Atelier Mama

We've hit that point of winter during which the cold (-18F yesterday), just really gets old and you start dreaming of spring and summer, or at the very least, temperatures in which you can step outside without the snot literally freezing in your nose.

Since I know we've got a couple months of winter remaining, I am dealing with the mid-season funk by sewing a summer wardrobe for Natasha.  Z will get a couple new things too, but as the younger one, she's cursed with abundant hand-me-downs and doesn't need as much. 

In the last 10 days, I've sewn two dresses for Natasha.  There are tons of free patterns for 2T and 3T toddler dresses floating around on the Internet, and I'm taking full advantage.  I sewed the pink and black one using the Beginner Jersey Dress tutorial from prudentbaby.com.  I added a sash since I was using woven fabric for the bottom, and the join is a bit bunchy. 

My favorite thing about this dress, besides the fact that it is ah-dorable, is that the top is made out of an old shirt of mine.  I loved this shirt, but I recently had to come to terms with the likely fact that it will never fit me again.  Back when I was pregnant with Natasha and Jeremy was in Afghanistan, I used to put on this shirt every Tuesday morning and take a picture of my belly to send to him.  Here I am at 11 weeks pregnant, smiling because I thought I was showing.  Silly girl.

And here is the finished dress.

Next, I made this dress using the Ella Dress tutorial from livingwithpunks.com.  The matryoshka doll fabric (a Japanese import ordered from Etsy.com) is pretty sheer, so I lined the bodice with pieces of one of Jeremy's old dress shirts.  I had to play with the tutorial since I was adding lining, and I ended up not using bias tape for the neckline.  I think it turned out fine.  The arm holes were still unfinished when I photographed Natasha in the dress, but then I made my own bias tape out of more matryoshka fabric (my first time - success!) and you can see the finished dress below.

Life in fast motion

The blog has not been silent for lack of things to blog about.  I just haven't had the time.  I lost three pounds last week because I was obsessively sewing and skipped lunch most days in order to spend those few minutes at my machine (stay tuned for pictures of the finished product).  I'm not even exaggerating.  Between baking and cooking, refereeing arguments - who knew they would start before Z could even really talk? - changing what seems like so many more diapers than ever and fitting in time to go to the gym, choir and band practice and toddler music class, I feel like there is no time left.

I've been accumulating photos for what should have been a series of blog posts, but as I don't know when I will next be able to blog, I am just going to dump them all in this post.

It's been really cold.  We hit a new daytime low for this winter today: 13F.  There is ice on the inside of our bedroom windows.

Before it got super duper ridiculously cold, Natasha learned to make snow angels.  She doesn't quite get the "snow" part of the equation, though, and will sometimes show me the angels she has made on the living room carpet. They are kind of like the emperor's new clothes.

We've been doing lots of crafts.  I made puffy paint with flour, salt and tempera paints, and Natasha used squeeze bottles to paint with it.

Zoia experienced the joy that is the ice cube game.

We attempted macaroni necklaces.  We will try again in a few months.

We made stained glass windows (clear contact paper + torn tissue).

Night out

Friday night (two Fridays ago, now ... that is how long it has taken me to write this post) we went out.  It's worth noting, as it doesn't happen that often. One of Jeremy's colleagues had a birthday and invited a bunch of folks to a newly opened Mexican restaurant to celebrate.  This particular celebration happened to coincide with a huge private party run by a local club promoter (or something like that).  The place was jammed.  There was live music and dancing, and the food smelled great.  I didn't actually get to try any.  Forty minutes after we ordered, the waitress informed us that our food would take at least another hour.  We ended up next door at a burger joint for dinner instead.  Afterwards, we went back to the Mexican place and danced a little bit.  It reminded me of single days in Yerevan, and I was mostly happy that they were over.

When I got home, I hung up the wool sweater I had worn (can you tell I'm old and married?).  Three days later, it still reeked of smoke.  I do not miss that.

Sadly, this was the only photo we got of the two of us that night.

Update

Life continues to kick our butts.  Jeremy and I signed up for an Embassy triathlon challenge.  Basically we have two weeks to finish an Ironman Triathlon - a 26.2-mile run, 2.4-mile swim (127 laps in the Embassy pool) and 112-mile bike ride.  We signed up to do it as a team, but then Jeremy got injured in broomball and hasn't been able to exercise as much as he had planned.  Today is day 8 of the triathlon and I've run 14 miles and biked 52 miles.  Jeremy has swum 60 laps and run 4 miles.   I am spending a lot of time in the gym and it feels good, but doesn't leave time for much else.  Plus N barely naps these days and she is not the sort of child who will just play quietly while I blog. 

Thankfully, though, our kids have been remarkably healthy this winter.  Last winter we didn't have a single day between mid-December and mid-April where all four of us were healthy.  But this winter has been much better, and that has made things easier.  Also, the Feingold diet is really helping N's skin, which is gratifying.

The weather has finally gotten cold - we've been in the single digits for the last week or so.  I am being way wimpier about going out in it, though, than I was last winter.  So much so that, yesterday, despite it being a beautifully sunny day, we decided to go walk around a nearby mall.  We were rewarded by the discovery of a free bouncy play area in the atrium that also houses a display of giant matryoshka dolls.  This mall is also always deserted, so the kids the houses nearly to themselves.  And since the roof is glass, the sunlight comes in and you don't feel so bad for being indoors.  (Also, Jeremy did take N sledding while Z napped, so don't feel too bad for us).

 

Doing it myself

I think about blogging most days - I was doing so well - but lately I have no time for anything.  Part of this is because my oldest seems to be on her way to dropping her only nap.  Lately we get 20-40 minutes out of her per day.  I'm trying to transition her to quiet reading time in her room, but so far, she will only do it if I am sitting in plain sight in the hallway, reading myself. 

