jacob & natalie's first years

Natalie meets Timmy

2011-06-11T12:03:00.002-04:00

Natalie is now 19 days old. She was due to be born in just 5 more days. She is doing well. Passed her birth weight and clocked in at 6 lbs 3 oz. last we checked. That's already half as big as our cat!

We're all doing fine and one of us (Jacob) is sleeping normally.

Here Natalie meets Timmy the Sheep. She was fascinated, and just stared and stared and stared. Before Natalie, Jacob always seemed normal size, but he grew three sizes the day she was born. Notice how huge his hand looks in relation to Natalie.

Welcome Natalie!

2011-06-02T00:27:00.005-04:00

Please welcome Natalie Claire Forster Rothbart to the world.

Natalie was born on May 24. She surprised us all by arriving 3 weeks early. Although she is just a petite 5 1/2 pounds, she is big enough to stop everyone in their tracks. Here is Jacob, very proud to hold her for the first time when Natalie was 9 hours old.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T12:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob and I built and photographed this winter scene together. Jacob is already 4 1/2, and says he wants to be a photographer when he grows up. Or a fire dog. Or a T-rex.

2010 has been a very full and wonderful year for us, and we hope it was great for you as well.

In the coming year, I pray that our lives (yours and ours) are full of activities and people that bring us joy and happiness. May our days be free from worry and our nights free from fear.

It may sound cheesy but I mean it. Happy new year!

10 Reasons Why

2010-06-27T21:46:00.008-04:00

We Don't Have Time To Blog Anymore

1. Amy is trying to finish her dissertation.
2. Mike is trying to write a book.
3. Jacob is trying to get someone to play with him.
4. Jacob is now a train engine named Hiro.
5. We're tired.
6. We're poor.
7. We're huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
8. We are moving August 1st.
9. We are traveling to Vermont and Maine and Michigan.
10. We can't even finish this list, never mind finding time to blog.

Maybe in the fall.

Jacob and the bats

2009-11-01T20:32:00.004-05:00

Photo by Jacob Forster Rothbart

This is Jacob's own photo of the bat puppets he made with his grandmother Irene and aunt Sarah. They used black socks and felt.

Jacob shows off his best bat grin.

Happy Halloween!

Green Thumb

2009-06-29T14:19:00.006-04:00

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

2009-06-12T11:09:00.002-04:00

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

2009-02-15T05:03:00.007-05:00

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

2008-11-01T17:29:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-01T04:40:00.002-04:00

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

2008-09-30T13:03:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-05T20:55:00.004-04:00

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

2008-08-22T01:02:00.001-04:00

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

2008-07-25T13:03:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-23T01:02:00.002-04:00

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

2008-01-21T23:27:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-14T01:22:00.000-04:00

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.

I rake for Jake

2007-10-08T13:03:00.000-04:00

Our lawn is the best raked it has ever been. Jacob has loved leaves since he was 3 months old, so I guess it shouldn't surprise us that he has taken to raking, now that his leaves are falling.

The first time out, I gave Jacob an old broom because he was so insistent on helping. He pushed leaves up and down the sidewalk. When it was time to go in, he refused to part with the broom, and proceeded to carry it around the house, banging into walls and doorways with it.

The second time, Jacob insisted on using a real rake, not a broom. Our neighbor Amanda (who has a 2-year-old) saved the day by lending us a toy rake. We made the mistake of leaving the rakes outside the door and now Jacob wants to rake every single time we come outside. He even takes his rake to school with him!

In sad news, my second favorite Jacob, Ann Arbor street musician Shaky Jake, died last month at the age of 82. Shaky Jake had been playing on the streets of A2 since I was the age of our Jacob, and his enthusiastic but off-key guitar playing was legendary. That man could put a smile on anyone's face! (Read more here, see video here or listen to the NPR piece here.)

If anyone out there has an "I brake for Jake" bumper sticker, I want it.

traveling fools

2007-08-21T02:01:00.000-04:00

That's it. We're leaving. Jacob's taking his ball and going home. His parents are coming too. The next 2 weeks, we'll be traveling, and one or more of us will be in: Kyiv, Chernobyl, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Boston, Detroit, and Ann Arbor, before we finally land back in Madison in early September.

