Seven Days in Kyiv: July 17-23

Sunday afternoon, the Hoglunds (and a lot of luggage) arrived on their way out of Ukraine. We had various friends over to bid them adieu throughout the day. Poor things rolled out of bed at 3 the next morning, and by 3:30 they were on their way to the airport. Sigh.

While they drove to the airport, I dove back into bed. When I finally awoke, cooking and packing topped my to-do list. The boys and I were heading to Sumy, sans Eric, but plus Lois. SEND has some workers in Sumy, and one of them, Anja, is extremely pregnant (as in, she was due yesterday). The week we went for a visit, her husband was two hours away at a camp for disabled kids. So Lois and I went to help out and to be there in case the baby made an early appearance.

The first day, a rainstorm settled over the city. But the kids still managed to have fun.



When the rain finally stopped, we took the stir-crazy little ones for a walk, and I had a little moment of culture shock. You see, we live in the city, where kids do not get dirty. Obviously, that's an exaggeration, but I cannot tell you how many times someone has pointed out to me that Dietrich is touching dirt.

So, on our muddy walk, I was constantly nagging Dietrich. "Go around the puddles! Stop stepping in the mud! Don't get your shoes wet!"

But at some point, Anja's 2-year-old got out of the stroller and started wading, barefoot, right through the middle of the puddles. She was up to her knees in muck. And people walking by didn't scold. In fact, they smiled.

So, I tried to mellow out, and we got dirty. Like, so dirty that we just wore the same clothes every day so that we wouldn't wreck everything we'd brought with us. It was actually really refreshing.

I promised no vegetables this week, but Anja has fruit trees. Several of them. And one of the ways we helped out was by collecting buckets and buckets of felled apricots and apples. Dietrich freaked out every time an apricot smooshed between his bare toes, so it was well worth it to keep them picked up.


Big helper.


Lev spent hours splashing in the water.


I love this picture. It perfectly captures the mix of interest and hesitation Lev expressed as he experienced so many things for the first time.

Dietrich was so excited that he actually made little clicking noises between every sentence when he told his grandparents about it.


"They had three swings!" Click.


"And one was a baby swing, but I went in it!" Click.


"And they had trees to climb!" Click.



"And you could make a huge flood!" Click.


You could even share the huge flood with your little brother. (Dietrich didn't actually list this as a highlight, but I thought it was really sweet.)

I was a big ol' baby when I was 39 weeks pregnant, but Anja seemed to have endless energy.


Did I mention that she already has four kids?

Plus, she didn't go into labor, so I'm not sure how helpful we ended up being, but it sure was nice to eat watermelon outside, letting the juice drip all over the place. And to spray each other with the hose. And to catch butterflies and potato bugs.

We left all this behind on Friday. Our train left at 6 a.m., and we all napped halfway to Kyiv. Poor Lev brought a fever and subsequent runny nose and cough home with him.

I returned to a full e-mail inbox, as it is Harvest Heartbeat time again. So Eric juggled kids on and off Saturday while I got started on editing stories.

While we were gone, Eric ate like a bachelor (potato chips and a can of beans, anyone?) and worked way later than he normally does. So, despite the sickness and looming deadlines, we were happy to be together again.

Seven Days in Kyiv: July 10-16

On Sunday, I finished the beans.

Whew. Glad we can all put that behind us.

Monday morning, I cleared out a space in the kitchen for the bookshelf we bought from the moving-to-America Hoglunds. That afternoon, Jon delivered it, along with a bag of other goodies -- goodies that finally put our slowly dying original vision for the kids' room out of its misery. When Dietrich was born, we didn't know whether he'd be a boy or a girl, so we went with an animal-themed room. We figured, if he were a girl, we'd add a hippo in a tutu to feminize the space.

But Dietrich was a boy, and then Lev was a boy, and slowly but surely, transportation-themed items started crowding out the elephants and giraffes. Grandma Cindy made Dietrich a blanket with vintage cars on it. Baba Jane bought vehicle sheets. Amanda made Lev an amazing train quilt -- a quilt so lovely, we hung it up.

