Life is short - eat dessert first...

Recently, I was talking to a friend who mentioned that I could expect to see her dressing more smartly in the future; on packing for her summer holiday she had realised that she has some beautiful clothes in her wardrobe that never see the light of day because whenever she thinks about wearing them, she decides to keep them 'for best'.  All very well, we agreed - but what if the day when your 'best' clothes are appropriate never comes?  Who knows what's round the corner?  You could put on weight, so they never fit; you might lose all your clothes in freak accident; a moth infestation might make confetti of them.  So my friend has decided to forget waiting for the day when 'the best' is required, and to start wearing her nicer clothes more regularly.

This has struck a chord with me so I've been trying out this philosphy myself - not that there is anyone to see in the wasteland that is currently expat Moscow - and was very interested to read a piece that one of my favourite bloggers, Plan B, has written, asking for help in choosing what to wear for her husband's 40th birthday party.  The theme of the party is 'Favourite Things' and she has photographed herself in various outfits and is hoping for readers comments that may help her decide which one to choose.

The last outfit she shows us is her wedding dress.  She looks sensational in it.  It put me in mind of a friend in London who, a few years ago, wore her wedding dress to a big party she threw and also looked amazing, ten years or so after the big event.  Obviously I am crippled with envy that either of them can even do the zip up on their dresses.   That aside, however, the comment I left was long and rambling and read:

'I would say - wedding dress. Of course you may want to keep that mothballed for the girls to use in future years. Although, being realistic, what woman doesn't want her VERY OWN wedding dress (your girls may) and of course the whole wedding concept may be ridiculously outdated by then, and then if either of those things happened you may regret not having given it another outing when you had the chance, so actually, if you want to wear it, WEDDING DRESS! It looks sensational - why not?'


So that's it, ladies.  You can expect to see me smartening up my own act, leaving the battered bowling shoes at home, and dumping the spotted, faded t-shirts in favor of something a little more pleasing (to me, at least).

I have to say that I'm not sure I'll be wearing my own wedding dress to any parties any time soon (the ship for my own 40th birthday party sailed 5 years ago and sadly fitting into it at that point was just a distant dream),  but the embellished tunics and flirty dresses I've been putting to one side for that special occasion will be brushed off in recognition of the fact that whilst the 'special occasion' per se is currently an insubstantial some-time-never possibility, the clothes are in my wardrobe now, and it won't do me any good to look at them in ten/twenty years time and think 'why on earth didn't I wear that more?'

Life is short - if you want to, why not eat dessert first?

What would you do?

Memories

I was trawling through old posts on The Potty Diaries this afternoon, checking for links to this piece in the Saturday Telegraph 4 years ago so I could compare and contrast with this piece in last Saturday's Guardian.  Why?  Well, mainly so I could marvel at how much the blogging universe - or at least, the one I'm part of - has changed in the last five years.  Take a look at both pieces, if you have a moment, and you'll see what I mean.


But that's not the point of this post.  


The point of this post is that whilst I was fruitlessly searching the blog for a link to the Telegraph piece (thank god for online archives), I realised how much more I used to post about my children than I do now.  As they've grown older, the number of times they get mentioned on here has decreased; perhaps because I've become more conscious of their privacy, perhaps because my own world has expanded since I started blogging.  Probably it's due to a little of both.  But reading back through those old posts, two things struck me.  Firstly that actually, I like reading my own writing from back then.  It's funny.  Probably funnier than what I write now.  Almost certainly more honest - but that's a subject for another post.  And secondly, that - assuming I continue to save what I write in some fashion - this blog is providing one of the things I started it for; a record of those moments I would like to somehow bottle and hold onto from my children's lives.

So here, for my posterity, are two more to add to the memory box...


Boy #2 

We're trying to minimise the chances of summer learning loss - and perhaps even make some progress over the next few weeks - by working on Boy #2's reading skills over the holiday.  UK residents with children aged 4 - 6 years may be familiar with the epic adventures experienced by Biff, Chip and Kipper in the Oxford Reading Tree's series of phonics books, and today Boy #2 was - very slooooooooowly - working his way through one entitled 'The Mud Bath'.  In it, Dad falls flat on his face playing football, covers himself in mud, and goes home to take a bath.  Whilst running the bath, he is distracted by football on the television, settles down to watch it on the sofa and - well, you can guess the rest.

