School Performance

With one day warning, we were summoned to another performance at the school. It's the third one this semester. Danya's song was about "Africa" which was strange, since we were approaching the May holidays of Labor Day and Victory Day. Once there, I figured out that the holdiday was the celebration of a poet from the early 20th century. He wrote stories and poems for kids. And Danya's class was performing one about Africa.

The clip above is short. The next few are longer, about a minute and a half each. Only for the grandparents, if they even have the patience!

May Day

The day is here! Yesterday, the birch trees leaved... leafed... leaffed? I suppose it's not technically miraculous, but watching dead-looking wood putting forth green leaves is amazing.



I'm feeling sick, and not up to taking the kids across the street to the woods. Sad to miss one of the 60 days of sunshine each year!

This is the view from our balcony. The sun keeps us warm, though the air is still pretty cool. The computer says 50F (10C) but the wind is still cold.

While I wrote this, the kids got antsy and pestering each other. So we are going outside, whether I feel like it or not!

Growing Things

Perhaps someone can explain my visceral desire to grow food on my balcony. I would love to have the time and energy, money and availability to do much more- to compost, grow food organically, and even do some hydroponic 'window farming.' Strawberries all winter! But, alas, I live in the trench between English-language websites which explain how to do it all, and Russian reality, where I can't remember the word for 'fertilizer' and I have no idea how to find all the 'easy' supplies that the websites recommend. One of my favorite websites is a Canadian cold-weather-urban-gardening one. In some Canadian cities, they give away balcony-sized compost boxes, complete with worms! If only...

But for this year, we've had more success than ever before. Seeds from the local supermarket; Soil and planters from the 2-minute-walk-away store. (Though the woman who works there hates it when I come in with my three roving children, and ask that she, once again, reach the biggest planters, which for some reason are all on the top shelf. I have offered to get them myself, but she won't let me behind the counter!) She was incredulous that I was taking home the bag of dirt. "Now? By yourself?"

"Sure, I have a big stroller."

After five minutes of self-concious effort to put the huge bag in the (shrunken?) stroller basket, Ella was ejected from the stroller seat. She whined all the way home and the soil enjoyed pretending to be a baby.

We have spinach, broccoli, and apples growing. One day, the boys saved their apple seeds from their snack, and how could I resist the pleas to plant them and grow apple trees? So now we have 8 apple trees... if you can call them that when they are two inches tall! (They are on the far right of the following photo.)

After planting a lot of broccoli seeds, I read the instructions on how to grow it, and it turns out we need five-gallon planters. We are transplating a few shoots, and eating the rest as sprouts. I'll be very surprised if we actually get any broccoli! The apple 'trees' ... well, we'll see if they live through the summer!

We already thinned the plants pretty ruthlessly. And the boys ate the sprouts in handfuls. Amazing.

Our sunny balcony is like a greenhouse (which will be a problem in the warmer weather) but it's poorly insulated and very cold at night. The multiple bulbs I planted resulted in one shoot early in the spring. It was the closest to the door, and I wonder if enough heat leaked out to keep that one bulb from getting too cold. I didn't know bulbs could get too cold, but in containers at -30C I guess was too much. The seeds that did the best were those which have never been to the balcony, but rather stayed on the inside windowsill. I know spinach should be a cool-weather crop, and it seems that our climate is ideal. But they seem to be pretty happy at 70F (or hotter, in the daytime sun)!

So, here are way more photos than you want to see. Mostly for my dad, so he could imagine our balcony! The balcony extends from the kitchen to the kids' room. Here is the view from the kitchen window.

The same corner, but photographed from the middle of the balcony, looking toward the kitchen. The boys' workbench and tools are spread out, with one planter on top (basil, spinach and dead bulbs) and the pots of daisies on the floor. The white windowsill in the corner is the kitchen window.

Here is the opposite end of the balcony, photographed from the door of the kids' room. Our transplanted spinach is in the red bucket. And it's doing well, though the websites warn against transplanting.

Musicals

A few weeks ago, the kids gave Miss Lena a concert. They turned off the room lights, turned on the night light (as a spotlight substitute) and stood in a line, belting out their favorite songs. Ella loves to sing alone, but usually gets mixed up with the words. Then she invites the boys in. I was amazed not only by their decent pitch, but also by the way the belt out the song, like they are on stage. I credit the Glee songs that they watch on youtube for the wide-leg, arms to the side and open mouth stance.

(see former post for the video of them jumping to the "Jump" song.)

http://coefamilyadventures.blogspot.com/2009/12/jump.html

Once one child (or Eric) starts singing, they all join in. It can go on and on and on. I usually have to stop them singing at meal time so that we can finish our meals.