Only the green elephant-patterned curtains hinted at what used to be -- and while we were in the States, I'd actually bought car curtains at Ikea, but they were a bit short and too thin to block the morning light.

So, when Jon and Andrea put their thick white curtains up for sale, I nabbed them. About 60 safety pins later (don't laugh, I know not how to sew), the elephants were tossed in the laundry basket, and the new curtains were hanging up. As an added bonus, the floor now is covered with a road rug. Little reminders of the Hoglunds, all over our house. Hooray!

On Tuesday, I worked in the morning and sent out a newsletter, in which I promised that I'd be blogging here again. So, here I am! Also, on Tuesday, Lev woke up cute.





Tuesday afternoon, we had an accident. Dietrich dropped a toy behind his heavy, wooden dresser, so he tried to scooch it away from the wall, a toy-retrieval move he's performed many a time. But this time, the dresser caught on the new road rug and slammed into the floor. The floor where both boys were playing just minutes before.

Dietrich was terrified. So was I. Spooked, I decided to swap out his tall dresser for a shorter version from our room.

After all the furniture was moved and everyone's clothes found new homes, I looked around with such a sense of thankfulness. No one was hurt. And I love the way that the boys' room has come together, so much so that I'm going to get all Design*Spongey and give you a tour. Ready?

First, a before shot.

This was before Lev was born, when we cleared the room out to have it wallpapered.


View from the hall.


Elephant-slaying train quilt.


Shorter dresser has feet, so it doesn't need to be moved when Spiderman dives behind it. Added bonus: New spot to set up "Cars" cars.


Antique wagon was a gift from my mom when Dietrich was born.


Trapped by the bed, this bookshelf will never fall.


Spiderman bides his time, waiting for the day when he will use his web to capture all the cars, trucks and trains.


Finding storage containers can be a bit of a challenge here, but washtubs work well.


This bookshelf used to belong to the Saucy family — another set of friends who had to move back.


Look! Up in the sky!


View from Dietrich's bed.

And did I mention, no one was hurt? I spent the next two days occasionally having to blink back tears of thankfulness to Jesus, because NO ONE WAS HURT.

On Thursday, Lev was cute.

Peek-a-boo! from josie oldenburg on Vimeo.

On Friday, he was cute, again.

Not really stuck from josie oldenburg on Vimeo.

Friday, Lev and I took a little stroll to the market, where I bought 50 summer squash. Bet you can guess what I did on Saturday.


This is only half of them!


Fatties got cubed for future curries.


A cool bath on a hot day can be so refreshing.


Race relations between the squash are not so good.


Ready for the freezer.

Next week will feature nary a vegetable, I promise.

Seven Days in Kyiv: July 3-9

So, it's been a while. (Several people have mentioned that they're weary of seeing Eric's foot stuck in the elevator door!)

To catch up: In late April, the inspiration for Seven Days in Kyiv (i.e. our family) flew to California for a five-week trip. We had lots of reasons for going -- but meeting Baby Betty and seeing the first Talbot—Kyiv Extension students graduate were dominate.



Our time in California was wildly fun -- and wildly busy. (Here are Aunt Jit Fong's pictures of Dietrich's first roller coaster ride and a celebratory dinner for my grandma's 90th birthday. Perhaps I eventually will post about Disneyland, Gilroy Gardens, Lev in a swing for the first time, In-N-Out Burger, the beach, visits with special friends, snail collecting, long car naps and tree climbing.)

In California, Lev celebrated his first birthday and ate cake off his pants. (Isn't it nice that Jit blogged all this stuff so that I don't have to? Thanks, Jit!)



We flew back to Kyiv, repacked, and flew to Germany for two back-to-back SEND conferences. The first conference included some sessions for husbands and wives, but the wives also had a lot of down time. It was just what I needed -- the proverbial vacation from our vacation.

Also during this time, Eric started a new job as SEND Ukraine's Area Director.

And that about sums up the past two months.

Thankfully, I came home from Germany feeling relaxed, but I think my keeping-up-with-life-in-Kyiv muscles atrophied during all that time away. It didn't help that Lev got sick, his nanny had to skip a day to go get her homesick daughter from the family dacha, and Dietrich had to wait several days for the medical note that allowed him to go back to preschool. (Even if you're on vacation, if you skip three days, you need a note.)

