We made votive candle holders

We are on day six in Moscow and, as I have complained recently, the jet lag is murder.  I don't have the brain power to think of a more interesting or witty title for this post.  Also, I don't want to get on a plane again until they are at least 10 and 11.

I know you are wondering why we are crafting when we are so freaking tired?  Well, we're also battling a nasty phlegmy coughy cold thing, so we haven't had any playdates since we've been back.  And I have to find something to fill the time while we're under quarantine.

On Wednesday we turned old baby food jars, tissue paper and glue into candle holders.  First we tore up the tissue paper.  I was surprised that N was not interested in this, but in fairness, I had just woken her from a long nap and she was a bit peeved.  Z is always up for ripping paper, though.

N did pretty well painting the jars with glue (I mixed Elmer's School Glue with an equal amount of water), but her attention dropped off when it was time to affix the tissue paper to the glue-painted jars, so I finished it for her.  Z painted a little, but mostly just sucked the glue off the brush.  I was too tired to care. 

This activity held our attention for about 15 minutes.  Minimal mess.  We didn't break any jars and no one died from glue poisoning.  Not terrible.  Next time I think we need to do more layers of tissue, or maybe use brighter colors - I had a few pastels in the mix.

A journey across the sea, by the numbers

We arrived in the U.S. six days ago, but I've only now summoned the energy to blog about it. 

Miles traveled: 5,200
Hours in flight: 13.
Hours in airports: 7.
Hours in transit to and from airports: 1.5
Hours slept by Z: 3
Minutes slept by N: 45
Minutes slept by M: 8
Minutes slept by J: 15
Diapers changed: 14
Cups of coffee drunk by M: 6
Toys packed in the carry-on: roughly 78
Varieties of snacks packed in the carry-on: 12
Future vacations canceled once we realized what the flights entail: 1
Last-minute decisions to carry-on a car seat: 1

Checking in at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow.

Somewhere between Moscow and Frankfurt.

Frankfurt Airport.

Contemplating the next 13 hours of travel.

Somewhere over the Atlantic.

We spent a large portion of our trans-Atlantic flight trying to get the girls to sleep.  That was largely a failure.  Predictably, the girls fell asleep once we hit the security line at Chicago O'Hare.  At that point, it was about 11 p.m. Moscow time - they had gotten up at 5 a.m.  And then we had to take them out 15 minutes later to go through the TSA check.  Which was fun for exactly nobody.

We learned that, no matter what you do to make a flight better, traveling that many miles with two toddlers is just never going to be easy.  Also, N's eczema flared up like I haven't seen in 18 months, whlie on the plane.  I don't know whether it was stress from lack of sleep, something in the air, or something gross on the seats and blankets, but it took three days of OTC cortisone cream (which we usually don't use) to ease her pain.  As a result, we decided to give up on the idea of going someplace warm for a week in February.  You have to fly at least 10 hours to get anywhere beachy from Moscow at that time of year, and it's just not worth the stress on her body.  Sob.  Goodbye, Sharm el Sheikh :(

The dirty secrets of motherhood

Having been at this for two years now, I am definitely not an expert.  But I have learned a few things.  Secrets.  Dirty, dirty secrets that no one tells you when you are pregnant.  I don't know whether they are taboo, or what, but I'm going to share them.

1) The terrible twos don't actually start at 2.  Around here, they begin at 15 months or so.  Just FYI, so you're not caught off guard like I was.

2) You will eat previously chewed food.  I know, it's gross.  But you'll do it.  In my case, the first time was while at a holiday party at someone-important's home last year.  I was holding Z when N came up to me, chewing something.  She then spit it into her hand, as toddlers do (see item #1), and handed it to me.  I was holding a baby who, it dawned on me, had just done a big pile of stink in her diaper, in a crowded room in a fancy home, with no trash can or toilet in sight.  So what did I do, but pop that partially chewed piece of cheese into my mouth, and wipe my hand on my skirt.  Which brings me to #3.

3) You will wipe your hands on your clothes.  Even when you (see #4) ...

4) ... wipe your children's runny noses with your hands.  Yes, you will do this too.

5) And sometimes, you'll wipe your hands on your children's clothes.  You'll think, well, her jeans are already filthy and going in the wash tonight anyway.  And you'll wipe snot, or regurgitated cookie, or dirt, or whatever, on your toddler's pants.  And hope no one saw you do it.