So don't expect to hear from us for awhile.

swing time

2007-08-18T14:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob loves the swing. He can sit there for an hour at a time, watching the older kids on the playground as we push him back and forth.

Soon we will return to the U.S. It's been a fabulous 8 months, yet recently we've been thinking of things we will not be sad to leave behind (visa headaches, inexplicable bureaucracy, bad traffic, the national absence of bagels). Nevertheless, we will all miss having a playground just outside our door. We've promised Jacob that they do have playgrounds in America too.

As you may notice, we gave Jacob his first haircut recently. Just his bangs, which were falling into his eyes. He squirmed every time the scissors came near, and neither of us had cut hair before, so it is not, let us say, the straightest of cuts. Fortunately his curly hair hides it well. At first many Kazakhs assume Jacob is a girl. It is very rare here for a baby boy to have such long, gorgeous hair. Sometimes we correct the error, sometimes we just accept compliments on our "beautiful girl."

ice, ice, no baby

2007-08-03T18:09:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday Amy gave me a lovely gift. She took Jacob for the day and sent me off to the mountains. I enjoy hiking with Jacob, but it was also fun to spend the day scrambling over loose scree and snowfields up above Talgar Pass.

This photo shows a small snowmelt pond on top of Bogdanovich glacier. Over the years so much loose rock has fallen on the lower part of the glacier that it isn't apparent you are actually walking on top of the glacier until you come to a section of bare ice such as this.

When I spend a day like this, I start to think that maybe I should give up photojournalism and be a nature photographer.

playground confessional

2007-07-24T14:35:00.000-04:00

The best thing about our apartment, in Jacob’s opinion, is the playground, and the best thing about the playground is the sandbox. Amy bought Jacob a bucket and shovel set, and the boy has commenced to dig.

I have to confess: for me the sandbox is boring. There are only so many times I can fill the bucket up with sand and dump it out again before I go mad. The toy rake is not a lot of fun either. Things have gotten a bit better since we started bringing Jacob’s yellow ball with us. He can’t catch yet, of course, and doesn’t quite throw either, but some days, rolling the ball is not a terrible way to pass the time.

If I had someone to talk to, I’d be better off. The two-year-olds out there are not great conversationalists. The one-year-olds are worse. And their parents aren’t so great either. My Russian is good enough to fool people into thinking I understand them. We’ve now had all the conversations I know how to have. More than once. The weather. What we are doing here. Whether America is better or worse than Kazakhstan. How crazy the traffic and the rents are now. How old Jacob is and when he naps.

No, wait, there actually is one conversation I don’t think I’ve yet had with other parents on the playground: the fruits and vegetables I want to buy when I go to the bazaar. Maybe we can talk about that tomorrow.

There is one three-year-old, Denis, who likes to whine to me about what is wrong with his toys. I am pleased to say I understand most of his Russian. Jacob sits listening to him with wide eyes. Memorizing all those complaints to use later, I am sure. But like emptying the plastic bucket, there is only so long I can listen to Denis before I want to bury my head in the sand. Which happens to be conveniently located nearby.

And sure, I talk to Jacob. He understands, we think, at least 60 English words. And he responds with half a dozen of his own: ba[ll]. Ba[ll.] Bo[ttle]. Da. Mama? Uh. Ba[ll]. Remember that Far Side cartoon, What A Dog Hears? “Blah Ginger, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah, Ginger.” In this case, Jacob is like Ginger. He also barks, by the way.

Jacob completely disagrees with my assessment of the playground. Every day, he can’t wait to get out there. He has started to bring us his shoes when he thinks it must be time to go outside. Then he brings us our own shoes, to be sure to drive the point home.

And now that he can walk, the playground is an even more exciting place. He has been so delighted to walk his way from one part to another. He grins enormously with the thrill of voyaging from the park bench to the swing. He is still not very sure-footed; he grabs my hand for tricky moves like stepping from the sidewalk onto the grass.

Watching Jacob explore and enjoy himself is the sole redeeming facet of a morning on the playground. Every time we go out, he finds something new. This week, his favorite game has been picking up handfuls of gravel, studying them, and then passing them to me. Try as I might, though, I can’t find anything marvelous about them.

Sometimes I feel like a bad father because I often don’t enjoy playing with Jacob. Amy has been reading new-parent discussion lists like those at babycenter.com, and she assures me that there are plenty of stay-at-home moms out there, also going slowly mad in their own sandboxes.

backpacks!

