September started off with Nikita’s first day in the first grade – “real” school in the German tradition. The event capped off days of buying stuff for his Schultute (school cone) and labeling school supplies (including 32 colored pencils). Thank goodness his schoolbag arrived the day before from Germany. Nikita was excited about the new purchases (particularly the schoolbag), but upset that Legos were not in his Schultute. I really must remember this for the future. Afterwards, I spent my nights hemming the boys’ pants for their Uncle Vincent’s wedding that weekend. The boys were really excited to meet their Uncle Michael’s new baby, Creighton. Ivan, in particular, kept wanting to see his “baby cousin”, which really reminded me of Nikita with Ivan, especially since the boys are also 3 years apart. The wedding weekend was packed: rehearsal dinner the night before, haircuts and a photo session before the wedding, and the boys walking down the aisle as ringbearers.
This is my favorite shot from the wedding photographer's session:
The short service included elements from both Filipino and Jewish weddings. Afterwards, the boys had to make sure that the glass was broken:
With the intensity of the weekend, Nikita had a meltdown right as the wedding party was being introduced during dinner. So, Igor and the boys spent most of the time watching Russian cartoons on my laptop while I caught up with my relatives, many of whom I hadn’t seen in years. The music was really good, and I was able to dance with my cousin’s partner (because my cousin doesn’t like to dance). But, in the end, we left by 10 and drove back to NYC to avoid the traffic of Labor Day.
Nikita had a particularly busy month. On top of his instruments and chess, he swims with me once a week, and participates with the choir and chess club at school. As you can see, chess plays a large part of his free time, and indeed, he went to a chess tournament nearly every Sunday – and actually twice came in first place in his age group. The scoring is a bit odd, however, because he can get a trophy without winning all games in a tournament. Still, he was happy because winning meant more Legos for his collection. At this rate, we’ll probably clean out Target’s Lego department (at least of the cheap sets) before the end of the year. Thankfully, our lives don’t completely revolve around chess. We spent a lovely day picking apples (20 lbs. worth, which has meant lots of apple cakes), and one morning at the LegoFest. I was really happy that we bumped into one of Nikita’s classmates early on because it was difficult to please both boys. Ivan spent most of the time in my arms because he was freaked out by the number of people. Surprisingly, he did let go to jump around in the bouncy houses, but really freaked out when he couldn’t find me at the end of a maze – all because the smart organizes had blocked off access.
A particularly wonderful development is our attendance at classical music concerts. We attended opening night of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra (the soloist was a childhood friend of Nikita’s violin teacher) and closing night of Longy’s Septemberfest. It’s so great to hear live classical music again. Indeed, I think if I had money to sponsor something, it would be organizations like Longy that provide free classical music. And it’s so great that Nikita at least is old enough to come with us. Ivan did come with us to New Bedford, but it was a bit tough.
As for me, work has been especially busy because I decided to practice what I learned from my summer readings by getting rid of bullet points from my lectures. I also had to prepare my promotion material by the end of the month. Thank goodness I’m not conducting research this semester because I’ll probably have to revise my personal statement. Apparently, such essays don’t end with grad school applications. Readingwise, I thoroughly enjoyed The Woman in White and Story, but am finding Emotions Revealed a slog. My first issue of One Story arrived in the mail, and I think I'm going to subscribe. I like the concept of reading a single, complete story from a new author every three weeks. I’ve avoided knitting, however, because my next project is Nikita’s Transformer hat. I should really get started on it soon.
But I’m going to end this post with one of Vanya’s latest drawings. It’s so interesting to see how different they are from Nikita’s at that age. They’re like mini-Miro’s. I really love his minimalist people: circles with two dots and two vertical lines underneath:
