The price of everything...

We're trying to teach the Boys the value of money. I've had enough of asking them to be careful with things and being told "You can buy a new one, Mama!" as they pick the dropped digital camera or similar up off the floor. Step One in our campaign involves the introduction of Pocket Money. We've tried this before and simply forgotten to hand over the cash each weekend, so in an effort to remind all of us about this, I've written out a list of tasks they have to complete - in the main - each day before they qualify for their 100R a week. It's not a long list that I've stuck on the fridge - it includes making their beds, and laying and clearing away the breakfast table - but it's a start and I can add to it as we go on (they'll be cooking dinner and washing the car before they know it, bwa ha ha...).

100R works out at around £2.20. It should probably be around 50R, but a 100R note is the only denomination we can be sure to have handy without lengthy negotiations over splitting notes between them, and subsequent wars over who gets to 'look after it' without charging their brother interest for holding onto his hard-earned cash.

This being Russia, of course, the opportunities to spend their pocket money on a weekly basis are quite low; 100R here will buy you a couple of litres of milk (not high on their list of priorities, funnily enough), or a big handful of sweeties (not high on mine), but not much else as the comics they might buy back home are all in Russian, and the toys etc all kick in somewhere around the 200R mark.

So my sons are beginning to understand the value of saving their earnings until they have enough to buy their hearts' desires. This morning, for example, at the supermarket they both decided what they wanted to buy - and were both around 9 weeks pocket money short. I explained this to them and they got the concept, lowering their expectations until they were only a couple of weeks shy of the toy they wanted. Great, I thought. They're learning. And I get two more weeks of table-laying and bed-making out of the deal too. Result!

Some children learn more quickly than others, of course. Which I realised after we got back here and I overheard Boy #2 telling a friend who had dropped by;

"Yes, you can play with that. It'll cost you 200 roubles..."

The Gallery #17: Emotions

Week 17 of Tara's Gallery, and this week it's a double-header, also appearing on Sleep is For The Weak as part of Josie's Writing Workshop. The prompt is 'Emotions', and bound to throw up some humdingers of both photos and posts, I would imagine.

So what's my chosen emotion for today's piece?

Amazement.

Because sometimes I look at my life and I can't quite believe it's me that's living it. If someone a few years back had said that normal, staid, shy and probably a bit boring me would be living in Moscow, and what's more, had chosen to do so of my own free will? I would have told them straight; not a chance. I'd visited this country over the preceding 15 years, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it would be like. It's too cold, I would have said. It's too far away. It's too complicated, it's too Russian, I would have said. It's just too damn hard, I would have said.

But when the chance really came up, what did I actually say?

Yes.

Which is why, when I was sitting in traffic this afternoon and this view came into sight, I felt that I had to record the moment. Not a view a suburban Londoner who was never intending to live in Moscow would expect to see on her way home from the bank, is it?

It certainly fills me with amazement.

Note - look hard (with a magnifying glass) and between the two buildings you can see St Basil's Cathedral. Well, you can if you ignore the dirt on the windscreen of my car, that is... (And no. The car was not moving when I took this, officer. Chance would have been a fine thing...)

Cheeky...

Note to Self #544...

When Husband dresses the Boys in the morning, do remember to check that everything - clothes-wise - is present and correct.

Otherwise, when you are in a crowded playground with your younger son later in the day and he announces in the panicked tone he reserves for just such pronouncements "I need to GO TO THE TOILET!" and starts to pull his shorts down in readiness for his arrival at the loo, you - and the assembled mummies at pick-up time - might get rather more of an eyeful than you bargained for...

(This was inspired by Little Green Finger's post today. It's been a long first day of the second week of the school holidays - not that I'm counting or anything - and inspiration was running low, so thanks for reminding me about this one Dawn...)

British Mummy Blogger of the Week

I had a long waffle planned for tonight about rewriting history. But I'm afraid it's just too dam' hot here (a week of +30degC will do that to a person), and I'm dreaming of cold baths and sea breezes, (amazingly, not the alcoholic kind - it's too hot for any of that nonsense) so I'm just going to jump right into the point of this post.

This week's recommended reading, Jean of PlanetOutreach-ASD, writes of herself:

'I am an ordinary mum of 3 great kids, whose life became extraordinary when my youngest son was diagnosed with autism at the age of 3. '

She writes of her struggles with dealing with a world that treats people with disabilities with contempt alongside posts about maturity and grumpiness, and whilst - as ever - this a purely subjective recommendation, if you've enjoyed any of the blogs that I've pointed you to in the past, I defy you not to like Jean's writing.

