Big Boy Bed

How things have changed at the Starikov residence! The big boy bed has been operational for a couple of weeks now and the days of psychotic screaming fits in the cot seem like a distant memory. The whole sleep situation has become so much more relaxed because...surprise surprise!...Atticus LOVES his new bed! He rolls around in it during the day, reads books to himself and teasingly tells me "Mama, (i'm going to) sleep" (spat').

He still wakes up a couple of times during the night, but now I just pretty much sleepwalk to his mattress on the floor, collapse next to him and keep on sleeping. In the process of our sleep battles he has become accustomed to sleeping with us next to him, so it's unfair to make him sleep alone all of a sudden. I have no problem sleeping with him and slowly slowly, leaving him and going back to my own bed. It's all about baby steps around here. At least he is now out of our bed, he loves his new bed, and the overall anxiety around sleep has finally been lifted!

6 | 52

"A portrait of Atticus, once a week, every week, in 2013."

This week's been all about running around naked in the backyard, playing with water and watching watermelon juice run down his fat little baby belly. 

Once again joining with Jodi and co for the 52 series.

5 | 52

"A portrait of Atticus, once a week, every week, in 2013."

Brighton Beach is a sensory feast for a curious toddler. Sand, water, seaweed, shells, colourful beach boxes and people galore. Atticus loves to watch others at play (especially the older boys) and I love to watch him deep in observation. He even managed to sneak up to an unused paddle board and climb all over it while the boys were looking away.  

Atti Speak

"COPTA" he yells and points at the sky at the faintest sound in the sky. Even if it's actually a plane and even if he can't even see it...Yes, we currently have a slight obsession with helicopters.

4 | 52

"A portrait of Atticus, once a week, every week, in 2013."

This week has been tough in the sleep department. A bad case of teething and separation anxiety has resulted in Atticus waking up an hour or so after falling asleep screaming. Some nights I sit by his cot, others we take him downstairs for cuddles and a break, or we take him straight into our bed where he automatically relaxes and falls asleep. The big boy bed should arrive next week. I'm counting down the days...

16 months...an update

I haven't done of these posts in a while and considering how much development has been going on in Atti's world it is long overdue. Here are some things Atticus has been getting up to lately:

• Atticus is a wordsmith. He repeats my EVERY. SINGLE. WORD... ALL. THE. TIME.
• he knows the names of all the animals, their sounds, all variations of transport, talks in mixed russian and english but knows that cat/dog/cow in both languages says "meow, woof, moo"
• we talk...like full on conversations! "bye bye" he says "bye bye, where are you going?" i reply, "Alec" he says, always "Alec"
• he's making sentences, "bye bye, dada, see ya"
• we walk past dogs in the street and he yells "no! sit, sit" from his pram
• asks for water, biscuits, milk, apricots, books, anything he likes
• Atticus loves songs and music. He sings along to Elmo in the car as well as a CD of old school russian children's songs and asks for me to put certain songs on. When there's a catchy beat, he moves his hips to the beat and shimmies his shoulders.
• These are the songs we sing: "Happy Birthday", "Do...a deer...", Antoshka", "Twinkle, Twinkle little star"
• These are the books on high rotation at the moment and these are ones that Atti asks for depending on time of day and his mood: "We're Going on a Bear Hunt", "Madeline", "Goodnight Moon", "Peepo", "Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes", "Lost and Found"...just to name a few...we know them all off by heart already and Atti is always on cue making sound effects for relevant pages/characters
• Atti has started making more of an effort trying to use the spoon to feed himself and has started trying to put on his own shoes, hat and tshirt.
• "Park" he says, grabs my hand and pulls me to the door, pulling on the handle to try and open it.
• Since discovering that his full name is Atti-cus he has deduced that everyone else is also "Dadacus", "Mamacus", "Ninacus", "Alecus".
• Point to pictures in a book and says, "Show me cake", "Show me car", "Show me bird"...
• Point to nose, eyes, ears and says "Nos", "gaza", "uki". Also refer to glasses/sunglasses as "Gaza" and yells it out loud while pointing to someone wearing glasses.
• Is slowly becoming a better eater. We have taken the tray table off his high chair so he can now climb into it himself. When I ask him if he's hungry, he runs to the chair, yelling "Chair, chair", climbs up into it and starts yelling "Kasha, Kasha!" 
• When we go to watch trains he now yells "Coming coming, tootoo coming!"
• Plays with his (or my) hair when settling himself to sleep.
• Sleeping is still a nightmare, wakes up every couple of hours and still spends half the night in our bed...we're working on it...trying to keep in perspective that  HE WILL EVENTUALLY SLEEP! We've ordered him a big boy bed so hopefully that will change things up a bit. I have a theory that he really hates the cot and sees it as a bit of a cage. 

** Photos taken at Dad's birthday lunch at Fitzrovia

At Heide

We took a trip to Heide today to frolic in the sculpture garden and check out the Louise Bourgeois exhibition. While the sculpture garden was a big hit with Atticus, I think it left him a little over excited and over stimulated and our morning ended with both of us in tears; him yelling at me hysterically for an hour instead of having his nap. Nevertheless, here are some pics from the morning before things turned pear shaped.

 The cow says "Moooooooo"

"Airplane"