Catching up

Since my last post:

1) Dietrich went back to preschool/kindergarten. Since he's one of the youngest in his class and misses the start date for school next year, he'll have a normal preschool year this year, and next year will be his school-preparation year. We think. There are many questions to be answered in the coming months.


Alas, the camera was out of batteries when we dropped him off at school carrying flowers for his teachers. This is upon pickup.

2) I got mastitis. Twice! It was awful, but it could have been more awful. Thankfully, an American lactation consultant whom I know and admire currently lives in Kyiv, and with her help, I feel like I got the best of both worlds (Slavic and American) in how we approached healing the source of Lev's sustenance.

3) I turned 35, and felt extra celebrated and loved, especially when Eric arranged babysitters and took me out to our favorite restaurant for late lunch.

Pretty flowers for little ol' me.

4) Eric had his first Area Council meeting as area director. It started at 2 p.m. and lasted until 1 a.m., with only a one-hour break for dinner. Oh my.

5) The coffee shop in the new grocery store in our region named a drink after me. It's a mint mocha -- not a common flavor combination in Ukraine. Evidently, people are trying it because, weeks later, it's still on the specialty drink chalkboard (and they've corrected the spelling).

Yes, I was embarrassed to take this photo.

6) Dietrich turned 5!


That, my friends, is a chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cake with a cookie dough crust. You know how there's never enough cookie dough in store-bought ice cream? One way to solve this problem is to move to a country that doesn't have cookie dough ice cream. When you make it yourself, you control the proportions!


For Dietrich's birthday, my mom sent books to read to him over Skype (she has a copy, he has a copy), so his birthday ended with Baba storytime.

7) We all got a killer cold that lasted two weeks for each of us, except for Dietrich. Though he got over it more quickly, his sneezing and fever struck on the very Saturday that we'd planned to have his fifth birthday party. He must have felt pretty bad, poor thing, but he handled the cancellation of said party like a champ. And, amazingly, everyone was able to gather a week and a day later for the rescheduled party.

And now for many, many photos from the party.


First we gathered at our apartment for pizza. Eleven adults, nine kids, one crowded living room! Also, I need more forks.


Then we set off on a stroll to an undisclosed location.


We stopped to climb trees along the way.


Our destination!


The kids bounced until they were red in the face.


Even Lev got in on the action.


On the walk home, the kids hunted for treasure, hidden in yellow boxes all along the path.


The "treasures" were some of Dietrich's favorite things. This box, for instance, was full of cereal.


See that biker? He almost stole our box! (It was hidden in the phone booth.)


Not sure what Mr. Biker Man would have done with all these dinosaurs.


My favorite of the hiding spots.


Then back to our house for cake. Ten points to the non-Russian-speaker who spots the typo in the candles.


Dietrich didn't like the cake. But his brother did.


And so did his new stegosaurus. (Dietrich took this photo.)


Then we opened presents ...




... and got busy playing with them.


This was our major decoration for the party: 122 photos of Dietrich from the past year. Photos of him in trees. Photos of him with friends. Photos of him with his baby brother. Photos of him with his toddling brother. Photos of him at Disneyland. Photos of him at sadik. Photos of him in the snow. Photos of him at the beach. Photos of him with his grandparents, his aunt, his uncle, his Baby Betty. I love it too much. I can't take it down.

Ever since the party, I've been basking in the glow of thankfulness. I know, I know it's just a kid's birthday party. But there was no guarantee when we decided to raise Dietrich here that he would have playmates. In fact, I remember in our early years deciding that close relationships were something I'd probably have to give up during our time in Ukraine. But look! God has, in His goodness, seen fit to put these dear people -- and their wonderful kids -- in our lives.

Lots and lots of days in Kyiv

Evidently, Seven Days in Kyiv is on a break while its author struggles to keep her head above water. Lots of stuff going on around here. Good stuff! Back-to-school duties to complete, a big 5-year-old's birthday party to plan, new friends to connect with.

Rest assured, much vegetable shopping-and-chopping also has been taking place. In lieu of a real post, here are some of the things we've spotted on our many, many walks to the market.


Elderly men often gather in this cozily cobbled-together spot, right outside Dietrich's preschool, for a game of cards.


Anyone in the market for a wedding dress?


When flowers and trees join forces, nothing can stop them!


Six years ago, when construction started on this building, Eric and I used to joke that it could be our future home. Construction has stalled to the point that I doubt it ever will be anyone's home.


