Winter playground

Although there is not a lot of sun, we are enjoying a lot of snow! I'm happy as long as it doesn't rain.... I'm not sure I've ever before experienced the sad fact that rain melts the snow away.

Our closest neighbors, Lena with her son Dima.

We've finally switched Ella to some two-year-old outerwear, though she is still swimming in it! Last year's snowsuit was just not keeping her warm. But there's plenty of air in this one! You might remember the coat from the boys' photos--it was originally Andrew Nicholl's and I believe Ella is the fourth child to wear it. (Correct me if I'm wrong!) I'm pretty attached to it, but was ready to give it away since it's not too girly. But so far, we think the pink accesories are doing the trick for identification purposes!

Dee-dah!

Ella loves our neighbor, Dima. He is just 6 months younger than she is. And he often requests to come visit. Whenever our doorbell rings, Ella cries out, "Dee-dah!"

Yesterday I was able to film their interaction. This little house was loaned to us by another neighbor family, and the one-year-olds love it!

(If you can't see the embedded video, click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YRcD9WdFCg





If you want to see a few more clips from the last few months, click on the video box to open youtube.com. Then click on the arrow for "more from karaink" to see our Advent singing and Danya dancing with Ella (plus some older ones from the summer).

Moving... not yet

A quick update:

We are delaying our move to St Pete. We expected to move Jan 15, but we’re waiting until mid-February.

You can definitely pray for us! It has been quite a wild ride of moving for these last three years. While the last-minute change is hard to deal with, we are also grateful for more time with friends here in Kiev.

Korea

Eric had the privilege of spending New Year’s Eve in Korea. He was invited to speak at a regional conference for Korean students. So, for three days, he joined 600 students from the south-east corner of Korea in fasting and prayer. He was able to share with the students the compelling vision of reaching Russia for Christ, meet Korean staff members who are preparing to move to Irkutsk this spring, and see one young woman who just returned from her internship with our there.

We fall more and more in love with Korea the more contact we have with the people there. The conference hall differs from what we expect. Instead of chairs, there are mats taped together. The students remove their shoes at the edges, and spend the meetings standing or kneeling.

He also enjoyed learning some Korean history, as he spent one day seeing the tombs of emporers whose dynasty ruled for a thousand years.

Wall-E

Wall-E and Eva have helped our children’s linguistic and artistic development. Crazy, I know. But Tima was not very interested in drawing (mostly keeping to whales and other blob-like figures) until he saw the movie Wall-E. Perhaps it was the simple, box like figure (and Eva is just an oval with eyes) but he started drawing the characters, even sometimes with additional details, like a plant held out to Eva. Then he moved on to rockets, with planets and stars. And now he’s drawing Ninja turtles!

Ella also had an explosion of new words after learning to say “La-lee”. She also says “Eee” for Eva (as well as the letter E, and all the other letters, and ‘eat’). She’s been working on other ‘l’ words, like “lay” for ‘play’ and ‘ballet’. “Loo” means balloon or moon. (Is that because the Russian is “loo-na” or because it looks like a balloon?) And yesterday, she said ‘blue’ a few times, very clearly!

Ella really enjoys the movie, probably because the vocabulary is much like her own—a lot of repetition of names. Here are some of her expressions while watching.

Yes, in that second photo, she is standing in her potty. No, we don't usually use it like a skirt.

Happy New Year!

We enjoyed a mixed American/Ukrainian celebration of New Years. It was a little hard since Ella has been fussy—I guess with a cold—since Christmas. And Eric spent the week at a conference in Korea. So we went to an American family’s party for an hour or so, and then put Ella to bed. Our neighbors Lena and Sergei invited us over, and we spent an hour there, eating caviar, traditional salads, and toasting the old year, the new year, parents, neighbors, etc. We had champagne at 11pm, when it was the New Year in Moscow, where they are from. Then we walked across the hall, and settled in to watch a new video—Ninja Turtles, which was a Christmas gift that the boys haven’t been able to see yet because Ella is too little for it. They were more excited about that than all the parties! And somehow, we all stayed awake until midnight. It was pretty anticlimactic at midnight, with multiple fireworks displays on the horizon, but none close by. However, after 15 minutes or so, the neighbors had filtered out into our courtyard and started to light their fireworks. And then we had quite a show. I forgot how fun fireworks are. The wind was blowing toward our building, so though they were shot off of the playground which might be 10m away, they exploded right outside our 9th floor window. We watched until the number grew fewer and fewer, and then decided to go to bed—at about 1am. So, for Tima it was the first new year he greeted at midnight. Ella didn’t—thankfully, she even slept through all the booming.

Christmas Gifts

As was traditional in my family growing up, the kids opened one present on Christmas Eve. We let them open their gifts from Totya Klava (our babysitter). She amazed us with her knowledge of the kids--a plastic dish set for Ella that brought a chorus of "ooh's," a big Spiderman figure for Tima, and a checker and chess board for Danya. He's really wanted a chess set but we thought he was too young for it. This morning he insisted that Eric teach him chess. So it was a nice relaxing morning (for me at least) and we had to tell them it was time to open stockings!

It is so amazing to see how animated Ella is, as she opens gifts, and then cares for her baby. She had a two-hour long playpen time with the doll this morning. Although her old, cloth doll is only called "lya-lya" which is what Russian kids call babies and dolls, this one was immediately christened "bay-bee".

One of their favorite gifts is electric toothbrushes, complete with cartoon characters. Most of the boys' gifts were similar, but we forgot about Ella. Who knew she wanted an electric toothbrush also? Happily, her normal one placated her... so far! There has been a lot of whirring noises all morning!

Advent

Our daily advent celebration is very simple:

Light the candles
Color a downloaded Christmas page

Read a Bible passage centered around the coloring page verse
Sing a Christmas hymn

This year, we bought an interactive nativity set as well. So each day we opened a box with one character in the Christmas story and read about him or her. It's called What God wants for Christmas, and the last box holds only a mirror.

VISA!!

Just a quick note to let you know that, along with the rest of the family, I received a visa to return to Russia today! Thank you SO much for praying for us! For the past two and a half years, we have been in a season where we haven’t been able to live in Russia. The end of that season is now very much in sight. The date on the visa is January 15, and there are a LOT of details to be worked through in order for us to move. But we are VERY excited to have the opportunity to work through those challenges!!!

Pa-pa?

Ella misses Eric. She asks ‘Pa-pa?’ all the time. It’s funny, but she’s reminded of him mostly when I’m singing the little drummer boy. She starts to repeat the drum beat as ‘pa-pa-pa-pa’ and then remembers Eric and asks ‘Pa-pa?’ Really last week was the first time when she seemed aware of him missing on a trip. And he’s gone for a short trip this week and she definitely misses him!