Vancouver = Mushroom Town???

 In a conversation about how awful we are as parents for forcing her to go on vacation, Alex gave an example of a small town where there is nothing to see or do but a few mushrooms.  I told her that in 20 years I will remind her she compared Vancouver to a small mushroom town and she will apologize and buy us drinks.

Skiing

 We've been skiing the last 6 Saturdays, and have learned quite a bit. We learned that when Nakiska is packed with people and we leave when it closes, it can take longer to get home than if we had gone to Lake Louise. We learned that when it is -25 outside, there are no lines for any lifts and no traffic getting home.  Those who did not ski before December learned how to get down a Blue slope in reasonably good shape.

 Now that the 6 weeks of lessons we signed the kids up for are over, we have plans to try each of the other three major slopes in the area (thanks Costco for the discount lift tickets to exactly these three mountains!)  We also won't go quite so often. We'll have Saturdays we sleep in, and Saturdays we go  hiking - as well as Saturdays to ski. Now that the Superbowl is going on right this very minute, football crowds out no more Sundays - we'll have whole weekends we can decide what to do on a whim!

Snow!

 We've had snow on the ground for a solid week now. Alex's days of riding her bike to school are probably over until May (assuming kids can actually continue in-person education until then). I just read this quotation and had to laugh, as we certainly embrace the snow in this family!

If you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life 

but still the same amount of snow.

The Ballad of Broken Glass

We'd been warned before heading to Calgary to save up for a new windshield or two. Chips, cracks, hairline fractures, the traffic kicked up a lot of rock and every single Consulate vehicle ended up with broken windshields. It wasn't whether, but rather when.  One overachiever managed to crack his windshield on his drive to post.

The first crack appeared in November or so. It seemed enormous and dangerous to me at first, starting several inches from the bottom left and moving toward the north/northeast. We called around for quotes and discussed our work schedules to see who could bring the car in, and when.

We marked where the crack ended and tracked how much, and whether, it grew each day. Some days it did, others not so much. We stalled and hesitated. We noted the seeming proliferation in cars driving around with cracks in their windshields. Of the six cars parked closest to us in the Consulate garage, four of them had cracks - and two of them were very nice cars (I don't pay attention to cars much, maybe they were Lexus or Beemers or Audis?) Walking around our neighborhood one day we noticed more than half the cars on one block had such damage. Apparently this is a thing.

We discussed further and reasoned that we were likely to sustain further damage and how many times did we really want to pay for new windshields? The crack did not impede vision, and there didn't seem to be any laws against it like there are for broken headlights.

Some cracks we've seen reach from one side of the car to the other. I think when we get there we may look into a replacement. Or whenever we depart Calgary.

Why do we buy them toys?

Each child has spent a large part of this evening entirely encased in a sleeping bag. First they wandered around testing out life as an inchworm/a caterpillar. Then of course they started bug battles that ended with my son suffering an objectively minor, but emotionally major, wound. This will not end well.

Single Parenting is Hard

Disclaimer: I am still happily married to the father of my children, who provides financial and emotional support as much as the six hour time difference allows, so I recognize I do not face many challenges truly single parents do.

I'm into my first month as a single parent. For three days in the first week I tried to get to the grocery store but by the time I got home from work, cooked dinner, fed the kids and myself, cleaned up and spent a few decent moments with them, it was their bedtime. I could have gone to the store then, and one night I did pop out for milk and bread, but generally the remaining hour before my own bedtime was filled with dishes so we had clean things to eat from in the morning, a bit of work I had brought home in returning for leaving a bit early, other chores and maybe a shower.

My work day is pretty solidly 8 hours, plus 1/2 hour lunch and the 20 minutes or so it takes to get there or back. My children do plenty of chores, from dishes to laundry to cleaning the bathroom on the weekend. On the evening that we came the closest to running out of food we just had sandwiches for dinner. In the world of actual hardship, mine barely registers.

And yet.

Single parenting is hard.