Boy #2 found this hilarious.  Although not quite as hilarious as I found his comment when the Dad - somewhat inevitably - sat down to make himself comfy on the sofa.

"He's just so, so, so, PREDICTABLE, Mama!"


Boy #1

Taking children to Amsterdam for the weekend is a great idea; there's lots for them to do and see, as I wrote about here.  However, one should never lose sight of the fact that for many people Amsterdam is empahatically not somewhere they would take the children, and that the city caters more than adequately for people who visit it for much more adult forms of entertainment than playgrounds and museums.

I won't dwell here on a close shave we had with some red-lit windows other than to say that I think I very possibly should qualify for a Quick Thinking Mother of the Year Award; "Look over there (on the opposite side of the street) boys!  Who can spot the tallest steeple on that building?" as we moved smartly past the ladies on show.  No, instead I wanted to share with you Boy #1's reaction to a rather questionable poster for a forthcoming festival near Amsterdam.  It featured a very ordinary-bodied woman in a bikini, with milkshake dripping suggestively down her front.  There was no avoiding these posters; they were everywhere, so Boy #1 noticed one, as I knew he would.

There was a sharp intake of breath.  Then, "That's inappropriate, Mum..."

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I Amsterdam...

**


Due to the fact that we are now in full-on summer holiday mode (Wk 2 started today.  Oh, sorry.  Did I mention already that the Boys have a loooonnnnggg summer break?  Did I? DID I?), posting on here may be sporadic for the next few weeks.  I will snatch the opportunity when I can, as I'm doing here, when my sons have finally gone unwillingly to bed, giving me a moment of calm - ignoring the unpacking from our weekend away, the laundry, the tidying up, and the preparations for visitors tomorrow.

We just arrived home from 3 nights in Amsterdam.  You've got to love the Dutch, you really have (well, clearly I do; I married one of them).  In this case however, I guess I'm referring specifically to the Amsterdammers.  They have a certain brash in your face character that - if you're not used to it, as the family we were visiting the city with weren't - can be rather... surprising.  They know how they want things to be, they know what they like, and they aren't shy of sharing that information with those who they clearly view as hapless tourists.

There was the waiter in a smart hotel who, having given the four boys under 9 in our party strict instructions in a very no-nonsense maner on what they were and weren't allowed to do in the garden cafe we were sitting in, then turned up with a gift for each of them, courtesy of the hotel (we weren't staying there, by the way - just stopping for a cuppa).

There was the manager of the terrace cafe outside the Rijksmuseum where we stopped for an afternoon snack which turned into a glass or two of wine whilst the kids played in the adjacent playground, who on hearing our order, proceeded to tell us how the bottle we had ordered was her very favourite wine in such a way that we actually believed she meant it.

There was the waitress in the poffertjes* restaurant who took a fancy to one of the boys in our party who was being particularly cheeky, and rewarded him with a big lipstick kiss on the cheek.

And then there was the waiter in the restaurant where the adults in our party went for dinner.  He gave us truly dreadful service and was hilariously unaware that he was doing anything wrong on what he freely admitted was his first night on the job.  I think the high point for me was when my husband complained about a dreadful smell of sewerage coming in through the open window next to us and instead of closing the window the waiter chattily replied "I know, isn't it awful?  You should smell it in the kitchen.  The poor man who had to go and deal with it was retching when he came back inside."

We didn't ask which part of the restaurant the 'poor man' was working in...


*Poffertjes: a tiny version of pancakes - but puffier - around 15 to a serving, dredged in icing sugar and butter, a heart-attack on a plate and not to be missed if you visit The Netherlands.


** No, that is not my husband or child standing in front of the I Amsterdam sign.  Just two people who had the temerity to get in the way of the shot I was trying to take.  No, seriously.  My family are FAR better looking than that...

