They know their smetana

The Russian word for sour cream is CMETAHA (pron. smetana). The different varieties can take up a whole shelf in the little produkty. CMETAHA comes in different cream percents, we generally get either 15% or 20% but there are varieties with as little as 5% and one time I accidentally bought the 42%. We ended up mixing that one with 15% to make it more palatable.

Imperial Porcelain Factory tour

The Consulate organized a tour of the Russian Imperial Porcelain Factory on MLK Day. We took the opportunity to leave the kids with the babysitter and went. The tour guide brought us through where the Masters work (Artists are the ones who develop the new designs and artwork for pieces, Masters replicate them by hand). It's funny, it was basically like a regular office building with desks in a room but instead of computers they had thousand-dollar pieces of porcelain and tons of different paints.
The tour guide explained what ingredients go into the porcelain, how it's poured into molds, where the term bone china came from (yep there's real bone in there - wild animals, so they say). She also explained the two different ways of firing porcelain and how the firing both shrinks the piece as well as changes the color of the paint. Cobalt goes on black but comes out the well-known dark blue.
We then went to the gift shop, where we looked at pieces that cost hundreds of thousands of rubles (roughly 30 rubles to the dollar) They were significantly less intricate, smaller, and less ornate than the pieces we saw being worked on. Hm.
Here's some more information about the factory

The dark side of Petersburg

We had our first, terrifying to us as parents, experience with frostbite yesterday. Terry and Alex went sledding in Tavrichesky Park, where we had spent at least 4 days each week in the summer. They got home just in time for lunch, and while Alex was eating I noticed her cheeks looked strange. It looked like someone had drawn on her face, in a waxy white, little circles right over the apples of her cheeks.
I commented on it to Terry and then we both ran for the computers to look up frostbite. It was definitely frostnip if not full blown frostbite We can't be entirely sure as Alex couldn't articulate for us very well how she felt. We went right into the home remedy (warm wetness .... if it had been feet we could have had her immerse them in water, as it was her face we just kept re-warming washcloths.) As she thawed it started to hurt and she didn't want to let us near her. Then out came the Motrin "Motrin makes you feel better" she kept saying after we gave her a dose. After a while her cheeks got back a lot of color and we had debates over how supple her cheeks were (the frostbite makes then hard, you know the home remedy worked when the skin is supple again). It was naptime and we decided nothing would get worse if we waited 2 hours for medical care so we put her down as usual.
The upshot is that it looks like she's totally fine, but now we are pretty freaked out about having her outside for any length of time. Of course, her cheeks will now be sensitive to the cold so she probably won't want to be out that long anyway.
We're looking into balaclavas.

Who knew? Beer is non-alcoholic

We keep forgetting to mention this astounding fact. At least in Russia, beer is considered a soft drink, like Coke, and is occasionally sold in 2 liter plastic bottles just in case someone thought that was a joke. A Russian who claims never to drink might be telling the truth and still downing a few beers every night. Crazy.

We are living in a statistical anomaly.

My boss in the past looked up the average number of sunny days in St Petersburg in the month of December. The source he found gave an average of zero days. Since you can not have negative days to bring the average down that basically says there is no sun in St Petersburg in December. There probably is a day or two every decade so that rounding brings it to zero.

When I was in the states on facebook people in St Petersburg were posting about seeing the sun. Now today for a short period this afternoon I saw blue skies and sun. It seems this December we have seriously bucked the sun stats. Probably there will be no sun in St Petersburg during the month of December for the next two decades.

Settling in

St. Pete decided to welcome us back with a massive snowstorm. The snowfall itself is well over a foot and drifts are taller than me. It took Terry three or four trips outside to shovel out the car.

I had heard that the streets aren't plowed and sidewalks not shoveled and said to myself "OK this is something to learn to deal with." You can't truly comprehend what it means until you're faced with it. How to push a stroller on a "sidewalk" that consists of tampered down snow interspersed with piles of slushy drifts and the whole thing is the width of a person anyway. I have yet to figure out who gets the right of way; no matter which direction I travel it always seems to be the folks coming the other way. Driving is little better as the streets are in the same situation, except the width of the packed down snow is a car. Studded snow tires make lots of sense and I'm sure glad Terry got some on the car before he came home to get us.

I have yet to venture out with either stroller or car - so far it's been me alone or Zoltan in the Moby (a wrap - which is like a sling in concept). If I am not to go stir crazy though, I will need to brave the streets in some way, so I plan a test run in the car this week ... on a day our babysitter comes, as I don't want to be responsible for the children in case things don't go well.

The good news is the open space next to our building does seem to be free of the citizenry who populated it during the summer, so I should be able to get Alex out to play in the snow if I can ever get her and Zoltan's naps timed well enough that they are both properly up and not eating at the same time when the sun is out. It's like a logic game ... I love logic games!

Reunited at last

Terry has returned to the USA to assist me in bring the kids back to Russia. This is what I have to look forward to ... a recent conversation between Terry and his boss...

Boss: "I don't think the sun came out today at all"
Terry: "Of course the sun's out. It is a slightly lighter gray than it was this morning."
Boss: "If you can't see the sun is it still out?"

Alex learned a new word

On Halloween when Alex came back from trick or treating she was saying "candy". We realized she had never said that word before. Our daughter knows the word for "pear" in 2 languages but didn't learn "candy" until she was 2. And she calls breakfast bars "cookies." We're at least doing one thing right as parents!!

brief update from the States

We do often go silent, but not usually this early in our new adventure. Right now we're living the separated life, as Alex and I have gone home for Zoltan's birth because health care in Russia isn't very good and I don't speak enough Russian to make me otherwise comfortable about the experience. In our 3 weeks in the USA we've been sick, spent a week in Pennsylvania, and had 2 play dates :-) Terry and I have done separations several times in our relationship, but the addition of a child makes it that much harder and I have so much respect for the military and other families who regularly spend time apart.

Terry's in training right now so he isn't home either. If he does much sightseeing in Moscow I am sure he'll post about that. My mom moved to Amesbury a couple of years ago so I am learning a whole new town - and have been pretty happily surprised at what's here. This is definitely not the Amesbury that existed while I was growing up. The next time I take Alex to Cider Hills Farm I'll get some photos - they have apple picking, hay rides, a country store, and farm animals to look at ... and is only about 5-10 minutes away! This whole driving to get anywhere thing has already gotten old to me, but the people in my mom's development are a pretty close knit bunch and nobody minds if Alex runs across their yard or gently pets their ornamental stone animals, so we can at least get some fresh air and exercise without have to go too far.

He created a monster

The Philadelphia Eagles play today. Hence, in the mindset of any self-respecting Philadelphian, today is a day to wear one's Eagles jersey. Or one of one's Eagles jerseys as who would be caught with only one? Of course, Alex has a jersey (but only one, she grows too fast).

It got chilly in St. Pete as of this last week, so we wanted to put on a long sleeved shirt under Alex's jersey before going outside. The conversation between Terry and Alex went something like this:
T: "Alex we need to put this shirt on first, but then I promise we'll put the Eagles shirt on top of it."
A: "No, Eagles shirt"
T: "Yes, we'll put on the Eagles shirt AFTER this shirt."
A: "No, EAGLES SHIRT!"
Followed by Alex hugging the Eagles shirt to her chest, fending off daddy's attempts to put on the other jersey, then attempting to put the Eagles shirt on herself.

We did get a short video of this exchange, someday to be revealed.