Eric has been playing guitar with them more, and the boys are practices keeping the beat with various percussion instruments. Ella likes to drum on the guitar case, though her sense of rhythm is pretty post-modern.

Favorite songs:
Glee "Jump" "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (I highly recommend this to any parent as a response to, "But I really want to!"
Veggie Tales -Lyle the Kindly Viking "When We Share"
Go, Diego, Go - some song about walking like a dinosaur.
They Might be Giants- "I can add," "Seven" and of course, "The Alphabet of Nations."

Development Updates for Everyone!

Danya recently picked up his new Magic Tree House book (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and started reading it. At bedtime, he read the whole chapter out loud to Tima and Ella. The next night, he read six chapters. For the first time, he’s reading chapter books (with fairly simple, short chapters) that used to be too hard. Before this, his English reading each day was about six pages with four lines each.

His Russian reading is getting easier, though he doesn’t understand most of what he reads. But he is enjoying memorizing poems, and can do more than a stanza a day now. This week he had a whimsical one of around three stanzas that he memorized overnight. (He takes the poem to bed with him and practices it instead of complaining that he can’t go to sleep.)

More than anything, though, Danya loves Eric reading to him. After many months they’ve recently finished The Lord of the Rings. (It’s hard to say who enjoys it more!) And now Eric has restarted The Chronicles of Narnia. As it is, we wake up to children begging to be read to, and at each meal they also ask for us to read. I’m hopeful that Eric can start reading some of the homeschool books to the boys, but we’ll have to see if he enjoys them as much. Usually I read those when Eric is travelling or at work. Danya and Tima both enjoy them-they insisted I read The Wizard of Oz again, which isn’t my favorite!

We’ve just had a new infusion of chapter books from our teammates, along with next year’s History and Geography curriculum. Hopefully, we won’t have to do them during formal ‘school’ time this summer, but they’ll get read anyway.

Tima is loving math right now, but only in his own way. When he has subtraction problems in his school book, he rejects the number line provided, and gets out the Monopoly Deal card game. After sorting out the money cards (10 minutes) he looks at his problem, for example 36 – 4 = ____ . He adds up the cards to reach 36 (which takes at least five minutes, since there is one $10 card, and the rest are $5 or under). And then takes away 4. And then he re-adds the money cards to see how much he’s left with. (This takes up to 10 more minutes, with a lot of getting mixed up, usually.) Then he writes the answer in his book. While I admire his creativity, and know that he’s getting a lot of adding practice, it’s hard to be patient with this since he has at around 12 problems to do. I told him he could use the cards with one-digit subtraction (for example 5-2= ) but after doing one problem, he said that it was so easy he didn’t need the Monopoly cards.


For Ella, it's all about clothes. Ella was very disappointed last month when we told her that her favorite pajamas were too small. Too put it mildly! The 'pajamas' are actually a Colorado Rockies outfit, shiny purple shorts and tank top. (Thanks, Mama Coe and Papa Coe, for giving them to us eight years ago!) But the top was so tight she cried when it was taken off, and the shorts were no longer fitting over her diaper. So I flippantly said that the shorts would fit if she didn't wear a diaper. A month later, I accidently let us run out of diapers. And she was so excited! "Now I can wear my purple shorts!" exclaimed Ella. And thus we began the big experiment. Which I felt was a huge mistake, especially since we had no diapers in the house. I imagined that after she wet the bed the second time we would really wishwe could just put her in a diaper. The first night I woke her up twice to go to the potty. And the best part was that she woke up without crying (first time ever, I believe) and immediately knew why I was waking her. After a week, we had one accident, and I exercised my new sewing skills to widen the neck of the tank top.

One other tank top Ella found while we were putting away winter clothes is a plain blue one. Ella wanted it on, right over her dress. And she calls it her ‘tink-ball shirt’. Tima decoded that she got ‘tink’ from ‘tank’ and thinks it’s a real sport. So now we are waiting to learn how to play ‘tink ball’.

A last word on clothes—Ella loves a little pleated skirt (thanks, Andes!) with a matching sweater. When she wears it, she bounces around all day, imitating ballet moves. “You know, Mama? My ‘kirt maked me dance!” she exclaims as she twirls.

Saturday Preparations

According to Russian tradition, spring cleaning is done on the Saturday before Easter. We did a little extra, and the boys volunteered to clean the balcony. This is the open balcony where they have been playing 'hockey' in the warm sunshine. I think they might be disappointed that it's no longer slippery without the layer of dirt. We took two dustpans of dust and grime off of this little space! And then wiped and mopped a few times until it was clean enough to go barefoot.

