Single Shots

Visitors aren't allowed to bring in cameras or cell phones so these are the pictures we took for the Petersons.
Kate - fairy godmother
James - Knight
Bruce - Pirate
William - Tiger

Trick or Treat!

Friday night was Trick or Treat around the Embassy. We invited our friends the Petersons to come over with us. We were pretty unsuccessful at getting a group picture. John was making funny faces to get the kids to look and right as Levin went to snap the picture Oliver got scared by the funny faces and freaked out.

Left to Right, Kate, James, Leah, William, Oliver, Bruce. William is wearing Oliver's tiger costume from last year. He's not dead in the chair there, it just looks that way.
Oliver stopped hating his costume once he started getting candy. He turned into a candy addict that night. He'd been in a bad mood ALL DAY but once we got some candy in him he was the happiest he'd been all week. He wouldn't keep his monster costume hood on so most people had no idea what he was and asked if he was a dinosaur, but that's okay.
You can see from the picture above that each outside entry into the housing then has four apartments so it was easy to get a lot of candy, but also made for a crowded little space especially when the older kids came in droves.
Leah was super cute and said Trick or Treat! She said thank you soo much too. I was so proud of her. After getting the kids were on a sugar high we watched the Charlie Brown Halloween special. Bruce sat on Leah's bench so I went to go get the other one for her and she just said, on I think there is space and squished her way in by Bruce. I think he is her new best friend. Their birthdays are just days apart.
I wish I had a video of Leah walking in her monkey costume. It was the same as last year. When you see her walking around in it, it becomes three times as cute. I heard so many people saying, oh look at that cute monkey!

Story Time Slime

Sunday is Leah's favorite day of the week because it is "church-a-day." She's not so wild about regular church, but the girl loves nursery. Last week when I picked her up a teacher told me she was the life of the party in nursery. Later I realized, I hope he meant that in a good way.

The next favorite day of the week for Leah is Wednesday because it is story-time day. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Leah at actual story time, but they have stories and then an activity and this week they made slime. Leah kept calling it salami. Ha ha.

If you look closely you can see there is some on my wall and I found so much on my floor the next day that the slime has been confiscated. Here is the recipe and I was given some Borax by the Mom who read this week so maybe we can make some more another day.

Mix 4 oz glue and 4 oz water. May add some food coloring.

Mix 1 tsp. Borax and 1 c. water.

Add the two together and stir.

I cannot wait for the day when Oliver has all of his teeth. I will have to start thinking now of something we can do to celebrate. It takes every tooth a million years to come in, he usually gets them one at a time, and he is MISERABLE and therefore I am MISERABLE. Right now he's getting a molar and also two eye teeth (is that what they're called?) He has been waking up at 6 am, still grumpy, taking a morning nap after a long fight, and then needing a late afternoon nap. Add in that Leah is a scaredy cat and constantly runs into his room while I'm trying to get him to sleep . . . and you have a tired and grumpy mommy.

Oliver has been throwing himself down on the ground alot in his . . patheticness. Today I was worried he'd give himself a concussion. But I have learned a trick to get him to smile. Just pull out the camera. Then he busts out a smile. You put the camera away and he goes back to despairing. Bring it back and you get another little smile. If only I could walk around with a camera held up every hour he is awake, and find the trick to getting him to sleep. Oh, and did I mention I used our last dose of Tylenol today? Should make for a long night. I forgot to order so i will be 2 weeks before I get more and the Russian "Panadol" we bought requires you to give the kid like 3 ounces of nasty tasting medicine. It is impossible to get it all down his gullet. Everybody feel sorry for us now. :(

Oliver on the Slide take 2

Oliver loves this slide! When he's not all bundled up and it's not quite as damp out he can really get some speed going and even does a little bounce at the bottom. I wish I'd gotten this video sooner when he used to give the biggest grin at the bottom, but now it is old school to him.

