Tough guy

Lev took a tumble in the play room at McDonald's a month or so ago. He and Dietrich were with a friend of ours. He would not calm down and there was a LOT of blood. (Head wounds, you know.) So the McDonald's workers called the ambulance while our friend called Eric.

On his way to McDonald's, Eric called me. All he could tell me was that Lev had fallen and hit his head, and an ambulance was on the way.

The next 15 minutes passed very, very slowly, as I waited for more details. I kept flashing to thoughts like: "What if they can see his brain?"

His brain was fine. The wound was deep, so they shaved off a little circle of hair and gave him one stitch. The stitch came out a week later, and now we're just waiting for the hair to grow back. 

Lev was a trooper. He willingly let the doctor examine his head the day after the accident. A week later, he sat quietly on my lap as a nurse held his head immobile and the doctor pulled out the stitch. He's a tough kid, and it all ended up being no big deal. But doesn't this look dramatic?

Happy holidays

This is the typical post-holiday scene here in Kyiv. This photo was taken January 24, and a similar pileup takes place every day for a week or so. Our tree was one of the first to hit the street.  

And then there's this.



I took this photo on March 2. As I was taking it, a man yelled out of his balcony, "What are you taking a picture of?"

"The trees," I said.

"Why?"

"Well, in America, we usually throw out our trees quickly after New Years. And today is March 2."

"This is normal."

What I said: "Yes, but to me, it's interesting."

What I wish I would have said: "It's better than normal. It's wonderful."

Because you have to love a country where it's totally permissible to keep your tree up through the start of Spring. Why not celebrate as long as possible? 

Sunday morning

We're giving Sunday morning church with both boys a go again. Once Lev dropped his morning nap, it became too difficult to keep his squirrely self seated, silently, so I've stayed home with the boys on Sunday mornings, while Eric goes to church. On Sunday evenings, we go to a different church that has a children's room, and Eric tends to the kids while I sit in on the service. But for the past two Sundays, we couldn't make it to Sunday night church, so we hauled everyone through the snow to morning service.

This week, the boys made it through about an hour, with barely any issues. They browsed Star Wars books. I fed them peanuts, one-by-one, for about 20 minutes. Dietrich and Eric played some tic-tac-toe.

The boys and I did decide to scooch out while the second sermon was starting, as they were starting to get antsy, but all-in-all, a success!

On stage at sadik

After working hard on his Ukrainian poem, Dietrich caught a cold on the day of this year's holiday show at sadik. You might recall that we missed last year's show after a chicken-pox quarantine led to it being rescheduled for a day when we were out of town. I, sadly, thought he'd better skip it again this year, and Dietrich was cool with that. Until I let him try on his costume.

All of a sudden, he had to be on stage.

So, I came up with a plan. We'd go, but we'd wait in the hallway until his part. He'd pop in, say his lines, do his dance, and we would head home. 

His teacher would not hear of it. After thanking us copiously for coming, she insisted that I "let the kid have his holiday." The coughing wouldn't bother a soul, she promised.

So, on with the show it was.

Dietrich was dressed as Buratino -- the Russian version of Pinocchio. To get him into character, we watched the movie one afternoon. Dietrich didn't like it. Good thing he liked the costume.

Since it was the kind of day when things didn't go as planned, I only managed to get about half of his poem on video. My favorite part is watching his classroom helper, Sveta, cheer him on in the background. She has such an encouraging spirit and a sense of humor about childhood foibles.


Buratino from josie oldenburg on Vimeo.

After the hour-long show, which started 90 minutes late, another hour was spent playing little games and waiting for Grandfather Frost to arrive.

Needless to say,  Dietrich was drained. He opted out of the group photo, stumbled home and practically fell asleep eating his celebratory pizza.

For the grandparents, here he is saying the whole poem at home, before the show sucked every last ounce of energy out of him.


MVI 7065 from josie oldenburg on Vimeo.

Translation:
Greetings, children --
girls and boys.
You've known me a long time.
You've seen me in the movies.

I have a lot of friends.
You know them, too.
Artemon, Pierrot, Malvina,
And my name? Buratino! 

Next year, it will be Lev's turn to put on a holiday show at sadik. Crazy. 

Scenes from the kitchen windowsill

p.s. Look who's wearing big boy underpants!
p.s.s. Merry Christmas!

What's really important

Lev got off to a slow start with speaking, which makes his every word all the more thrilling to my ears. He's surprisingly adept at noticing emotions and attitudes. It's rather humbling to have your 2-year-old comment on your "stinky at-ti-tude," but sometimes he's right. My attitude does stink.  And he says it so sweetly that the stink lessens.

This weekend, for the first time, he was able to tell us that he felt scared. And then Dietrich came over and kindly helped him through the scary situation. (It involved climbing over some mesh on a play structure.) I will hold on to that moment for years to come. 

But it's not all "let's talk about how we're feeling" all the time over here. We're passing along other important life lessons, too.

Lev knows Star Wars from josie oldenburg on Vimeo.

Brothers