Ukrainians don't care for tossing out bread, so we see lucky birds pecking away at a stale hunk every day.


Pretty flowers in clever containers.


See the balcony with all the pots hanging off of it? Those are tomato and pepper plants. I do declare that this apartment owner deserves the award for best use of a balcony.

Seven Days in Kyiv: August 14-20

Five significant happenings this week:

1. I finished freezing 64 cups of tomato sauce. Only bell peppers, salsa and spinach remain on my to-freeze list.

2. Eric and I took Dietrich out on a special excursion to get him a new passport. When you're under 16, your U.S. passport is valid for five years, and Dietrich got his just after he was born.



Clearly, it was time for a new picture. Thankfully, it was much easier to photograph Dietrich this time around. (In the photo above, we had to wake him up, hold his head at just the right angle, and get him to keep his eyes open -- not an easy task with a 2-week-old.) As is typical here, Dietrich started out not smiling at all. But that made him look angry, so the guy at the photo place encouraged him to smile. He turned up the corners of his mouth just the wee-est bit, resulting in this sweet shot:



The easiest way to apply overseas is for both mom and dad to be present, with supporting documents that prove their parentage. Everything went quite smoothly at the consulate, and the passport was ready in just two working days. However, the consulate is more than an hour away, so I have yet to go pick it up.

3. Lev learned to climb.

Lev climbs from josie oldenburg on Vimeo.

Don't let this video fool you. He's on top of everything - the bed, the sofa, the windowsills. One day, I found him perched on our biggest suitcase, his little body pressed up against the balcony window. It's chained shut, but still! My heart!



And he's discovered that certain items (overturned cooking pots, the laundry bin) can give him a little boost. He's long loved to climb onto the bathroom stool, but he just realized that he can pick that stool up and move it wherever he wants. There are no more safe spaces.

4. We did have another Schlaack attack. Now our cabinet doors close. The floor, however, is a lost cause and we will need to have a specialist look at it once the weather turns cooler.

5. Casey came back! And this year, we're hoping that she will split her time between playing with just Dietrich and playing with just Lev. So far, Lev has not agreed to this plan.

And here's a little something for the grandparents ...

Lev wakes up from josie oldenburg on Vimeo.

Seven (times two) Days in Kyiv: July 31-August 13

After all the travel and what-not, we've finally settled into a lovely summer routine. So lovely and so routine that it feels rather silly to write about.

While Dietrich is at sadik on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, I go to the market, cook, clean, and snuggle or struggle with Lev.

Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I go to the seminary to do my SEND work.

I get Dietrich at 12:30, and we stop to swing and to climb an apricot tree on the way home. We're home at 1. By 1:15, Dietrich is surfing Sesame Street and I'm feeding Lev. Lev inevitably konks out, so Dietrich and I read stories and do school and play a bit while he naps.

Lev's up at 3. We all have snack (mine usually includes caffeine), then we go outside from 4 to 5:30 or 6, depending on how much dinner I still have to prepare.

After dinner, it's bath, cleanup, stories, chocolate milk, bedtime.

I feel these sweet summer days slipping away, and I imagine that the new school year or Lev or both will force a new schedule. So I'm trying to soak it all in.

Of course, there already have been some notable departures from the schedule. For instance, we celebrated Eric's birthday.


Dietrich made a birthday banner ...


.. Lev "helped" put it together ...


... there were presents, but most of them came from Amazon and still haven't arrived, so there was a birthday crossword puzzle ..


... and ice-cream cake (the birthday boy wanted sprinkles on the pistachio half).

Dietrich was in charge of taking pictures of me bringing in the cake. This is what we got:




We also spent one day having a Schlaack attack. John Schlaack is here with SEND, and he has "golden hands," as they say in Russian. He can fix anything. So, we save up little household projects, then ask him to come over. He put in a faucet in the bathroom that Dietrich can actually turn on. (Our old faucet took all of my strength to turn on, and often even I couldn't turn it all the way off.) He put up some shelves that had fallen down. He fixed a stuck drawer under Dietrich's bed. And, just when he thought he was leaving, I realized that we had a leak under our sink. I'd wiped up a puddle of water earlier in the day, and I thought I'd heard a drip a few days earlier. The leak dripped right into the one-liter jar we used when cleaning our fish's bowl, but just as John was putting his shoes on, I opened up that cupboard and found the jar overflowing.

In other late-summer news ...

