Ella

Klaudia Fyodorovna comes four mornings a week to babysit. She and her 11-year-old son, Oleg, also came to Danya's birthday party. (I found out it's a good idea to invite our babysitter to the party, because she played with Ella while I was busy.)

How to quickly describe Ella's development?

Why quickly, because ....

...I started this last week, hoping to do it before we left for a week in Finland. We met our campus leadership team members who drove from St. Petersburg for a relaxing two days together. (Except we are still sad that Cheryl and Lena were not able to come at the last minute. :( We also got year-long Ukrainian visas, since our 90 allowed visa-free days were almost over.

...Ella is changing so fast, and doing new things every day. So if I want to keep a record for myself--which I've always done through these updates--I better write every week!

...I seem to have lost the margin in my life necessary to write every week! I blame the hour I spend homeschooling each morning. That used to be my time for email, shower, rest or anything else. Ella only sleeps for an hour during her two naps, and I use the morning for homeschooling and the afternoon for my nap. So the only free time I have is the evening, which can be easily taken up by dishes, sweeping, reading the Bible, managing the boys' one-more-trip-to-the-bathroom and then Ella cries for her 10:30 feeding and I suddenly realize I need to get to bed! Updating you is important, but not worth losing sleep over! (The bills I haven't been getting to might be another matter, though.)

Her walking has really progressed. Three weeks after her first steps, she is heading off across rooms, down halls with great bravery. And though she rarely makes it to her goal, she is no longer intimidated by wide spaces! She is also very stable, and can stand up easily, or squat down to pick something up or regain her balance. She is getting better at picking up toys or pillows to carry with her. Last week (3/20) she picked up a wet towel in the bathroom and carried it out to me. And this week she discovered the noise two stacking cups make when hit together. Now she loves to pick up two at once and walk around, banging them together.

"Uh-oh"

Ella mimics almost any sound she hears, but 'uh-oh' is her favorite. Last week she started saying it whenever something dropped. It sounded like 'uh-uh' but with the same tone as our 'uh-oh'. And then the boys echo her, and she repeats it over and over. Just yesterday (3/28) she started saying the 'oh' sound at the end. Whenever we cough, sneeze, or she hears a dog bark, she mimics it.

Ella is feeling a better--waking only once per night, though still sometimes fussy during the days. We're still at a loss for what is bothering her. And to add to the mystery, her reflux symptoms increased for about two weeks. She even started spitting up again. But it didn't make her fussier. And now the symptoms have receded. I think that she is less fussy during the days, and napping sometimes a record 1 1/2 hours instead of her usual one.

We've tested a few foods that were low on our suspected-sensitivity list, so now she's eating bananas again, and I'm allowing myself berries and any fruit except apples. I'm still debating whether to test her with apples, dairy, or maybe just whether I can eat eggs or almonds. An American doctor here is going to help us evaluate what's going on, but she's pretty busy, so we haven't been able to talk yet. At this point, I'm hoping that all of her January fussiness was due to her molars and not any food sensitivities!

Happy Birthday to Danya!

On March 13th, Danya turned 6. Wow!

We invited all of the friends he's met here, the kids that we've played with. It was mostly Americans or Ukrainian Campus Crusade staff, plus our babysitter and her son. Here are some photos!

What?

Danya: Do teenagers sometimes fall in love?

Me: Yes, they do. Your daddy and I fell in love with each other when we were teenagers.

Danya: [laughing] You and Daddy fell in love once?

Me: [laughing now] Yes! Is that funny?

Danya: Well, I knew you were good friends, but I never knew that you fell in love!

First Steps...

Mar 2 or 3--Standing very stable. Stands up from sitting. Can squat down, pick up even relatively heavy things and stand up holding them. (Then usually lifts them over her head to drop them behind her!)

Mar 3--Giggles and laughs when I ask her to walk to me, and stretches her hands in front of her, leaning to try to reach me. She usually falls, but one time she shuffled one step toward me.

Mar 4--At Mark and Jill Claxtons, she was playing with a castle about as high as her shoulder. When I said, "Come here, Ella." she stepped two steps from the castle to me. Then she giggled and fell into my shoulder. Later that same evening she tried to 'cut' a corner along a wall she was following. She took two or three steps away from the wall, then fell into the corner she was trying to reach.

Mar 7--She walks 3 steps to Eric, then throughout the day she does this again and again!

more to come, I'm sure...

Lessons in culture shock--Coming to terms with washing raisins:

All those years in Russia, I hated washing raisins. To me, having to wash your raisins represented what was so much harder about living there. I would buy these huge black raisins from the Gypsy woman in the market, wash them, spread them out to dry, and half the time they would be too wet, get mushy and rot. Then, supermarkets appeared in Irkutsk, and with them imported pre-packaged dried fruits. I used them for awhile, before noticing that on almost all packages was written, "Wash before eating." What?

I have enjoyed the abundant selection of packaged dried fruits and nuts available here in the supermarkets. For a few weeks, I used them straight from the bag. Blame it on cultural amnesia. I was coming from the States. Then, I remembered that I used to have to wash even the packaged kinds. I read the label, and sure enough, it said to wash them. For a few days I pouted.
Then I started using the strainer that came with our well-furnished apartment. Instead of washing them all at once, I just run water through a handful each day, then dump them in my oatmeal bowl. So easy. Why did I never think of that before?

Life in Kiev

"Святошин (our local metro stop, which is from the word 'holy') is Ukrainian for Шиномонтаж (tire-repair shop). " Our neighborhood is full of mechanics, repair shops and everything about cars. The biggest institutions are a cement factory -- which means a lot of cement trucks on the road-- and an army base.

