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.

Ice Skating

Back in December the Consulate was offered and accepted a Master Class in ice skating taught by a former Olympic competitor and current coach of Olympic hopefuls. I "had" to go as it was my event, Terry and Alex came too for the skating. It was a great time, I had completely forgotten how much fun skating is.

This was also our test experience to see if Terry's dream of Alex going to Penn State on a hockey scholarship could ever possibly be realized. She had a great time on the ice, especially when the current skater being trained by this coach took her and led her around the ice.

So, we asked around, found a skate instructor who speaks some English, and Alex - on her 3rd lesson - skated on her own for a little bit. She is happy to go to her lessons, is dead on her skates after 1/2 hour and has a good nap later. Win-win. Today's lesson was also her first on her very own new skates - we had been renting previously and the new ones arrived this week. It's not too long before she'll be skating circles around mom & dad ....

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.

Big News!

I've moved one more step closer to the possible eventuality of becoming a foreign service officer - I passed the QEP. Of course, the window to choose a test date for the Oral Exams is this week, and we have no idea when we'll be allowed to take our Home Leave, so it is still to be seen if I'll be in the USA at the right time to take the thing. I made a relatively conservative guesstimate of when I'm likely to be home given various possible scenarios. Keep your fingers crossed.

Brought low

When you last saw the Mad-Zac clan we were returning from a vacation fraught with minor annoyances and major family bonding time. Turns out the family that flu-s together stays together or something like that.

Zoltan, the one who got the stinking flu shot (well, Alex did too) was the first to fall. Sunday night a week ago he woke in the middle of the night with the kind of burning up fever that terrifies a parent. Of course our children's thermometer's battery was dead and we somehow didn't notice we had 2 other digital thermometers. Whatever, burning up is burning up so we got Motrin into him, tried to soothe him until the meds had a chance to kick in, and hunkered down for a night of intermittent wakeups, screams, fever reducer administration and generally not a whole lot of sleep. Alex's ability to snooze throughout the whole experience is testament to how far she's come and the merits of sleep training, but that's a digression.

Next to fall was Terry, who came home "early" on Tuesday (as in, right at quitting time), and didn't make it back for a full day of work til this week. I was next on Wednesday. It really is a lot like mastitis without the painful breasts! Friday I managed to get Alex to preschool (so grateful for the car, I never could have gotten her the mile walk on foot) and Terry and I took turns trying to care for Zoltan, who seemed to have turned a corner and was in good health and fine spirits other than his refusal to nap. We even pulled out Baby Einstein in desperation. He watched it as much as he watched Big Bang Theory. We called our nanny and begged her to come on Saturday.

Saturday was definitely the worst day for both Terry and me. We ended up bringing Terry and Zoltan to the doctor, Zoltan mostly because of his refusal to sleep caused us to worry about an ear infection. He did have fluid but not an infection so I'm glad we took him.

One of the four medicines the doctor prescribed for Terry is the most amazing drug I've ever experienced for a stuffy nose. It's a nose drop of some sort, probably something the FDA would run from in horror, BUT within 1 minute of administration you go from completely stuffed up to breathing completely freely. And the stuff cost a whopping 8 Rubles (approx. 22 cents, give or take). It took 24 hours for me to stuff up again after taking it, although Terry definitely didn't last so long.

And now I'm feeling worse again? These kids will, literally, be the death of me!

First haircuts

My friend Heather inspired me. Her son is one month older than Zoltan and got his first haircut last week by her hands and the family hair clippers. I told Terry he was welcome to cut Z's hair whenever he liked, as he's been bugging me about Z's "hippie looking" long hair.

Today was the day. Alex helped Terry comb Z's hair, then the clipping began. Z was pretty indifferent to the whole thing, but he really didn't like Terry getting too close to his ears and didn't like when Terry pulled out the haircutting scissors to do a final trim on the parts that still annoyed him.

I commented that he wasn't a baby anymore, he looked like a boy. Alex didn't accept any of the explanations I tried to give her as to why I said that (she's deep into the "why" phase) and in the end demanded a haircut RIGHT NOW.

I figured with long hair and a slight wave, nobody would notice the imperfections of the very tiny trim I intended to give her. She fidgeted the entire time, so it was a very imperfect cut, but I don't think it is noticeable. We'll see if anyone asks about her hair when they see her next week when she returns to preschool. The one thing I will say is it seems a lot healthier. We'll see if it's any easier to comb.

Had we lived in the USA, they definitely would have gotten their haircuts by professionals, but this was probably way less traumatic for them - at least, the photos many of my friends have sent of their kids' first haircuts seem to indicate the home remedy may be easier to take.

Seen on the streets

I keep forgetting to mention, the other day I saw a woman walking her baby in the pram ... with the tiny little kick-me dog riding in the bottom basket. It was pretty cute, unfortunately I didn't think fast enough to get a photo with the phone camera ... probably wouldn't have come out well anyway.

