Snow

We have had two days of beautiful, fluffy snow.  Gabriel woke up projectile-vomiting on Friday, so I kept the girls home from school to spare him the long car rides for drop-off and pick-up.  He napped most of the day, so the girls and I spent a lot of time outside.  Today it kept coming down - there has probably been a good 6 inches, if not more, of accumulation.

 
Cleaning the cars was their favorite activity ...

... closely followed by making snow angels.

Throwing snow is also great fun.

There was also the playground to explore.

I didn't manage to get photos of the snow cookie factory they set up in the yard, but here are some bonus pics.

And an unrelated one of Gabriel since he hasn't been featured much lately.

Rubbing some soup into his hair before bed.

Skiing in Bakuriani

The Saturday before MLK day, we left Gabriel with the nanny and drove to Bakuriani, a ski resort 2.5 hours west of Tbilisi.  Bakuriani is known as the more child-friendly ski area in Georgia, and unlike Gudauri (which is a bit closer), Bakuriani actually had snow.

There are two separate ski areas in Bakuriani - the bunny hill, which features a one-passenger ski lift and a rope tow - and the larger adult area with a gondola and lifts.  We stuck to the bunny hills.  Jeremy and the girls had skis borrowed from friends, and I rented a set from a guy at the bottom of the hill for about $3/hour.

Turns out, we could have brought Gabriel.  They had strollers on skis for rent.

Or perhaps he would have preferred a rocking horse on skis?

So Jeremy and I decided we'd each go up with a girl.  The problem was the lack of two-person lifts.  To go up, we had to use the rope tow - that thing with the disk attached to it, where you sit on the disk. Only we had to sit on the disk, use one hand to hold on to the rope, and the other to hold up a kid.

Yeah, it wasn't pretty.  Natasha and I fell on our first try.  I will say she was a trooper when we finally got going; I had a vise grip on her, around her armpits, and it could not have been comfortable.

When we got to the top of the hill, I realized that perhaps it was unwise not to do at least one test run by myself first.  After all, the last time I went skiing, I was pregnant with Natasha but did not know it yet.  That was awhile ago.

So I positioned myself in snow plow, with Natasha between my legs, but I just could not get going.  Later I figured out that those $3/hour skis were not waxed, or rough-bottomed, or something.  Anyway, Jeremy ended up having to go down with Zoia, then take off his skis and walk back up to get Natasha.  

I skied down to Zoia and got her up, then we actually got going.  The only proof I have is this crummy picture from Jeremy's Blackberry.  Note the armpit stranglehold.  Yeah, I'm not a good enough skier to teach someone else how to ski.

When we got to the bottom of the hill, I asked Z if she wanted to do that again.  She didn't.  Phew.  Neither did I.  We hung out at the (very overpriced) cafe and had tea and juice while J and N did a few more runs.

We bought Natasha an apres-ski cream horn.

Then we found a restaurant and had lunch, including spicy and delicious "Mexican potatoes" and chkmeruli, which is one of my favorite Georgian dishes.

Chkmeruli seems to come slightly differently every place I order it, but it is always made of chicken and always has lots of garlic.  The best varieties, like this one, come swimming in a bowl of delicious and surely fattening sauce.  This one tasted like it had yogurt in it.  I really need to do a post about Georgian food.

On the way home we stopped for some Georgian fruit roll-ups (hanging on a rope at the top of the photo).

The woman tried to sell me some pine cone jam - really, there were tiny pine cones in it.  I should have bought some just to taste it.

And then we drove home.  The crazy wealth juxtapositions in Georgia never cease to amaze me.  We drive through villages like this:

And then stop at rest stops like this (which contains a grocery store and clean bathrooms!):

April in Moscow

The weather has been so frustrating the last week. It's either sunny and below freezing, or in the mid-30s, but overcast and snowy.  Monday was the former, so we decided to go outside and get some vitamin D.

Gross.

We got another inch of snow on Tuesday, but this morning it looks like some might be starting to melt.  The end of the 10-day forecast predicts weather in the low 40s with partly sunny skies.  We're getting there ...

It's transition time

My anxiety for spring to come is even greater this year, than last, because we are leaving at the end of May and hoping for some nice weather before then.  Moscow summers are short, but spectacular.  The city becomes a huge green park interspersed with buildings and river walks. Sidewalk cafes sprout up all along the pedestrian streets.  The sky is blue and the sun shines, and even though it only lasts about eight weeks, it's pretty awesome.  Fall's not bad either, but it is over in the blink of an eye.

And with post transitions, too, come regrets.  Things we didn't see.  Things we didn't do.  Why didn't we take walks along the river more often? (Because it's really hard to get down there with the stroller).  Why didn't we go to the opera or ballet more often? (Oh, right, because we had a new baby and I was terrified to leave the kids with anyone for the longest time).  Why didn't we do the Trans-Siberian Railroad.  (Self-explanatory).  I think I will need to get used to these sorts of nagging questions, at least as long as we still have small children. 

