Spending the end of summer in Siberia

After my 30th birthday (an extensive account of which is still to make an appearance on this blog) Timmy, myself, my parents (who were a BIG surprise for my b'day), my brother Gleb and his g/f Nastya all together flew to Novosibirsk. Sadly Jack used up his leave on our Aus trip this year and couldn't come with us :( Timmy and I are here for 3 weeks until the 11th of Sept. The flight was just awesome and on it I realised that it was the first time I was on a plane with both my parents since our immigration to Australia in 1994! Only some 17 years ago!

Anyhoo... the flight was great. We ended up taking a "Child" taxi from the airport with a proper baby seat, which made me very happy and are all now completely relaxing. Mum and Dad are taking Tim for walks... we visit our wonderful relies, I'm eating Sushki (hard Russian round bread-like things) and reading 'Dracula'. What could be better?!

The first few days after we arrived I got reminded of the good old soviet days as there was no warm water. But Tim and I held out showering or bathing for three days and all was fine!

Two big events occurred on the weekend in Tim's life - 1) on the evening of 27th of August he took his very first three steps by himself, and 2) on the morning of 28th of August we discovered his next 8th tooth! He adjusted to the 5 hour time difference very very well and is his happy and babbly self.

As we took a bus on Sunday with Mum to go to the gallery I could add some of the amusing bus sayings to my collection:

"Ни одна зубная паста не сохранит ваших зубы так, как вовремя оплаченый проезд" (No toothpaste will save your teeth as well, as a timely paid bus fare)
"Крупные деньги не давать - сдачу не унесешь!" (Do not give large money notes - you won't be able to carry the change!)
"Заранее просим прощения за тряску, толчки и другие прелести езды по нашему городу" (We'd like to apologise in advance for bumps, shaking and other wonders of riding in our city)
"Хочешь жить? Не отвлекай водителя!" (Want to live? Don't disturb the driver!)

And a few I made while walking around:

"Russians don't drink!" (written with a mistake)

"The stars and Vladimir Putin against drugs! Boys! You don't need them!"

Social advertising - the bottle is hitch-hiking to the rubbish bin :)

Uncle is here

My brother Gleb and Tim's uncle is here with his girlfriend Nastya. Well right now they're in Prague but overall they're here (in Europe) for 3 weeks. Next Sunday Tim and I will be flying back to Novosibirsk with them. Here are some snaps...

Haircut

A few weeks back we gave Timmy a haircut that involved not just the fringe, but his whole head of hair. Even afterwards we still get people asking us if he's a girl or a boy... hmmm

immediately before


immediately after

Russian ideas on safety Nr 2

Tim and I will be flying to Novosibirsk at the end of August. While preparing for this trip it occurred to me that since my folks don't have a car it will be a problem to get home from the airport at their end. Normally we'd catch a cab. Those who've been to Russia will know that Russians are not big on seatbelts. Cars either don't have them (esp. old ones), drivers de-install them, or simply don't use them. Whenever we go in a car that actually has seatbelts and I put one on I get weird sidelooks from the driver.

So you can imagine what the situation is like with child car seats... We arrive in Novosibirsk at about 8pm so we could potentially take the bus, but on the way back our flight is at 6am and buses don't run at night. So I spoke to Dad and after being 1) laughed at that I worry about such things and then 2) being told that "oh - we'll just ask the taxi driver to be careful and Tim can safely just sit on your lap and it'll be fine" I convinced him that I will not be doing this and 3) Dad agreed to try and find something. My brother seems to have actually found a company that's called Child Taxi where you can hire a taxi with a child seat and a non-smoking(!) driver so we have to see if that might be an option. My brother also seems to be of an opinion that I am a silly western person who cares about such stupid things and apparently child seats are just propaganda of the car industry in order to make money. Ahhh conspiracy theories.

Thus, my family seems to think that I am a safety freak. They are not alone. When searching on the internet about this I came across forums where anybody who mentioned that child carseats are important got laughed at, sweared at and abused. These seats became law in Russia only relatively recently and from what I can tell the majority of people don't really follow it. The two main arguements going around against them are that 1) child car seats are the invention of the ГАИ (Russian Road Police who are notorious for their bribery) in order to scam money off the poor and innocent people, or (and this is the strongest and most popular arguement) 2) "we lived without these stupid things for so long and didn't have a worry and everything was fine and now suddenly we do - there must be something wrong with these stupid seats!".

*sigh* Yes I am a silly western person, yes I know that the risk of being in a car accident is minimal, yes it is an inconvenience, but to use the line out of my favourite movie "HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE CRAZY? AM I THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE RULES?". In the meantime Jack and I made a point of finding videos of various crash tests and I found some accident reports describing consequences of accidents where children were travelling on mother's lap. To summarise for those who might be wondering if child car seats are really there for a reason - yes, they are.

New Kita or Russian ideas on safety

Timmy started the new kindergarten on Monday. As is customary here I am going with him as part of the introductory period. Guess what I spent doing on "my" first two days there? Babyproofing! Timmy is the smallest child in the group, and even though the teachers knew that when they took him, somehow it didn't occur to them to sort through toys and put away anything that's too small (eg. Lego). What made me notice this was a 4 y.o. boy playing with figurines out of Kinder Surprise. When I pointed out to the teacher that Tim is _very_ likely to stick small stuff in his mouth at first I was told something along the lines of "Well, this is not a small babies group, so (to the effect of) you just have to live with it." Then it went something along the lines "Well, if he still (!) sticks stuff in his mouth, then we'll just be extra careful." Despite this wonderful reassurance I spent Monday moving small things onto higher shelves. Then on Tuesday I noticed that all the small toys again were pretty much on floor level. So we spoke again and I insisted that this is not safe and despite the teachers reassuring me that they will be looking at what Tim is doing 24/7 we came up with a compromise that the older kids won't have access to tiny toys while Tim is there, which will be 5 hours a day at most. I offered to sort through the various buckets of assorted toys myself and spent about 1 hour doing just that.

Other than that (!) I really do like this new Kita. All kids seem to really like both of the teachers and the teachers are also pretty affectionate to the kids and seem to do quite a few fun activities with them. Bleah... but seriously?! Need I rant more? I mean this is a f(&cking kindergarten for God's sake! It just _has_ to be f^&cking safe or am I on a different planet here?!?!?!?!?!?!?