Aeroflot

Terry told me I had to blog about something that's gone right on this trip so here is my posting on Aeroflot. No, seriously. We took Aeroflot through Moscow to get to Antalya. Both flights were comfortable and comparatively new Airbuses. We had no troubles getting milk into sippy cups before takeoff and the children's meal we ordered for Alex was perfect – a lot of fruit, chicken nuggets that were actually mostly chicken, juice box of 100% juice and packed in a brightly colored really sturdy cardboard box so it could take being brought down to her level (i.e. on the seat between us). On the “long” flight Alex was handed a real canvas backpack stuffed with markers, coloring book, a hat, socks, a 20 or so piece puzzle, and a booklet of mazes and games. I, carrying Zoltan, was handed a bag with diapers, a pack of wipes, a disposable bib and bottle. Both flights were on time. Meals were tasty and every meal had a juice box, which we squirreled away for Alex. Flight attendants were helpful. I seriously would love to fly this airline every time I fly from now til forever.

Addendum: return flights were just as good. Terry didn't think to order a baby meal for Z but I saw one and it was 3 jars of reliable baby food (i.e. I could see one was Gerber) and a box of Parmelat milk. I wish we had ordered one! Too bad we won't be flying again before Z is out of baby food. Still loving Aeroflot

First Full Day, More Impressions

Other than Zoltan's 3 screaming wakeups (each 2 minutes or less, Alex slept through each) the kids did pretty well the first night. We had put them to bed roughly when we wanted them to sleep to shift their schedules and I guess Z was so overtired he couldn't make the morning transition. Breakfast opens at 7am, we were up at 6am. Even Alex couldn't sleep through the crying at that hour, she got right up. There was a thunderstorm the first night and it was still damply chilly in the morning. The walk over to the main building was refreshing to say the least. After we ate we checked out the playground and beach and the kids had a blast. We were glad we'd thought to bring rain pants for each. Then it was time for Z's nap – Terry took Alex to the indoor pool while I stayed behind to put Z to bed and deal with yet more issues (the safe was locked and unopenable so the front desk said someone would come at 10am to unlock it for me. This was probably the one and only time that everything happened perfectly – he came at exactly 10 and the whole transaction took 2 minutes).

Then the phone starts ringing. It's the front desk saying something about us forgetting to sign our credit card slip. Huh? That usually doesn't happen until the end of a stay. Whatever. A bellboy gets sent to our room with the slip to sign. It's just a credit card slip with the amount and signature line, no itemization of what we're paying for. I ask what it's for, the guy speaks no English so he calls someone, puts me on the phone and the guy says we just forgot to sign the slip yesterday and to sign it now. I say my husband isn't here and we'll deal with it when he gets back. The bellboy leaves the slip with me and leaves. A few minutes later the manager guy comes himself and asks for the slip. I tell him I want my husband to see it, he says he needs it back for the accounting department – something about us losing the paper – so I give it back to him. I still think this is incredibly sketchy especially given the nightmare the hotel put us through Turns out it's relatively legit, at least Terry says the cc was charged but nobody gave him anything to sign – the paper he got didn't have the signature line. So he signs and all is well.

More reasons not to come here: the high chairs have not been cleaned once. We have used the same one 3 times a day for 3 days now and it's all the same crumbs and leftover food. We have been wiping the tray and seat with our wipes or if not too bad with water and napkins. Disgusting. Also the tables are not always cleaned and never have all the tables been cleaned. This morning we never found a clean table for breakfast but we found one with only crumbs and no spills on the tablecloth and they had new silverware on the table so we figured it was good enough and sat down.

There's no ATM at the hotel, in fact the nearest one is 4km away in front of a different hotel. The hotel told us 4 different buses we could take to get there but never told us the bus fare. Babysitting is 10 Euros per child per hour, which does seem to be the going rate but is scandalous to me, especially as the kids would be sleeping (we were thinking of trying an adult-only dinner at the reservation restaurant). So, we're just going to keep them up a bit late one night to try it out because even if we wanted to pay for babysitting, we don't have enough cash to do so and no motivation to schlep over to the nearest ATM for more. We had to adjust the kids' schedules anyway due to time zones so we just decided to shift them a bit more to see if we could get them to sleep later, and be up later. The latter worked, but the former not so well. It doesn't help that the footballers are up at 6am for their practice – except the ones who are in the rooms right by us apparently are deep sleepers because their phones ring on and on and on at manage to wake us all quite well but not the intended sleepyhead.

As a safety precaution (I assume) the room door sounds an alarm when it is opened to remind the occupant to shut it (again, I assume). The alarm isn't TOO loud, thankfully, because the one for our room has started to sound the moment the door is opened rather than wait a reasonable time for a person to actually walk across the threshold and shut the door and then determine whether it was shut properly.

Can you tell I am entirely NOT in love with this place?

There are some good points. Between the playground, beach and indoor pool Alex has been loving life. The Turkish food is excellent, the pide at dinner every night is amazing, in fact Zoltan ate meat for the first time - devouring a piece of pide with minced meat. I was excited the first night because the desserts sucked, so I thought I could work my way back to pre-Thanksgiving weight. Fortunately or unfortunately, there have been several really delicious treats at each meal since. The two times we called for housecleaning to be at a certain time it was within 15 minutes of our request.