The other reason I have no time is that I am cooking a lot more than I used to.  We've been on the Feingold diet for about three weeks now, and I can cautiously say that it seems to be helping N's eczema.  It seems, however, to have doubled the time I spend in the kitchen.  We can't eat anything with artificial colors or flavors, or most preservatives. 

Example: We don't eat storebought bread anymore.  I don't have a bread machine.  And the recipes I use - a soaked grain bread recipe that is linked in pdf form on the bottom left of this page - and this sourdough bread recipe are pretty time consuming.  You do the math.

But there's more.  Jeremy and I spent several hours this weekend making graham crackers from scratch since Natasha's beloved Honeymaids have artificial vanilla flavor in them (seriously, just charge us the extra buck and use the real stuff!).  And when I made "Oreo" truffles for Christmas (using the Trader Joe's knock off which doesn't have as much garbage in it), I had to find an alternative to chock-full-of-crap candy melts for the coating.  Having used regular chocolate chips before, I knew that untempered chocolate doesn't set up as nicely as the melts do.  And I wanted the coating to be crisp.  And I am a glutton for punishment.  So I decided to temper the chocolate first.  It wasn't hard, but added 40 minutes or so to the process.

Below, some of my homemade sauerkraut (really tasty) and a slice of my homemade sandwich bread.  Below that, a really bad picture of a few of the truffles scattered around Jeremy's beloved fudge mint cookies.

When I get some time maybe I will figure out how to take good photos at night without natural light. 

Rainbow Jello Snow

 I've been getting lots of ideas for kid activities off Pinterest lately.  The latest is coloring snow with "paint" made of water and food coloring.  I feel like this is an idea I should have come up with on my own - maybe I watched too much TV as a kid.  Anyway, thank goodness for Pinterest and creative mommy bloggers. 

I had bought these squeeze bottles at AC Moore during our last trip to the States, with the idea of making my own puffy paint (also found on Pinterest).  They were perfect for snow paint.  I had stupidly thrown away our food coloring during December's great kitchen purge.  Yesterday I borrowed from our neighbor, but today I had the bright idea to use a bit of Jello powder that was still lurking in the kitchen (it was in a bag of similar bad food that I hadn't yet gotten around to giving away).  The girls had a great time making colorful snow soup, and I was more or less successful at keeping it out of their mouths.

Holiday's end

Yesterday was the last day of the Russian administrative holiday that lasts from New Year's Day through January 9.  We didn't make it out as much this year, mostly because the weather was slushy and rainy.  But we got a pretty snow fall on Sunday night, and decided to check out Sokolniki park.  

Right as we pulled up to the park, Natasha vomited cheese all over herself.  We thought about going home, but it had taken us 45 minutes to get out the door and another 30 to drive to the park, thanks to a wrong turn or two.  And it looked like she was just car sick, so we wiped her down and went on our way.  I wrapped my scarf around her head because her hat was too pukey to wear.

We arrived just in time for a children's New Year's program.  Ded Moroz and Snegurachka were up on stage calling out instructions to a group of children dancing in a circle.  Natasha and I joined in.

Zoia enjoyed the ice sculptures, including some neat slides and a chess set.

Winter at the Park

The sign in front of Gorky Park this winter says "Winter at the Park," and so far, we've been taking advantage of it.  We have been there three times this winter, mostly because Moscow hasn't had much snow and some of the places we had planned to visit, like the snow village at Luzhniki, were closed due to clement weather.

I crack myself up.

Anyway, Jeremy and I left the girls with the nanny last week so we could go ice skating on the really cool rink at Gorky.  We saw a lot of neat things, including speed-skating, bobbing and weaving grandpa pushing a baby in a pram (our own skating prowess didn't permit us to get photos of this), and this congo line.

We went back a couple days later with the girls.  Natasha was delighted to see Santa, and not scared at all.  Where was that bravery during our Ded Moroz photo op, I'd like to know?

We walked through a field of snowmen.

We watched a performance by these Yakut people.

And played their spear-fishing game.

And checked out the sad reindeer who were herded in and out of a tiny little trailer.

And played with the ice sculptures of the Smeshariki, the title characters from a popular Russian cartoon.

Христос рождается!

So the children are tucked into bed after a long Christmas Day.  Last night we tried to attend the early evening services at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, just like last year.  Right as we were walking up the stairs to enter the church, the policemen shut the door and told people trying to get in that the church museum was closed.  I pointed out that we were there for religious services.  I was told that the service was over.  People coming out confirmed that was not the case, and that the church was not packed.  The policemen clearly knew nothing about what was going on inside, but nonetheless, for reasons that remain unclear to me, and that I would bet are completely arbitrary, they would not allow us in.  This is the church that Vladimir Putin attends, however, he was supposed to be at the midnight service, and we were there at 5:45 p.m.  I know this probably isn't that interesting for you, but I'm still angry thinking about it.  The Soviet Union is not dead.

Anyway.  We ended up attending the service (late, of course) at our usual church.  It was very nice.  Several people oo-ed and aaahed over Zoia's outfit.  One woman came back three times to tell me how cute she was, adding, "But I have to ask - why do you shave her head?"

My poor bald baby.

The girls got a kitchen and a number of other gifts, mostly accessories and foods for the kitchen.  I think Natasha baked several tens of dozens of cookies with her new Melissa and Doug cookie set.  We had a very tasty ham, green beans and sweet potatoes with coconut streusel topping.  Pear crisp and ice cream for dessert.  My tummy hurts.

Not a creature was stirring

And to all a good night.