Me in English

It’s a gloomy day today. And today is “Pokrov” (The holiday of the Intercession of the Mother of God). I intended to go to church but didn’t. We went to bed very late again yesterday.

Max has come to tune up our piano. He’s already been working for almost 4 hours.
He must finish soon as he’s leaving for Arzamas tonight.

These days I’ve been busy making up a wish list of toys for Glasha. I also ordered some Gymboree clothes for her in a LJ community (I participate in so-called cooperative purchases). Well, it’s squandering, of course, but there are so pretty dresses on their site that I couldn’t resist:-) I seem to have caught a disease called “virtual shopping for children”:-)

*****

9.00 p.m. now.

Max left. Serge came. Glasha’s sleeping.
I’m making a new experiment in the kitchen. It’s called “achma”. It’s a Georgian dish. I’ve never tried it yet, but it’s a sort of a layered cheese cake. I wonder what will come of it:-)

Well, yes. That's another try of mine to keep a journal in English....

When you don't write in a diary for some time, you don't know what to start with then. It seems to you that there's nothing to write about and there are too many things to write about at the same time. I feel a sort of tongue-tied (if I can say so in relation to writing:-)
So I think, I start with some primitive things. To warm up a little.

Today is Monday. It's driving to the end. It's a half past 7 p.m. Serge came from work and had supper. Glasha's playing by herself in the liviing room (Hah! Do we have a living room?). So I have some minutes to spare and can relax at last!
Today was a busy day although there was nothing but routine. We woke up late again. At 10.30:-( I really want to break somehow this state of affairs and start getting up earlier. But Glasha goes to sleep very late (after 1 a.m.) and then I have this most precious time of the day when she's finally asleep and I can have some time of peace and relaxation. So I linger with going to bed and surf online till 2.
And then again I can't drag myself from under the blanket at 8 or at least at 9! But everyday I hope that NEXT DAY I'll do it...

So in the morning I had no minute to spare as I had to make borsch and do my morning routine and feed Glasha with breakfast and then declutter the cabinet in the corridor for 15 minutes and then to vacuum and  mop the floors. And when I was finally through with all this stuff and prepared myself to go out, Glasha suddenly fell asleep. She dozed for 20 minutes sucking the bub and then woke up. And then we got dressed and FINALLY went out. It was 15.40. The weather was good. It cleared out but it was still chilly and windy. We went to the playground and played in the sandpit a little. I showed Glasha how to make sand pies. The sand was wet and Glasha's clothes and hands got really dirty. Then I swung her in a swing. She loves swinging! And then we made a circle around the park in the stroller and came home. At home we ate the soup and I was sure she would fall asleep after our walk. But she didn't! She's doing it now, I mean, dozing with the bub in her mouth again. And this means that she'll go to sleep late at night again. grrrr...

CHRIST IS RISEN!

I still can't get into the habit of writing here regularly.
So much to write about April...

Well, first of all, April is a month of birthdays. My Mom has 4 kids and 3 of them were born in April:-) Me and two my brothers.
So we've had a few parties recently:-) They were all quite modest, however.
On my birthday we had a small tea party. I got wonderful presents and the main was a laptop from my dearest hubby:-)
He's so kind and generous and is spoiling me:-) So now I have a personal computer which is totally mine and which I can take with me wherever I go:-))
I enjoy every second I use it:-)

We've finally had our new wardrobe assembled. We were waiting for so long! It's light almost white and beautiful and has several drawers so I hope our things will be in a better order now.
We moved back Glasha's bed (in which she doesn't sleep) and the chest of drawers and now there's much less space in our bedroom which is tiny as it is. But I like it how it all looks. Quite cosy. Only curtains are needed.

Glasha crawls! She can crawl the whole room and the corridor on her tummy and get the kitchen this way! She grasps and tastes everything she can reach. She opens all the doors and drawers. Her two favourites are cables and slippers. She also learnt to say 'ta' and 'da' and is charming now our ears by her babbling. It's such a fun! We can't stop laughing!

Lent is coming to an end. Well, unfortunately, I can't say I've spent it well as I should have, I haven't been a good faster this year. But I managed to commune on Palm Sunday (We call it Pussy-willow Sunday here in this country, btw). I didn't commune since last summer and it's toooo long.
Today I'm cooking a "kulich" (a traditional Easter cake). By myself for the first time! I've just put it into the oven and it smells AMAZING in the kitchen now! Will it taste amazing as well, I wonder?
This year we won't go to church for the night service. It's impossible with a baby as churches are overcrowded on Pasha but we'll go on Sunday morning.

I'm having a splitting headache right now. It's been aching since the afternoon.
We woke up early in the morning and went to the clinic to have a blood test.
Then Glasha refused to sleep. I tried to get her to go to sleep three times. The last one (at 6 p.m.) was successful but didn't last long. Some dogs in the yard began barking and woke her up.
So I didn't get my three usual hours of rest, and if I don't get them, I get pretty irritable by the evening. And yet this headache.... And Glasha keeps whining now and then. And I'm so tired of carrying her all day long. And Serge has had a hard day today so soon after he had supper he dozed off. So I'm alone again with no one to expect help from.
And I'm tired and sleepy and dissatisfied with myself again as I have failed to do all the things which I planned to do. And I say to myself again "OK, tomorrow will be a new day and I'll do it better and I'll be more productive". But tomorrow it will be all the same...