6) You will touch poop.  A lot.  Not on purpose, hopefully, but it will happen.  And at some point you will even get used to it.

So there you have it.  The dirty secrets of motherhood.  You are welcome.

How I make my own life more difficult

I have plans.  Lots of plans.  They always seem small, like, I'm going to sew this, or I'm going to cook that.  Sometimes they take a bit more time and energy than I had anticipated.  But that is not the problem. 

The problem is my inability to quit when things get too difficult.  Case in point: I found a recipe for butternut squash gnocchi.  I'd never made gnocchi before, but I recently discovered butternut squash (I think maybe my dad hates it; that tends to explain the omission of a few foods from my childhood diet), and man, is that stuff tasty!  I decided to make it for Natasha's birthday dinner today.  But as the recipe is a bit involved, I had to start yesterday morning.  First you have to roast the squash, then squeeze out the juice, then make the dough.  Then you have to chill the dough.  Then you roll it out into long ropes, cut it, and put the classic gnocchi grooves into it.  Last night around 9:30, as I was rolling out the stupid dough and thinking about everything else I needed to get done before Natasha's birthday, would have been a good time to quit.

But the dough was already made!  All I had to do was roll it out, cut it, and painstakingly press every.single.little.piece into the tines of a fork.  Never mind that I had never had any kind of gnocchi, much less this recipe.  Never mind that I had no idea whether anyone in my family would even like it.  Nor that I still had to finish sewing Natasha's present (more on that below), wrap the presents family had sent and making frosting and frost the cupcakes.  No.  I had started the blasted gnocchi, and I needed to finish them.  It took me an hour and a half.

Well, here they are, uncooked and looking rough since it's not dinnertime yet.  Fingers crossed that my kids and husband like them.

Which brings me to Natasha's gift.  I got it in my head a few months ago that I was going to make her some felt food for her birthday.  And, since I like to complicate everything, I decided this food needed to be made out of wool felt, not the acrylic stuff that you can buy at the craft store.  Wool felt is crazy expensive.  It does feel a bit nicer than acrylic, plus it's not made of recycled Mountain Dew bottles.  I know, good for the environment, but maybe not so much for my kids' health.  Before you jump down my throat - I concede they're probably fine.  I'm just weird like that. 

Anyway.  The combination of wool felt being expensive, my being too cheap to buy felt food patterns (ironic, no?), and my limited artistic abilities, made me terrified to cut into the felt for fear of messing up.  And that meant that I was way behind where I ought to have been, volume-wise, and is the reason I decided I had to make a box for the felt ravioli at 10 p.m. yesterday.  Here's the finished cache.  Minus the pear, apple, pumpkin, cabbage, etc., etc., that I didn't get around to.  Christmas is coming, right?

Of course, N picked up the felt watermelon, tasted it, proclaimed it "kaka" and put it back.  Oh well.  She'll appreciate it later, right?

At this time two years ago ...

... I was in early labor with Natasha.  My sister was hanging out with me while we waited.  We went to Marshall's where I bought a green dutch oven.  I cooked dinner in it tonight and thought about the anticipation of that day.  When was the baby going to arrive?  Would it be a boy (as I had long thought, so much for mother's intuition)?  What would the baby look like?  I had to wait another 27 hours to find out.

It was worth it.  Since birth (well, maybe since the end of the colic stage), this child has lit up every room she has entered.  Her laughter is irresistibly contagious.  She is funny and headstrong and full of life. 

Tonight after Z went to bed, Natasha and I drank hot chocolate and read books.  Then I rocked her for about half an hour before bed - a very rare occurrence these days.  And I thought about how, surely, it can't be true that we've had her for two whole years.

We'll be having more of those tomorrow.

Yum.

Making the most of it with kids

When my inlaws returned home after visiting us this summer, they left behind their Lonely Planet Russia guide.  A few weeks ago, before bed, I began flipping through it.  Man, was that depressing.

We have seen nothing of this enormous, diverse country.  I mean nothing.  We've tried to explore parts of the city every weekend, but after a solid start, band practice and softball games and illnesses began to interfere.  The weather is rapidly getting colder and there is still so much to see!  We did make it up to St. Petersburg over Memorial Day weekend.  I'm glad we did it, but it was hard.  And we were utterly exhausted by the end of it.

