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.”

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.