I think we hit 50 F (9C) today. Outside, the boys begged to take their coats off, but all the Russian kids were wearing coats and hats, even while rollerblading in the sunshine. So we lived it up American-style on our balcony-shirtless and barefoot.

Finally, we've hit the age(s) where egg-dyeing is not too out-of-control! I even had fun. I only wish we had more eggs! My favorite was Ella's collection of purple eggs--she was the most productive and monochromatic. But Danya came up with the 'globe' idea yesterday at the Huddlestons' and I was inspired. We colored continents green, polar ice caps white, and then dyed the eggs blue.

Documenting the Snowpack

For the last two weeks or so, we've had some sun-power that has reduced the volume of snow. And today, a light rain tamped it down more. Cars are emerging, like the window now visible above. This snow fell in mid-December. A few weeks ago, a loader worked all day to widen this road so people could park on both sides. (It's still just one-lane wide, which is confusing, since there's no agreement about which way people should drive!) At the time, we wondered how the loader driver knew where the buried cars were. Did they tear off any bumpers?









All our playgrounds are buried up to the swing seats. Those are the backs of the wooden swings you see. Most have been dug out so that kids can still swing...

My favorite vision of our snowpack. That's the top of a bench sticking out on the left side of the path. The weirdest thing is that the packed down paths are the same level as the surrounding snow. But it's like a swamp. If you step off the path, you're up to your knees (or worse).

Danya is Eight! ...continued

It rained on our parade... well, on our party, today.
After debating what to do with a promised birthdeay party for Danya's classmates, we settled on sledding on a nearby hill. Despite the late invitations (two day warning!) only one child couldn't come. But we didn't go sledding. The rains came. Well, the drizzle, drips, and 'plus' temperatures that meant sticky snow, and soaking kids.

We decided to stay inside. This is not a decision to take lightly in a 64 sq. m. apartment. Even without Ella (thank you, Trisha, for babysitting!) that means eight eight-year olds for two hours. But with a little game-storming and Eric's deep reserves of energy, we did it. I don't know where he gets it from, but Eric is very capable of leading, cajoling, reprimanding and explaining games to kids.

Some highlights:
Masha gave Danya a box of magic tricks. With great excitement, she set up one to show me. First she covered a fuzzy ball with one of three cups. Then she tapped the cup three times with the magic wand. Dramatically, she lifted the cup... and was shocked to find the ball still under it.

As they were sitting around the table, the kids started singing the 'Goodbye to the Alphabet-book" song which they just performed last week. Only one boy didn't join in with gusto. The kids are all in class together, and it's obvious they are all comfortable with each other. There is a spirit of innocence and enthusiasm that we are very grateful for. And it's great to see how Danya is truly a part of the class.

The presents were great. A Lego set (which Danya worked on for hours) a puzzle, a board game, a magnifying glass. I was surprised how education they were--although he also got a realistic looking toy pistol.

From Eric, clockwise: Masha, Gleb, Nikita, Dima, Tima, Danya, Sasha, Paulina.

Danya is Eight!

Can you believe it? Danya turned eight years old on Saturday. To celebrate, we went skiing for the first time! We rented cross-country skiis in the wooded park in our neighborhood (thank you Edings, for discovering it and communicating it!) and Trisha and Nick joined us for an hour-long tour.

The boys both did well, though I was pretty helpless to explain how to do anything! Especially problematic was how to get your skiis pointed in the same direction after falling. But though they fell a lot, neither boy was frustrated or discouraged.

Our only tears were at the end. Tima discovered that 'to rent' doesn't mean 'to own'. And he wailed that he wanted to take them home, or buy some new ones immediately. The owner gave the kids a free ride on the 'carousel' to stop Tima's tears. (Yes, the ski rental place is right with two swing-carousels, and a shooting stand, and who knows what else! In the summer they rent bikes and roller blades.)

And what better way to celebrate the first birthday in awhile with a car, then drive to McDonalds!

The biggest part of the celebration was actually having Nate and Nick stay the night. Next weekend (when we have more energy) we're planning to do something with some friends from school!

This birthday was noteworthy because it is the first one in four years when Danya has celebrated in the same city as the previous years. The last 'stable' birthday was his fourth, in Irkutsk, where he had celebrated every year. Then, 5 was in Colorado, 6 in Kiev, and 7 in St. Pete. In fact, we hadn't moved to our own apartment yet; we celebrated while living with the Huddlestons.

Winter Images