I finished the printed version of the Harvest Heartbeat! Love to cross that off the list, though I still have the e-mail version to work on.


The big pots are out for water-boiling purposes, because we're enduring our two-week hot-water shutoff. We had a one-week shutoff earlier in the summer, and we were impressed, thinking that the government had managed to cut the time needed to work on the pipes in half. Yep. We were wrong.

Lev loves him a stroll. When his nanya is late to take him out, he plops himself down in front of the door and starts waving bye-bye. So, as the harvest season gets into full swing, I've taken the liberty of almost always walking to the farther-away-but-cheaper market, which is right next to a train line.

I hardly ever make it all the way to the market. At this time of year, people stagger through the train station, weighed down by bags of produce from their gardens. They haul the bags across the street and open them up along the edge of the sidewalk. Some mornings, such vendors line four blocks and snake through the nearby park. Since they aren't paying for stalls in the market, their wares are cheaper -- but what I love is the element of surprise. You can always find the staples at the actual market, but on the street you just might find the last of the strawberries. Or purple potatoes. Or homegrown peaches.

Speaking of peaches, I tried my hand at canning jam. And then I did it again. And again. And again. It's my new addiction. There's a jar of strawberry jam sitting in the fridge, waiting for tomorrow night's dinner. It's in the fridge because I've run out of preserving jars. I think we can manage to eat it right up.


This summer has been crazy-wet. We just heard that July's rainfall was equal to Ukraine's average annual rainfall. And August has been even rainier. Eric loves it.

Our floors, on the other hand, evidently hate the humidity. They are warping up into inch-tall hills until someone accidentally steps on them (once me, once Lev) and pops a plank right out. So now, to keep little fingers from pick, pick, picking at the concrete flakes under the wood, the kitchen floor looks like this:



And in the background, you can see where Lev ripped off the wallpaper. Classy! Looks like we need us another Schlaack attack.

Anyhow, we're taking credit for the cool weather, because (at our landlord's insistence) we installed air conditioning this summer. We've used it twice. Maybe next year? In any case, I will leave you with a look at the drill they used to connect the outside unit with the inside unit.



Impressive, no?

Our landlord

You already know that I love our apartment. I also appreciate our landlord, Sasha. He is a fair landlord, and a generous man.

He and his wife run a foster home for Ukrainian kids. In many ways, their ministry is closer to adoption. This is a fairly uncommon ministry in the Ukrainian evangelical church, though many (SEND and others) are hoping to change that.

Sasha, one of the kids and the British ministry with which they partner recently were featured on a British news show. So, here's your chance to meet our landlord!

Seven Days in Kyiv: July 24-30

Ah, baseball. Most of the time, we miss it so. We check the scores and occasionally when we wake up early, we catch the last few innings of the game. But 10 or so times a summer, the Angels play East Coast day games. A 1 p.m. East Coast game is an 8 p.m. Ukraine game. This week, there were three such games! So, while I washed the dishes or made granola, I listened to live baseball. And loved it.

Most of my week was dedicated to ordinary homemaking, wiping Lev's drippy nose, going to a birthday party, going to a waffle party and working on Harvest Heartbeat. I added a morning of work, which threw me entirely off my schedule. But it had to be done, because for this issue, I was asked to write an article about the Eurasia Family Conference we went to in June, on top of my normal editing and design work.

I was asked to write the article because, on our last day in Germany, I mentioned that it was my favorite SEND conference in my eight years with the organization. But, in retrospect, I probably should have declined. As I sat down to start writing, I realized that my reasons for enjoying the conference were pretty personal and not good fodder for a general mission newsletter.

I came back from America pretty run down from having all that fun, and not ready to tackle the mundane inconveniences of life yet. Germany gave me a buffer.

At past conferences, I’d felt rather alone. Missions culture was still rather new to me. Sometimes people would say things that left me feeling judged. I didn’t feel like I fit in. I sometimes still feel this way, but I’m realizing that often it’s either a generational issue or a because-I'm-from-California issue, so I try not to let it upset me.

When we were at this same conference four years ago, Dietrich was 10 months old. He wouldn’t stay with the childcare workers for more than a few minutes. But task-oriented me felt like it was my job to participate in all the sessions, so I’d stand in the back of the room, trying my hardest to keep Dietrich calm. He was miserable. I was miserable. It was miserable.

I didn’t really want to go back.

