Puppet show

Our last "big thing" for the long week was a trip to the puppet show with a friend. The show was a riff off The Nutcracker, with a similar theme of a girl loves her Christmas gift nutcracker, dreams of him being real and there's a fight with the mouse king, but there the similarities end. The theatre did a great job of moving between puppets and actors, and employing some other media forms - at one point we saw a very short film about the history of the animosity between the nutcracker-prince's family and the mice. It involved kielbasa.

After the show there was the obligatory Ded Maroz sighting, and the actors were available for photos. The children also did some singing and dancing and as usual, although my kids knew the songs perfectly, they had no intention of joining in. No worries, they were happy spectators.

Christmas Market

There's an annual Christmas market held off Nevsky for the weeks surrounding and including the January holiday. We went last year, but the kids were small and we had gone at night and in the end we didn't stay long and didn't do much.

This year we went early in the day, which was a benefit for many reasons. The crowds were much smaller. We noticed the honey stalls and got to spend some time tasting the various kinds, although as usual we bought the white honey. Oh goodness will we miss Russian honey when we return home!

Then off to the rides. They had a merry go round and a few other preschooler-appropriate rides. Alex definitely has the thrillseeker in her, she'll go on all the roller coasters with Terry one day. Zoltan was visibly thrilled on the train ride. I think I see train adventures in our future - a stop in Jim Thorpe for sure during home leave!

 We were all starting to get cold, so each kid got to choose a treat and off for home we went. We didn't notice Zoltan fall asleep, but he still had a piece of his cookie in his hand when he awoke back home. It was just the thing to keep him happy as we had to wake him, get him out of the stroller and out of his winter gear. Unfortunately, it seems the 10 minute nap so refreshed him that he didn't sleep during naptime. Rough all around.

Umnikum

The science museum in the mall is still awesome, and the kids again were entertained for the entire 2 hours we were there until everyone started getting hungry and grumpy. It is small, though, and our annual trip is probably often enough.

One surprise hit was that Zoltan loved the planetarium show. We sat through it 3 times. He also couldn't get enough of the exhibit where he got to "make a crater" by pressing a button that released a "meteor" onto a flat dusty ground. Boom! about a hundred times. The magnets were their usual hit, with each kid returning to that exhibit a few times.

There's also a huge foam ottoman-height seat that we let Zoltan bounce around on. Because we don't have a bouncy castle as home he could use or anything.

 Of course we got no photos of the things the kids loved the most, we were too busy doing stuff with them.

Tropical Butterfly House

Not too far from Sadovaya, in the middle of a block and otherwise unremarkable except for the butterflies painted all around and above the door, is a tropical butterfly paradise. Kept at 28 degrees Celsius (steamy warm for you Fahrenheit folk), the butterflies are thrilled and the patrons are warned not to use their cameras for 10 minutes to let the fog steam off.

The downside to the trip is that I only remembered that Zoltan is afraid of butterflies that morning, after we already promised Alex we'd go and quite frankly, both Terry and I wanted to see it. In the end, Zoltan spent about 3 minutes in the butterfly area, then spent the rest of the hour or so there eating his snack and playing with his cars in the outer area, accompanied by me and Terry in turn. The extra down side is because it was only Terry and Alex, nobody got the photo of his handing the butterfly off to her (which I could at least see) or when a butterfly walked from his leg up to his chest (which only Alex witnessed).

Big Boy Bed

For the last few weeks, Zoltan has been begging to sleep in the big bed. Unfortunately for spontaneity, he has a bad habit of falling out of bed during the night and the configuration of his room was not conducive to helping his stay put. Today we finally moved the room around, got the bed against a wall and packed away the toddler bed.

Our baby is growing up!

The best laid plans

We planned to go to the Butterfly House today, or whatever it's precisely called in Russian. Alex was so excited, one of the girls in her class had gone and told them about it. We got all the snacks and toys together for the trip, got the kids on the potty then into their car seats, and ... my seatbelt won't extend long enough to buckle. It's been finicky for a while now but never life-threatening. We're having a ridiculous thaw right now, temps over freezing and everything is icy (Russia, you should be ashamed of yourself showing such warm weather!). Given that driving here is like driving in Philly, nobody thinks it's a good idea to risk Mommy's life so we abort the plan. New plan for the day: Terry tears apart the car to see if he can fix the seatbelt and a few other things he's been meaning to get to while he's there.

A while later he comes in with the car part we need to replace. He writes down every bit of info he thinks I might need, tells me where there's 2 car parts stores nearby, and wishes me luck. The first place just says no they don't have the part. At the second place I think to ask where I could find it after they also tell me they don't have it. The guy tells me a bunch of things I don't quite understand, but I am pretty sure the gist is that "People go to mechanics to get this kind of part replaced. It is very difficult to do it yourself." At least, I caught the word for "difficult" and in the context, he must have been saying something like that. He asks me what make of car it is, then points to a stack of flyers like what you get at the grocery store, all about car repair shops or car parts.

Of course, this being a holiday, the place Terry tried to go to is closed. Our plans may get a bit restricted in the next few days without the car. The good news? Everything we actually need is within walking distance.

Oh Piter, there are so many things about you I will miss dearly when we leave.

Wordless Wednesday

Happy New Year / С Новым Годом

Happy birthday to me!

What an auspicious start to my birthday. Piles of dirty dishes and laundry. Squabbling children. The conversation with Alex this morning went like this:
Me: What do you want for breakfast?
A: Muffins
Me: We don't have any defrosted. I'll take some out but they are frozen solid and won't be ready until lunchtime.
A: OK
Me: So what do you want for breakfast?
A: Muffins
Me: Do you want to try to eat a frozen one?
A: No.
Me: So what do you want for breakfast?
A: Muffins

It got even "better" when, after a lot of screaming and crying actual tears she tells me we have some in the cabinet. Because I love the sound and sight of her screaming and crying so much I'd lie to her about having any defrosted when we had some in the cabinet? I don't think so.

Naptime: Zoltan won't sleep, calls for me every 20 minutes and is hysterically crying because I keep telling him to go to sleep.Finally, I tell him to give me 10 minutes and I'll be back to let him get up. I show him what the clock will look like. I go away and pour a drink. 10 minutes later I dutifully poke my head in and hear that most glorious sound - deep even breathing.

And, I have my one little word (heard about this for the first time last week and already loving it!); I ate some ice cream from the Last Pint of Haagen Dasz; and my birthday roast duck is in the oven. We have plans for tonight that should be fun and the baby monitor seems to be working again after a week of constant interference.

And I live in this beautiful city

And sometimes the kids are like this

Practice for January holiday

Between our wonderful surprise of Terry getting the 24th off, to the kids not feeling 100% and later having doctor's appointments, the kids and I just spent 6 days together (Terry was there for 4 of them). In between the fighting, chores, cooking, eating and naps, we managed to...

paint toes

work on puzzles

make a popcorn string for the Yolka

  read books

 play with the new train set