Not all the time, not completely, but every now again, the comment "I want to go home to 57 Penridge Road*" is uttered.
I can't say I blame him for it. Whilst we are fortunate enough to be living in one of the least urbanised areas of Moscow, surrounded by trees and open space, the extreme weather at the moment is keeping us penned inside for most of the time. Hell, it's even too cold to take him on the walk to Boy #1's school and back; this morning the outside temperature was -23degC.
Obviously the answer is to get him into a nursery, which we're trying to do, but sadly that isn't as simple as it might be unless we want to parachute him into a Russian-only one, and whilst I'm all for immersing our sons in the local culture the thought of Boy #2 sitting there and understanding nothing, not being able to communicate, and being the oddity is just too much. He's only 4, for pete's sake.
So we're hunting frantically for somewhere for him to go, but in the meantime it's just the two of us during school hours. He's handling it very well, I have to say. The fact that we haven't had more fallings out than we have, bearing in mind our current lack of a tv, limited supply of dvd's to play on my laptop (3, at the last count - I know, not good planning on our part), and still-small circle of friends for him to play with (all of whom are already in nursery so not available most of the time), is testament to his good-natured stoic character I think.
Right now he's lying on the sofa, chilling, and no doubt bored stupid. There's only so much Poisson Rouge a chap can take, apparantly. (Thanks Emily from Maternal Tales for that tip, by the way!) And only so much playing at airports that a mum can take, I'm afraid.
As for going outside, and playing in the snow and bright sunshine? Well,to give you some idea of what - 23degC actually means, the photo below is of the inside of our front door lock.
The white stuff?
Ice.
On the inside of the door.
We're definitely not in South Kensington anymore, Toto...
* - not our real address, obviously.
