Treasure Island

Well, we finished reading Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson tonight. Alyosha understood a lot of it, there were some parts that were beyond him, but he hung on every word. He loved the entire novel! Tonight when he was playing in the bathtub he had a little boat, that he made into a pirate ship, naturally. He called me in there have a look at his boat. He said he "beached it (on his legs) when the tide went out." Then he said, "what does that mean?" (they beach the pirate ship Hispaniola when they lose the anchor)

So I told him this story: When I drop this sponge, where does it go?
Al: It falls down.
Mama: Why does it fall down and not up?
Al: Because gravity. What is gravity?
Mama: Gravity is what pulls everything down to the earth. And the moon has gravity too, but the Earth is stronger. The moon tries and tries to pull things up to it, as hard as it can, but it can't. It doesn't quit trying though. The moon isn't strong enough to pull you up, but it does pull the oceans a little bit. It pulls and pulls at the water and the water rises up toward the moon a little bit. That is when the tide goes out and you can see more of the beach. The water is being pulled towards the moon. Then the moon gets too tired and the earth pulls the water back to where it belongs. That is when the tide comes back in and there is more water on the beach. That is why you can beach the pirate ship. If you put the ship in the water close to the beach when the tide is in it will float, but then the moon pulls at the water and the ship will be stuck on the sand since there won't be any more water. And that happens all the time, because the moon never quits trying to pull things from the earth.
Al: That is the coolest book ever!

Video for download here
Alyosha playing his new guitar (a real one) and singing like a pirate--click play!

The Pirate without a ship

There was a pirate. This pirate didn't have a ship but he really wanted one. So, since he didn't have his own ship he decided to build one for himself. So far he had one board and that was what he was sailing on.


Yes, he was in the middle of the ocean hanging on to one board and he was as happy as could be because that was the beginning of his ship. So, along came a shark. And the shark was so surprised to see a pirate just floating in the middle of the ocean-all alone and without a ship. (the shark didn't know that the board was the pirates 'ship')

The shark was so surprised that he stopped in the middle of his swimming to ask the Pirate what was going on. "PIRATE! Are you crazy? You are out here floating in the middle of the ocean with no pirate ship! A shark could come up and eat you any time he wanted."


The pirate replied, "First, I do have a ship. It is here, this board is the first board of the ship I am going to build for myself. Second, a shark could not eat me! If one even tries I will take my board and bop him on the head and he will swim away as fast as he can."


The shark was amazed that this pirate was so strong that he is going to build an entire pirate ship himself and so brave that he would float in the middle of the ocean just hanging onto one board. He was trying to decide whether or not he should just eat up that pirate or become his friend...so he decided to become his friend.


The pirate was pretty excited to get a shark as a friend. So the two of them swam around for a while, then the shark remembered that he was actually hungry. He looked at the pirate but remembered that he shouldn't eat his friends so he said, "Pirate, I'm hungry but I don't want to eat you. Do you have something I could eat?"


The pirate said "the only thing I have is this one board. If you would like to eat it I will give it to you."


The shark thanked him and opened his mouth wide to fit the entire board in his mouth. Then, the board got stuck and he could not get it out at all. The pirate tried to help but it wasn't budging! So, there the shark was with a big stick stuck in his mouth and the pirate didn't have is board to float on anymore.


The two of them made a deal...the pirate would sit on the back of the shark to get around and the shark would just keep that stick in his mouth forever.


After a while the head of the shark started stretching and stretching--and then the pirate noticed "Ha, ha, ha shark!! Your head looks like it is shaped like a hammer!! You are a hammerhead!!!"


The shark didn't mind being a hammerhead, actually he kind of liked it. Later he met a beautiful girl shark and they got married and had lots of baby sharks--and they were all little baby hammerhead sharks! And that is how there are hammerhead sharks in the world.


And, about the pirate...When the hammerhead shark got married he finally dropped the pirate off on a little island in the Caribbean Sea. There, the pirate built a ship so big that it couldn't even sail on the ocean. So it is just sitting there like a house and you can go visit it if you dare.

