It's Spring, sort of

In Piter the temperatures have been frequently (but not always!) above freezing, leading to ice underlying veritable pools of melting snow. The other day started with snow, moved into sleet, then hail, finally settling on rain. That became snow again by bedtime.

It probably doesn't need saying, but this is NOT the most wonderful time of the year.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

So we've had 2 flurries of about 10 minutes each and at least one hail but as it's only dropped below freezing a couple of times ... well, let's just say Indiana has a whole bunch of snow according to my friend and yet Petersburg is just damp and chilly. And dark. The dark is more annoying when it isn't glinty with snow and ice.

Springtime in Piter

I think it got up to 15 or 16 today (Celsius), sunny ... absolutely lovely. And two children who think naps are for losers - at least Zoltan will grant us one, albeit too short. So what to do? Of course, go outside!

Terry and Zoltan left first, as it seemed at the time Alex might realize what a friend to her sleep really is. When Alex and I got to the playground, Terry looked at me and said "I had a great idea. How about one of us runs to the produkty across the street and we get a beer for me and a gin & tonic drink for you." (being Passover, I can't have beer) This is Russia, where a beautiful day outside must be enjoyed with alcohol in hand, so across the street Alex and I go. She was promised a juice box, as everyone else was getting a special treat.

The best part of the whole thing is when she and I were in the store looking at the non-beer options for me and after I make my selection I ask what I should get for daddy. "Get Daddy a beer." Good girl.

+9 Centigrade

Today's temperature. Yeah, spring is a fickle, weak little thing who flirts with winter and lets him walk all over her with 5 inches of snow on March 31. But ... Let The Thaw Begin.

Beer as far as the eye can see...

There's a company that provides duty free goods to diplomats, the best deals are on alcohol and very occasionally we and others at the Consulate place orders with them. They are located in Denmark, I'm not really sure where the goods are located, but in any case they aren't local so after an order is placed some time passes before the delivery - which occurs at the Consulate.  We ordered 3 cases of beer. As our car still isn't accessible, a friend drove Terry home with the goods.

That's the background. The story is that the shipment sat at customs for a few days, and then the cases sat in our friend's car. Short story - all 3 cases were "refrigerated."  Our fridge at home doesn't fit 3 cases of beer if we also want any of the food and drink we need to survive to also fit inside. What to do?

We opened the window in one room and now it's the "cold room." We're also slowly (as in, whatever we can carry each day when we go to work) carrying beer into the Consulate to store in a fridge there. Finally, we had some people over Saturday night and told them we were only serving beer.

The moral of the story - don't order beer through this company in the winter.

It wasn't the frozen lock

We got lock de-icer (yes, this product does exist and even has what it is in helpful English) and the locks still won't work. SO now we wait for warmer weather to use our car again. Those studded snow tires, that brand new battery, just going to waste ....

It was so cold ...

Sounds like the beginning of a joke, but the joke is on us if anything. So our car has been having troubles with the locks - the automatic locks aren't working properly so some doors don't unlock with the auto locks, some don't lock, and in general when it gets below freezing there's liquid in the driver's side door so the key can't even get in the lock all the way so we have to go to the passenger side, unlock it, then lean across the entire seat to unlock the driver's side because the passenger side auto locks don't lock OR unlock anything.

We have some concerns about the car surviving the tour. Especially as we have another 2 years here. Terry keeps saying the problems are cosmetic, the engine is solid yadda yadda

Today proved me right. The drivers' side lock was as usual nonfunctional and today the passenger side made the clicking sound but didn't raise the lock enough to actually open the door. He couldn't drive to the grocery store because he couldn't get into the car.

How thrilled are we that Okey Express opened last month about a 15 minute walk away? Can't carry as much, but can get the necessities purchased. Now we're looking into anti-freeze stuff for the lock. Exciting times.

Winter in Petersburg

The photo isn't great, taken with my phone and all, and this is seriously delayed as it was taken on December 24, but this is the sun in the sky just before noon right around the solstice.

