Day at the Kremlin

We spent the afternoon on Friday knocking around the Kremlin and the armoury, where we saw some really cool swords, axes and suits of armor. I finally saw Monomakh's Cap and the only thing I could think was "I bet that's not the original fur lining..."

Here's Arsen and Zig at the Eternal Flame outside the Kremlin wall.
Zig capped of his afternoon by falling asleep in the metro and sleeping all the way home in the car.
His Uncle Sergei gave him a "build your own electrical circuit kit" for Christmas and it is still getting active play.

Ice Age

This is Zig's reaction to Ice Age:

If you saw the flick, you'll remember the dinosaur-tooth dagger that little animal was carrying. I'm not sure what kind of animal it was because we watched the movie in Russian and I'm not up on exotic rodent names. I did get that the "hero" was a sloth (lenivets). Zig's interpretation is in Legos, of course (the blade is an airplane wing).

And here I am in a top I finished a few weeks ago.

I'm trying to live up to the haircut for the rest of the day. Boris chose not to understand me when I told him that I always let my hair air-dry. Don't get your hopes up folks, the regular me will be back tomorrow...

Grammar

I don't have any new pictures right now, but I wanted to share some cool things Zig has learned. This morning he said, "Мама, ты знаешь что? Русалка - это существительное. Воодушевленное." ("Know what Mom? Mermaid is an animate noun.")

He can take a sentence and circle all the nouns, verbs and adjectives with different colors.

He understands what synonyms and antonyms are, and we're learning lots of them.

Cool stuff, huh!?

Space Story

Here's a story Zig wrote a few weeks ago. I'll put it up in Russian first, and then I'll translate it.

Про Сатурн

50 лет назад космонавты на корабле полетели на сатурн и прямо когда они приземлились, их корабль утонул. Они узнали, что сатурн сделан из газа и на него вокруг его кружились кольца и их корабль потрогал мяч который сделан из огня, корабль просто утонул и прямо к середине. И чуть-чуть загорелся их мотор. Космонавты включили полную скорость и быстро улетели и потом отрезали мотор, который загорелся. Приземлились на Марс, и от Марса на Землю.

Конец

About Saturn

50 years ago some cosmonauts on a spaceship flew to saturn and right when they landed, their spaceship sank. They found out that saturn is made of gas and it has rings spinning around it. Their spaceship touched a ball made out of fire. It sank right to the middle of the planet. One of their motors got on fire a little bit. The cosmonauts turned on their top speed and flew away quickly. Then they cut off the motor that had caught fire. They landed on Mars, and from Mars they went to Earth.

Randomness

Ceci n'est pas une pipe... (that's a modeling clay pipe with modeling clay smoke)

Self-portrait

Inspiration

What could this mystery object be? Zig has assumed all along that this was his dad's nightstand.

It's a Singer sewing machine! Made in Scotland in the 19th century, it found its way to Bataisk, where Zig's paternal grandmother's maternal grandmother put it to good use for many years. It had a wooden cover that was broken when the family home was bombed in WWII. Sewing machine runs fine. We bought a new needle for it today.

Zig has been consumed by thoughts of this lovely piece of engineering - the foot pedal, the wheels, the leather belt, the shiny wonderfulness!!

This is his LEGO interpretation of the Singer.

Space!

We went to the new space museum at VDNKh today. For your pleasure, Zig posing with a model of the Buran, with a landing module, and with a model of the rocket Tsiolkovsky designed.

While we were eating lunch afterwards, Zig asked for a pencil and paper. He drew this "rocket airplane" (with winglets, if you know what you're looking at!) for his papa and put the Boeing symbol on it.

Horses in the Park

What a fun day! Zig and I went to the city park to find his cousin for a play date. Rob is always with his great-grandmother (who does not have a cell phone) in the afternoons, so sometimes we have to look for a while before we find them. While we were crisscrossing the park I saw two girls holding a pair of horses by their halters. There is only one reason to bring a couple of cute horses to a park full of kids on a summer afternoon... to make a buck!

Zig got his $5 worth of pleasure for sure, but he was kind of nonchalant about the ride. He did tell the girl that he wanted to ride SLOW.

After he found his cousin and played for a while, it was dinner time and we started home. When we passed the gazebo on our way back through the park, there was a brass band playing waltzes that I recognized from different movies but couldn't put a name to. People were dancing and we stood around for a while and listened, but then Ziggy's bike announced that it couldn't sit still anymore. He makes "vroom vroom" noises ALL the time when he rides his bike. Reminds me of how my mom used to make car noises when she was driving us around when we were kids.