's Day and what it involves. Flowers, grown with slave labor and brought to the USA and some Europian countries from Columbia, "conflict" diamonds from Sierra Leon, and chocolates made from the cocoa beans where child slavery is widely used.

In the evening I received a phone call from a friend of mine who wished me "Happy Valentine's Day". I wished her the same back very politely, but thinking about the morning radio program asked, "So, did you get your diamonds today, chocolate and flowers?" And I felt a bit uncomfortable when she said, "Yes, I did! How about you?". So, I had to go and explain to her that we do not celebrate this holiday with Mirek. I wasn't going into any details, but I guess she had sensed something in the tone of my voice (even though there was really nothing there, just the tone of a tired preggo woman whose due date was 4 days ago!) and started apologizing for calling me and wishing "Happy St. Valentine's Day". Ahhhhh! Sometimes it's just better to keep quiet!
I do some fun activities with the girls, though. We baked heart shaped cookies and decorated them hoping to bring them to share with the friends in our homeschooling coop. But we had so much snow, that we did not go anywhere yesterday, so all the cookies are for us!
Hurray!!!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Piggy bank.


As we are still waiting for the "little one" to come and great us in this world, we are trying to keep busy with doing a lot of arts and crafts. I will not have as much time later, or at least in the beginning after bringing the baby home, so we are on the roll.
The girls wanted to make a piggy bank the other day to put money aside for our trip to Russia (who knows when that will happen, that's why we have to start early to save the money).
As I really like to make things out of "nothing", we used a plastic bottle for our piggy bank. Some felt, wiggly eyes, hot glue gun (of course!), the empty paint containers for the legs...
And when Tata comes home in the evening, the girls run to him to give him kisses, hugs and... get the change!

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Before and after.

We have been working on this project for over two weeks and now finally it's done!
It started with the girls wanting to make a castle out of the toilet paper rolls, since we've been using them for a while for small craft ideas. And I decided to take it up to a bit higher level and started collecting the empty boxes and food containers. It took us so long to complete the project since it had involved a few stages. First, we glued newspaper strips all over the containers to make them sturdier. When the glue dried up, we painted the first coat of paint, then the second and the third. The girls were very busy, and played in between the painting sessions. I helped to make the "cracking effect" which took me a couple of days. Then we were working on our roofs, all over again with gluing and coloring. The most fun was the final part, when they already could see the ready towers of the castle coming up and could play with them trying to figure out the layout. Windows and the doors came in the last and then it was time for me to take out my hot glue gun. It's a "must have" if you have kids!
So, a bit of imagination, acrylic paints, brushes, glue, newspaper, scissors, a few empty food containers that would've ended up in the garbage anyway, and we have a wonderful toy to play with.
Next idea is to populate the castle with princesses and knights made out of the salt and flour dough.

Monday, February 05, 2007