2007-07-18T13:48:00.000-04:00

Jacob loves being outdoors. Mike's parents bought us a baby backpack, which makes it much easier to haul him around. Earlier this month we spent a night at the GAISH Astronomical Observatory in the Zailiysky Alatau mountains near Almaty, then climbed the dirt road up to Big Almaty Peak. Behind Jacob and Amy is 4317-meter (14,163-ft) Peak Sovetov.

Jacob has a new word: backpack ("bah pah")! We were practicing our B words: ball, bird, banana, bath, boat, baby, bring, bye bye. Jacob may think that every important thing starts with the letter B. (Except mama, of course). Our beautiful bright bouncing baby boy brings back bluebirds before breakfast.

Then I tried some P words, and he was mimicking me but not quite getting the sound. So we introduced him to backpack and he took to it. Now he has been talking about backpacks all day. He definitely knows his backpack and he is glad to tell the world about it. It's a little scary how fast he learns.

Here there be dragons

2007-07-08T14:03:00.000-04:00

During a Sunday afternoon picnic at Lake Issyk, in the Ili-Alatau National Park, Karolina Reno (age 3 1/2) decided she was a monster on rampage, ready to eat small boys like Jacob. After much growling, it all ended well, however: they later gave each other wildflowers.

Almaty has been hot this summer. Every weekend we try to get out of the city and into the mountains. Fortunately it isn't hard to do. Lake Issyk is about 35 miles (60 km) from Almaty, at 5,775 feet elevation (1760 m). It is fed by glaciers on nearby 16,332-foot Talgar Peak (4978 m); the water is a frigid 48 degrees F (9 Celsius). Despite the chilly water, I still went for a swim. It took me 15 minutes to get myself in, and 15 seconds to get back out!

See another photo here.

where's your mustache?

2007-06-22T14:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob has discovered how much fun it is to play with markers. Sometimes he actually gets some ink on the paper. His favorite part is pulling the lids off the markers. We have learned to strip him down before he starts, to keep the ink off his clothes.

breakfast of champions

2007-06-20T14:03:00.000-04:00

At fourteen months old, Jacob is often eager to feed himself. He grabs the spoon and won’t let go. This morning he did fairly well with the spoon at first, until he decided that palming the yogurt was more appealing.

Father's Day

2007-06-17T14:03:00.000-04:00

Amy and Jacob and a mug for the camera.

Jacob and I spent our second father's day together today. We started the day by going back to sleep for a long morning nap. I didn't mean to nap with him, but he was so cosy and then I became so drowsy... he curled up on my belly and I just relaxed and closed my eyes until suddenly it was almost noon!

Then we went for a long afternoon walk around town, ending with a picnic dinner, joined by Amy and some new expat friends.

Pictured above with us are: Giada Ripa di Meana, an Italian photographer; Masha Rasner, a Ukrainian-American who works for Internews; Eugenia Benigni, an Italian who works for OSCE; Eva Binette, from Quebec, and Julien Garoste, from France, who are biking their way home across Asia from Vietnam!

Of course, we were thinking about John today, Amy's dad, Jacob's grandfather, my second father. Today was our first father's day since he died last August, and we didn't talk about him, but we were all missing him.

What a difference a year makes. Last father's day, our bouncy curly-haired boy was bald and tiny! For comparison, we’ve posted a photo from our first father’s day here.

greetings from Kazakhstan

2007-05-26T14:03:00.000-04:00

Family self-portrait in the Koktobe playground.

After a three week hiatus, we're back in the modern world. We all landed safely in Almaty, and we now have an apartment, our phone finally works, our landlord installed cable TV and a clothes washer, and now we've gotten our DSL modem hooked up.

Until now, doing anything online felt like trying to fill a bathtub with an eyedropper. (Actually, I shouldn't complain: compared to the dial-up connection we used to have when we lived here in 1999-2000, the modem speed is not bad.) Really it's now more like filling a bathtub with two eyedroppers.

Next time we go abroad, we keep telling each other, we're moving to a country for more than 4 months at a time. Jacob has not minded the move, but he certainly does not make moving easy. (More on the moppet soon).