Pirates, sharks and Bananas

There was a homeless man in the park today, sleeping by a stump. He was snoring and the kids thought he was a bear—but he turned out to be a man instead. I guess that really made an impression on Alyosha because he mentions it every time you ask him a question about what he learned about in nature school today… He asked why the man was homeless, and that is a hard question to answer…but I told him one reason might be because the man doesn’t know that he has any skills so he doesn’t know what job to do. That is why we are helping you learn lots of skills like reading and writing and about bugs and nature and bike riding…

He said that if he could read he would read lots of books about pirates and learn everything about pirates that he could learn about—and I told him that if he learned the skill of writing then he could think up of his own story and write it down and share it with grandma and grandpa and all his friends. This is the story he helped tell and when it was finished he told me to go write it down because it was soooo funny and he wanted to show his friends….let’s see if I remember it!

There was a pirate on his pirate ship. The pirate was standing on the very top of the mast of his ship looking out to make sure there were no sharks around. Especially one shark—a shark as big as the pirate ship who could eat up that ship in one gulp. He was looking and looking but didn’t see anything, yet he kept looking out.

All of a sudden he saw THE shark. He yelled down to all the other pirates “the shark is coming, the shark is coming” All the other pirates started running around figuring out what to do. The pirate yelled again “THE SHARK IS COMING” He yelled so loud that the pirates ears popped off their head and then popped back on.

They couldn’t decide whether or not to jump off the ship and swim or just try to go as fast as they could. So they saw an island and started sailing towards the island. The propeller on the ship was spinning as fast as it could and the pirates had paddles helping the ship go even faster.

The ship was going so fast that when it got to the beach of the island the whole ship just popped up on the land! And it was a good thing it did, because if it stayed in the water the shark surly would have gulped it up.

The pirates jumped out of the ship to have a look at the shark in the water. He was so upset because he wanted to eat the ship up. The pirates were laughing and laughing because they got away. They saw some banana trees on the beach and pulled down all the bananas and threw them to the shark. They said “Shark, you should be a monkey because we can give you bananas but we won’t let you eat us!”

And that is Alyosha’s story (mostly his…)

Where's the fire breathing dragon?

Alyosha: Mama, tell me story, tell me story, tell me story!! Tell me a story about mushrooms and blueberries....(where he gets the ideas, I don't know)

When I was a kid, I was 8 years old and we lived in Alabama on the top of a hill. And all around the hill there was a forest. And when you looked out over the edge of the hill, you could see all the city lights--it was very beautiful.

One day, I was very sneaky because I wasn't supposed to go to the forest at the bottom of the hill since it was very far away and it was a very dark forest. I snuck down there with my friend Aleuts on my bicycle. We were so excited to walk on the trail in this forest!

We got off our bikes and started walking on the trail. As soon as we walked into the forest it got so dark, like the sun disappeared. We walked right out of the forest and the sun was shining brightly! We realized that the sun didn't disappear, the forest was so thick that it seemed dark as soon as you walk in. We were excited and afraid to start walking on the trail.

We walked just a few steps into the forest and found a huge patch of blueberries. Those were the most tasty forest blueberries we ever tasted. We just sat down right there in the middle of the blueberry patch and started eating. Then, my friend found a beautiful mushroom. She said "Look! a forest mushroom, I bet it is even more tasty than the forest blueberries. Let's taste it"

I wasn't sure, because I knew that it was safe to eat the blueberries, but I never saw that kind of mushroom before. My friend said, "Let's just have a little bite, it won't hurt us!" Finally I said OK...and we each ate half of the mushroom...

It was totally not tasty!

Then, all of a sudden, we heard a "Crash, Rooarrrr" so we got up and ran out of the forest as fast as we could.

We hopped on our bikes and started riding them up the hill, but our fingers started tickling...then our arms, and our elbows all the way up to our shoulders. We were both just laughing and laughing and our back started tickling down to our bottom and our legs. We could hardly ride our bikes up the hill because everything was tickling so much and we were just laughing. We figured out that we ate a poison tickling mushroom!

By the time we got home to our moms and dads everything was tickling from our fingers down to our toes...everything except for our nose!

My mom and dad asked me what was wrong and I told them my friend and I had eaten a poison laughing mushroom in the forest that we weren't supposed to go to--

They said "oh, no!" and took us to the Emergency Room. There, the doctors gave me an awful medicine that made me throw up!! Yuck!! but finally I got all of the poison laughing mushroom out of me and I stopped tickling all over my body from my fingers to my toes, everything except my nose.

Oh, my goodness! I knew that it was not right to eat something from the forest that I wasn't sure about--but we were so silly and did it anyway.

