Nothin’

Last week Rachel had to use the potty during sacrament meeting, so I took her out and into the little bathroom in the hallway. The first thing she did was pull a chin-up on the sink so she could check out the soap.

“Nothin’ purple soap here!” she exclaimed, “Just ‘reen soap. I don’t like ‘reen soap.”

I told her how cool green soap was and after that failed I tried the mean-mom method and said that it didn’t matter if she didn’t like it because I wasn’t going to take her upstairs to use the purple soap.

Flashback Friday: There was a great big moose

Rachel and I were reading Colours the other day, a Canadian book showing colourful Canadian things, like a red Mountie jacket, for example. For the colour yellow, the author/illustrator, Marc Tetro, chose to draw a moose with yellow antlers, even though moose don’t really have yellow antlers. I guess he gets artistic license.

When I asked Rachel what the picture was she told me it was a deer. I told her that it wasn’t a deer—it was a moose. She asked me what a moose was, so I told her it was kind of a like a deer, only bigger, and its antlers were special because they were all filled in, like a spork instead of a fork. Then she asked me if I had ever seen a moose.

I was able to tell her that I have, and on more than one occasion.

In which Rachel invents the sleepover

Yesterday Rachel found a toy that has been buried at the bottom of the toy box for a while. It’s technically a door-hanging, I think, and she got it from Grandma—it’s a little pink pillow with a fluffy handle that came with the movie Sleeping Beauty. Rachel uses it as both a pillow and a purse. It’s precious to her.

When she found it she started making big plans for a celebratory event.

“I want to go to have a party!” she declared, “Everyone eats cake, plays with my toys, goes outsides, and brings a pillow!”

“What are you going to do with the pillows?” I asked.

“Sleep with them! It’s a sleep-party. We all bring pillows and sleep!”

Not good for bearing sons

Our landlord was supposed to come by last night at around 8:00 PM  to fix our satellite, again. We haven’t had television for a while now; I can’t remember when it stopped working, exactly, and we haven’t bothered to get it fixed because we don’t watch all that much TV.

Still, it’s nice to have it working, so we mentioned it to Hatim when he stopped by the night before to pick up our rent money.

He was surprised that Rachel was still awake; she’s usually already in bed when he stops by. That’s because he has this habit of stopping by really, really late at night.

Snippets from this week’s FHE

It was my turn for the Family Home Evening lesson last night. I pulled out the nursery manual and prepared to teach the lesson on eternal families.

We began by describing the temple and what makes it beautiful. Rachel pointed out the flowers and then to angel Moroni.

“Jesus died on temple,” she said.

“Jesus died on the cross,” I told her, “That’s angel Moroni.”

“Angel Moroni like cross,” she said.

After failing to understand what she was trying to say we decided to move on. I pointed out the spire.

“Ooh, spire!” she said, excited to have a new word. “Spire is tiny like pyramid,” she added, drawing a big triangle with her arms.

Settling of contents

A pair of green shorts has been at the bottom of our laundry basket for a few weeks now. Somehow they just never made it into the washing machine—it was always too full by the time I got to the bottom. The shorts belong to Andrew and he decided that since I seemed incapable of washing them, he’d do it. So he put a load of darks in.

All the more power to him.


We’re not very good at separating our clothes into loads here. Our washing machine cycle takes upwards of three hours to run, so I’m not keen on separating darks, colors, and whites. We just do two loads a week—darks and lights. (Probably we will end up doing more once we’re into cloth diapers full time).
This is where we run into issues.

Quarter of a Century

Andrew’s so old that we didn’t even have enough candles for his cake this year! Most boxes come with 24 and this year Andrew reached the big 2-5. He’s so old.

I had plans of pampering him for his birthday, but I’m coming down with a cold and woke up feeling awful yesterday so instead of me pampering him, he ended up putting me back to bed and tidying up the house before the Home Teachers came over. Then he played with Rachel and did homework all day while I pretended to be alive.

Gee, Happy Birthday, Andrew!

Why I nap

Last night I had trouble falling asleep because my list of things I had to worry about before I let myself fall asleep has become far too long. We just realized that this baby is coming in like five weeks.

We have to figure out how to move another person into our home. Clean out a drawer or two, somewhere (?), to put all her hud, which is currently piled in her crib, which probably won’t work out too well once she’s here since she needs a place to sleep, even though most of her sleeping will likely be done in our bed because—let’s face it—I’m a little lazy, especially in the middle of the night, and don’t like getting out of bed to get the baby. And I like cuddling newborns.

I have to get a list of stuff that we need/want to Karen so that she can decide what she has room for in her suitcase (whatever doesn’t fit, Brother Tueller can bring for us). It’s hard to remember what I’ll need for such a little person. How many onesies and burp cloths did I go through per day with Rachel? Will I need more diapers?

Flashback Friday: Busing in Russia

The first few weeks of school in Russia, my host dad picked me up from the school to drive me home. If I wasn't teaching evening classes I'd meet Alosha after kindergarten in the afternoon and we'd wait together. If I had to teach evening classes Sasha would make a special trip out to pick me up, which was very nice of him.

My host family lived on the right bank of the Voronezh river in the northern outskirts of Voronezh on Ulitsa Morozova--a fitting name for a street in Russia, Frost Street. The school and all the other teachers lived on the left bank. I'm trying to remember the address of our school, but it's just not coming to me--Dimitrova was an oft used bus stop, but I think the one closest to the school, at least for me, was Ostuzheva, although I could be way off. I'm pretty sure the school was somewhere between Ostuzheva and Dimitrova. Either way, everyone else seemed to live within walking distance or a couple of bus stops away from the school.

I, on the other hand, lived a dedicated bus ride away. If I missed the bus there wasn't any other option (like walking) to get home.

Book Suqs and Ramadan Lamps

We ventured out to the Ataba metro station today to look for some books that might be applicable to Andrew’s research. One of his professors had told him that there was a book store there called Ezbekiyya; little did we know, we’d walk up the stairs from the metro and immediately stumble into a  whole book suq, disheveled enough to be considered a librarian’s worst nightmare (or paradise, considering how many treasures must be hidden there).

Magazines from 1987 alongside magazines from 2009. Psychology books with general fiction. French, English, Swedish, whatever…