This afternoon, we took a family walk up to the top of Koktobe, a 1060 meter (3450 foot)-tall hill on the upper edge of Almaty. I should point out to our flatland Wisconsin readers that this is not as tall as it sounds, since the city below is at 870 m (2830 ft). Nevertheless, it is high enough to give a grand view over the plains below and up to the mountains above.

View from Koktobe. Almaty is nestled tight against the Zhungarskiy Alatau range, with peaks as tall as 5000 meters (16,000 ft) nearby.

There's a stunning wall of mountains just 10 km from downtown. Anywhere you go in the city you can see this vista. At least, you can see them whenever the smog and new high-rise apartment buildings don't obscure your view!

Of course, Jacob was much more interested in the playground at the top than the view. Amy recently read that babies Jacob's age (now 13 months) typically have an attention span of 3-5 minutes. Not Jacob. He played with these rings for 20 minutes and still wasn't ready to leave when we pulled him away.

a moving experience

2007-05-07T17:43:00.000-04:00

Jacob plays with his nanny Larissa Onischuk during their last day together. Later, as Larissa was leaving, there was not a dry eye in the apartment — the adults because we were saying goodbye, and Jacob because we were not yet eating dinner.

This week we are uprooting ourselves as we move from Ukraine to Kazakhstan. It's hard to believe that half of our year abroad is over! Amy and Jacob flew to Almaty today, via Istanbul. I fly on Friday, after I try to tie up about 1 million loose ends here.

We will probably be out of touch for a week or two until we get an apartment and figure out internet access.

Thanks to all who recently helped us find a new home for our cat!

As I leave Ukraine, I feel I've just now started to understand the multitudinous problems surrounding Chernobyl. I am starting to look into grants so that we can get ourselves back here, possibly as soon as a year from now.

breaking news

2007-05-01T06:09:00.000-04:00

Some recent surprises in our world:

Sunday we discovered Jacob has a new, third tooth!
Monday, Jacob took his first step!
Today is May first and it is snowing in Kyiv.

Jacob has a new tooth (not pictured). Photo by Sarah Forster.

On Sunday, Amy and Jacob went to the zoo, where Jacob's favorite animals were the geese. (Mike was spending the day in Chernobyl.) Amy and Jacob stopped to eat a banana, and then went on to watch the monkeys, also eating bananas. In the middle of all this banana-eating is when Amy saw it, right there at the top of his gum: tooth #3. It looks like it's been there a few days, but we've been so preoccupied with Jacob's cough that we overlooked it.

On Monday, Jacob and Mike were running in circles around the living room. Jacob is now quite good at walking – as long as he holds on with both hands. He likes to run this way as well, although he stumbles a lot. We paused after our thousandth lap, and Jacob was leaning back very casually against the sofa, his elbows on the seat. Then he decided he wanted to come to Mike, so he pushed off, took one step on his own, then promptly lurched forward and grabbed Mike's knees just before falling on his face.

This morning, Mike got up with Jacob at 6:45 while Amy slept in. Then at 10 Amy took a shift while Mike went back to nap. When Mike arose again, and complained how cold it was, Amy announced: "it's snowing." Mike looked out the window and didn't believe it. "Those are apple blossoms blowing around," Mike said. He was wrong. It is snowing. Happy May day.

Let them eat cake!

2007-04-28T14:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob and Samuel Bregard threw a party to celebrate their first birthdays. (Samuel turned one on April 9.) They invited babies from near and far, along with their parents and some other old folks. There was cake and candles and toys and diapers for all. Here, Jacob (and Amy) blow out Jacob's candle while Samuel and Max start to dig into Samuel's cake.

happy birthday!

2007-04-20T02:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob is ONE YEAR OLD today. We'll post some photos from our little party. But really, who has time to keep a blog with a toddler running around? In the past month, Jacob has started to crawl, sprouted 2 teeth and stood on his own (without holding on) for 40 seconds. Wow!

Baby group

2007-04-11T14:03:00.000-04:00

On Wednesday afternoons we usually go to the baby group run by the International Women’s Club of Kyiv. Jacob has a chance to play with (or ignore) other babies from around the world (including Canada, China, Finland, France, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, the UK, and the US).

It's fun to compare how the babies are progressing. Compared to a statistically insignificant group of his peers, Jacob has been slower to get teeth and stand on his own, but faster at growing hair and learning to pick up and eat minute objects, such as grains of rice or individual cat hairs. Meanwhile Mike, normally the only dad to attend, hangs out with the mothers.

