Green Thumb

Jacob waters his tomato plants on our balcony.

Mike and Jacob planted tomato and basil seeds in old water bottles back in May. They are thriving in our greenhouse-like balcony, which gets too much hot sun to use it for anything else. Jacob has been diligently watering and tending his plants. The basil is producing well and the tomatoes have buds, but we are unlikely to actually get any ripe tomatoes before we leave Kyiv (in a month!)

Davy does 20/20

Hi all,

We are breaking our long silence here to announce that Jacob's uncle Davy will be featured tonight on ABC's 20/20.

Read the article here.
See the video here. (Sorry, you'll have to suffer through an ad first).

So why our silence on all things Jacob? Honestly, we are all too busy living to spend much time recording our activities. Unfortunately.

We will be in Ukraine until the end of July and then moving to Oneonta, New York in August. Once we return to the U.S. maybe (hopefully!) we'll start blogging more again.

M

Happy Valentine's Day

How sweet it is. Photo by AFR

Jacob enjoyed helping with baking on Valentine's Day. He helped roll the dough and cut out cookies. By the end he was covered in flour, down to his toes.

The months fly by. I am very happy that my valentines are soon coming to me. Amy and Jacob will move back to Kyiv on March 1st. Ura!

Happy Hallowe'en

Photo by Irene Forster

For Hallowe'en, Jacob was a lion. He marched (or ran, actually) in the Hallowe'en parade and helped aunt Sarah pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters. And he roared at all of them. In fact, he is still roaring a day later. He also discovered those dangerous gateway drugs, M&Ms and Smarties. Roar!

mane attraction

Photo by Amy FR

Jacob and Amy got their hairs cut yesterday. Jacob's hair is no longer in his eyes, and he still has his curls, but hopefully they will be out of his face.

Yes, he is, in fact, sitting on a monkey.

separation

Last week I moved to Ukraine. I'm excited to begin my Chernobyl project, but while I am working in logistics it is very hard to be so far from my family. I must confess: last night, I was missing them so much I got up at 2:30 am to look at photos of Jacob and Amy.

Now that I am an absentee dad, maybe I'll find time to post more recent photos of Jacob. But let me tell you, it's not the same as seeing the giggly sweet lion-roaring truck-rolling boy in person.

Mike

a moving experience

If you think 3 days and 1340 miles in a small car with a small child and a loud cat sounds like fun, we invite you to join us the next time we move. Despite tears and meows and far too many repetitions of the Sesame Street CD, we all survived our move to Maine. Actually, Jacob traveled quite well most of the time. Kanzhe is the one who threatened to drive us batty. He managed to meow for nearly 3 days straight, despite sedation.

Anyhow, we made it.

on the road again

Our blog has fallen silent this spring and summer as we have all been way too busy to reflect. Today, we leave Madison. It's been our home for the past 8 years, (at least for those of us who are older than that) and we're sad to be moving on.

Tomorrow we start our drive to Maine, where Amy and Jacob will spend the fall. Mike leaves in September for Ukraine, where he will be doing a photography project on Chernobyl. Amy and Jacob will join Mike this winter. Amy is writing her dissertation and applying for teaching jobs. Jacob is writing circles and lines and singing Sesame Street songs.

Our fall address (and ongoing US mailing address):
86 Three Mile Pond Rd
Vassalboro, ME 04989.

Email addresses stay the same.

Thanks Madison, for being a great place to live!

best friends

Photo by Maciek Smuga-Otto

Best friends Jacob Forster Rothbart and Eli Smuga-Otto ride the train at the Vilas Zoo in Madison. Jacob and Eli are in daycare together and have really bonded. They are very different but they play very well together (most of the time!) On Fridays they take turns visiting each other so 3 of the 4 parents can work. This Friday, Eli's dad Maciek took them to the zoo.

hair today

Jacob got his first haircut today, at Next Generation salon, a place that specializes in kids' haircuts. Jacob was very calm about it (and pleased to sit in the firetruck chair!) He is already 23 months old — we’ve been putting of getting his beautiful blond curls cut, even though strangers often mistake him for a girl. Today he just got hair trimmed, and the ringlets stayed.

The Times, they are a changin

Now that Jacob is 21 months old, he has started reading the New York Times. At 21 days old he was no bigger than the Sunday Times, and suddenly now he's sitting there reading it. Okay, okay: he only likes it for the pictures. A habit he'll surely someday deny when he picks up Playboy.

Seriously, though, Jacob is now interested in letters. For two months he's been pointing out his two favorites (B! O! he chants, sometimes getting them correct). This week he is able to identify seven (A, B, C, D, J, M, O) more often than not, though M, W, E and N all mean M as far as he is concerned and J is called “dub” (his word for Jacob). We've been playing repeated alphabet games and songs about our names – Jacob, mama, (formerly known as Amy), and dada. Today he was obsessed with his alphabet puzzles; he now seems to understand that letters have names and was parroting them back to us.

time passes

So, how about that weekly family blog, eh?

It's been 6 weeks since we returned to Madison and we've all been busy. We've been:

• unpacking boxes
• growing teeth
• restarting a photography business
• teaching 4 sections of an International Relations class
• starting pre-school
• starting a dissertation
• looking for part-time jobs
• starting to potty-train
• finishing a web site
• learning two syllable words ("allo? ba-all dow-oon wow")
• applying for a grant to go back to Ukraine
• staying up too late and getting up too early
• completing our 2006 taxes (we got a 6 month extension)
• wondering what in the world we're doing here
• pulling the cat's tail.

But maybe sometime soon we can add blogging regularly back on the list.