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Lilia and the Trees 2011

laurushka — Sun, 01 May 2011 02:02:00 +0000

Here they are!
2011′s Lilia and the Trees:

And the previous years!

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

For reference…
2010 post
2009 post
2008 post

Lilia and the Squirrel

laurushka — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 12:35:59 +0000

We visited the Moravian Tile Works last weekend, where the potters showed Lilia how they press the clay to make tiles, and even let her put the signature stamp on the back. They also had a tile mosaic activity where you had to put together this squirrel tile:

The other day, Lilia and I went to the Morris Arboretum, and we noticed the same squirrel tile in the Oak Allee.

And I was reminded that we were here when Lilia was a baby!

Two Stories By Lilia

laurushka — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:32:56 +0000

I don’t remember when she wrote these, but they are now pulled out of the notebook and floating around, so I don’t want to lose them. And by wrote, I mean “dictated to mommy”.

Butterflies
Butterflies start out as eggs.
They hatch and out comes a caterpillar.
They eat and eat.
More eating.
They eat lots of food. They crawl.
They are tired so they make a home on a branch.
Then out comes a butterfly.

Ladybugs
Ladybugs are so pretty people don’t think they are bugs.
They eat pest bugs. They stay in the grass so much. And
they have wings. And they can fly.

Lilia and the Trees 2010

laurushka — Thu, 13 May 2010 02:12:07 +0000

I think we missed the right colors on the leaves by a week or two this year– oops! Here are 2010′s Lilia and the Trees:

2009

2008

2007

2006

For reference…
2009 post
2008 post

Lilia the artist

laurushka — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:23:42 +0000

When Lilia came home from school yesterday, she asked to paint. I pulled out the new poster paints and set the paper up on her easel, and she painted whatever she wanted. She did flowers, an orange, railroad tracks, and a penguin. I took pictures of the flowers and the penguin. I think the penguin is about as good as something I could do now. Or even better. How did this happen so quickly? At Christmas, I was still drawing little circles for faces and having her draw in the features. But now… just look. Are these normal for a four-year old?

Draw a Bird Day

laurushka — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:09:20 +0000

Someone told me it was Draw a Bird Day. Because I recently had some good news after hearing a woodpecker (apparently the two are related!), I asked Lilia to draw a woodpecker.

Here it is, a pencil drawing of a woodpecker, by Lilia:

For a muddled Wikipedia post about Draw a Bird Day, check this out.

Easter update

laurushka — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 15:26:42 +0000

I regret that I didn’t pull my camera out when we visited with my Grandmother on Saturday. We had a nice visit with her, my uncle, aunt, and cousin.
After the visit, we drove to Lancaster County to take the Easter Bunny Train at Strasburg Rail Road. Lilia really enjoyed the train and seeing the Easter Bunny engineer.

Yesterday, we dyed eggs at home (again, regret that I didn’t take pics of that!) and then we went to Cloverly Park to hold our own Easter Egg Hunt. Joe hid one dozen eggs throughout the park and playground while Lilia and I waited. She managed to find every one. And then it was her turn to hide the eggs. I convinced her to let me go with her, and I tried to remember where she put them all, but we ended up giving up after we found eleven. We are thinking about putting up a “Lost: Easter Egg” sign in the park, but we aren’t sure what color it was.

A few weeks ago, we tried to go to the Philadelphia Art Museum on a Sunday, thinking it was “Pay what you Wish” day. It turned out that they only have that day on the first Sunday of the month– otherwise it is $20 admission. We left. Yesterday was “Pay what you Wish” day, and we paid less than we planned to the previous visit, for our trouble. Lilia was tired from her egg hunt, but was still a pretty good sport about the museum. We checked out the arms and armor section first– she really liked that, especially since Joe’s parents had explained all about castles when they visited last month. We then went to the section with the Spanish cloister, Chinese Palace, and Japanese Tea House. She started to fade at some points– she did not like any rooms that were too dark– but she enjoyed the video installations that were around– I really liked seeing how they conserved the Chinese Palace– amazing! Then we visited the 19th-20th century European Art, which included many by Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and Mary Cassatt. She had already learned about Monet, Renoir, and Cezanne at the Barnes Museum last month, and we also recently watched Linnea in Monet’s Garden on Netflix, so she was able to recognize the Japanese bridge and the water lilies. Her favorite part of the visit, according to her, was throwing a penny into two fountains in the museum–one in the cloister, and one in European art. For some reason, the lights went off around 4:30, and we took this as a sign that we should leave.

Heading back to our car, we visited with a Phanatic statue near Boathouse Row, and watched drummers and roller skaters dance.

I only have pictures of some of the events described.

My heart is full.

laurushka — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 19:09:06 +0000

Lilia just handed me a drawing of me. She even put an M on it for Mom.
I think this feeling is called swooning. I <3 that girl!

Lilia’s first day of school

laurushka — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:09:29 +0000

On March 8, 2010, Lilia started a pre-k program at our local public school. Click on the picture to see the album.

Sorry for bombarding you with posts. Besides the 50 old journal entries I added to this blog, I have posted four separate entries today. My goodness.
I guess if you’re bored, you can spend some time reading. If you do read, leave a comment. Or if you’re really bored, you can play Sudoku on your iPod Touch. Which is what I’m about to do.

Nothing to jinx

laurushka — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 23:25:30 +0000

Well, it’s happened again. I was supposed to be 8 and a half weeks pregnant, but I went to the local hospital today to have an ultrasound, and received confirmation of what I was pretty sure of…there was just a sac that stopped growing over 3 weeks ago. Of course, I had the pleasure of suffering nausea and other pregnancy symptoms all that time– the symptoms stopped yesterday morning, which was my first clue. Second clue– spotting last night.

I hate having to wait for it to actually happen. Two factors, one minor, one major, are making me handle this much better than our first miscarriage. The minor factor is the fact that I already know how common miscarriage is and how many people have been through it. The major factor is five letters long… starts with an L and ends with an A:

We hadn’t told a soul about the pregnancy– because with our first, we blabbed about it and felt like that’s why we had the miscarriage. When I was pregnant with Lilia, we waited till we had “proof of life” (more than once), and didn’t announce till near the end of the first trimester. I am not a private person– I can post about the miscarriage on my blog. We just didn’t want to jinx it. Now there is nothing to jinx.

I was feeling nostalgic recently, and started entering some of my entries from my other online journal into this journal. Those entries can be found here. Coincidentally, they include entries about my previous miscarriage.

As for how I’m feeling about trying this again. Eh. Maybe after it’s over, I’ll have a different opinion, but right now I’m thinking that Three is a Magic Number. Please click that and watch it– I tried to embed it, but it didn’t show up.

A man and a woman had a little baby
Yeah they did
And there were three in the family
And that’s a magic number