This week, Roman and Mikael bopped heads, Maia upchucked her fruit salad on her mother's shirt, Jacob gnawed on a plastic apple, Rose bawled, and generally a great time was had by all.

dresser for success

2007-03-21T14:03:00.000-04:00

At 11 months old, Jacob has now learned to open the bottom drawer of the dresser and pull out toys and clothes, or better yet, try to climb in with them. Coming soon: installation of our first baby-proof latch. Also note Jacob's first two teeth, which emerged from his lower gum last week.

We're goin to the zoo, zoo, zoo

2007-03-09T13:03:00.000-05:00

We went to the Kyiv zoo with our friends Andrea and Andrew. To be frank, out of all the exotic animals we saw, Jacob's favorites were the fish. The cockroaches were pretty cool too, he thought. The elephant was just a big stinky gray wall and the hippo was a pair of ears in a dirty pool of water. He liked the lions but I don't think he realized that they were big cats that were far away.

Feed Me!

2007-03-04T13:03:00.000-05:00

If you won't feed me, says Jacob, I'll just eat the table. We were out at a cafe in downtown Kyiv. Jacob had borscht and liked it – maybe it's time to start feeding him a wider variety of dishes. His favorite foods remain bananas and yogurt. And tables.

Move over, Matisse

2007-03-03T13:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob Forster Rothbart, 2006 -
Ink with food-coloring pigment on recycled office paper.

The artist at work: Jacob made his first artwork today with his new markers, which he mostly used to stab the paper.

tofu you

2007-02-27T13:03:00.000-05:00

A lunchtime conversation. We were having a fine lunch of tofu goulash:

Take 1 rice cake.
Add tofu and frozen peas.
Pour boiling water over it.
Mash with fork.

Jacob happily let me feed him for awhile. Then suddenly, he'd had enough and pushed me away.

Ok, Jacob, I said. Do you want more? (I sign "more.") Or are you finished? (Sign "finished.")

Jacob screwed up his face as if I was suggesting torture not tofu. He shook his head and said, quite clearly, "No!"

I got out a jar of Gerber mixed fruit. Ok, I said. Do you want tofu or fruit? I asked, holding each one up in turn. He pointed to the fruit.

Parents are so slow to understand sometimes.

When he finished the fruit, I gave him some more tofu to smear across his tray and across his face. Sometimes he took a bite. But if I tried to feed him anymore, this is what happened:

Who needs speech to communicate? This is a boy with opinions!

Takes two to snooze

2007-02-25T13:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob and Mike sleep together on the living room floor. Lately, Jacob has been refusing to sleep when put back in his crib in the middle of the night, and so often one of us ends up sleeping with him.

fun with mirrors

2007-02-17T09:52:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple more photos taken with the MacBook Pro internal camera. The camera software includes a number of funhouse mirror special effects.

Jacob always enjoys playing in the mirror. He's been particularly fascinated by the computer camera, which also essentially looks like a mirror. When we had the warp effects turned on, he kept glancing over his shoulder to check whether Amy had changed how she looked in person or only on the screen.

three cheers

2007-02-14T18:49:00.000-05:00

Jacob is slightly sick this week. He was acting fussy and cabin feverish this evening after two days inside, so we entertained him for awhile taking photos of ourselves with the built-in camera in my laptop. Not even ten months old and he is already quite a ham.

Stand in the place where you live

2007-02-13T13:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob has been practicing standing, first with the help of stable objects and then with anything he can grab on to (including less stable things, like his father).

on the inside looking out

2007-02-12T13:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob's favorite place in our new apartment is the living room window sill, where he likes to stand and watch people walk past. Fortunately, the sill is too high for him to reach (until he starts climbing!) so we spend a lot of time there, exclaiming about what we see and making sure he doesn't fall off.

the family belt

2007-02-05T13:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob tries out the family belt while he sits on the bed in our new apartment. We only have one belt for the family, since Amy neglected to bring one with her and keeps borrowing mine on days she doesn’t want her pants falling down. She only needs a plain black belt, but all the belts she has found in the fancy downtown Globus mall sell for US$75 or more. That seems ridiculous, so for now we all share.

moving in: before and after

2007-01-28T17:02:00.000-05:00

Before:

After:

We have a home! After a month of living out of backpacks and boxes, we are delighted to be domiciled. Our new 2 room apartment was our third choice, as the others didn’t work out – one landlord was out of town, and another was reluctant to rent to foreigners who might make expensive phone calls. Since we’re only here for 4 months we couldn’t afford to wait any longer.