But I will also remember the Russia that we got to see BECAUSE we have small children.  How people would actually smile and do us favors while walking around the city (not a common occurrence if you are walking around sans children).  How Zoia charmed the candle stand lady at church. How people would nag me to dress my children better for cold weather.  OK, that I won't miss, but it's certainly an experience you don't get without kids.

So I can live with all the things we didn't do.  My greatest regrets are the people we didn't get to know well enough. The folks I kept meaning to invite over for dinner, but colds or flus or just plain exhaustion intervened.  The people with whom I know I could have struck up great friendships, if only there had been more time.  I hope that, at our next post, I'll take those opportunities as they come, and not push them aside.  And in the meantime, I guess we still have a few weekends left to throw a party.

The only blooming trees in Moscow

It's still winter here (as anyone who has been around me for five minutes can attest - I grumble about it all the time).  But we came across some trees in full bloom last weekend.

These are metal trees installed by the city to hold padlocks placed there by lovers who inscribe them with their names.  The trees were put there to stop people from padlocking the bridge.  I had to laugh at Tikhon and Evgenia's outsized purple padlock, though.  Guess they wanted to stand out.

Atelier Mama, continued

The feverish sewing continues.  This week I have a massive failure and a couple successes to show off.

First, the ruffle-butt failure.  This tutorial has been circulating on Pinterest.  I had pinned it awhile back, but mentally filed it under the category of "things to make when I am better at sewing."  Coming off my recent spree of commercial-pattern success, I felt confident to try it.  Although the tutorial author's version was lovely, I can't help but wonder whether her back bodice was weighed down and stretched out by the very heavy ruffle skirt.  Because that is what happened to mine.  I tried a couple different things to fix it, but none of them would have worked without my opening up the back bodice and having to add a closure of some kind.  And by the time I figured that out, I was fed up, and no longer as enamored of the dress as I had been.  The back sash was unfinished and I was planning to put some cute rosettes there.  But now this dress is in the scraps bin.  I guess failures are normal in sewing.

On a happier note, this is the Junebug dress from Craftiness Is Not Optional.  It is a gift for my niece.  Super, super easy to sew up.  Took no time at all, and I'm so pleased with it.

I made this sweet little shirred top using a really light cotton I found in a fabric store here, and this tutorial.

I went back to the shop today to get the same fabric in yellow and pink, so my daughters and niece can all coordinate this summer.  Also - like how my girls are about the same size?

Two more Oliver + S patterns.  This is the 2+2 top.  I modified it by omitting the sleeves.  I love this fabric and wish I had bought more when it was on sale at fabric.com.

And these are the Puppet Show shorts.  Also love this pattern and see a lot more of these shorts in my girls' future.

Spring is ... nowhere to be seen

The last couple days have been tauntingly sunny.  I bundled the girls up and took them to the playground on Thursday, where they swung happily while I faced the sun and soaked up months' worth of Vitamin D despite the 20-ish degree weather. 

Thursday was March 8, or International Women's Day.  The Russians really like this holiday.  There were signs all over the city reminding people of it.  Jeremy took advantage of one of the impromptu flower stands that sprung up outside the metro (in a city already overrun with flower stands, I might add) just for the occasion and brought home these:

They are currently in the windowsill of our office/spare room/sewing room.  I am not sure how long I will be able to keep them alive, but for now they are making the room smell amazing.

And I guess the ducks swimming on the no-longer frozen river is actually proof that spring is on its way ...

but the two feet of snow outside our back doors beg to differ. 

Afternoon at Luzhniki

We spent Saturday afternoon at the snow palace at Luzhniki Olympic Complex, the site of the 1980 Summer Olympics. I was pretty impressed with the ice buildings and amusements for the kids; it made up for our disappointment at Sokolniki.

There was a huge snow fortress complete with a cannon.

There were also icy sledding slides in two sizes.  The taller ones were quite steep, and Jeremy and I had to ride down with the kids.  I will confess that, even riding on my bum (as opposed to on a sled), we went a bit faster than I would have liked.  The kids, however, wanted to keep going.  Guess this is payback for my insistence that my father ride the Thunder Mountain Railroad with me at Disney World 25 years ago.

OK, it doesn't look that big, but trust me, it seems a lot scarier from the top.

The big hit, though, was the ice pits full of plastic balls.  Natasha saw them and exclaimed that she wanted to "купаться" (bathe) in the balls.

In case you were wondering, this is how you get babies out of a huge bowl-shaped ice pit:

Sorry for the dark photos.  I realized after uploading that I had had my camera on the wrong setting the entire time.  Oh well.  You get the idea.