There are a number of towns within a three-hour radius of Moscow - the so-called Golden Ring cities.  Had Jeremy and I come here without children, I think we would have seen most of those places by now.  For sure, we would have done the Trans-Siberian Railroad.  I've always wanted to go to Vladivostok (a mere 4,000 miles and eight hours by plane from Moscow).  We would have seen Lake Baikal and perhaps taken a winter vacation to Murmansk, which retains the distinction of being the largest city north of the Arctic Circle.

But with a not-quite-1-year-old and a not-quite-2-year-old, I think the most we can hope for right now is a day trip or two to the Golden Ring.  Our kids are still both in diapers.  Z hates riding in the car and screams and complains for most of the short drives we take now.  Moscow traffic is notoriously awful: What should be a three-hour journey routinely takes five - and those extra two hours are usually spent crawling at snail's pace to the city limits.  Also, it will soon be quite cold, meaning outdoor sightseeing will have to be limited to an hour or so at a time (again, for the sake of the kids).  And while we could try the Trans-Siberian railroad, let's be honest with ourselves about how much fun it would really be, to be trapped inside a metal closet for an entire week with two stir-crazy babies.

The expat life is definitely different with little ones.  I've talked to my mom friends here and they're in the same boat.  Some have traveled more than others, but for the most part we're all city-bound.  Nevertheless, I feel like a wimp.  Like diapers and nap times have killed my motivation to explore and experience.  What happened to the girl who got detained for snapping an illicit photograph of the Tashkent subway (pre-blog)?  Who boarded a sputtering motorboat captained by a monk to visit a remote island in Alaska?

Where is that girl?

So, for those of you more seasoned in the parenting department, please share your experiences.  Inspire me with tales of exotic travels aided by strollers and diaper bags.  Or tell me I'm doing great and gently explain the limitations of family exploration.  Either way, I want to hear from you.

Not-a-fail day

Do you ever have days where you feel like you just failed at that day? Where, though nothing earth-shatteringly horrible happened, you feel like you completely wasted an opportunity to do good things, better yourself and enjoy life?

I have had a lot of days like that over the last month.  A lot.  Days where I am short with people, I gossip too much, my kids eat frozen meatballs and vareniki (vegetable dumplings) for dinner again, I lose my temper when the toddler squeezes her very expensive eczema lotion all over the floor, my baby wails in her crib for 30 minutes until we both cry uncle on nap time, we don't make it outside the compound walls because I'm feeling too lazy to take advantage of the fact that we live in a foreign country, we spend the entire afternoon watching television, and I haven't done a single thing to promote creativity or education or even nutrition all day, and really, why am I staying home when the nanny obviously does a much better job of raising my children than I do??

You know.  Days like that.

Yesterday, however, was a good day.

In the morning, I bought a week's worth of groceries (minus the local veggies I had picked up at the farmer's market on Friday) for a meticulously planned-out weekly meal plan AND spent less than usual.  Score one point for organization and nutrition.

When I got home from the grocery store, we piled into the truck and drove 40 minutes to Tsaritsyno, an old estate that is now a lovely park with a lake and cute little bridges and a lovely fountain. (On the way there, I started knitting a fall hat for the baby.  Score one for saving money and becoming
reacquainted with my knitting needles - it's been awhile).  Tsaritsyno is host to one of the honey festivals around Moscow this time of year.  We walked through, taste-tested honey until our heads ached from all the sugar, and bought a couple varieties.  One is supposed to be very good for respiratory infections.  The other tastes like brown sugar.  Score one for experiencing the local flavor - both literally and figuratively.

Then we walked around the estate for a bit.  The girls loved the fountain and we loved watching them enjoy it.  Score one for quality family time.

 

We managed to keep both kids from falling asleep on the drive home, so when we arrived, they went down for a nap and I started working on dinner: slow-roasted duck with buttered noodles, sauteed swiss chard (thank you, farmer's market, for still being open in September) and parsnips fried in duck fat.  Oh my goodness, it was tasty.  N helped me spin the chard dry and checked on the duck roasting in the oven.  Z ate some chard and N at some of the parsnips, though neither was particularly into the duck.  Score one for vegetables and vitamins.  And for a new jar of duck fat in my fridge.  And for bones in the freezer to be made into duck stock.  Oh my goodness.

Then Jeremy took the kids out to play while I cleaned up (our dishwasher has been broken for over a week now - I am hoping our replacement comes on Monday).  After they went to bed, we watched reruns of Bones, drank a pot of chai and I continued knitting the hat.  I hope to complete it the early part of next week.  Score one for productivity and a relaxing evening.

Here's to more good days.