Here is our new address: Tverskoi Tupik 6/8, apartment 136, Pecherskiy raion, Kyiv. Stop by if you’re in the neighborhood! It’s a ten minute walk from the Pecherskaya Metro station in a neighborhood of auto mechanics and students. The area around the metro is very posh, definitely ‘the high street’ as the Brits would say. New buildings, a fancy supermarket, a Moroccan restaurant and a 24/7 “coffee haus” with wi-fi. From there you go downhill, past the three banks, the well-worn Institute of Culture (a college), across a muddy field and down an alley to get to our new place. In the other direction, Amy’s office is a 15 minute walk down a steep hill past the auto shops.

Three great things about our apartment: it has a microwave, a dishwasher and two closets! Three unfortunate things: it’s on the ground floor next to the front door, which slams frequently; everything in the living room is brown; and unlike the two other places we tried to rent, it is not next to the botanical garden. No matter, it’s home and we’re here to stay. Briefly.

fun with realtors

2007-01-24T13:03:00.000-05:00

Friends,

You’ve not heard much from us since we arrived in Kyiv. We are indeed here, we assure you. We’ve been sinking most of our time into our apartment search. Unfortunately, the realty agencies that market to foreigners are used to people with bigger budgets than a grad student research stipend. Most offer nothing for less than a grand. Plus an agency commission of one half a month’s rent. That thousand dollars will get you a “two room flat” – a bedroom and one other room. (Plus a bathroom and kitchen, which don’t count as rooms). We had heard Kyiv was more expensive than Madison, but this, we agreed, was ridiculous. We decided to dig a little deeper.

With tremendous help from some of Amy’s former colleagues (from ISAR), we searched online apartment ads such as Aviso (http://aviso.ua/ -- non-Russian speakers see http://aviso.ua/aviso/eng/). At first glance, it looks like there are tons of places available, starting at $600, downtown in the neighborhoods we want.

Don’t you believe it.

First discount all the old listings that have already rented, which we learn only after calling. Then discover that the bulk of these classified ads are actually posted by agencies. Which would be fine, commission aside, except for the bureaucratic way these agencies are organized: it seems every apartment is assigned to a single agent, who then must coordinate with the owner before they’ll set up a viewing. After a dozen calls back and forth, we might manage to see one apartment. If the agent shows up. And if that advertised location matches the actual location. This was not the case for one lovely apartment we found, largest we’ve seen, a good deal for six hundred, except that “ten minutes walk” from one Metro station proved to be out by the highway, fifteen minutes on the marshrutka (minibus) from a different station. Nice place though, too bad.

In two weeks we’ve managed to see only 5 apartments. We tried to rent two of them, and failed twice. We’ll try again tomorrow.

New city, (old) new year

2007-01-14T13:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob and Mike pose in front of Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the central square in Kyiv, during our first trip downtown. The square is decked out to celebrate the new year, which started today, according to the Julian calendar used here until 1917.

live from Kyiv

2007-01-13T17:39:00.000-05:00

Greetings!

Somehow or other we made it out of our house, out of the state and out of the country! We all arrived safely in Kyiv Thursday, as did most of our bags. (The last two showed up today). So far we’ve spent our time just getting our bearings, walking around the city, visiting the local markets, figuring out how to get online. Jacob has been going around with his eyes so wide they bulge. Wish I knew what he was thinking!

Tomorrow we’ll start hunting for an apartment. Once we get unpacked, I’ll post some photos.
MFR

Sleeplessness

2006-12-03T13:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob has not been sleeping well lately. And therefore, none of us have been sleeping well. For weeks he has been congested, and wakes himself up coughing. He's also been clingy — he wants to sleep on us, rather than in his crib. Last night, it took me two hours to get him to fall asleep, singing and rocking him, and then he awoke again as soon as we got in bed. 4:30 A.M. was the first time we were all asleep at once. This photo was taken in the dark with a long 3-second exposure.

gobble gobble

2006-11-23T22:06:00.000-05:00

Today we celebrated Jacob's first Thanksgiving with the Karamanski family, including Genevieve (age 3) and Theresa (15 months). At seven months old, Jacob is nearly as tall as Theresa.
Jacob's grandma Irene is here for a week to visit. And yes, there were more cameras than kids in the room.

