May survey/selfie

Just realized this didn't post! Back-dating...

Hair strategically flipped to the non-baby side...

What I've been...


Reading: "Light of my Heart" (Silver Hills trilogy by Ginny Aiken), continuing "Center Church" by Timothy Keller

Watching:  Started the new "Anne of Green Gables" on Netflix. Decided not to continue. Anyone want to discuss?

Cooking/Eating: Sour cream pound cake, chicken wings, zucchini bread, buckwheat, cinnamon rolls (not necessarily in that order).

Listening to: Andrei on the radio. :)

Striving towards: Taking care of trip planning and all the other adult responsibilities.

Looking forward to: Seeing family this summer.

What David is up to: Learning some letters, sculpting with Play-Dough, and handling snakes at a petting zoo!

What Sophia is up to: Getting into everything...including the food on our plates as opposed to her own. ;)


Your turn!

Playground-hopping

Monday morning. Woke up assuming Andrei would be around for a few hours this morning, but it turned out that his class schedule rotates, so he had 2 classes as opposed to one this time, and had to be on his way. I got to work on breakfast for me and David. I shared my egg with Sophia even though she's not a year yet and could have a reaction.

We found out yesterday a friend was in town and was free to spend the day with us. Sometimes spontaneous visits are the most successful because there is no time to go back and forth about whether it will work out...we have been trying to get together with so many people with little luck.

As soon as Sophia was asleep I had about an hour to clean and spent 15 minutes in the bathroom, 15 in the living room, and 30 in the kitchen....which still was barely enough to scratch the surface. ;)

Another thing going on was my laptop not functioning...as I mentioned, some of the keys aren't working due to a water spill. Andrei took it with him to drop off at the shop, so David didn't have his show with breakfast. I was actually interested to see how he'd do with less screentime. Andrei's computer was on, but that's not in a central part of the apartment, so not quite as attractive for David to be in there. He did go in from time to time and watch a little.

Anyway, we got through breakfast and then when David wanted to be entertained, I let him play with a pan of uncooked buckwheat (think grains of rice). He was in a pretty calm mood.

Our friend Emily came and we had a little borscht for lunch. We've recently gotten into playing a version of 20 Questions, which is fun. I love that David is old enough for games. He might be ready for board games, too. With the guessing game, we use the first sound of a word, not the letter. That keeps him entertained some at the table, but he was really wandering around the kitchen. With a movie on he can take an hour to eat a few bites, so I wanted to see how he would focus without a movie on. Turns out, not much better! He was eager to show off for company and along with dumping the buckwheat grains on the floor he was excited to show Emily some tricks. She works with preschoolers though, so had her own bag of tricks!

Spring is/was here-Part 2

Catching up around here...

-typing on a borrowed keyboard as my laptop keyboard met with a water accident. Have you ever had a computer take a really long time to dry out? Wondering if I should give up and take it in to the repair shop...

-building heat is officially off as of a week or two ago. At the same time, the hot water is being worked on, so it was off for a few days last week. Sounds minor now but I'm still catching up on dishes!

-I really love spring. Too bad it only gets here a few weeks before summer. Summer starts June 1st in Russia. But spring will be able to catch up since summer doesn't really get here until...who knows when!

-it might not get hot every summer, but there's no canceling White Nights! We've been going on lots of walks (for us), and it's nice to be able to go outside in the daylight way into the afternoon and evening.

-way behind in summer trip planning, and even harder without a functioning computer. Hmmmm...check out my Instagram feed for daily shenanigans!

Spring is/was here, Part 1- annual avitaminosis

Hi, friends! May has been "sick month" here. Or I guess I should say, since Easter.

From a post I started about a month ago:

The kids are both sick for the first time, and I realized that part of me has been waiting for this moment: to play nurse and coddle with soft blankets, juice boxes, and all-day cartoons.

What are the things you said you'd never do, as a parent? I think I planned on being fairly strict, and I wanted to encourage my child(ren) to be independent. I love those lists going around with chores for each age, starting at 2 or 3. BUT...another meme caught my eye recently. It goes something like this: If your child is asking you to do something that he(she) can do himself, that simply means that he LIKES when you do it for him. Imagine if you asked someone for a favor and were told "nope, you're capable of doing it yourself." I remember as a child what a treat it was to be carried even when I was "too big" for it. Or when I got to watch more TV than usual, or have dessert anyway, or be helped with my chores. It is always a joy to be shown grace. (But of course a loving parent disciplines, too)

So that was fun for a few days until the cold virus hit me full-force and I wasn't so willing to be awake at night tending to the other patients. Then comes the "who's sicker" competition!

In the end I "won" and lost my voice and needed antibiotics, which is kind of a long story. Have you ever needed to be hospitalized/on medication with young kids?

We've all continued to have symptoms on and off, but we did make it to church and have a few other social events in between.

So, "just a cold" is nothing to scoff at! How did I use to keep up with all my activities when I was sick? I remember going to work, class, teaching Sunday school, singing (!) on the worship team, all with a sore throat or worse! And Andrei had a really bad throat infection one time, like mine this time, and initially continued to go to work and preach at church, but then he had to take a break and it took him like a month to get better. Seems harder to shake it off as we get older...but then again, you do what you have to do for whatever season you're in.