On the Playground

I am going to try and take more pictures of the playground, but probably I won't. We go to this playground a lot! During the summer it was at least once a day, now we try to go at least twice maybe 3 times a week. Unfortunately, it rains a lot now and we've gotten more in the habit of staying inside. But it has been a sanity saver for both the kids and me living in our small apartment and not having many places outside the Embassy to go for one reason or another.

Leah with my good friend's daughter Natasha. This is some other girls toy stroller Natasha is pushing. Leah wanted to push it so bad, but was scared to ask Natasha so she kept telling me to go get it. I would comment on the girl that owns it but if you can't say something nice . . .
Oliver at the bottom of the slide. I tried to post a video, but it didn't work. I'll try again. He has been going down this slide for quite a while, way before he could walk and it has scared a few other parents, but he's just so good at it and mostly taught himself.
My cute girl. She loves riding the swings, but sometimes falls off the big ones. She just tells me to put her right back on! You will never meet a braver girl when she gets hurt she usually just says, "I'm okay!!" She is always following around older kids and usually it is a problem since they don't want to play with her and have a few times been kind of mean, but one advantage is she is trying to learn how they pump their legs to swing. Wouldn't it be nice if she could figure that out?! She also started loving the "baby swings" lately and begs me to do "high as the birds" she calls it. I push her and then run under - I always called those under dogs. She demands I do the one, two, three, before or else it is not high as the birds. The only problem with it is we go to the play ground in part for her to get exercise, but when we do high as the birds over and over I am the only one getting exercise.

Pumpkin Carving

Monday night we carved our pumpkin with our neighbor and Levin's admin assistant Karen. We went pumpkin shopping with her a few Saturdays ago. The Girl Scouts were selling them, but they were expensive and they were unsure of the transportation charge so we decided we'd find our own. Karen has been her a long time so she thought this farmer's market I always go to would have them, but as it got closer and closer . . the day before they only had one pumpkin for sale. So we went to this other famous one that supposedly all the restaurants buy their food from. We found one stall that had them and they were so expensive that we told them they were crazy and left. We had to sadly walk back and buy them. We got one and Karen got one.

Here is Levin carving Karen's. We didn't get a picture of her finished product.
Here is ours.
The nasty cleaning out. We couldn't even light them because somehow we don't have any lighters or matches. We have fire starters for the barbecue but that seemed like a fire hazard. I better get some before tomorrow night because that's when we're doing our Trick or Treat.

I didn't check, but I don't think we took any pictures of our pumpkin last year, but this reminded me that Leah was terrified of it. We had it on the kitchen counter for some reason and she would not go in the kitchen if the jack-o-lantern was in there. She ran screaming if you tried to get her to look at it. Ha ha! This year she loves it although she is more of a scaredy cat than ever.

Potty Training

If you're not a Mom you are probably not interested in this post. Just sayin'.

I am hesitant to say Leah is potty trained out of superstition, but I think she is . . . uh, always wearing underwear now. It went relatively easy. It all depends on her mood and she was in a bad mood a few days in.

Here she is with "Dolly." They got potty trained together. When Dolly had accidents we got to tell her how naughty she was. Leah was super into wearing underwear and I think in this picture has on more than one pair. At naptime if she won't go potty all I have to do is threaten to put on a pull-up and she runs to the toilet. She informed me that pull-ups are not practice underwear, but they are just a different kind of diaper. We still have to use them at night until we get 10 days of dryness. We have yet to come even close to that, but she still asks every night.
Oliver decided if Leah didn't have to wear pants, neither did he. It is always a struggle to get her to wear pants now.
If you look closely you can see a sticker on Leah's rear end. Before I was quite ready to take the plunge into potty training we got reward stickers and somehow Leah came up with the idea that the sticker went on her bum. This story is 10 times cuter if you could hear her say, I get a sticker for my bum! She still remembers sometimes and puts it right on her bum. This isn't a very good picture because I couldn't get her to hold still. I think we've only gone out in public like this a few times and she was sitting in the stroller. Usually it rubs off on the couch or somewhere.

