Shaved Sonja's hair

I've been meaning to do it for a while now for two reasons:
1. To check if it's true that thin hair comes back thicker after it's been shaved. Now she looks a little... funny.... but it will grow out soon! Her beautiful face is accentuated, especially her eyes :)
2. To stop her habit of pulling her hair just so she could have a strand of hair in her hand while sucking on her thumb (a strange habit that she has recently started spreading to Michael too).
She is definitely already kicking it!

Mikica's first poop in the potty!

He did it! And he said 'Gotov sam!' (I'm done!) when he was done, the same way Nikolas says it. Then Sonja decided she wanted to do it too, so she sat on the potty and chatted with me as I kept her company, made all sorts of facial expressions at me, but left nothing in the potty. She got up, continued playing (we just came back from the swimming pool and I let the kids run around without diapers/underwear before their bath), and then I saw her storm towards the bathroom again--however, she ended up peeing next to the potty and crying because she got the floor and her legs dirty (she says 'dirty' perfectly in English).

Nikolas's first pay

Nikolas got his first job and first pay: he gets a quarter every time he cleans up the toys in the living room. He's been doing such a great job! This week he'll get a new toy from hard-earned money. Just until a couple of months ago when I began asking him to clean up the room, he would ask me to help him. I'd end up putting away much more than him--he'd try, but he'd get distracted by toys and start playing, or he'd put a few things away and ask, 'Mama, je li volis sad?' (Mom, do you like it now?), even though there were a ton of toys right in front of him still. Now, every toys gets put away and the living room looks completely neat! Great job, Nikolas!

Nikolas has been enrolled in soccer at YMCA. He hasn't played a single game though... he doesn't like the idea of a team and a coach other than his dad. On the way to the practice he regularly complains that he is tired and/or hungry no matter how much he napped and ate before. I'd even pack bread with his favorite chocolate hazelnut spread that works like a charm in improving his mood and concentration during piano lessons; however, it produces zero effect at soccer.

Nikolas continues to hone his lawyer-like skills. He would propose what he would like to do and finish the sentence with jasno? or dogovoreno? (understood? or agreed?).

On a different subject, he just got conjunctivitis for the second time in one month. He got horrible bags under his eyes both times, really scary looking...

Gentle, caring Nikolas!

Nikolas was the first to get up this morning, as usual, and found daddy asleep on the couch after one of his work all-nighters. He grabbed a blanket that was sitting folded in the living room and covered him. Robb thought I did it and mentioned how nice of me it was to cover him, and that's when we realized it was Nikolas's doing! Very impressive!

Family reunion in Clearwater Beach

One beautiful week in Clearwater... together with baka and deko and, later, Sanja, Mia and Darko, we packed a lot of fun and relaxing beach time and family time in a few days. Even the one day it rained was a blessing in disguise as we otherwise wouldn't have peeled away from the ocean to visit the aquarium where Nikolas, Michael and Sonja went crazy for the fish, sting rays, snails... they screeched as they followed the fish along glass enclosures, like little cats chasing fish in the aquarium. Nikolas later pretended to be a dolphin at the beach, and he is still in the dolphin-mode during baths and when we go to the swimming pool.

The cottages were walking distance from the main pier, playground, cafes, and restaurants, convenient to take the kids out to play, to go for gelato (mandarin gelato for Nikolas!), to see the performers at the pier in the evening--they weren't too much into a guy dressed as a pirate but they had fun at the playground nearby. Speaking of pirates, there was a pirate boat that shot cannonballs just off of our beach every afternoon. The first time it happened, Nikolas was terrified. He ran to me and baka screaming and asking to be picked up, but the same day he kept talking about it ('Je li se sjecas onog piratskog broda sto je pucao topovske kugle? ('Do you remember the pirate ship that shot cannonballs?)) Whenever something impresses him and sticks in his memory, that's the standard question that he'll keep asking for days, weeks, months... ('Do you remember....?)
Finally when Mia showed up, she and Nikolas became best friends--they played together in the sand, built sand castles, ran in the shallow ocean, even took a nap together once, and actually slept (passed exhausting themselves on the beach in the morning). Every morning Nikolas woke up around 6:30am, noticed sunlight through the shades and whispered to me: 'Mama, napolju je dan, mogu li da izadjem u dnevni boravak?' (Mom, it's day outside, can I go out into the living room?). He whispered as if he didn't want to wake me up but, of course, wouldn't stop repeating himself until I opened my eyes and told him that he could go out.
Mikica is coming out of his shell, turning from a quiet little boy into a babbling and involved kid. He repeats our words like a parrot now, with the cutest accent that sound like baby Italian, accenting the first syllable a little stronger than the rest: ba-ka, sa-ca (grandma, Sanja-nickname, de-ka....). At the beach, he happily played with sand toys, imitated Nikolas and Mia, even, like those two, went up to his waist into the water and then ran back in front of a wave, while Sonja spent a good chunk of the time screaming for attention and asking to be held.Consequently, baka and I spent the corresponding portion of our beach time holding her, standing in the shallow water since she didn't want to be near the waves. I had a surprise in the ocean: while I swam I noticed people on the beach gathering close to the water and looking in my direction. I swam as fast as I could to the beach and asked if they saw a shark or what, and it turned out it was a couple of manatees they were looking at, and just then they happened to be right next to me--I would have swam over them without even noticing them!