Alyosha: Mama, why did you do that?
Mama: Because I didn't know what it was a I was curious to test it out.
Alyosha: Like Curious George?
Mama: Yeah, but that sure can get you in trouble sometimes?
Alyosha: Why?
Mama: It would have been better to pick the mushroom and bring it home to ask my mom and dad if it was ok to taste it...before I just tasted it myself. It can be dangerous to eat things from the forest if you don't know what they are.
Alyosha: Yeah...but what about the fire breathing dragon?

Three flying bears

Every night I hear the same question:

Alyosha: Mama please tell me a story! The one about three flying bears in the forest, and make it scary. (He has never heard a story about 3 flying bears before, he just assumes there is one...)

Mama: One time there were 3 bears. They were quite unusual bears because they were city bears. They had jobs and everything. Their job was at the very top of the highest building in the city. Every hour, they had to stick their heads out of the window and roar what time it was. So, right now it is 8 o'clock and this is what they had to do...

roar....1 roar....2 roar......3 roar.....4 roar.....5 roar.....6 roar.....7 roar.....8

Imagine, every hour, they had to roar that many times. So when it was 12 o'clock they roared 12 times! After a while they decided that their throats were sore and they just couldn't roar like that any more, so they decided to give up their jobs and move to the forest. They came down from the top of their very tall building and started walking towards the forest.

It was quite a sight to see 3 bears walking along the highway. Cars were stopping and staring at them and the joggers turned around and ran in the opposite direction. It didn't bother the bears at all; they were just ready to get to the forest!

Finally they made it to the wonderful forest, there was peace and quiet and no people around for miles and miles. They just loved it! It was a lucky time of the year too, summer, right when there were tons of berries to eat. The bears thought they were in bear heaven! Fresh air, quiet, blueberries and raspberries to eat and a running river close by. When they got tired they just found a comfy tree and curled up at the bottom of it and went to sleep.

One night they curled up by a very short tree--it was short, but it had large roots that made a very comfy place for a bed. After watching the stars for a while they fell asleep. After a few hours, they were awoken by some loud music!

They thought, where was this music coming from, there are no people in the forest!! So they decided to get up and search around to find it and ask them to turn it down a bit. They looked and looked around and finally found where all the racket was coming from! There was a fairy party going on.

Fairies are little flying creatures who love to have parties at night time under the trees between the roots that stick up above the ground. And this was a huge fairy party! These little fairies had a tiny light on their bottoms that was shiny when they fly around, so you could see hundreds and hundreds of tiny lights flying in and out of the fairy house they built for the party.

The bears nicely asked the fairies to turn the music down, but no one listened. They said again "Please, please turn that music down, we are trying to sleep here. But the fairies acted as if there were no bears around! Finally the bears said ROOOAAAAR, and the fairies did pay attention to that, but just replied..." You bears are in the fairy forest! It is summer and we have lots of parties. We think you should find another forest to go live in.

Well, the bears were not happy with that suggestion, they loved the forest that they had found. There were tons of tasty berries and a fresh clean river and beautiful trees! So they decided they were not going to move, but didn't want to listen to the loud music every night.

Ok, this is the scary part...

Those three big bears, walked right over to the fairy house and just ate up all of the fairies....

Alyosha: Wait, I wanted them to be little bears...

Mama: Well, they are little bears, they are little like the size of Luka. But a fairy is smaller than your pinky finger so to the fairies, the three bears were gigantic. So, the bears ate up every last one of the fairies at the fairy party! They could feel the fairies flying around in their tummy, then all of a sudden the bears grew wings and became flying bears! Now they were three flying fairy wing bears and they flew all around looking at everything.

Alyosha: And they had a fairy light on their popka too! (popka is bottom in Russian)

Super Alyosha

Alyosha: Mama, first I will tell a story, then you tell a story. Ok? Up on one time, there was a Super Alyosha. And he would fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly until he saw a pirate house. There was a pirate flag and a pirate door and pirate toothpaste and a pirate toothbrush and a pirate cup and there was batman toothpaste too. And Super Alysoha would walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk until he saw a spider man. And spider man and Super Alyosha would go to the store and buy pirate toothpaste and pirate toothbrushes and batman toothbrushes too. That is all. Isn't that a wonderful story? Now it is your turn...

Mama: One time there was a Super Alyosha. And he had 3 super powers: the power to fly, but fly very slowly, the power to run very very fast, and the power to help.