When one child is completely melting down and needs my full attention for an entire hour, dinner doesn't get made. The other child's needs are ignored. Lunches aren't planned, dishes aren't cleaned, and everything waits until the storm passes. The evening logistics become especially challenging because children have a relatively short window for all that must be packed in between coming home from school and going to bed, and generally the adult things need to just wait. The work day is crunched back into eight hours - for the last few months it had been expanding longer and longer - so now there is always a small anxiety that something there is being missed or forgotten.

Bless the people who do this without an end in sight. Bless the people who do this with younger children, unreliable transportation to work, erratic or long work hours, a rush hour commute.

In the last days of Astana ...

[Oops, somehow this never got published....]

In the two weeks before packout we had excitement - some serious stuff, some less serious, some personal, some work-related.

We learned that the route we intended to fly - involving a first leg of Astana to Vienna - had been cancelled at the last minute about every other flight or perhaps even more often during the last two months, with increasing frequency, and would officially cease to exist the day after our intended flight. My orders had me stopping in Vienna, so to change my flights required all the bureaucracy and paperwork one might think accompanied something called "changing my orders." Presumably, as more and more Astana-ians discovered the fate of the Astana-Vienna leg they would also be working to change their flights, possibly making three seats unavailable on our intended day. Although I was a near-hysterical bundle of stress for about 4-5 days, that was all the time it took to get everything done and dusted, as my British friends say.

Terry has a family emergency that sent him back to the USA for about 10 days, arriving back in Astana 5 calendar days before packout.

My boss, who I adore and we have an excellent working relationship, had been on holiday and was meant to return for my last 2 weeks at work. After one and a half days in the office he had to fly back out and only returned about 15 hours before my departure - so although we got to say goodbye, we did not work together again.

On a positive, note, my successor arrived three weeks before my departure - overlap is an unheard-of blessing in the foreign service world.  A major event got scheduled for one of my days of packout and although I did have to devote endless time and energy to preparing the event, she was able to take over on the day.  Also, although it took longer than expected, I was eventually able to focus my time on handover rather than current issues while she worked on the issue of the day, and managed to get done everything absolutely necessary before heading out on my last day of work at a normal time.

And of course, nobody is indispensable, time marches on, and by the time our airplane hit cruising altitude the spaces we occupied in Astana had likely already been filled in with suitable replacements. 

Welcome kit life

Now that our air freight is here (glory, glory, blessed be - finally!) I will try to explain what it is like to live off the "welcome kit". Mind you, I am not trying to compare our "privations" to the lives of the impoverished, for whom even our meager surroundings may seem a bounty. But for those of you reading at home in your stocked houses or apartments, imagine this:

• You have to do laundry frequently because nobody has enough clothing to last a week.
• Down to the salt and pepper (in our suitcase this time!) if you want to make a meal, you must go out and buy every single ingredient. You don't already have in your pantry a bottle of olive oil, a jar of basil, a can of baking powder. Now repeat this experience a dozen times or more. And while we're at it, remember you have no car and you're new in town so you have to hand carry home every item you buy and you might get lost in the process. And sometimes you have to go somewhere else for your fruit, or your meat, or your dry goods - not a lot of one-stop shopping outside the USA. Good for building muscles!
• Your children have four toys so they spend a lot of time aggravating each other for entertainment. You can't count how many times you have told them about your friend's aunt whose toys throughout childhood were "One red pencil. And one blue pencil. You at least have more than that. Now go play."
• For two-pillow sleepers it is especially challenging to get a night's sleep, as the welcome kit pillows are more like one-half pillow. I resorted to snitching the kids' lovey-pillows if they weren't sleeping with them that night.
• Tummy bugs cause real panic, because there is exactly one set of sheets per bed. If the vomit doesn't make it into the bowl, the kid sleeps on a bare mattress until laundry can be completed. (We were blessed with sufficient notice, decent aim, and very good friends who loaned us a set of sheets).
• On a similar vein, on laundry day nobody can dry their hands or take a shower either, as there is also exactly one towel per person. Extra bonus for the exfoliation skills of the towels we have, as they are at least half sandpaper (be careful drying those sensitive spots!)

