Kiev Trip (Part 3) and Other Stuff -- Day 773

Well, I have been a bit slow with the entries lately as I have been working on a website about Ukraine, which has taken up a lot of my time.

So back to Keiv. Towards the end of our stay, we found what can only be described as park heaven. Anna calls it train park because it had a big motorized train that you can ride in. And of course we had to take a ride too. Also, the playground equipment was fabulous. It had all of Anna's favorites: swings, teeter-totters, and merry-go-rounds and much more -- plus it wasn't sandy. Unfortunately, we didn't find it until the second to last day there. Another problem was that the park was about twice the elevation than other parks, so Daddy had to work a lot harder to get there.

When I first was trying to find it, I saw a set of stairs -- probably over 100 steps. So of course, I pick up Anna in her stroller and start walking up. When I reached the top my legs were wobbling and at muscle failure. Of course, I had gone up the wrong way and had to go all the way down again. Luckily I found a road so I didn't have to carry Anna down the steps.

So at the bottom I realize I now have to climb an equally high hill -- again -- to get to the park. By the time I got to the top I was bathed in sweat and huffing a mighty wind. The good news was that the park was woth it. I could only compare it to the grand parks of Paris or Vienna. I think we will spend a lot of time there when we go back to Ukraine.

The next day we went home and got on the plane; however, Anna wasn't really in the mood to fly. Great news. When we transferred in Frankfurt, Anna's stroller had somehow broke, so we had to carry her or let her run around. About an hour before our plane took off to DC, Anna just melted down and we were in an enormous line for security because of that terrorist liquid thing.

Finally, we just couldn't do anything more so Anna just cried. But let me tell you a secret about long lines. Crying babies get you to the front pronto. And it just so happened that we all had separate seats on the flight, so after some last-minute reassignments we got the last set of seats together. If we had waited in the line, we would have been split up on the flight back and had to trade around. I'll have to keep the crying baby trick in mind the next time we fly.

On our final leg back, Anna was good until she had to go to sleep. She stretched things out and stayed up for about three hours past her normal bedtime. Then she just melted down again for about 45 minutes. Eventually, we just gave her a lollipop and let her lie down on the floor.

We actually had to teach her to lick a lollipop since she had never had one before. A pretty good run of candy denial if you ask me. She was quite skeptical for about the first ten minutes, but one lick changed her tune. Of course, she never quite grasped the idea that she could manoeuver the lollipop with her hands. Instead she held the lollipop stationary while she wildly wiggled her tear-soaked head with her tougue hanging out. The sucker got in her hair, her eye-brows, on her chin, arms, hands and on her Nya-Nya. Eventually, she fell asleep clutching it in her hand, and she didn't move until we landed some four and half hours later.

So that was it. The trip was a bit on the long side, but Anna loved it and still talks about Kiev. I wonder how much she will remember when we go back.

As for other news, Anna started day school two days a week. The first day she liked it so much that she cried the whole way home because big bad Daddy took her away from her new toys and friends. The day school is a cooperative where we pay a monthly fee and I have to volunteer one day a month to be a parent helper.

My first volunteer day was about a week and half ago, and I can only describe it as one of the most miserable experiences in my life. Fourteen toddlers in a new program that hadn't worked out the bugs was not what I expected. Those four and half hours were more like forty hours of work. Half of the kids just cried for their Mommies or Daddies, while the other ones were just up to toddler no-good.

A little boy bit a girl. At one point the two oldest boys were literally jousting in the play area outside with a large stick and garden trellis. And in the sand box, Anna was shovelling sand into another kid's hair. There was no order. Everyone was running around. It was toddler anarchy.

When I got home I seriously thought about whether this program was worth it, but luckily by the next time things had gotten significantly better. In the future, I am sure it will continue to become more orderly.

One of the benefits is that Anna now comes home with art work. Anna told us after her first day that she wanted to go back to pre-school and make artwork to hang on the fridge. Anna is always talking about artwork now.

Anna is also again getting more interested in potty training. The other day she said she had to go, so I brought her toilet downstairs and she just sat on it. False alarm I guess. So I gave her something to read, a bag of cheerios, and some water to see if that would 'help' out. Anna just sat there getting off and on at various times waiting for the wee-wee to come. Every five minutes she would say, "I think I hear something," then she would jump off and say, "I did it. I went potty." Of course, nothing was in there.

I just kept telling her to keep drinking and sitting. Eventually, when crying wolf had clearly been established, she told me that she did it, so I walked over and sure enough she had gone in the toilet. I then went on the internet and scheduled a call from Elmo to congratulate her on working so hard to go to the bathroom.

You should have seen her eyes when Elmo called. She was so happy, but then she asked (15 minutes after she had just gone potty) to take off her diaper so she could go potty again and get another call from Elmo. (It is $2.39 per call by the way.) I told her that Elmo might call after she goes number two, so she just blurts out, "I'll sit on my potty and wait for poo-poo." That she did for about another 30 minutes. Nothing came of course.

Well, on that note, I will have to end this entry. Note: I will probably take this last picture off after a short display period.