Pinkalicious

This morning Alex started to "read" (recite) Pinkalicious to the nanny. She has to ask me to explain the first page - "What does it mean, too much rain to go outside?"

No such thing in Petersburg.

milk

The refrigeration in Spb stores isn't very good. In the last 3 weeks I have had to throw away 5 bottles of milk because they went sour before their due dates, several were sour in the store as I tried them immediately upon arrival home. I had gone to different stores and even had different brands of milk.

I think long life milk is going onto the next grocery list.

more details

Terry is, thankfully, back in Spb. His one week of training in Budapest became about 4 days then an almost-no-notice trip back to the USA for his grandmother's unexpected death/funeral. As fabulous Vonage gives me free calls to Hungary, I was the conduit between his family and him to figure out details and arrangements.

This one will probably get a bit whiny as it was an almost intolerable 10 days without Terry. First, he left the same day my father did, so we'd had no real opportunity to manage household things in the week beforehand. Second, Petersburg had a record heat wave that began right around the time my dad hit town. Being "record" means that it was way hotter than it had EVER been at least for such an extended period. So, the fact nobody had a/c made sense, but didn't make it tolerable. The kids couldn't sleep well and were cranky. Zoltan decided to go on a bottle strike, I wasn't making enough milk for him, so he got almost dangerously dehydrated. This did nothing good for his mood and really he spent most of the days screaming. Alex was further miserable because she really noticed Terry's absence and punished me (as the only one around) because she missed him and he wasn't here. It was almost comical when she demanded Grammy read her the books when we video chatted, and when Terry started to read the 4th book she said she wanted someone else to read it. I was so grateful when she decided to forgive him upon the moment of seeing him, rather than spend days being miffed. I even had help most days for at least a half day - but the kids were so miserable I think I would have needed 3 people all day to manage.

Oh, and Zoltan cut tooth #6 during this time too.

Next update will be about fun stuff we did when my dad visited

overview update

In the last month:
- Alex finished preschool until September
- Zoltan started crawling like a fiend and cut 4 teeth
- I got a job offer at the consulate (haven't started yet)
- My father visited for a week
- Terry left for a week of training the same day my father left
- Petersburg got record high temperatures. It is worth noting almost nobody here has air con, including us. Hot children are miserable. Hot babies are worse

I have lots to write about between the places we went with my dad and lessons learned on the travel front (from previous post). They will have to wait until Terry's return.

I've gone native

We've had a heat wave in Piter - it's been in the 20s Fahrenheit. We were going over to a friend's house, driving. We'd go from our front door to the car, which was parked right outside, and we'd park at our friends' lot right at their building. Maybe 2 minutes outside at each end for the kids. I asked Terry if he thought we needed to put Alex in her full snowsuit. He looked at me incredulously, then asked if I were in Mass. would I have put her in a snowsuit. I thought he meant when I was growing up so I said of course not, then do we want her to wear a jacket that goes with a snowsuit or her jacket that's just a jacket. He got very confused because he'd meant he thought there was no way I'd leave Alex without a snowsuit if it were that temp when we were home 2 months ago.
20 Fahrenheit is mild weather. I usually have my coat open at that temp (hat only because I don't have only-ear warmers anymore). I wonder how summer's going to hit me?

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.

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!

This is what we don't love about Malta

The maltaweather.com web site used to have a very helpful jellyfish report. It simply stated which beaches would have jellyfish washing up and therefore you should avoid them. I noted that it existed but never had need of it because we are not beach people.

As I mentioned previously, Alex loved the beach. So we decided instead of doing chores all weekend this weekend we decided to take her to the beach and hopefully we'll all have a good time and she will nap well from the sun and fun. But where to go? I pulled up the trusty web site only to find that the jellyfish report had vanished. Now, I can pay 1 Euro any day I want to get the report SMS'd to my phone at 8:30am. Grrrr.

The handy thing about being married to Terry is the weather report did give the wind direction and he figured which beaches were likely safe and he was right. We really, really love our daughter because we both relived why we don't like beaches but she was so happy we will probably go again, especially as the next 2 weekends are both long holiday weekends. But, next time, she better give us that nap she promised!!!