The people that got us through

Today we have only had one major temper tantrum. Hey, this is good for a kid who is almost two and only been with a family for a week! The tantrum was a good one though. Pickle threw a toy across the room and was sternly told NO. He did not like this, thus pitching a fit.

I think we may have a winner on the sleep issues. Today we went with option A. We put him to bed as usual and checked on him repeatedly. After about an hour he started to rock. We let him do this and he didn’t really get that close to the edge of the bed. His rocking only lasted a minute or two and was not that violent. Rather it was gentle. Soon he fell back to sleep and slept for almost 30 minutes more. He woke up a very happy baby. Now we have a happy mommy.

He did have one tantrum after nap time, but it wasn’t terrible. So we went on an adventure. We rode the trolley bus into town and walked toward the river. The weather is gorgeous today! Not a cloud in the sky and about 72 degrees. We thought we might try to find the oldest Orthodox Church in Khabarovsk today. It is near the Intourist hotel and the Lenin Sports Complex. Of course if you know the lore of Khabarovsk you know that the tale goes it was built on the backs of 3 giant whales that came to rest on the shore. This means the 3 main roads run along the backs of the whales. Our apartment is on the top of one, downtown on top of another and the Intourist at the bottom past downtown. So we had to walk down a giant hill to get to the church. Down wasn’t the problem. It was the getting back that sucked. (I’ll get to that in a minute)

First we visited the sports complex. It is a huge park with a big soccer stadium that they turn into an outdoor hockey arena in the winter. It is right on the water. The church is located just outside the fence of the complex. It is the smallest of the 3 major Orthodox churches. It is constructed of brick with green steeples and gold domes. There is a beautiful little garden around the outside and the inside is quite quaint. The paintings on the inside are by far the most beautiful we have seen. I only wish you could take photos of the interior of these churches. I may have to scan a few photos out of a book I have and post them when we get home. We wandered around to the back of the church and found this mosaic in the wall.

It was amazing. I tried to find a cross to buy, but the churches all carry the same stuff. I have one from the blue church and one from the Gold church. I didn’t find one I really needed to have.

Our outing happened to be during snack time so I did like have done in the past and brought snack with me. This usually consists of Gerber banana puffs or Goldfish crackers. Today Pickle got the puffs and we thought we would try a very special treat, a Dum Dum sucker. The idea is this would be a good thing for him to suck on during take off and landing on the airplane. Giving a sucker to a two year old who has never had sugar is a very bad idea. At first this was the greatest thing our boy has ever tasted. He sucked that thing to the last. He had sticky everywhere. On his hands, face, and even his jacket. Then all was well. We continued our stroll down the walk. We enjoyed the sun, looked at the water, watched the boats. All was good!

We got to the point where you go up the stairs to town from the river and we took one look at the stairs and said, “who is going to carry the boy up?” Oh yeah… there are 222 of them (we counted last time). We saw the gold church and though that it didn’t look that far away. We could walk along the water, grab an ice cream, and stroll back to the apartment. Ok… let’s go back to that whale thing shall we? We had to walk up a giant hill to get to the church. We had already walked down one big one, around a sports complex, a church and the river. My feet were killing me.

Now let’s revisit the sucker incident. About half way back to the apartment Pickle started talking. Not so sure you could call it talking exactly. More like babbling and he couldn’t shut up. He said beep-beep for ever car that passed or that we passed. Other things thrown in there included la-la, ma-ma and hulla-bulla-bulla. This wasn’t our timid little quiet boy. He was yelling this stuff. The both of us were laughing hysterically. The Russians were looking at us like we were nuts! This all as a result of 2 very smart parents giving their child a very small sucker. Yeah, we’re awesome like that. In fact my son is still bouncing off the walls.

Pickle has also whipped out a new trick when playing with Wobbles. When she takes a toy away from him he rips it back out of her hand and yells, “YA.” We take this to mean MINE!!! Lovely. Mmmmm, baby brawls.

Well I am off to cook us some sort of dinner. We are sick of Pelmeni so we are doing hamburger and potatoes. CS asked if I could put pepper, garlic powder, and season salt on the hamburgers. He said then they would be gourmet!