We’re finally in our new house. The movers came earlier than we expected which was nice. They said they’d be here on Saturday but they came on Thursday. We were here by Monday and were staying at Laki’s mom’s house. It was really nice of them to let us stay, but I have to admit I was glad to be in our own bed again. Sleeping in Laki’s old bed is not the be most comfortable. Laki and some of my family members have been kind enough to help paint the house. The old owner’s painted the interior peach. I like to call it pink but my sister says it’s peach. Well we’re trying to get rid of all the pink and we so far have 3 rooms down (the living room, dining room and the kitchen.) It will take a while to get the chairs and accessories that we want to make our house our home. Now we just need to unpack the garage filled with all our boxes.

Vasili is taking everything pretty well. He’s doing pretty well with adjusting to the move. Nothing too different. He’s very happy to be able to see his cousin’s all the time.

I’m still kind of tired. Have an appointment with the doctor for our 16week appt. Can’t wait.

A lot of things have happened since the last post and I’m glad to say that’s it’s all been good news.

We are moving to Seattle, into our first home by the end of next week, we’re expecting our second child in December and Vasili will be turning 3 in July.

Vasili News: Toilet Learning (it’s what the cool parents are calling it now) is going well. Today without encouragement from me Vasili went #1 and #2 all on his own. I didn’t help him at all. He is taking naps and sleeping through the night in his big boy bed. He talks...A LOT. I’m not quite sure where he gets that from. Exerting his independence by making his first answer to any question “no”. We’re thinking about putting him into preschool as soon as we get our finances in order. I’m not quite sure I’m ready for that but it’s for his benefit so I can’t argue with growth. I’m still not sure about girls. Well have to see about that in the next 5 or 6 decades or after my death whichever comes first. My favorite phrase for the week is (clasping his hands to his chest) “I love my daddy!” He’s still into trains. Loves any kind of train and loves to watch and read about them. I HAVE to read “The Polar Express” to him for his nap time. He’s finally coming out of his shell as far as meeting new people. I give that credit to his cousins. Being and playing with them has made him more social (another reason I’m glad we’re moving up). I’m sure I have more that I want to talk about but I can’t seem to think of them right now. More for later I guess.

Moving news:
We’re getting our key for the house today. We are moving to Kent. The house is fairly nice and the neighborhood seems very friendly. Well except for the guy with the bumper sticker that read “The south will rise again” on a confederate flag. I might have to avoid him/her. The movers will be her on the 13th to pack our stuff and on the 14th or 15th they will load it and head out to Seattle. Finding a house in 2 weeks proved to be more of a chore than we thought. This will be the house we’ll be living in for only a few years so it will do for now until we find our family home. By the end of our 2 weeks we were willing to take any home that didn’t need too much fixing or money. We settled for this house in Kent. We really wanted to live in West Seattle but the homes there were too overpriced for amount of work needed to redo the home. We’ll be driving up to Seattle. The main reason is we don’t want to spend the money on shipping the car up there. The other reason is that we wanted to make it a mini-vacation as we drive up the coast and see our friends a long the way.

New Baby News:
I’m only 12w4d but I’m showing like nobodies business. Well at this point I kind of look like I’ve had to many beers in my lifetime but if you knew I was pregnant then you’d know I was showing. I’ve been sick and tired for the whole 3 months. Some days are better than others. One day I think I’m getting better then a really bad day hits me and I lose hope again. I’ve only thrown up once so far. The rest of the days were just nausea. I’ve been given orders not to exercise or do anything strenuous. So I’ve been pretty bored and Vasili is paying the price for it since he watches tv for hours a day since I’m too tired and sick to play with him and he gets to whiny and I have to little patience to fight back.

That’s about it for us. Can’t wait to see everyone on our drive up!

Some of you may know that we tried to take Vasili our of his crib and into a ‘big boy’ bed when he was approximately 2. He is now 2 1/2 and sleeping and napping in his ‘big boy’ bed.

It started out of pure laziness on my part. Vasili reached into his drawer and grabbed his green sheet (the ones he hadn’t wanted on his bed since he first got his Thomas sheets). At this point I was at the end of putting his clean Thomas sheets onto his matress and told him that if he wanted he could use the green sheets on his bed if he slept in his ‘big boy’ bed.

Later that night, Vasili asked Laki to put his green sheets on his ‘big boy’ bed. Laki didn’t know at that time that Vasili and I made our agreement earlier that day.

We must of asked Vasili a few times before we finally put the sheets on the bed. He slept in his bed that night with out getting up once. The next day he slept in his bed for a nap (no getting up). The first day of sleeping in his bed was Thursday. It is now Sunday and he has yet to get out of his bed unless we are in the room with him and let him know that it’s ok to get out. He wasn’t ready before and he let us know when he was ready. I’m glad we let him decide because it was much easier.

Yes, we’re still planning on moving up to Seattle. Still no solid date yet. Just around May or June. We’re hoping that by the time we move up there we’ll be in a new home. We’ll see how that works out.

As for Vasili...

