Off to Maine

No recent late-night posts because I've been sleeping well lately, so perhaps I'm up in anticipation of my vacation that ends my summer vacation: a three-week trip to Maine. We're renting a house by a lake near Houlton, ME. If you look on a map, that's pretty darn close to Canada, but it's at the end of a big highway, so hopefully, it shouldn't take too long to reach.

The house is clean, and we're mostly packed. Nikita was pretty excited with all the packing, although I doubt he understands the reason. We've got two backpacks filled with books; last night, he packed away even more books for himself. Odd kitchen items that we'll be bringing along with us is my chef knife, yogurt maker, and at least one cast iron pan so that Igor can make pizza while we're up there.

I'm also taking the rest of my yarn for Nikita's sweater, and yarn for a blouse in Knit Picks' Shine Worsted that I'll knit for my mom. Finally, I packed up a few blocks (Nikita really likes piling things on top of each other, including his chess pieces), cars, crayons, and small jars of paint; Igor packed away a chess set.

Not much time spent with Nikita this week because I had to go into MIT a number of times this week to help prepare for the fall. Nikita, however, was quite the active participant at storytime on Tuesday. He kept calling out the items of the book (clock! rabbit!) as if he were the only one read to.

The biggest news with Nikita is that since Thursday, he's been calling himself by his correct name! This is more exciting than last's week progress of being able to count to 12 in English (he still vacilates between 7 and 9 in Russian). Last night, Igor commented on how long we've waited for him to say that his name is "Nikita", after months of Barbit, Bart Pippitz, and Lumpitim.

See you in three weeks!