Super Alyosha decided to take a trip to a place very far away. He decided to take a trip to Egypt, but not only a trip, he would fly himself to Egypt. Since he was a slow flier, it took him 5 days to get there, but it was a wonderful trip.

As he was flying over the Atlantic Ocean he saw all of the fish and the dolphins. It was beautiful to fly over Morocco and Tunisia, and finally after 5 days he made it to Egypt. He went to the capitol of Egypt, Cairo, which is right on the sea.

The next day he decided to get on the tourist bus and go with all the tourists to the Valley of the Kings and to see the pyramids at Giza. No one on the tourist bus knew that he was Super, and Alyosha didn't tell anyone...he wanted to be a tourist just like everyone else.

The tour bus took everyone to the Valley of the Kings and let them off the bus to explore the pyramids and the sculptures and the artwork of the ancient Egyptians. Everyone had a wonderful time because it was such a beautiful day and they were in a very special and ancient place.

In the evening when it was time to get back to the tourist bus, everyone started looking around and it was as if the tourist bus just disappeared! Everyone was getting worried because since it was evening, that meant it would be night soon and all the desert animials would be coming out of their hiding places. The desert snakes and scorpians would come up from under the rocks. The desert foxes would come from their dens. The desert lizards would come from behind the cactus. Then the desert would be a scary place for a bunch of tourists!

Super Alyosha had a plan. He told all the tourists to go look on the other side of the pyrimid because maybe the bus is just hiding to play a trick on us. The tourists thought that was a good idea, so they went over to have a look. In the meantime, Super Alyosha ran to Cairo to look for somthing to carry all of the tourists in. It only took him 2 minutes to get to the city because of his super power to run very fast. It would take a normal person all day to run that far!

The only thing that Super Alyosha could find was a big wagon to fit all of the tourists in. So he grabbed it and ran back to the Valley of the Kings. By the time Super Alyosha made it back, the tourists were just beginning to come back from the other side of the pyrimid. They told him that they didn't find the bus hiding back there and they were all very worried. Super Alyosha said not to worry and told everyone to climb into the wagon he found.

They were all very skeptical because he didn't even have a car or horses to pull the wagon. But they climbed in. Super Alyosha said hold on, and he started walking slowly--then he took off. The tourists were all amazed!

Since Super Alyosha could only fly slowly, he decided to take everyone on a wonderful trip. He flew over the Valley of the Kings and saw all of the pyrimids and the sphinx from the sky. They saw all of the desert animals crawling and playing around in the sand. Then he slowly took them back to Cairo where they flew all around the city, looking over the city lights and the tall towers. It was very beautiful. Then, finally, Super Alyosha landed in front of their hotel safe and sound.

All of the tourists said "Thank you, Alyosha, that was so great!"

That's all.

Alyosha: Mama, that was an amazing story.

Rocket Ship Rocket Ship

Alyosha is asking for new stories every night and all the time. We both like to make them up on the spot, so I thought I would start writing some of them down for good ole' memories sake.

Alyosha asked for a story about a rocket ship--so here is how it went:

Five years ago Mama and Papa were dancing around outside in the streets. It was a beautiful sunny day and no one was driving their car because it was so pretty outside.

Suddenly, we saw a rocket ship flying in the sky! It had a red rocket top, blue wings and a yellow body. It was going so fast up in the sky and Mama said that she wanted to take a ride. Papa pulled out his cell phone and called the rocket ship and asked it to land and take us up high in the sky. The pilot on the plane said that we should run as fast as we can to the airport and it will land down and pick us up.

So, we ran as fast as we could and climbed up the blue winged rocket ship with the red top and yellow body. Then we all counted down to take off...10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 lift off!!! (Alyosha then asked me if he was there too...I said no, not yet but wait)

Mama and Papa were flying around in the rocket ship and we looked out of the window. We flew over the ocean and the mountains and the beautiful desert.

Then we saw this gorgeous place with forests and rivers and clean air and water and we decided that we would jump out of the rocket ship with our parachutes and live there. So we took a big jump and floated down to the ground with our parachutes.

While we were floating in the clean, fresh air, Mama told Papa that she wanted to have a little baby boy. And Papa said that was a good idea and he wanted to have a little boy too, named Aleksei Eugene.

So then baby Alyosha grew in Mama's tummy. And that rocket ride was so great and flying through the air in the parachute was great. But having baby Alyosha was the best thing of all.