Still growing up trying to assert his independence. Hard to balance that but as always we’re working it out. “I’m do it,” he says. “I’m said...” if we don’t acknowledge him his words right away. He loves this park called Columbia park in Torrance on the corner of Crenshaw and 109th. There’s a slide there that must be about 2 stories high. He’ll come down yelling, “Weeeeeeee! Mommy, look at my hair.” It’s a plastic slide so the static electricity makes his hair stick up. Mondays, garbage/recycling day, are his favorite days, because he gets to see and hear the trucks coming down the road. He yells “GARBAGE TRUCK” and runs to the window to go look at it. This one time when we were in the car, he wanted me to follow the truck. Apparently, he wasn’t done watching it.

He’s started doing the cutest thing and that is, when he watches Laki and I give hugs to each other he’ll run over and give hugs to each of of and sometimes give us a big round of hugs. Once in a while he’ll ask for kisses, but most of the time it’s “all done kisses”. Yesterday after doing our routine of drinking water, a round of kisses, then daddy reads bedtime books, and we both tuck him in at night he wanted mommy and daddy to kiss. I gave Laki and kiss on the cheek and he said “mouth. Kiss daddy mouth.” Hahaha How can you resist that request?

I’m so excited and nervous about going up to Seattle. Moving near family is what I’ve wanted for Vasili since he was born. He’ll love his cousins. The bonus of all that is I get to go to school again. Well after a year of living there and claiming residency. What a bother. The 20+ years of living there and I have to redo my residency stuff. Booooo.

Hope all is well with everyone.

So the latest on Vasili talking is that he’s saying...well...the darnest things.

For example: He will repeat something over and over until you respond and after the 3rd time he’ll say, “I’m said...” That’s his thing. Instead of saying ‘I' he says “I’m”.

He is now correcting me. “It’s ‘mommy’ not ‘momma’.”

Last night Laki did something that was funny and Vasili said “That’s clever”. Neither Laki and I say that, but I guess he picked it up when watching Bob the Builder. One of the characters, Lofty, says that (that’s what he told us.)

As for moving back to Seattle. Laki has talked to his bosses about moving up there this summer. Hopefully by May. If you guys have any estimates on moving companies please let me know.

We’ve been slow and steady with the potty situation. Vasili is 2 months from being 2.5. Today he went the entire day without wetting his pants He didn’t tell me to that he needed to go, but still he went when we asked so he does have control over it.

He still doesn’t go poo poo in the toilet so we’ll not totally there yet. I can’t wait for that day

Just got a call from my sisters letting me know that our family pet of 14 years has just passed away.

He was playing out in the yard and no less than 5 mins after being out there my mom went to check on him and found him laying there dead.

They are trying to find a pet cemetary to bury him this very moment.

I’m feeling really sad, but more for my parents than for the loss of Kiki. He was a great pet but the sad part is that my parents have lost the pet they considered their 7th child. My brother summarized it best when he said that he’s lived a great 14 years. That’s awesome for any dog.

Jim Light (the person helping the company find work in Seattle) gave word to Laki he’s found 2 companies that are prospective contracts. Hopefully they pan out. We also looked over our lease and it states that our lease ended in Sept. Which means we are free to go wherever we want. I thought it was going to be in March/April but it looks like it’s already ended. We’ll see how things pan out. Wish us luck.

Vasili News:
He is getting big and speaking so much. He’s such a polite little boy. Most of the time he says please and thank you. Today he was really showing his independant side. He wanted to do things his way and at his time. We had to have a sit down and talk about when and how things are done. And that he can’t get his way each time. Today he was singing B-I-N-G-O and dancing around his room. It was absolutely adorable.

There is still no real word about moving up to Seattle. According to Jim Light the person helping Laki (and the company) find work in Seattle, there is very little work for Laki up there.

Vasili News:

Vasili is really starting to remember things from the day. We went to the park yesterday and when he woke up he was reciting what he saw at the park. “Train. Like James” The train was red like James from Thomas & Friends. Last night before bed he mentioned the swings and the sand and then afterwards went to the toy store and went to pick daddy up. He said it was lots of fun.

This last one is a test....

Vasili is crawling!!! He has been hinting to us that he was ready to crawl but yesterday he finally went further than just reaching out twice. We went to visit Leila, our neighbors, and he was so excited when he was there. He was crawling to her and to the toys. It’s still not “graceful”, but its just so adorable. His motivation...Cheerios! That’s my chunky monkey!!!

I’ve been getting alerts from my old entries from spammers eventhough there isn’t a button for them to choose... I haven’t received any since I deleted the comments section on the new entries but am still receiving them from the old entries.

It’s the start of Monday and new week. Very excited to see what news we’ll have from Jim Light the guy who is suppose to help find some work for Laki in Seattle. I’ll keep you updated as soon as anything new comes along. Until then if you know of a company, involved in aerospace, communications, and/or satellites, that wants to contract work out to a company let us know.

On Vasili news:

He’s started this new kind of whining that is very very annoying. MA-MEE MA-MEE. I’m trying to ignore him when he behaves that way but boy does it urke. We’ve tried telling him not to do that but it just seems to get worse. It’s slowed down a very little bit since the ignoring thing so we might continue on with it until it stops completely.