But, in the intervening years, I’ve gained a certain confidence as a mother, and I’ve (with great difficulty) learned to (sometimes) abandon my task-oriented ways for the sake of my kids. Also, I’ve realized that SEND values families and that no one will be upset (or even notice) if a parent needs to duck out to care for his or her kiddo.

So, when Lev wouldn’t stay with the childcare workers, we’d go for a walk. When he wouldn’t fall asleep in a new place, we’d go for a walk. And those walks, through breathtakingly beautiful countryside, ended up being my very favorite part of conference.




"Mama, I picked you a flower!"


This is a bit hard to see, but the signs indicating a walking path included an icon of a woman walking hand-in-hand with a child.


My favorite wildflower. I picked fresh sprigs for our room every day, and pressed some in my Bible to take home.

I also appreciated the way the German workers treated our kids. Sometimes missionary kids are expected to behave like little adults. Sometimes even their mama expects them to behave like little adults, even though she knows that they are 4 and 1 and therefore should act like they are 4 and 1.

There were no such expectations at this conference. Our kids were allowed to be kids. For example, one time the German lady running the conference said, “We know if kids go through the buffet line alone, they will see something that looks interesting, grab it, realize they don’t care for it and put it back. So, accompany your kids through the line, let them tell you what they want, but you pick it out.”

Dietrich experienced so many fun things at in Germany. He and his buddy Joy sang in front of 150 supportive people, and not one person commented on his American accent. (Full disclosure: While I love me a Fabulous Bentley Brothers song as much as the next guy, I do not know all the kings of Judah.)

All the kings of Judah from josie oldenburg on Vimeo.

He rode a kid-size Ferris wheel. (Interesting cultural moment: Parents were responsible for running the ride. Of course, we assumed the man standing at the controls was a worker, not a mere dad, and were pretty concerned when he just walked away.)

He bounced on trampolines and slid down fire poles. He jumped off the high dive.


He fell in the sand after jumping off the high dive.

He got to act like a kid. (I feel like there's a "he got to act like a kid" theme to my posts this summer. My city-dwelling self seems to be clashing with my childhood-growing-up-on-the-farm self.)

However, I doubt Harvest Heartbeat readers are very interested in my personal growth as a mother or in how much my eldest enjoyed German quality as it pertains to playgrounds and pools. So I put on my reporter hat, did a couple of "interviews" via e-mail, and came up with this:

Once upon a time, a young mom set off on a stroll along a path bordered by wildflowers. The trail turned to follow a meandering stream. A bright blue dragonfly joined the stroll. The friendly insect eventually darted away, but by then, a herd of fluffy, white sheep grazed nearby. Naturally, the path ended at a castle surrounded by a moat.

And, as if that weren’t fairy-tale enough, the cranky 1-year-old in the stroller the young mom was pushing fell asleep.

This was no storybook stroll. I actually experienced this enchanting walk during June’s Eurasia Family Conference. For many of SEND’s workers, the five days at Brake Bible School in Germany were just the break from reality we needed.

For SEND’s missionary kids, the storybook elements were quite literal. At one point, the younger children dressed up as knights and princesses and went on a treasure hunt through the aforementioned castle.

With more than 150 people at the conference, different people came with various needs. One worker in Kazakhstan appreciated how the schedule allowed for relationship building.

“This conference, there was a lot of time planned in the schedule for connecting with people,” she said. “I enjoyed the downtime to be able to have a serious conversation with a friend, or just enjoy a time of hanging out together. One of the older women took it upon herself to listen to my story, encourage me in my ministry, share about her own struggles and then pray a blessing over me. This was by far the highlight of my time.”

Others came seeking a respite. “We love this place where God has called us and truly love the people,” one Central Asia worker said. “But we had been in a valley in terms of clashing with the culture and language, and this time recharged us.  We came back feeling energized to continue on through a busy summer and are still feeling the effects of that time.”

For many people, the morning sessions of singing, teaching and testimonies (all in English) proved the highlight. Longtime SEND missionary Robin Pocklington brought us fresh messages out of Paul’s ancient communication with the church in Corinth. On several occasions, we also heard first-hand from International Director Warren Janzen.

And we got to listen to several chapters of the story God is writing in the former Soviet Union. One full day was dedicated to reports from each of SEND Eurasia’s fields — hours spent reflecting on how God is at work, praising Him for that work and lifting each other up in prayer.

“The worship time was really refreshing, positive and encouraging,” Ukraine missionary Jerry Benge said. “And the teaching and reports of what God is doing throughout Eurasia lifted our hearts.”