At the beach

2006-11-20T23:35:00.000-05:00

Jacob enjoys a Florida beach on a visit to his great-grandmother.

Catch a tiger by the tail

2006-11-18T13:03:00.000-05:00

The ferocious Jacob beast plays in the jungle (on his great-grandmother's couch).

Lapping it up

2006-11-12T13:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob and Kanzhe share space on Amy's lap. One of Jacob's favorite new activities at 6 and 1/2 months old is pulling Kanzhe's ears, which the cat tolerates in order to get some attention himself.

Election Day

2006-11-07T22:16:00.000-05:00

Jacob, one of many new voters today, helped vote in his first general election. His help included stomping on the ballot and trying to chew on the marking pen. Note to electoral photographers: I recommend that you avoid trying to simultaneously hold a baby, vote, and photograph the process, unless you happen to have three hands.

Jacob meets the carrots

2006-10-29T23:37:00.000-05:00

Jacob ate carrots for the first time today, at 27 weeks old. Unlike avocado, which he also tried this week, Jacob enthusiastically smeared the rice cereal-carrot goop all over his face, including some that made it in his mouth.

Happy birthday Amy!

2006-10-27T13:03:00.000-04:00

A very, very happy birthday to you, Amy!
(Since we are about to move, I didn't want to give Amy anything hard to carry. So this blog is Amy's birthday gift: for the next year, I will add one (or more) new photos of Jacob each week.) We all love you, Amy. Many happy returns of the day!
love, Mike

Note: this blog was started in October 2006. All previous entries are backdated to the day they were shot.

Mr. Stylish

2006-10-17T13:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob shows off his fabulous hand-knit roll-neck sweater, made by his aunt Sarah using wool from organically-fed hand-sheared sheep raised on the coast of Maine. Not yet 26 weeks old, and already the boy dresses to drool. If only his parents dressed so fashionably...

sunset silhouettes

2006-10-07T13:03:00.000-04:00

During a day hike on Governor’s Island, Jacob and Amy watch the sunset over Lake Mendota.

studio portraits

2006-09-05T13:03:00.000-04:00

One afternoon after work, while Amy was in class, Jacob and I took self-portraits together in my office studio. (Unfortunately, Jacob would only look at the camera when someone stood behind it and made peculiar noises!)

Since an early age, this boy has shown an interest in other people's mouths; is there dentistry in his future or is it just a passing oral fixation?

On the farm

2006-08-15T14:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob meets baby goats on Kate Barnes' farm in West Sidney, Maine. He also enjoyed the chickens, cows, cats, dogs and sunflowers.

what's it take to get a meal around here?

2006-08-14T13:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob covets his mother’s bowl of cereal during breakfast in Vassalboro. At almost seventeen weeks old, Jacob has yet to try solid food, but he certainly pays attention to it when we eat!

how we feel today

2006-07-30T01:03:00.000-04:00

Our family is in Maine to be with my ailing father-in-law John during the final days of his life. Yesterday, Jacob expressed how we are all feeling at the moment. Tonight I am sitting up with John, doing the 11 to 3 am vigil as he sleeps.

Little swinger

2006-07-13T13:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob sits in his swing and plays with a bandana. He is 12 weeks old now and he has gotten good at grasping on to things. Does he have any idea what he is doing? Possibly.

Im/mobilized

2006-07-10T13:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob lays in his crib and stares up at his new mobile. At eleven weeks old, he seems fascinated by how it starts and stops. He has started spending as long as 45 minutes every morning after he wakes up, happily babbling to himself and watching the mobile.

family picnic

2006-07-06T00:03:00.000-04:00

We had a family picnic dinner beside Lake Monona in Yahara Place Park. Jacob is almost 11 weeks old and likes to stare up at the trees.

first father's day

2006-06-18T14:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob and Mike celebrated their first Father's Day together with a feast at Bluephies and some mutual admiration.