Mikica and deko:
Sonja with her happy hat on:
And another happy hat (ok, I think it was deko who made her happy this time):
Mikica and Sonja managed to lock themselves in the room. After talking to Mikica for a couple of minutes to get him to turn the lock, he did it. Then it happened again the next day, and again the kids unlocked themselves.

Deko, with all great-grandchildren:
On our last night we had a nice dinner to celebrate this year's big birthdays, deko's 90th and baka's 60th. After dinner the kids went dancing to the live music--Mia and Sonja were dancing away on the floor and Michael wanted me to hold him and dance with him. I watched Sonja in amazement the whole time, not believing this was her! She was spinning, jumping, waving her arms and her head, going crazy on the dance floor as I never quite saw her at home! Wow!
Nikolas, after a fancy dinner, wanted to be taken to the gelato place to have his mandarin gelato once again before we left for home the next day.

Sonja, Mikica, Nikolas, Andrei and Mia, all together:

Daddy with the twins:

Twins move out of their cribs, Nikolas's phone conversations

Sonja and Michael got their twin XL size beds in place of their cribs. For one week we put Nikolas and Michael in the room together, and Sonja in Nikolas's old room to see how that would work out. Every morning the boys would get up unbelievably early (I never found out exactly when, but for sure by 6am) and played with legos, cars, books, etc underneath a tent that they made out of blankets that they hung from the bunk bed. So much energy, screeching and giggles were a bit too much for the early hours... and poor Sonja next door couldn't even open the door to come out to play with them. The boys went to sleep without too much fuss (actually, Michael is bar far the easiest kid to put down, he won't even let you sing a song to him--he immediately puts his head on your shoulder, and if you are sitting on his bed, he'll wriggle out and lay down on one side, put his head on his arm and close his eyes). At the same time, Sonja would be at the door as soon as we'd walk out of the room. She'd yell and cry, and after a few attempts to calm her down and make her go to bed, she'd still quietly move to the door and fall asleep there on the floor.
Eventually we decided to keep the twins together (plus save us effort of shuffling their clothes and toys from one room to another), so Nikolas went back to his old room and Sonja and Michael got the bunk beds that we separated rather than stacked. Michael slid out of his once or twice and that was it, but Sonja still keeps falling asleep on the floor in front of the door. Now she is getting Michael in trouble too: instead of letting him sleep in his bed, she's move into his bed as soon as I'd leave the room and poke him and talk until he was awake and up with her and then they would be standing at the window together looking out and talking or playing with blocks or at night laying on their blankets together right in front of the door. When I'd walk into the room, Michael would have such a guilty face and would lie down on his bed barely suppressing crying, and Sonja would go lie on her bed too but with not much of a guilty look, in fact, with a look that guaranteed that she'd get up again as soon as I left the room.

Nikolas feels he needs to talk on the phone whenever Robb or I are on it. The other day he spent 20min talking on the phone with grandma, pacing around the driveway the same way Robb paces. He actively participated, with a serious look on his face asking questions like 'What are you doing now?', talking about what he plays with, what he does at school, what Sonja and Mikica are doing... it was amazing to watch and listen!
Nikolas counts: jedan, dva, tri... jedanaest, dvanaest, trinaest, cetiriprst!
He reads simple words. The other day though, where he was supposed to read 'Nikolas jede.' (Nikolas eats.), he read: 'Nikolas ljencuga.' (Nikolas, lazy bum.)

The latest fun in the front yard: popping packing bubbles, skateboarding, biking:

Kids' annual dr. appt

Nikolas:
height: 42" (90%), weight: 36lb (45%)
Sonja:
height: 35" (80%), weight: 25lb (45%)
Michael:
height: 34" (45%). weight: 23lb (5%)

Michael is like a parrot now: Nikolas likes to tell him, Michael, say such and such, and he'll repeat it. He is pretty good! A lot of those words he probably doesn't know what they mean, but he knows to say 'Bopta (lopta) pala na pod' (A ball fell on the floor). He also calls for 'meko' (mlijeko)=milk, and voda (water). Still, when he wants food, he calls for 'meso' (meat). I guess I'd been pushing meat at him too much to gain some weight, so now that's his word for food! Then still he says 'baci' (throw) when he wants me to put him down, like when I pick him up to put him in bed.
He recently also started including the word 'necu!' (I don't want to!) He has to keep up with Sonja's incessant NO!'s.

Nikolas is now 100% potty trained. He's been sleeping in his underwear for the past couple of week instead of pull-ups, and it's been working flawlessly, after the first couple of mishaps.