Saturday, November 27, 2010

Galleria

A second mall has just opened up in my neighborhood. It doesn't open til 10am - including the grocery store - but when I was finally able to get into the place I was thrilled. It's an Okey Express, but had 90% of the items on my list. I didn't get to check out the mall but it has a baby room with changing facilities on every floor, an underground parking lot that advertises how many open spaces it has, and either already or coming soon is bowling & billiards (pool). The best part? From the moment I got into the mall (and the store opened late so there was additional time before I could actually begin shopping) to the moment I walking into my building bursting with groceries was one hour.

Monday, November 22, 2010

My very Russian Sunday afternoon

     Weekends are always tricky with the kids' afternoon naps. Alex wakes Zoltan when she goes back there because he's so sensitive; Zoltan wakes Alex when he goes down because of the screaming. Sunday we put Zoltan down first, then 30 minutes later brought Alex in to her room. Scream, scream, the baby's awake.

     Terry took the hit on Saturday so Sunday was my turn to go walk him in the stroller for however long he was willing to sleep. I took him to Mikhailovsky Gardens. He fell asleep, and after about 10 more minutes I sat down on a bench where someone must have sat recently - the snow had been wiped off. I opened my thermos of hot tea and sat there drinking and reading my book while Zoltan slept in the stroller next to the bench.** 15 minutes passed. It began to snow. The tea was long gone. 15 more minutes passed. I couldn't feel my fingers. It began to snow harder. Zoltan was swatting at snowflakes in his sleep so I pulled out his rain cover to protect him, and decided he'd napped long enough and it was time to go home.

** This sentence is the quintessential Russian part, except that I wasn't wearing stiletto boots and an adorable but largely useless hat.

Stockmann's

The new Stocksmann's store on Nevsky opened this week and I am already in love. Yesterday when Zoltan refused to be happy and Alex was napping I sent Terry out to check the place out and get Z out of the house (he's happier out and about, just like his big sis). Terry came home with tons of exciting news, the Stockmann's grocery store is just like Lend (the gourmet store that has all the stuff nobody else has like American brand cereals and maple syrup) but waayyy closer. They also have Lindex, our new favorite children clothing store that has ridiculously affordable clothes, Baskin Robbins in the food court, H&M, and I don't even remember what else. It's a whole 10 minutes walk from our house!
 
With Zoltan walking as of 3 days ago, I was able to run over to H&M and buy him some boots so he can play outside. Even with broken elevators and massive crowd of people the whole door to door transaction was 45 minutes and no car time.

The extra super awesome part is they have the big slow cooker 220W so we don't have to run it through the transformer. We've become big slow cooker fans especially now that I am working, we also use it for making stock after our friend's information that she just puts all the stuff in the slow cooker and lets it go for a couple of days. So now we don't have to schedule stock making. In fact, at one point over the weekend we had stock in one cooker and apple sauce being made in the other. Yum!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Halloween at the Preschool

Of 12 preschoolers, only 2 have 2 American-born parents. One kid was only 18 months old - and in Russia - last Halloween. Alex, however, participated in the traditional Halloween trick or treat in mom's neighborhood and was old enough to remember it. As it turns out.

The decision was made that "because the kids don't know any better" the treat bags would be filled with healthy food. They got raisins, Fig Newtons, peanut butter crackers, and fruit jellies.  The kids didn't actually trick or treat for them because the larger space we were supposed to have for their Halloween party got double booked and we were ousted. The regular classroom doesn't have enough room to move around that much so a group of parents quickly filled the bags with all the stuff and handed the ready-made bags to the kids. As there were plenty of treats at the party, the kids didn't really even look at their bags til it was time to go home.

When we got home, Alex eagerly asked for her treat bag. The crestfallen look on her face made me wish I had substituted at least 1 or 2 pieces of candy for the stuff in her bag.

He's walking

Last weekend Zoltan took an unaided step toward me - twice in a row. But there were no spectators even though it was the weekend and Terry was home. Today, he did the same for Terry!  Then later in the evening he stood for almost a whole minute, then took two steps forward before sitting down - right in front of both of us and while we were on the phone with a grandparent. I think the days before he's officially a walking are probably single digits!