So, on July 3, we were visiting our friends, the Hoglunds. We got married at about the same time, moved to Kyiv at about the same time and were in language school together. They had a baby, then we had a baby. Then they started ministry at Kremenchuk Regional Bible School, and we started ministry at Kyiv Theological Seminary. Then they had another baby, and then we had another baby.

Our lives have taken similar paths, and I'm so thankful that the Lord saw fit to have those paths intersect.





Now they're moving back to America -- but we're not. So this was a good-bye visit, our last time at our "vacation home on the beach," as we like to think of their apartment, which is just a short walk from the Dnieper River.

The Hoglunds are amazing people who, despite the fact that they were about to pack up or sell all of their belongings, put all their moving tasks aside to make time for us. And, it was a great visit. After two weeks of steady rain, we got a three-day reprieve that allowed the kids to play on two of Kremenchuk's excellent playgrounds and to swim in the river. (This time outside was quite necessary, as Dietrich and the Hoglunds' eldest developed the fine art of comparison -- "I'm bigger, faster, older, have more toys, etc." At one point, their daughter was in tears because she said her new nightgown was the best thing in the world, but Dietrich said Jesus was the best thing in the world. Ah, Jesus as weapon. Teaching him early, we are.)







Though Lev's been taking steps for months, he started truly walking at their house -- all those big kids to keep up with! His first outdoor steps were in the Dnieper. I love that.



We stuck around for the Fourth of July (no fireworks or watermelon, but we did have pulled pork with BBQ sauce), and on the fifth we boarded a bus back to Kyiv. Though we will see the Hoglunds again on their way out of Ukraine, I was glum. But all the boys (even Eric) quickly fell asleep and stayed asleep for nearly the whole ride, so I got to sit quietly and enjoy the beautiful Ukrainian countryside. About 80 percent of the ride was through fields, and about half of those fields were sunflowers. It's hard to stay glum when you have a sweet sleeping toddler on your lap and you're looking at thousands and thousands of the most cheerful of all flowers.

During the summer, enough kids go out to the village or on vacation that all the remaining kids get lumped into one big group. Which means, starting on Wednesday, Dietrich was in a class with littler kids, and with much bigger kids, and with a different teacher every day (so far). He seems to be adjusting OK to the change. Sometimes, Ukrainian preschool seems like cultural bootcamp. Yes, things change unexpectedly here quite frequently, so why not get used to it when you're 4?

While Dietrich was at school on Wednesday, I had the chance to go for a stroll with another mom from our building. We occasionally have visited a Sunday-night church here, and she attends that church, but we didn't know we were neighbors. She has a 10-month-old and she's patient with my Russian, which has only deteriorated with every new child. (Or, to put it in a more-positive light, my Russian is excellent if I'm talking about nursing or pooping.)

We walked to the produce market, where I saw that it was green bean season. That changed my plans for the rest of the week a bit, for I try to freeze enough green beans to get us through the winter, but they are hard to find and have a very short harvesting season before they get too tough for little ones to eat.

I bought about nine pounds of beans, then spent Thursday afternoon blanching and freezing. That got me 11 servings. Saturday morning, it was back to the market, with Lev in the Beco on my back. He was the hit of the market. Babywearing is not very common here, and Lev tends to stare at people in such a way that they think he's miserable. So they say something, like, "Little boy, you're uncomfortable and hot on your momma's back, aren't you?" Then he breaks out his thousand-watt smile and starts cooing back at them. They always walk away charmed.

We lugged about 12 pounds of green, yellow and purple beans home, then I spent a good chunk of afternoon processing about half of them. I can only put in about two hours at a time, because I run out of ice for the cold-water bath that they need. You cannot buy ice here, and our two little ice-cube trays can only make so much. I've taken to freezing water in small loaf pans and muffin tins, but our freezer can only hold so much. So, two hours at a time it is.

Wow, that was a lot of writing about beans. And that kind of sums up the week. Are you sure you don't just want to look at Eric's foot stuck in the door? That might be more exciting.