Burlaki on the Hudson

Kimmy finds ways to make her little sister occupied – why not make a short video together?
 

Children, Family Videos

For some time now, my middle child has been entertaining herself with making short movies using her webcam and the basic video-editing software installed on her PC. She asked me to put up her latest “trailer” here on the blog.

Enjoy!
 

Children, Family Videos

Demands of varied kinds did not leave me much room to flex my artistic muscles in advance of the Bat-Mitsva celebration that Kimmy enjoyed this past weekend. I only had time to quickly string together a slideshow of 150 or so pictures that charted her growth from a little baby to the Amazing Tween that she is.

Don’t expect special effects, captions or narrations. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it nonetheless!
 

Children, Pictures

Last Friday was the senior prom night for our eldest. Here are a few pictures taken during the photo session prior to the dance. No commentary is truly necessary.
 

        

Children, Pictures

I’ve heard it many times in the past that performing at the Carnegie Hall in New York always features among the major highlights of a musician’s career. Well, one of my children have gotten it out of the way at a pretty early stage. Becky and her high school choir participated in a program at the Carnegie Hall earlier in the week. With her name in the playbill, she officially arrived…
 

 
Here is a less-than-perfect mobile phone photograph of what the auditorium looked like before the show.
 

 
I suspect that there will eventually be videos of the performance available through the usual sources. If/when that happens, I will be sure to link it.

Children, New York City & Environs

The new hairstyle is more appropriate for the temperatures outside.
 

Children, Pictures

Somebody turned 1 yesterday!
 

Children, Pictures

Today marks the day on which another member of the human race figured out the complicated act of walking upright. Here is the proof:
 

Children, Family Videos

Children, Family Videos

A couple of recent pictures of the little’un, in lieu of any other entertaining content herein.

First, a cutie in pink.
 

Second, a hedgehog attack. (Have I mentioned before that Emily is known in the household as “the hedgehog”, on account of her customary hairstyle?)
 

Children, Pictures

It is a bit disorienting when one day your youngest child is 3 months old, and then a few days later, your eldest hits 16 years! I feel old and young at the same time.

Children

I am re-learning a well-forgotten language nowadays. It manages to convey a vast range of thoughts and emotions via usage of just a few syllables – “aye”, “goo”, “uhm” and the like – with facial expressions playing a critical role in differentiating between homonyms. I am very busy trying to regain my fluency in it.

Children

When family with children is going to visit relatives who live about an hour’s drive away, Dad’s responsibilities do not really start until around the time of departure. Prior to that, Dad might indicate several times that he is annoyed at being the only person who is ready. But only when the same level of readiness is exhibited by all members of the traveling party, will Dad spring to action. He will check the doors and the appliances. He will put the necessities into the trunk. He will carry the baby in the car-seat and make sure it is most securely attached to the base. He will, after all, do the driving.

Mom, on the other hand, will get ready for departure by feeding and dressing the baby, helping the older kids with outfits, hairdos and snacks, packing the diaper bag and the breast pump, keeping track of things that need to be brought along or undertaken along the way. She won’t be ready until everybody else in the house is ready. And her “ready” does not really include getting ready herself.

Only when the driving starts and the baby is strapped in, Mom has a chance to relax… and get ready.

She will finally do her own hair, put on some make-up, eat a yogurt or a banana that pass for her breakfast. In other words, she’ll do all of those things that are not really pre-requisites for leaving home in the family minivan.

Being a passenger in that minivan is the only time Mom can spend on herself.

Or so I hear.

Children

Admit it, all of my one-post-a-week schedule aside, you keep coming back to this blog because you expect pearls of wisdom from me that you cannot get anywhere else.

I’ll give you one: This whole thing called parenthood is awfully hard.

There she is, just a few days old, lying on a blanket and moving both of her feet and arms according to some inner beat that I cannot hear. She eats, she poops, she sleeps. She is quiet most of the time, but starts crying for no apparent reason at random points in time. Is she hungry? No, she just finished eating not long ago. Does she need to be changed? No, I just changed her diapers a few minutes ago and the new one still looks and smells pristine. Is she uncomfortable? Is she in pain? What does she want? I’ll do anything, just tell me what it is that I need to do.

