August 4th, 2010 at 2:27 am
by Auntie (Generally being cute)
So, Trevor is playing in the sea of legos, with his boats (he has about 5 now, two of which are ferryboats, and one of which he built entirely on his own). He puts them all very close together, and arranges the ‘drivers’ to talk to each other, or at least look at each other as he puts it “glediju se”, and says they are going to “burina”.
Now, not to be ignorant we ask whether they are going to the marina or to ‘burin’, a cafe on the sea side, and he says they are going to have some ‘kavu’. A kid this cute makes any morning headache just go pouf! I am however worried that we have turned him into a bit of a cafe-goer, Croatia style. Well, he’ll just have to deal with the weird looks when he asks for a ‘sok od jaboka’ in starbucks. At least he doesn’t drink espressos yet.
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July 22nd, 2010 at 2:39 am
by Auntie (Generally being cute)
The last few days have been so full of new that I completely lost trace and can’t even remember any more at which point in time I find myself. And space is getting iffy too. Chris came, and we managed to convince my mother to join us too. Both to the infinite pleasure of Trevor. And Owen was so excited he grew a new tooth. Yesterday. Or maybe the day before? Now I am no longer so much seeked for, everything is “where is jaaasnaaaa?” accompanied by a sad and disappointed face when the forementioned is not readily available. So I make up for my jealousy with gifts and bribes – I make sure I feed Owen solids at least once in the day, and Trevor got a lighthouse and a ride in the kayak. I got kisses and smiles for both 
. Of course Jaaasnaaa happened to be walking Trevor next to the firebrigade house exactly when they were happy to invite little boys to sit in the truck and were giving out coloring books. But hey, you can’t have it all.
Trevor is using more and more words in Croatian, which, while it makes me happy, makes my concentration requirements during conversation even higher. But amusing, like a guessing game. And he’s constructing and inventing words more than I heard him do before. Owen is getting more mobile and thinking that if one sits him in one place on the floor, in half an hour he will still be within belly radius, one is direly mistaken. While he was a pretty tough and active little baby when he came, what was then seems floppy in comparison.
Two nights ago, our neighbors made an open air projection of an old Croatian childrens’ movie on our little square and called it “The Pjaceta Film Festival”. This was made for fun and for all the neighbors and friends young and young at heart, and since Irka, who was the main organizer, is one of Trevor’s favorite people on Cres, she called him the guest star. He lived up to his name by intensively watching the film for about an hour and then getting up from the fist row and demonstratively going to bed. Totally cute. I use this space to applaud our neighbor’s efforts and energy, because such an event is exactly what the kids here need. The comments during the movie gave me back hope about the innocence of childhood, which I recently have come to suspect was slowly vanishing from the face of the world. With this positive tone, good night to you all 
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July 13th, 2010 at 3:14 am
by Auntie (Generally being cute)
About a week ago Trevor and I went into a store that’s near the beach to get some ice-cream and he saw a toy mixing truck (which he calls a measuring truck for some reason) and asked me to buy it for him. Being evil as I am I blackmailed him by saying that he’ll get it if he gets into the water whole, including his head, not just ankles and hands. Since then he would go into that store pretty much every day and look at the truck and then bravely start towards the deeper water and then at about above knee height chicken and run out. Yesterday however he didn’t want to go even near the sea, he didn’t even allow us to take his clothes off. I was already late, everybody was leaving and soon there was no one left on the beach except us. The sea was clam as it usually is in the evening and the sun has pretty much set, and since I just got back from my swim before I changed into dry clothes just for fun I asked him do you want to earn that mixing truck? And to my surprise he said yes and got his clothes off and went into the water. He again got to knee height and did his usual play and didn’t really dare go further. Our deal was that he has to get his hair wet, so I said that he’s still not getting the truck at which point he bent so that he got the front and top part of his hair wet and started yelling that he did it and now he will get his truck. I said that was not our deal and he has to do better than that, although at that point I would have gotten him that truck anyways, just for being so resourceful. He did get back into water, shyly trying to figure out how to get out of this a winner and not actually get wet more than he was, at which point a tiny little fish came into the shallow water and we started chasing it and he got much braver, probably being too interested at the fish to think about the perils of above knee sea level. To make a longish story slightly shorter, when the fish ran away, he was already quite wet, and when he saw a speedboat in the distance and I asked him if he wants to be a speedboat himself and that this would finally get him that truck he didn’t hesitate much and he was in, laughing. As nobody took any pictures here is an illustration of him wetting his hair, being a speedboat and a picture of his prize.
Owen was jealously eying all events and the prize, although I think he would not need to be blackmailed to get into water, rather to get out of it.
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July 4th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
by Auntie (Generally being cute)
Fix it!
It’s been a month now with the boys and I already don’t know what I’m ever going to do when they leave. Every day there’s something new and it’s hard to think of where to start when Boj asked me to write an entry. About Owen, I can only say that I am absolutely amazed by the kid, he’s the sweetest baby one could possibly imagine. Being the younger brother I guess he feels he has to learn everything faster so not a day passes that he hasn’t some new look or action or wish. The best is his laugh when he’s amused by his older brother. If you can imagine a hearty laugh, that’s exactly it, but in miniature. It’s impossible to think of him as being only 7 months old then. Trevor is a box of surprises. Boj was worried that he is acting strangely since we came to Cres, and I suppose he has been a bit “musicav” (Croatian for fussy or something like that, I really can’t think of a better word) but being a big boy of 3 and a half I think he’s just stretched between growing phases, having a brother and all the boats and fishes and fire engines and trucks and crankies around here. Yesterday I think he regained some of his focus. Admittedly he did wake up at 4, had some pancakes and to my pleas was relatively calm and quiet for another hour and a half. So then we went for a walk, somewhere where he could play with his new toy dump truck and sing without waking up everybody in town. Which was actually quite a long walk for such a small boy. But as there were plenty of things to see on the way I don’t think he even noticed until we came to one point in the bay of Cres that he thought we’re going back to town from the other side (the bay looks like a lake from that point) and when I explained that the only way to get there is to head back he decided that’s ridiculous, sat down and for about half an hour built houses from rocks (now, that’s focus).
Focus on the fly houses
And since some fly decided it was a good hideout he decided those were fly houses. Which is just one of those adorable things he says. Like when he saw a little bird hopping around he called it a bunny bird, which I heard wrong and asked him why is the bird funny and got a slightly annoyed answer that it’s a BUNNY bird since it hops around. And my Trevor favorite I think is “get it for me!” whenever he sees a school of fish in the water. His progress on voluntarily speaking Croatian is slow but we’re getting there – sometimes he uses a word here and there without noticing it. Two words he has definitely adopted are “ribr” and “pecr”. Ribr being an anglicized version of the word for fisherman, which he decided to use for fishing ships, and pecr being and anglo-croatian construction referring to his device for fishing (a large bright orange piece3 of rope – bigger rope = bigger fish!), derived from the word “pecati” – to fish. Now, to get him into the sea…
Getting ready
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