Discovering the world: the joy of having a backyard

Specialy when we keep on waking up before 5am


P.S. If anyone wants a postcard from Melbourne send me email with your postal address to fioleta at gmail dot com

Discovering the world: baking

Discovering the world: wooden blocks

1. Short & tall, 2. Dinner time, 3. Nap time, 4. Someone isn't sleeping

After seeing Cat stack up cardboard boxes, I remembered the wooden blocks my parents bought at the beginning of the year and took them out for her to play with. She is using only round blocks to create tiny towers (you can see one on the main photo), but loves watching us make elaborate constructions and enjoys knocking them down.

P.S. She is past her sickness, though still has a horrible sounding cough.

(Re)discovering: the fun of building indoor tent

Since it was raining for most of the week I had to think of new activities for us to do inside. Yesterday I tried to build a tent to play in and totally lost track of time. I loved both building it and playing inside. The Little Girl looked very confused at first, but soon joined in the fun.

Discovering the world: sand and sea

While in Odessa The Little Girl got to experience walking and playing in the sand for the first time. At first she totally didn’t like the feel of the sand and tried really hard to avoid standing on it. Every time I would try to put her down she would cling to me with all her strength and lift her legs up as high as she could. However, when I put her down on our beach blanket she was happy to grab handfuls of sand, let it go and see the grains fall down. Soon the blanket was covered with the sand and the Little Girl finally braved walking on it to try to get to someone’s beach ball (she loves playing with the balls at the moment). Later Clive and she built a sandcastle and she was perfectly happy to crawl all over it.

She was slightly unsure about the sea water at first as well, but warmed up to it very quickly (I wish the water would warm up to us as it was very cold). She enjoyed walking in and out of the water, looking at the tiny waves, searching for the wet stones (collecting stones is another recent love) and even managed to fall face down into the water ones. Somehow I find it sad that she didn’t get to walk or play in the sand earlier. I noticed that all the kids playgrounds I saw in Russia had sandy surface unlike the asphalt one of England – the sand probably has it’s on downsides, but I think I would prefer it to the hard grey asphalt.


The photo above was taken by my husband using his "new" (at least to him) Mamiya camera.

Discovering the world: feeding birds

Today the little girl experienced the joy of feeding the birds herself. Cat saw me and various friends throw the bread crumbs to the birds many times before, but today was the first time she threw the bread, given to her, to the birds instead of eating it herself.

All along

I don’t seem to have much luck with writing quote of the week posts recently, even though for a change I have plenty of quotes to share with you.

Occasionally I watch some TV and few weeks ago while watching very enjoyable The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency movie, I was struck by how much attention I paid to the beautiful colours of the buildings and clothes and this quote popped into my head:

The world was always
there before,
but where
was I?
Erica Jong The Raspberries in My Driveway

Additionally every time I see an episode of The Great British Menu, I get frustrated at not being able to get a better view of Prue Leith’s necklaces, as I would love to study how they are made. Trying to create simple things and seeing my daughter discover the world lead me to being more aware of my surroundings. Nowadays every time I step outside there is something new to see and to experience: the fascinating knitwear, the unique jewellery pieces, the fresh green of the spring leaves, the bird songs, the feel of the cold wind.

Ah raspberry -
if you are so beautiful
upon my ready tongue,
imagine what wonders
lie in store
for me!
Erica Jong The Raspberries in My Driveway

Discovering the world: snow

Discovering the world: wobbly squashy jelly

Everyone, thank you for your good wishes. The little girl is feeling better, though she still rather play with food than eat it.

Discovering the world: drawing

Discovering the world: being sick

Poor thing had her first cold. She felt and looked totally miserable yesterday: runny nose, watering eyes, sneezing, and fever. And she couldn’t sleep – throughout the day and night I tried everything to get her to sleep and eventually she would fall asleep only to wake up few minutes later whimpering. But she still smiled and even laughed occasionally at us, at the funny noises we made, at her favourite toys, at books and her own reflection in the mirror.

After finally sleeping soundly for few hours in the early morning, she woke up looking healthy and energetic and is back to trying to figure out how to sit up and crawl.

Discovering the world: field flowers

Discovering the world: dresses

Thanks to the very warm weather Cat got to wear a dress for the first time. Perhaps I should put her into dresses more often as people always ask if she is a boy. She has few “boy” outfits, because I often find “girl” outfits too girlish and prefer deep green, blue, brown and orange colours to the bright toxic pink and yellow ones. Though maybe it doesn’t matter what she wears – as people call her “he” even when she has a pink hat and pink flowery top on.

Discovering the world: grass

Discovering the world: glass

The beauty of raindrops

It was a gloomy and rainy day, so we stayed inside for most of it. Cat passed time by staring out the window in total amazement at the falling down drops of rain. I wonder what she thinks and feels. I wonder what she makes of the world and us her parents. I wish we could remember our babyhood. I wish the babies could share with us their experiences by putting them into words. Her face and all its expressions are so familiar to me since I spend lots of my time looking at her. But sometimes a feeling of her being a totally different alien species strikes me. It is difficult to believe that soon she’ll grow into real size human being like the rest of us, that everyday objects will become familiar and … well.. everyday to her and she’ll lose her bright eyed marvelling at the simple things like raindrops. But hopefully she’ll never get bored with life and will always find something new or even old to marvel at. And for now she reminds me of how beautiful life and everyday objects are. And so I will be in awe of her and her big bright wide-opened eyes gazing in wonder at the new things.