That's it. No wittering today - I'm off to cool down. Where's that fan?

For the British Mummy Bloggers Ning, click here. (Note; we're called 'Mummy', but Dads can be members too...)

Dear Tooth Fairy

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I know you're really busy - zipping around the world collecting tiny teeth has to be a full time job, I appreciate that - but I have a couple of questions it would really help me out with if you have moment.

1. How do you manage to sneak in to swap the tooth (under the pillow), for the cash without being caught? I mean, I thought Father Christmas had it tough, but at least he only has to dump and run (if you'll pardon the pun), leaving the stocking or pillow case at the end of the bed. Of course, in our case the switch was not helped by the fact that just as I was about to reach under Boy #1's pillow, a particularly loud fire work went off close-by (these Russians don't do 'subtle' when it comes to celebrations, even mid-week), and woke him up. It's lucky that I habitually check on him before going to bed each night otherwise my son might have suspected something. As it is he just sat up in bed and said "What? Is she here?" and somehow I don't think he was referring to me...

2. What's the going rate for a tooth these days? We started Boy #1 off with 50R (about £1.20), but on doing a little market research, I find that some children in this area are receiving 100R a tooth and for their first, 1000R. A THOUSAND RUBLES? That's - well, that's - a LOT of money. (Give me a break, it's still early). Lucky it's the school holidays or I would have to keep Boy #1 in isolation for the next few weeks in case he found out that the tooth fairy in our house is on more of budget than the one who visits his friends...

3. What do you do with the evidence? Am I supposed to keep them? ALL? At the moment there is a tiny tooth scudding around on the mug shelf (out of Boy #1's sightline), and it seems callous to throw it away. Something tells me though that the charm will wear off by the time I reach Tooth #3 and #4. (To be honest, it's sort of worn off already... But then again, I didn't keep the baby books up to date either, so I guess that shouldn't be a surprise)

Anyway, I must go because it's half past ten in the morning during the summer vacation and today's first showing of Ice Age* has just finished, so I need to go and put on my Butlins Red Coat and become camp organiser for the next scheduled activity...

Yours faithfully,

Potty Mummy

* Before you judge me on the Ice Age thing, we had a hairdresser visit this morning** to give the Boys their summer clip and putting on the tv is the only way to end up with an even fringe...

** And before you judge me on the hairdresser visiting the house thing, it's cheaper than going to a salon out here (or at least, to one where they speak English), and since she's accustomed to cutting the hair of expat's children there's the added bonus that they don't end up with the ubiquitous Russian mullet haircut (long at the back, short at the front) that so many boys wear here...

I'll never make a personal shopper...

I should be trawling through my files for something to use for this week's Gallery over at Tara's, but this week's theme is 'Creatures' and for the life of me I can't think of any suitable photos to use for it.

I can think of one I could use; that of a toad squatting fatly brown underneath an upturned log on the minibeast safari we organised for my son's 4th birthday, but since it just looks like a toad-shaped piece of bark (which I guess is the point of camouflage), I hardly think it's worth it. And I can think of one that I would like to use; that of a rolling wave off Noosa beach in Queensland Australia that shows water so clear you can see the silver shapes of fish hanging suspended inside it, but sadly that's an impossibility. Whilst the image is burned clearly (and I hope, for perpetuity) into my mind's eye, I didn't have a camera in my hand at the time, so I can't share it with you, I'm afraid.

So no entry in Tara's Gallery for me today.

Instead, a conundrum (and no, it has nothing to do with helping me come up with a schedule for what on earth to do with the Boys during the school holidays).

This afternoon I met a friend of mine who is soon to travel to England for the first time. Having lived in the US all her life, and not having travelled that much outside it before she and her family were posted to Moscow, she's keen to make the most of her experiences as an expat. A part of this is her wish to take home a tangible souvenir from each of the countries that she visits whilst she's more European-based. For example, she's decided that when they finally leave Russia to go back home to the US, she will take with her a samovar. This summer she's also visiting Norway (a troll is on her shopping list), Scotland (bagpipes are a planned purchase), and Croatia (where she's hit a bit of road-block as it seems the only things invented there were the tie and ballpoint pens. Who knew?).