Today we've had our new wardrobe delivered. Well, actually it's not a wardrobe yet, but just 19 packages of boards! They took almost the whole free space in our bedroom. Now we are waiting for a furniture assembler to come and make all these boards a real wardrobe:-)

Our home is pretty a mess now because we had to move the chest of drawers into the corridor and to dissemble Glasha's bed. And there's also that huge box from our new 40" LCD TV filled with old video cassettes which takes up half a room and which Serge don't know what to do with.
And there are also Glasha's toys scattered all over the floor. And I like cleanness and order so this mess is getting on my nerves a little.

Glasha is learning to crawl on her tummy!! She can crawl up to the computer desk now and open the lowest drawer! And she also can reach the cables and outlets which is my new headache now.

We went out shopping today. I bought the first porridge for Glasha and some spinage for me but can't decide what to cook with it.

Serge went to the hospital today and got an appointment for the drainage on the first of April.
He seems to be afraid of this Gestapo (as I call it) procedure more than me!

Well...I'm dissatisfied with the way I live. I have so many plans, projects on the list but do very little. Mostly I sit online and read something. I know that I can't read the whole Internet but I go from one link to another and just can't stop!
I want to be more self-organized and active, to get up earlier, to do my workout regularly, to eat healthier food, to read more (books, not the Internet!), to use every spare minute to work at my textbook, to practice English more, to knit faster:-))

Wow, I haven't been writing anything here for almost a month!
Don't even know why. I've been really lazy recently...
There are a couple of things which have happened during this period of time.

First of all, my Granny died:-(( She was my great-grandmother and this January we celebrated her 90th birthday. She was very weak and the flu became the last straw.
These were really hard days for my Mom why was taking care of Granny and she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown as she couldn't stand the sight of a slowly dying person.
Now it's all over. I pray that Lord may have mercy on her and rest her soul!

On the day of the funerals we went to the graveyard and took Glasha with us.
Now that I have an Ergo baby carrier I'm more mobile. I can go wherever I want now - shopping, guests etc. It also allows me to vary our walking routes as I'm pretty sick and tired of walking the same routes for 7 months!! I almost don't get tired of carrying Glasha. She sits quietly, looks around or just sleeps. So it was really worth buying!

We've got a referral for a drainage of the lachrymal sacs...Ohh...

I'm watching Bleak House now. There are 15 episodes. Frankly speaking, I didn't expect a movie based on Dickens' novel to be so exciting:-) But it's really good.

I've started to knit a dress for Glasha. I'm looking forward to see it:-)

Well, well, well…let us see what has happened since my last entry here…

Glasha learnt to roll back-to-belly!! YES!!! It happened 11 days ago, the next day after she turned 6 months. I already began to worry that she couldn’t do it. I taught her, showed it to her by my own example, exercised with her a lot, begged her, but all was in vain until one beautiful day when she decided to make her Mom happy at last and did it!

But there is another problem which is troubling me – the eyes. Her darcryocistitis never ends. Yesterday we went to the oculist and she prescribed new drops, the fifth already, and if these don’t work, then she’ll give us a referral for a surgery. I don’t want a surgery!!! I fear a surgery!! I hoped to avoid it and I still do. But I’m also tired of washing out the pus out of her eyes each day. So if these drops and massaging don’t help, we’ll have to consent:-(

Yesterday was Serge’s birthday. He had said he didn’t want to celebrate it and had told me not to bother about it and not to cook anything special and so I didn’t. But then I realized how stupid of me it was to listen to him!! I should have cooked something unusual or prepared some surprise for him. He would have been glad because it would have been totally unexpected. But I didn’t have enough wit for it. What a fool I can be sometimes:-( I had a present for him, however, - “valenki”:-) He asked me to buy them as he thinks they are the best way to keep one’s feet warm, especially when you have a cold. And this is quite topical as he hasn’t felt well for the last two days. Mom and Misha have fallen ill with flu too, by the way. There is an outbreak of it in Moscow now:-(

It's almost 5 but it's still light outside. I was admiring the sky coloured in pinkish hues by the sunset and all of a sudden I felt that the winter is coming to an end and that the spring is already in the air despite the deep snowdrifts lying on the ground. I even didn't have to go out to feel it. It was all in the sky. This mere thought cheered me up at once. I'm looking forward to this spring...

These two days were good. Well, nothing special happened, neither did I do anything extraordinary, but generally I was more active and productive and wasn’t sitting online all the time. I think it’s due to my early rising. Yesterday Glasha suddenly woke up at 7 a.m. and then woke me at 8. So I had to get up and 15 minutes later I was thankful to Glasha for it as I had the whole day ahead of me. I believe I’m an early riser at heart as I really enjoy morning hours but unfortunately I cannot always overcome sleepiness. The pillow is soooo soft and the blanket is soooo warm in the morning:-)))) I want to get into the habit of getting up at 7 or even at 6.30 so that I could work at my textbook for one or two quiet hours while Glasha is still asleep.(Well, in fact, it’s premature to speak about “a textbook”, but anyway I need to find some time to see at least whether IT will become a textbook or not).

Today it was sunny! AT LAAAST! The sun was so bright and the sky was so blue that I would have committed a crime if I had stayed at home. So we took a walk along the river and I wished again I had taken some bread for the ducks. We walked for an hour and a half and then waited for Serge so that he would help me to lift the pram.

Today was My Cleaning (or Home blessing) Day and it took me three solid hours (instead of two) to tidy up the flat so now I’m pretty tired and I think I don’t need to do my workout today as I have had enough exercise:-)