His fear for kids seems to be very fickle. There is this one child in our mommy and me class that Vasili is very timid of. Whenever this boy comes near him he runs for us. We try to reassure him that it’s ok that he’s safe and that he needs to stand up but right now he’s not buying it. That’s ok by us. We’ll still let him know that he can stand up and not be afraid but that it’s ok to be afraid. If that makes any sense.

We were looking at some videos of Vasili’s first birthday (soukhoune) and it seemed like Vasili was a totally different baby. He’s progressed into being this little man that can talk and walk and tell us about his feelings from just learning how to walk and speaking very little and mostly with sign language.

Truly amazing.

For some of you we’ve talked about moving back to Seattle within 3 years. Some of you may know that we want to move back earlier than that.

Here’s how things are going...

We were initially waiting for Laki’s stock in his company to be vested so that we’d have some money to put down on a house once we move up there. We also have been thinking about another option from Laki’s company. Move up to Seattle so that Laki can work from home but still travel to California a week out of the month.

After our last trip to Seattle there was no doubt that we wanted to move up earlier than 3 years. So right now Laki is looking to find some clients up in Seattle in order to justify moving to Seattle yet still working for Linquest. After talking to the business aquisitions person at Linquest it looks pretty promising that there might be some work from Boeing, but not too sure.

We’ll find out more next week. From that we’ll see how long the job lasts before we move up there permanently. If there is work that is. We still have a lease for our apartment until April/May so we’ll be paying for the apartment until then no matter what happens.

Wish us luck.

I’ve been so amazed at the fact that Vasili can even talk. I’m not sure why each new development I’m absolutely surprised, but I am. Here are some words he’s learning to say.

Word or phrase/He says:

spider/pasida
Vasili/basili
truck/twuck
kitty cat/killy cat
shower door/shallow doh
I’ll do it myself/sewf, sewf
1, 2, 3, 4, 5/1, 3, 4, 5, 6!!!!

So we went to get Vasili’s hair cut today. I was pretty scared about how he would react.

He was really scared at first and burst out crying but after the first few snips he was fine. Actually after those snips he was really comfortable and sat through the whole thing.

I’m so proud of him.

Today was our weekly mommy and me class. We witnessed Vasili finally playing with other children. Jonathan and Ryan (twins in the class) were unloading blocks and toys from a table into the basket and Vasili actually helped. He’s moving from parallel play to playing with other kids.

We were looking at some pictures that Eleni sent us from her trip to Greece. Vasili’s Papou was in a few of them. We pointed out who his Papou was a couple of times. When we getting ready for bed he said bye Papou and good night in greek. It was too cute.

So far he’s really learning more and new words. Making up his own sentences. Copying everything that he hears, even parts of songs he hears from the radio.

At present he:

Recognizes most of the letters of the alphabet as well as the sounds. A says “Ah”, B says “Ba”
He’ll count but misses numbers. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, (we say 9) 10! YAY!!!
Give hugs and kisses to all his toys (ALL his toys, even the trains)

I can’t believe that Vasili is 2 years old already. He’s growing up and just yesterday he was this creature in my arms that couldn’t do anything but eat poop and pee.

We have a book called “How Dinosaurs go to sleep” or something to that affect. Well we’ve been reading it for Vasili for awhile now and Laki just discovered that he can recognize the dinos that are on the front and back inside covers. Vasili has always pointed at the dinos and asked for their names but just recently Laki has asked him about each dino. He points correctly to each one that is asked. Yeah he’s gifted lol. I’m sure he got it from his daddy. Laki, for those that don’t know, is a genius so I wouldn’t be surprised if Vasili took after him.

Vasili decides he wants to go outside but does not want to tell me that that’s what he wants to do. So instead of letting me know his wants he falls on the floor and cries and cries and cries. He does this for about 10 mins and then looks up at me and says, “momma”. I pick him up and he guides me towards the door. Mind you, all Vasili has on is his onesie. That’s it. No diaper, socks, shoes, nothing. So we have to struggle through clothing him between fits of crying and grabbing onto my arm, which brings great difficulty to my task. I finally get him clothed and ready to put his shoes on. This entire time he has been making my job to put his clothes on very difficult. As I’m finished putting his shoes on he sees an empty box and reaches for it. He is genuinely having a good time with this empty box, when a split second ago he was wailing around like a was torturing him. He walks his box like it’s his new pet through the house. He sits in it and falls over. He cries gesturing that he wants to put the box upright again. As we are headed outside he decides he wants to take this box out with us. He whines when I tell him that we can’t bring it out with us. As I close the door, it’s as if he forgot there was even a box, and tells me, “walk”. Which is his way of saying that he wants to walk. Ah, the pleasures of being bipolar.

We’ve finally found a place to move to. It’s a 3br/2.5bth and it’s $400 cheaper than the place we’re in now. Can’t wait to move in. Our official move date is the 25th. Vasili loves the place because it has stairs and is really roomy. Unfortunately, his room there is going to be a bit smaller but he’ll have a big living room and dining room area to play in to make up for it.

Vasili is getting his canines and it’s not a pleasant time around him during this time. He is VERY cranky. Both his canines on the bottom are coming in at the same time.