Ah, yes, the glamorous life!

The goodbyes begin

Several people from my A-100 class left for post this past week. Several others have finished their time at FSI and are doing their other stuff (leave, consultations, outside-of-FSI-training) and will hit the road within the next few weeks. It's funny how going from post to post is bittersweet and nostalgic, but this is the first time I really feel like I am leaving something. My language training is the last FSI training I get and I'm in it right now. There are several people I'm making plans to see and I know this time will be the last time for a while. My mom is coming this week to spend time with the kids - unless she comes to Astana, when Terry drives her to the airport at the end of her week here it will be the last time we see her until R&R.

On the upside, we found our Rockville version of shashlik in the park. There's a wonderful water ice place across the street from a playground. Sugar the kids all up with a frozen treat then work it off. Meet up with friends and it's a party. We'll be there once a week until we leave!

Religious education

Our friends held their son's birthday party at their church this weekend. This led to a conversation with the kids on the car ride home about what a church is, who/what is God, what is a religion and what different religions teach/people believe. I had been largely stalling on this version of "the talk" as I have been very unsure what I want to teach my kids. Thus, such spontaneous conversations occur and I can't be sure I'm actually giving them the information I want them to have.

After some thought at the end of the conversation, Alex reveals:  "I think Leprechauns and flying horses are real, and God is not."  Terry was so proud. 

1950's

The most exciting thing happened tonight. A neighborhood kid we know from the bus stop rang the doorbell. We've almost never spoken with him, the kids have never played with him. But, with the kindergarten confusion of what he actually wanted, he was able to make clear that he wanted to talk to Alex. And now all three kids have been running and playing outside for the last half hour. I thought such things only happened in TV shows and certain compound embassies.

An important week

After seven years, this was my very last week as a stay at home (or work part time) mom. I'm now just like almost all my friends, and like I would have been had we lived in the USA when having children. I have been reflecting constantly about how lucky I feel to have had this time. This week has also shown me, if I had any last lingering doubts, that this is a good time to get back into the work force and pursue a career. The kids are growing more independent by the hour as though they were simply waiting for us to give them the room.

Tuesday, the second snow day of the week, promised to be a frustrating one. I expected to have my children trailing after me while I tried to do three days' worth of errands in one. The weather was fine and the roads were clear, why would I not run my errands? The real question is: why wasn't school open? Instead, when Alex heard one of our stops was her after school care center to drop off some paperwork she decided to spend the day there. From then it was easy to convince Zoltan to go to sadik. They both protested when I came to pick them up that they weren't ready to go home yet. This pattern has continued through the rest of the week.

And there it is, folks. We are all ready to start our newest adventure - the first one for the family that hasn't included an international move (yet).

I still get a thrill ...

... out of letting the kids play outside without adult supervision. We lived in the center of a big city, in an apartment, for essentially their entire lives. A backyard is still thrilling to me. I get to stay inside and get something accomplished (even if it is just a blog entry) and they get fresh air and exercise. Win/win.

(edited to add photos: As you can see, they were chalking the deck and loving every minute)

Soon to be a working mama

When Terry joined the foreign service, I quit my job as an attorney in Philadelphia so that I could accompany him all over the world. I conveniently became pregnant two weeks after my last day at work and being a mom has been the bulk of my "employment" since then. Even when I was CLO, I was never away from home/the children more than 8 hours a day, 4 days a week - including commute.

What this all means is that the whole family is about to get thrown into a huge turmoil. Chores that have been mine for the last 7 years now need to be shared. My children won't even see me in the morning when they wake. I have a feeling I'll spend a lot less time on Facebook.

I am both excited to once again be a professional, and terrified about how the family will adjust to the new life.

On the whole, though, I am mostly excited - especially as each piece of the puzzle fits into place. Zoltan was easy - he can go full time to his preschool, and he's finally becoming comfortable there.  Both days this week he played with everyone; he told me yesterday he likes speaking Russian.

