Holidays x2

Every year I am struck by how lucky I am to celebrate the holidays twice - normal Christmas stuff in Chicago and the Russian secular version on New Year's in California with my parents. And Eva is probably just going to accept this double-Christmas as a given - lucky girl!

Flying out to California with her on my lap and every seat full was just like it sounds - bad. But once we got there, we settled into a happy little routine of sleeping and taking naps together, going to the beach or to the little pond to feed the ducks or to the playground in the morning, then napping and then hanging out with the family until bed time.

Eva was her sweet self, begging everybody to read stories in bed with her, chasing the poor cat around, playing with toys that my mom's coworker has generously let us borrow - it was all so normal - only instead of just watching her by myself I had company of my parents to entertain me and so it was good.

She came up with names for my mom - baaaahbeeeeee - that is the best way to transcribe it - "babushka"was just entirely too long for her. And my brother was Uhdeee - a mixture of uncle and djadja. Eva loved the attention and she even let my dad pick her up towards the end of our stay.

And then we came back and I realized that I had only a week until school started, and so we have cleaned our house and generally relaxed, just three of us and tomorrow I have to go to school and be away from her for 3 months. Yikes!

The good thing is that Chris will get a chance to bond with Eva. They are, as I write, fighting over the pillows on the bed, trying to settle in to read a story. It is like she knows that the "mommy era" is over and daddy is taking over - she is all over him and keeps asking him to stay while she falls asleep and looks for him first thing in the morning. She did not ask for him much in California, but now I can see that she did miss him a lot.

Chris took Eva to the doctor today for her belated check-up. She is 27 pounds and 3 feet - 50% and 95% respectively - nothing surprizing here. We are making plans for her to play forward - she is going to be too tall to be a defensive soccer player. For our second Christmas in California she got some soccer socks and a ball - perfect!