She can’t tell me.

I’ll pick her up, rock her for a while, make silly sounds at her or try to reason with her as if she could understand my words, drive myself crazy for a while without making any visible impact on the little person’s disposition, and then suddenly whatever bothered her is gone and she falls asleep. Or her mother decides that it’s been long enough since the last feeding.

I only lost a few billion of my nerve cells in the meantime.

I don’t do well to the extreme when one of my children is in any sort of physical discomfort. I feel helpless. I hate feeling helpless. Especially when I don’t know what is going on. And she won’t be able to tell me for a while.

Of course, now is one of the easiest parts. Caring for a newborn is, after all, fairly straightforward and has little variation. Wait till she starts walking [tripping, slipping, falling]. I should know, I already have well-developed examples of my own…

When parenthood first happened to me nearly sixteen years ago, I half-jokingly told everybody who asked that I did not feel ready to be a father. I have a nagging suspicion that I did not manage to get ready in the intervening years. Emotionally, at least.

Somebody is awake. Gotta go.

Children

Children of the age of technology acquire the weirdest mannerisms. Becky, for instance, has gotten into a habit of saying “LOL” when she is amused, rather than, you know, bursting out laughing.

I’m starting to call her Lola.

My other daughter, meanwhile, resides in pool heaven. She always has been very partial to water-based activities, and having a pool in her own backyard is a true boon to her.

She is now privately known as The Frog. Or The Duck. Or The Fish. Or whatever other water-dwelling member of the animal world comes to mind when we need to talk her into getting out of the pool.

I joined her on a couple of occasions over the weekend. I have to admit that was awfully pleasant. Even if the damn pool causes me more grief maintenance-wise than I ever expected…

Children, Chronicles

My eldest daughter seems to be the primary source of material for my blog lately. At her request, I am putting up another of her drama class projects, so that it is publicized to my considerably larger audience.

The assignment was to select 3 words that either described the person, evoked a specific emotion or simply had a certain meaning, and then display them in a 10-second video-clip in some creative way. Becky’s pick was technically 4 words – but who’s counting? – and her presentation idea was to actually perform the action somewhat opposite to the words being shown.

Here’s how it turned out.
 

 
Uncredited editing by yours truly.

Children, Family Videos

It occurred to me that my girls now possess skates signed not only by the Olympic silver medalists, but an Olympic champion as well. Becky participated in a 2004 edition of Stars Stripes and Skates gala with Nancy Kerrigan. Next year, she attended a skating clinic in NYC’s Central Park hosted by Sasha Cohen. Now, Kimmy has Oksana Baiul’s autograph.

Not that I am big on autographs, but it is a pretty cool little collection that has a chance to grow.
 

Children, Sports

When our children were born, we did not exactly bother to research what the names we were giving them meant. (Or, if we did at the time, my memory did not record it.) But yesterday, Kimmy came across a naming book in our library and decided to figure out what her full name originates from.

Kimberly Sarah turned out as “Royal Princess”. Sorta redundant, but it just proves that we weren’t concerned with meanings much, just with whether we liked the names and whether we could honor our late grand- and great-grandparents by naming the children so.

Becky then looked up Rebecca Evelyn as well.

“Faithful Hazelnut”.

She was surprisingly good-humored about it…

Children

I wanted to put up another video of Becky, this one of her recent number at the school Performance Showcase, but I can’t make the Facebook video download script work in my Firefox browser.

The quality of that video is lacking anyway, so I have to rely on eyewitness accounts that it was a pretty good number. It also became apparent to said eyewitnesses (Natasha and Kimmy) that some of Becky’s expectations for coming back to the US did come true. She is widely known as “The Brit”, which contributes a fair share of her popularity among her classmates. Since I don’t personally recognize traces of British accent in her speech, I cannot truly opine whether she works extra on that when in school.

Children

I don’t want to provide the name of this little performance out of concern for what type of future Google searches it may attract. You’ll understand.

This is something Becky did for a graded Drama class project at school a while ago. We decided to take a video cut for posterity.
 

Children, Family Videos