Bath time

It's hard to find a tasteful picture of your kids in the bath, but hopefully this won't offend anyone's sensibillities.  We have a great kidney-bean shaped Jacuzzi bath here, with glass doors that when closed provide a completely waterproof environment.  I can already see how this could be a problem when we move to a shower/bath that does not allow copious amounts of splashing without soaking the surrounding environment.  I like the photo below, as our youngest looks a little bit like Jack Nicholson in "The Shining."  She's a Miss Chief, that one is....

Maslyana

Maslyana is the holiday that corresponds more or less with Mardi Gras.  It's part of the week before Lent begins, when people enjoy the foods they won't get for the next 40 days.  Maslo is Russian for oil or butter (I know, what a great holiday already!)  So we celebrated by going out to the VDNHa, or the obligatory series of monuments to the acheivements of the Soviet Union that exists in the capital of every former Soviet Republic.  Hence the awesome architechture that you see here, and the women holding sheaffs of wheat.  It's fallen on hard times since then, and now hosts Expos.  They were selling souvenirs in the first hall in the photos.  And they were heating the place with a giant blower, which alternately freaked the kids out, and was a great attraction.  If I'd brought more funds I would have picked up some nice items, but I always feel like there's more time, and then run out!   

Here are the munchkins enjoying the delightfully freezing weather, bundled up against the ice-cold wind.  I could barely handle it, after about 20 minutes outside we had to leave. I, of course, was foolish enough to go outside without a hat, and that was my problem.  They were happy, but then again, they also had crepes (blini) with warm mashed bananas inside.  Yum!

Preschool Productions (TM)

One of the most fun (or funniest) aspects of S's nursery school is the production schedule. We showed you some highights from the Fall show, and in February they presented their winter cycle. All of the children were assigned an animal to represent. My daughter was a mouse. I dutifully sewed cute mouse ears and cut some felt to make a pink mouse tummy on a gray outfit. The play was scheduled for Wednesday February 9. On Monday morning I was informed that my daughter wanted to be a fox. Oohhh-kaaay. For those who know my well, you are aware that the Martha Stewart gene is strongly expressed in my mother, but apparently skips a generation. I can do the basics, but whipping up a fox costume on the fly while working full-time was not in my repetoire. So. Home Monday night, get some more felt, make some orange/pink ears (sadly set really awesome mouse ears aside.) Find orange dress and brown pants (we don't have orange pants on hand, sorry, it's not her style, you know.) Realize I have a faux-fur collar from a suit that I never wear. Get to school and get told by nanny, teachers that they even have a little costume with vest and tail (seen in the video.) Mumble under breath about time wasted stressing on costume when it could have been really simple.

I wanted to upload the video of the foxes doing their dance, but S only goes part-time to school, so she's not 100% on the choreography. And since she was training as a mouse until the week before... well, it's not her best work, and I would hate for it to haunt her later. So what I am uploading is the video of the middle of the production, where the woman dressed as a giant snowman (a lovely, lovely teacher, BTW) brings out the "snowballs" for the kids to throw. I thought it was brilliant and inspired. They are really great at this school at combining the whole production concept with the kinds of things that 3-4 year olds will actually do. It makes me feel better about the fact that we are shelling out the "big bucks" (for Kyiv) to send her here. $500 a month may be low in the US, but if I'd sent her to the local Ukrainian pre-school it's 130 Ukrainian Hryvnia, or about $15 month. I justify it quite easily, and she loves her classmates, her Russian is better (I don't know if she speaks Ukrainian, but she must understand some since they speak to her in it), her art skills are growing by leaps and bounds, and of course, most importantly, she now has a video repetoire in case I ever become a momager and send her to Hollywood! So enjoy the snowball fight:
Shortly on the heels of the February performance is the mandatory International Women's Day performance. In case you didn't know, it falls on March 8 and is celebrated in over 100 countries. So this was the "Mommy" performance. They have the most heartbreakingly adorable songs, all revolving around "Momatchka." This time we were assigned the role of "Frog." You can imagine my delight. We are awash is animal-type costumes, but seriously, who owns a frog costume for their kid? And again, I am too cheap to rent a costume (I do have the numbers of two places, though, in case my thriftiness is threatened by a short deadline.) So I put her in green, made her a stomach and made some eyes for our hat. Thank you Mr. Internet for the ideas. Being goofy with the camera. All of the kids were doing their pre-play psyche and wanted to have their photos taken right up close to the camera.Here she is with some classmates, so you can see her classroom, and her teacher Irina over at the right. She's standing in the doorway to the room where they sleep. They have little trundle beds three deep. This being the former Soviet Union, they keep the room about 100 degrees even in the winter, so the kids sleep in their underwear. I think it's so hot the kids have no choice but to pass out.

So the little boy to her right is Joseph, who is a Canadian, and speaks Russian, Ukrainian, and English. To his right (the bee) is Samuel, who is a Slovakian-American and speaks English, Slovak, and Russian. I am starting to develop a complex that my poor children are only bi-lingual. But enough of my parental insecurities. Here are the great kids of her class.