Things are looking up

2006-06-10T13:03:00.000-04:00

At seven weeks old, Jacob enjoys his new playmat, a gift from Mike’s office. In the past week, he has started to be much more aware of his surroundings. He has started watching and batting at toys as they hang above him.

fete de bebe

2006-06-06T18:27:00.000-04:00

As guest of honor, Jacob surveys his party from the middle of the conference table as University Communications holds a lunch party for him and his parents when he is almost 7 weeks old.

Doting grandparents

2006-06-01T13:03:00.000-04:00

At the end of May, we took a family trip to Maine, so Jacob could meet his grandparents John and Irene Forster for the first time. During this trip five-week-old Jacob has also had his first bath, his first bottle and his first babysitters (when we his parents slipped out for a paddle in the kayaks without him).

Rebel without a cause

2006-05-15T13:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob poses (or more accurately, gets posed) for portraits at 26 days old. The bandana started as a burp cloth, but once I tied it over his little head, he looked like a miniature rebelious teenager, and I had to get my camera. Jacob's facial expressions are so animated, it's hard to remember they don't actually mean anything half the time.

Happy mother's day

2006-05-14T01:03:00.000-04:00

We celebrated our first Mother's Day as a family, when Jacob was just 3 weeks old. First Mike served breakfast in bed, then Mike and Jacob went out to Quaker Meeting and gift shopping, leaving Amy some quiet time at home (which she promptly filled with grading exams).

Jacob was smaller than the breakfast in bed.

Are mothers maternal?

2006-05-09T13:03:00.000-04:00

Amy breastfeeds 3-week-old Jacob, while Mike reads an article in the New York Times Science Times section about how mothers are not maternal. The article tells macabre stories about "mothers that zestily eat their young." But don't you worry, Jacob is not for dinner.

Father and son

2006-05-08T13:03:00.000-04:00

Here is another photo from yesterday. I love the fact that Jacob is small enough to lay in my forearm.

All the news that fits

2006-05-07T13:03:00.000-04:00

At 18 days old, Jacob is 20 inches long and weighs 7 pounds — the same size (but lighter than) the Sunday New York Times.

First picnic

2006-05-06T13:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob takes his first trip to Olbrich Botanical Gardens at two weeks old, during which he has his first "picnic," (AKA Amy's first public breast feeding).

As you can see, he's still a little bruised from birth, but his head has returned to a normal shape after the Big Squeeze.

Sorry, he's tied up at the moment

2006-05-04T13:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob is now two weeks old. He tends to scream in protest when his diaper is being changed, and only calms down after he gets swaddled. It is amazing how quickly he quiets. I guess it reminds him of his old womb.

Sweet dreams

2006-05-02T13:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob is thirteen days old. Amy has already fallen in love with him. Of course, who wouldn't?

Don't cry uncle!

2006-04-30T13:03:00.000-04:00

Would you trust these men with your baby? We did, and all survived. Once Jacob can understand what they are saying, however, we may have to be more cautious. Uncle Davy tried to tell Jacob all about the world, while Uncle Peter tried to understand what Jacob was saying.

sleeping like a baby

2006-04-24T13:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob is four days old. He is busy sleeping and accepting visitors now that we've come home from the hospital.

Day 2

2006-04-21T13:03:00.000-04:00

Here is Jacob Benjamin Forster Rothbart at one day (33 hours) old, in our recovery room of the St. Mary's hospital maternity ward. We're all very tired and this breast feeding routine is hard to get used to – right now it takes all three of us to make it work – but otherwise we are well.

Jacob's first hour

2006-04-20T13:02:00.000-04:00

Five minutes old

Jacob Benjamin Forster Rothbart spent the first 40 minutes of his life laying on Amy's chest while the doctors cleaned up. What a tiny precious gasping little bundle he is!

Twenty minutes old

Twenty-five minutes old

Forty minutes old

Fifty minutes old

One hour old

Jacob arrives!

2006-04-20T02:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob was born April 20, 2006 at 12:03 a.m.

Here are his stats:

20 inches tall
7 pounds, 6 ounces
5 fingers per hand, (the tiniest we've ever seen)
4 days late
3 happy, healthy and sleep-deprived Forster Rothbarts
2 uncles, and one aunt
1st grandchild in the family
0 hours of sleep per night

All is well.
MFR