If I had any advice on potty training it would be two things - Potty Power DVD and Gerber Training underwear. She has only had a few accidents, but the Gerber ones hold in a lot more so there is less mess, but she still knows she had an accident. Actually she always knows she has an accident because there has only been one time I can think of that it was a true accident. The other times she's mad at me for turning off the TV or something so she runs out of the room and wets her pants on purpose. Oh, strong willed children can certainly make you want to pull your hair out.

Homemade Play-Doh

We didn't bring play-doh with us and the toys here are extremely expensive, so I've twice made Leah play-doh, today was the second time. The first time I ended up throwing it away because she kept bringing it out of the kitchen and I was sick of finding it stuck on things, bottom of shoes, the carpet, etc. I gathered my courage and made it again since I'm trying to get her off her TV addiction. She would watch it 12 hours a day if I let her, and sometimes I just don't know how else to entertain her so I let her watch too much.

My mom made it for us growing up, and I was reminded of it long ago when I saw it in the Flake Family Cookbook. Unfortunately, there are like 10 slightly different recipes for it in there and I always agonize over which one to choose. SO . . I decided to post the one I think I figured out I like best and that way I don't have to waste time deciding anymore.

1/2 c. salt

2 c. flour

2 T oil

2 c. water

2 tsp. cream of tartar

Combine ingredients in a pan and cook over medium heat until mixture thickens, stirring at all times. Remove from pan and knead until smooth. Food coloring may be added. Store in airtight container or baggie.

Reese's Cheesecake Recipe

Once a long time ago someone (Tiffany) told me to post the cheesecake recipe I made for Levin's birthday in April. I never did, but I'm going to now because this will help me not lose it since it was just an online recipe I found and not on a website I normally use so I won't know how to go back. I don't think I can make this again until I lose at least 10 pounds.

For the Crust

4 1/2 cups crushed Oreo cookies

1 cup chopped roasted peanuts

1/2 cup butter, melted

For the Filling

2 lbs cream cheese, softened

5 eggs at room temperature

1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar

1 cup smooth peanut butter (not natural style)

1/2 cup whipping cream

1 tsp vanilla extract

12 Reese's Peanut Butter cups, broken into small pieces

For the Topping

3 oz sour cream

1/2 cup sugar

** We didn't actually make this topping. We found another one somewhere to do just like a chocolate glaze on the top. It'd probably be fine with no topping.

Directions

1. Please Note, Plan Ahead -- cheesecake needs to chill for at least 4 hours

2. To Make the Crust, combine crushed Oreos and peanuts that have been ground in a food processor with the melted butter. Pat the crust mixture onto the bottom and sides of a 10" springform pan.

3. Filling: Beat cream cheese in bowl of electric mixer until smooth

4. Add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition

5. Add sugar, peanut butter and cream; mix until smooth.

6. Stir in vanilla, then fold in peanut butter cup pieces with a rubber spatula.

7. Pour filling into prepared crust.

8. Place springform pan into a larger baking pan.

9. Pour hot water into the larger pan so that the water comes 1 inch up the sides of the springform pan.

10. Bake at 275 degrees F 1 1/2 hours or until firm and lightly browned.

11. For the topping: Combine the sour cream and sugar and spread on the cheesecake. Return cake to the oven for 5 minutes.

12. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire wack for one hour.

13. You may run a knife along the edge of the cake to loosen it from the pan somewhat.

14. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

Novodevichy Monastary

On a rainy Columbus day we went to Novodevichy Monastary. I wasn't feeling very well and I can't honestly remember too much about it. Some famous people are buried there, like Kruschev. It was so rainy that we didn't even find his grave.

Women had to keep their heads covered to go in the church parts. I forgot a scarf, but a hood on your jacket counts so I was covered. A babushka got mad at me that Leah's hood wasn't on when we were going into the bathroom - a gross bathroom at that. Luckily I don't speak enough Russian to tell her if she wanted me to treat her bathroom as holy she needed to do a better job keeping it stocked with toilet paper. I felt like I was in Nigeria.