What, she asked me, should she buy whilst in the UK? Her initial idea was to buy a tea set, which of course I pooh-poohed because, well, it's such a cliche (unlike the bagpipes, troll and samovar, obviously), and of course there has to be something permanent and tangible that reminds one of England that is more interesting than that.

She was interested. "Really? What?"

"Um...."

There was a long pause whilst I realised that for me, most of the things that speak of England are not tangible. Crisp Autumn days, the long-ago sight of burning fields in August, the sound of cricket matches (I almost wrote 'the sound of leather on willow' but who knows what hits on google that would turn up?), soft West Country rain, thunder and lightning ice-cream, eton mess, church bells on a Wednesday evening, patch-work fields, Class (with a capital ''C'), picking blackberries with purple-stained fingers in prickly hedgerows, rubbing dock leaves on nettle stings, cornish pasties, cream teas, roast potatoes and yorkshire pudding, mass hysteria over Wimbledon, morris dancers, school fetes, country shows, pub lunches, cotswold stone walls, Brit pop, 80's synthesiser pop, the New Romantics, The Wombles, Paddington Bear, St John's Ambulance, the Brownies, Bonfire Night - well, the list is endless*. But not one of those things can you package up and take home with you to pull out and show to someone to say 'And of course we visited England too, and this is what we came home with...'

She got bored waiting for me - her quintessentially English friend - to come up with something, and said "Well I guess I do already have my Waterford stuff, of course."

I woke up from my reverie. "Waterford is in Ireland", I replied. "Definitely not in England. You'll have an entire nation upset if you make that mistake, I promise - and it won't be the English. No, there must be something else. Other than a tea-set, I mean."

................

I've said I'll get back to her. Any ideas?

*BTW - I have a list of these for London too, but as anyone who's lived there knows, London is not really England...

Close Shaves and school holidays - the Beginning...

We're three days into the Boys' summer holidays. I can see any Brits reading this throwing up their hands in horror. Summer holidays? ALREADY? Oh yes, dear reader, al-bloody-ready. The summer holidays at their school in Moscow last a little longer than those I was used to back in Blighty - like, from now until the end of August.

(Cue suitable pause for you to pick yourself up off the floor, open the bottle of sauvignon blanc and pass me a brim-filled glass...)

Actually, believe it or not, it could be worse. The Russian schools have been shut for two weeks already, and will remain so until the 1st September. No wonder vodka is so popular in this country...

Anyway, in those 3 days (because yes, I am counting Saturday and Sunday as days since it suits my purposes for this post), a couple of notable things have happened...

Our house has become Rampage Central for a number of kids in our compound. It seems that playing in our home - by far the smallest on the block, and probably the least well-equipped with electronic entertainment systems - is the new black. This had led me to the following discoveries:

1. We are running out biscuits.

2. We are running out of juice.

3. I am not in the least shy of being a school-marm type with children who are not blood relatives.

4. Seven and eight year old boys are perfectly capable, when being informed that 'in this house we have a 20 minute rule when you're playing with Boy #1's nintendo DS, and your 20 minutes are up' of picking it up, walking out of the door, and saying 'I'll just take it home with me, then...' (Needless to say, Elvis did not leave the building - hence the discovery of my school-marm potential).

What else have I discovered? That a trip to the car wash offers great entertainment opportunities for 6 and 4 year old boys. The key of course is to remain inside it for the maximum experience as the team there cover your car with soap and - crucially - to explain to your younger son not to open the door as they do so...

Oh, and that Boy #2 likes to wander. God help me. The 15 minutes spent fruitlessly combing the compound for him yesterday afternoon are not the favourite moments of my life to date. Of course, he turned up at home having somehow evaded all the searchers hunting for him (some of my lovely neighbours jumped on their bikes and helped us look), toddling straight up to bed and falling asleep. God knows how he managed that; I have images of him crawling commando-like through the undergrowth, maintaining radio silence and ignoring Husband's and my calls until he reached his objective. I know this is not what happened, obviously. He was on his scooter, for starters and it's not an off-road model, and there were no traces of camo-stick on his face when I found him...

Joking apart, this was not a funny experience. It will join a list of other not-funny close-shaves I've had with my sons, most of them still too jagged around the edges in my memory to want to see written down. As is this one, almost, so I'm going to stop writing now, push the thoughts of the unguarded building site at one end of our compound from my mind, and go upstairs to gaze on my beautiful boys and give thanks.