Reading

Phone call:

What's up?
Hi Tete.
What are you doing?
I'm just reading.
What are you reading?
That book I got from Santa Claus, Nina.
Nina Sharp, from Fringe?
No.
So what's it about?
I don't know.
What do you mean you don't know?
It's about alot of things, it's not just one part.
So tell me everything you know so far.
I don't know anything.
What do you mean, aren't you reading it?
Yeah but I don't know anything yet.
How can you know nothing? What's the first part about?
A black star.
Well what's the black star do? Is it bad, or good?
I don't know!
What did you read about it? Nothing?
I just got hungry.
So wait, you sat down to read, opened up the first chapter, saw that it's called Black Star, then took a break?
I didn't take a break I just got hungry.
You got hungry so you took a bread to eat, right?
Yes.
Alright, well good luck reading that book.

Christmas Food

Christmas Eve

 Bagels with some homemade lox cream-cheese and onion bagels from America. 

 This year I decided to make two varieties of Christmas Cod: 

the usual (Elona Vaišnienės recipe), and a spicy version. 

 Shrimp--good, but I think we got the wrong kinda shrimp. 

 Special Lady's crab salad. 

Herring, sour cream, and boiled potatoes. 

Another kind of herring. 

 Two more kinds of herring, for a total of four herring dishes. 

Šližikai

Christmas

The production of the BBQ Bacon Explosion. I was only have to get such a nice weave because of some excellent bacon I was very lucky to get at Druskos Namai, my favorite new restaurant in Vilnius. 

The BBQ Bacon Explosion was excellent.

Home fries on the side. 

BBQ sauce on the side. 

Christmas II

Beef Stir Fry, with some excellent beef. 

I also made some onion rolls to make sandwiches with leftover Explosion, which were great, but not photo worthy. 

As you can see most dishes are made on the first day. On the second day you only need a few more because of all the leftovers, only a couple more on the third. I planned to make a chicken today two, but I barely got to the beef. Chicken is put off until tomorrow. 

Bilingual Barrier Blasted to Bits

Until last week I had only instructed my youngun to speak English: when she spoke to me in Lithuanian, I would say, "speak English." I didn't see any functional difference between this and another method often used by parents rearing bilingual children, which replaces the instruction with mock misunderstanding/deafness: "I can't understand/hear you."

Boy was I wrong. Apparently, with a daughter as stubborn as mine, instruction will only take you so far (not very far).  She is happy indeed to disregard my instructions. But she is not happy to be ignored, oh hells no. I don't believe that she doesn't realize I do understand her completely all the time, but she's willing to play along with "I can't hear you." And after a week of this routine she's finally chiming in in English without being reminded.

So after three years of little progress, I've finally broken through. It was really frustrating after such lingual success with #1.

Christmas miracle? Thanks Jesus!

"Stop hitting yourself!"

Played "Stop hitting yourself!" with the little one this week, she thought it was pretty hilarious.