For Alex there's been a lot more anxiety as those darned snow days last week made it impossible to call facilities to see if anyone had any space in March. As it turns out, the after school care center that I walked to in 10 minutes actually takes the kids outside EVERY DAY. In rain. In temps as low as 15F (yeah still plenty warm but lower than the school's outdoor recess policy so I'll take it gleefully). They tell parents to bring boots, umbrellas, whatever. They do kitchen projects like make vegan cookies or homemade play doh. Did I mention they go outside every day and are a 10 minute walk from home? They also have a summer camp that books up week by week so if there's any gaps in the Russian camp there's a backup.

The very last piece of the puzzle is morning care. I'm meeting a woman today and if it isn't a good vibe I have a few more applicants I can call. I am also amazingly lucky in the friends I have made in since we got here - two fellow moms have offered to pitch in if I end up short. Think about it. These people have known me barely 6 months and are willing to take my children in at 6:30am and get them to school. I didn't think this kind of thing happened outside the foreign service, where 6 months is an eternity and people become each other's "emergency contacts" within weeks.

Winter weather observation

Last night we finally got some snow. Today we finally got some cold weather. The kids lasted all of 5 minutes outside this morning. Already going soft? Maybe. But I also note that - presumably because of all the tall buildings - there's rarely a blustery wind in Piter other than on the bridges. Here the wind was whipping everything about, including the snow that got in the kids' faces. I am a little surprised at us that we aren't likely to go back out and play in the beautiful, pristine snow!

"Old" friends

Something I think every foreign service person would recognize: having in your life people who knew you when is important, but it is equally important to have people who knew you where.

Celebrating birthdays

Every year for the kids' birthdays Terry and I argue about how to celebrate. He prefers the way he grew up: birthday child chooses dinner and cake. That's it. No party, no gifts, nothing more. I grew up differently; birthdays were a BIG DEAL.

This year I think we found our happy compromise. Yes, the birthday child gets to choose the dinner we make and the kind of cake. This year their birthdays were on Saturday so they also got to choose the day's activity from a curated list. Plus, we have introduced the coupon book. It's a gift with no tangible residue (I do agree with Terry that the kids have too much stuff) and the kids have been thrilled to use them.

This year's coupons were (2 each):
- one TV show even after mom and dad said no
- one dessert without eating a good dinner
- one trip to a cafe or ice cream shop with just mom or dad (this was sweet, they pooled them once so the whole family could go together)
- one treat at the supermarket
- 30 minutes of playing on the tablet

6-8 weeks later they each have 3 left. I'm keeping track of which ones they use when, and plan to modify the coupons each year. 

Gratitude #27

27. Today I am grateful for the daily gratitude project. Every study on happiness shows that expressing gratitude is an important part of a well-lived life. Yesterday I received news that, while not catastrophic, derails plans that had been in place for a good year or so. But after a little cry and some self pity, I pulled up my big girl panties and put everything into perspective. Going through my past 26 expressions of gratitude helped with that exercise.

And a quote from Alex, that just randomly and serendipitously happened to occur last night:
"I like the word "happy" because it is a way that we feel good."

November gratitude

As a first world person with first world problems, it's too easy to get bogged down sometimes. I loved doing the daily gratitude post last year and will be continuing the tradition this year. Some posts will be redundant, I can't help it, there are some things I am continually grateful for every single time I think about them. That's a good thing, no?

I'm running a bit behind as we went cabin-ing this weekend so didn't have internet (and yes, you can bet the cabin will feature this month).

To kick it off -
Day 1: I am grateful for our enormous pasta pot that lets me cook down a crazy load of apples into several quarts of applesauce. Having control over what goes into my family's food is important, and being able to do it efficiently makes me happy.

(now I must get back to peeling and chopping apples from which to make delicious applesauce)

Pictures on the wall

With all the moving we do, it becomes relatively easy to develop an understanding of what I need to be settled, comfortable, feeling like "home".  For me, no matter what's in the house or not, how much is unpacked vs. strewn across the floors, a residence is finally home when we hang the pictures on the wall.

Today is that day.

Hallelujah.