"In Kiev the farther from the center, the closer you get to Siberia." Although in general the streets, sidewalks and buildings of Kiev are in much better shape than Irkutsk, by the time you get out to our region, they look pretty similar. Hence the tire repair shops.

We love that we live so close to the bus stop. It takes only a few minutes (adult pace) to get there. And there are about ten different routes that run down our street to and from the metro stop, so we never have to wait long. We can walk to the metro in just over ten minutes.

Boys' adjustment

I have written so little about the boys, since I wanted to keep up with Ella’s development updates. (These emails serve as my only record of her milestones!) In general, I am amazed at the kids’ resiliency. There was one day when Eric was gone in early February and the weather was miserable. A sandy playground in the rain is not much fun. So we decided to walk to the store that sells ‘kinder surprise’ eggs—the chocolate ones with toys inside. And we were walking on the icy slush in the woods, cold and getting wet. But the boys each found a stick, and started singing, “We are the pirates that do a lot of things…” (A parody of a veggie tales song.) And they were marching and singing and having a great time. They really improved my mood! They have played in our sandbox and on the playground here with great gusto, and done well wlaking relatively long distances to friends’ houses.

One of the most surprising things for me in our first days in our new apartment was how adventurous the boys were. The first time I took all three kids outside to the playground, the boys wanted to go by themselves down the stairs. So as Ella and I finished getting dressed and rode the elevator, Danya and Tima walked down nine flights of stairs. I got scared at one point, when I couldn’t hear them, and started thinking, “What have I done! What will I do if they’re not there at the bottom?” But when we arrived, there they were, happy as clams. “Mom, we’re never doing that again. Some floors are very dark and scary.” Since then, I let them go outside when I’m finishing getting Ella dressed, but they always ride the elevator! Because Danya can reach the 1^st floor button, and the button to open the door to the outside, they can go down and out by themselves. But they can’t get back in the locked external door, and can’t reach the 9^th floor button in the elevator. So they can’t return. But they’ve done well each time, except one day Danya was throwing snowballs at a car when I came out! The second day, I left them outside with our neighbor because Ella was ready for her nap but the boys wanted to stay. I was surprised they agreed to it. And they did have trouble, since they didn’t even know how to tell her that they were ready to go home! We’ve worked on a lot of little phrases, how to say, “I want to go home,” “Stop that!” etc. (Unfortunately, that neighbor, who is retired, was outside all the time in our first week and helped a lot in various ways, isn’t around so much anymore! I was hoping she would be a lot of help, but we’ll see.)

The boys’ culture shock shows up in interesting ways. There is still an underlying insecurity. Danya gets very clingy and sad when we leave him with the babysitter. (But if her son is here, he’s fine!) Tima is usually happy-go-lucky with the babysitter, but he always wants someone to lie down with him at night, and give him a ‘matazh’ (that’s massage—I spent hours giving the boys gentle massages when we were in the throes of jet-lag. It’s the best way to keep them in bed when they’re not tired!)

I hope to get to more specifics about the boys, but maybe another day.

Family summary- March 2

We’re feeling fairly well settled. We have ordered bunk beds and they should be delivered tomorrow. We bought a small desk and bookcase, plus a million little things for the kitchen and house. After three trips to the customs office and no small fee, we are expecting our homeschool books and curriculum to be delivered Monday or Tuesday. Our babysitter, Klauvdia Fyodorovna (Auntie Klava to the boys) is here about 12 hours a week. The boys are getting used to her still, but love it when her 11 year old son comes, too.

Everyone has stayed healthy, though Danya had a painless ear infection we finally treated with antibiotics, and Ella just finished an extra-long course for her ear infection that may have been percolating since January.

Eric was home for the whole month of February, and left for Moscow on Friday. He’ll be there until Thursday night. We have been doing fine without him, enjoying getting together with other families. In fact, we had a a mom and her two daughters (age 5 and 6) over Thursday, swam in the pool with four siblings yesterday (age 3, 9, 10, 11) and will have two friends over this afternoon (age 5 and 2). We’re going to some of those same families for dinner on Tues and Wed. Our closest friends here have been stuck at home as chicken pox slowly courses through their three kids, so we’ve been a little socially isolated. But they’re getting close to the end, and I feel we’re finally getting into the swing of things socially as we meet new friends.

First Birthday

Dancing with her hands to the music!

Here, Ella, let us show you how to do it!

Is this just the beginning? (This is Ella's frustrated mode, when she rubs her hair.)



Ella had a good birthday, though she's showing some of her allergic signs. From the photos, you can see that we opened a present this morning, then had cake and another present this evening. Her cake was a special one, made without milk or eggs. I was actually amazed how good it was, very moist! The only ingredients were flour, sugar, oil, vinegar, soda and water. Pretty easy to make without a mixer, too. We actually found powdered sugar in the store here, and have a recipe to make it with dairy-free margarine. But we ran out of time, so just sprinkled the cake with the powdered sugar. Nobody complained!

She was a little fussier than usual all day, and in the evening was rubbing her head a lot, and has cried 3 times since being put to bed an hour and a half ago. We're hoping that the night won't be too bad, but we haven't seen her this bad for a few weeks. She's still on antibiotics. The rash on the back of her neck looks worse--more like patches of red with some scaly parts, less like the red-dot heat-rash from before. (But I may just be looking for eczema!) In the last 48 hours, I've had a few dairy-questionable cookies, and about 1/3 an egg in my homemade meatballs. Ella has started eating wheat this week, and has been eating a lot more potatoes than normal. So, I guess we've done poorly at eliminating foods! We'll hold steady; I'll be more careful and we'll see if she improves.

First taste of cake!

Candles are good for chewing.

You want me to eat this?

Suspicious. But I'll let you give me some.

I'll try a nibble...

It's really not so bad, I guess.

Yum!