Carnival!

Daddies Have Birthdays, Too!

And two days after Mommy's birthday, we have Daddy's birthday (so convenient!) We really enjoy the season of cake and cupcakes, especially since it keeps us on our holiday kick. And in the dead of winter, who doesn't like sugary baked goods? Ready, set, go!And guess who really gets the enjoyment out of birthdays? Not the birthday parent, but the assistant candle blower and cupcake eaters!Delicious! Especially the few crumbs that got into my mouth and aren't spread all over my body. Good thing this was followed by birthday bath time.

Mommies have Birthdays, Too!

Happy birthday to me! (Guess who blew out the candles?) Kyiv is sometimes cold and far from family. Thankfully we have Cousins Cameron and Robert, and their two kids around the corner. My birthday was on a weekend, and we'd been meaning to get together, and they invited us over for lots of fun. The photos aren't the best, but William is 5 (6 in April) and Max is about 2 months younger than our littlest (they would have been four weeks apart, if SOMEONE hadn't come so early!) The chocolate cake was delicious, Cameron is a wonderful cook, and we really just enjoy their company. The two littlest get along beautifully, although our precocious girl was walking at this point, and poor Max wasn't quite yet, so the fight for toys was a little unfair. But they had two high chairs, so everyone was fed, cutting down on the competition. And just a shot for flavor - this is what the back seat looks like. Lots of warm clothes and car seats. I can't compete with my brother, but I don't know if car seats per capita is a fight that I want to win, to be honest!

Home Amusement Park

Luau Party

M's grandmother sent the girls hula skirts and grass bras for Christmas. We weren't quite sure what to do with them, but then conveniently we were invited to our twin friends' 3rd birthday party, with a Luau theme! The Mai Tais knocked me sideways, but the girls had fun - it was like going to playgroup for them. 15 small kids running riot!

Happy First Birthday!

Our 1 year old star, complete with birthday dress made by GranDora, food all over her face, crazy Elmo socks and shockingly silver shoes. (I did change her into more appropriate tights for the party. But that's our girl, no slave to fashion, setting her own style pace and going for it! Oh, and showing off her great new chompers, as well - all the better to get at that birthday cake! Being a working mother is a struggle, with me constantly feeling that both work and family don't get 100% of my true capabilities. And let's not even mention "me" time! So it took me a while to organize an official first birthday party for our baby girl. We had it on January 8 (less than a month late!), which was a long weekend for Embassy folks, but since most of us are not Orthodox Christians, not really a holiday weekend. This meant that folks were free to come over and party! I limited the guest list this year to friends who have little ones under a year (and then our good buddies the Millers, just because we like them!) The Playgroup set here at Post is numbering well over 30, so it just isn't practical to invite everyone under 5 without getting out the riot gear and the emergency soporific music. Oh, and no matter when you have a party, it's someone's naptime, so there's always a bit of crankiness. Not exactly a restful recipe. So with all of this working against us, I still managed to get both girls dressed up, the place cleaned up and a cute, simple, yummy cake made up. We even had bruch for everyone!

And now for the exhilarating action sequence - here Mom brings out the birthday cake, to the delight of the few children old enough to have figured out that birthdays mean sugary treats (I invlude the adults in that group, as well.) And now big sister is fended off as she tries to "assist" by blowing out all of the candles. I love our friends' face at the end of the table - she is a wonderful little girl, and I can just tell that she's thinking - "enough pageantry, let's get to the good stuff!"Blow. Blow wind. Blow wind blow. All we want is a tug on the mainsail... no, that's another song for another day. Here we have the singing and the looking and posing and, ultimately, the blowing out of the small candles in the shape of her name (ooohhh, aaaahhh!)And the happy birthday girl - isn't she beautiful?

Auntie Allison - Our Wonderful Godmommy!

A story of unexpected and wonderful presents dear to a girl's heart. Told without words for now.

The End.

K-P 2

This could more properly be called castle-a-palooza. And the nice thing is that it appeals to boys and girls, men and women. Who doesn't love to feel like a swashbuckling invader or a princess in a tower. Of course, our romantic fantasies were tempered by the fact that is was about -15 degrees Celsius during our tours, and we were afraid that in place of kids we'd have kidsicles.

Kamianets-Podilsky

As the weather stayed cold, and we were still down a member, with M in Hong Kong, we started to get a bit of cabin fever. Dear husband had taken the week between Christmas and New Year's off, and didn't want to just sit in the apartment and stare at the walls. So he conned, I mean convinced me into going on a glorious road trip. We'd talked frequently about wanting to see Kamianets-Podilsky, a little town in the south-west of the city, not far from the Moldovan border. The town is famous in Ukraine because the river there has an unusual natural pattern, where at one point it forms a perfect letter "C" - which means that there is a small, impenetrable C-shaped piece of land surrounded by a deep gorge on each side. There has been a fortress there for hundreds of years, and in fact the Ottoman Empire was unable to conquer the fortress for a long long while.