Silent Sunday

Guns and the expat family

I had a classic Moscow Moment on Sunday.  In a quiet corner of our compound, one of the bodyguards who works for a fellow-resident was exercising in the sunshine.  What's remarkable about that?   Well - I say 'a quiet corner', but he could be clearly seen from our carport.  And I say 'exercising', but what I mean was tai-chi, martial arts moves, and push-ups on a bench.  So far, so par for the course, in this rarified world that we've somehow found ourselves living in.

He was doing this all without his shirt on - which in itself, is also not remarkable here.  When it's warm enough it's not unusual to see Russian men without their shirts in town, whether it's exercising, just taking a walk alongside the main road, or sitting in the sunshine.

No.  What was remarkable was that he was doing his shirtless exercises with a hand gun tucked into the waist-band of his trousers.

Now, you can raise your eyebrows, shrug your shoulders and say 'Only in Russia' as many expats here do.  Or, you can do what I did, and complain to the management of the compound*.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not naive enough to imagine that the bodyguards looking after some of the more illustrious residents of our compound aren't armed.  I know that they are.  When you've got a follow-car and a couple of heavies in your entourage, of course your protection will be carrying guns, I get that.

But when those guns are carried in full view of my impressionable children, as if it is the norm, acceptable, and everyday behaviour to carry one?

Not OK.


* The management were helpful, by the way.  I'm hoping that at the very least, he keeps his shirt on next time.  Or leaves his gun elsewhere.  Either will do... 

The Gallery: Family

This post is for Wk 102 of Tara's Gallery. Click here to see all the other entries...

When I was younger and child-free, I always imagined I would quite like to have 4 children.  Well - 2 or 4; for some reason an even number appealed.  Then, I met my Husband, got married, and had babies - but just the two.  We were agreed that 4 would be nice, but the timing just didn't work out and now I have to admit to being quite relieved about that.  So instead of a big rumbunctious family with 4 children, we just have our two boys.

The summer holidays have already started for us (you may have heard me mention that fact once or twice, on here and on Twitter), and we're staying put for the next couple of weeks or so before we head back to the UK for a while, unlike many of our friends here in Moscow who jumped ship the moment the school bell rang.  "How are you going to manage?" they ask, concerned for my mental health.  "What will you do with the kids, stuck in Moscow with no school?  Won't you go crazy?"

Well, no, I won't.  Because in addition to setting up 'playdates' with various friends, I know that there is one resource my boys will have.  Four years ago, when they were 4 and 2 respectively, we took them to Australia for 5 weeks.  Apart from a couple of days in the middle and at the end of our trip when we met up with friends, and the odd occasion when they teamed up with other children wherever we happened to be staying, it was just the four of us.  We had a limited number of toys for them to play with, and were in almost constant motion for much of the time.  You would think that we might have gone crazy then, but during the 5 weeks a wonderful thing happened; our Boys discovered each other.  They became more than brothers, they became friends.

Nowadays they're like any other brothers; they play, they fight, they playfight, they learn from each other, they comfort each other in the dark at night, they  tell rude jokes, they make each other laugh, sometimes they make each other cry, and then they make-up and start the whole thing over again.

 But no matter what, they are - and always will be, I hope - each other's family.

(Unpaid) Movie Review: Megamind

Our summer break started this week. We are on Day 2 of 10 weeks off.  Ten. Weeks.  (Insert horrified gasp here if you're not part of the US or expat schooling system).

Don't judge me, but I think we might be watching the odd movie in our house over the Duration.

Rather than just waste that experience, I thought I would take the opportunity to post a couple of unpaid brief reviews on here.  Just in case, you know, there might be other parents who are interested and looking for movies to show their kids over the summer break...

So, this week's post is for the animated move Megamind, which the boys and I downloaded and watched on the ipad yesterday evening.

Age of kids I watched the movie with: 8 and 6 years old

Plot:  Megamind (voiced by Will Ferrel), a self-styled evil genius, has spent his life battling his nemesis, the goody-two-shoes 'Metro Man' (Brad Pitt).  When he inadvertently manages to destroy his foe, he finds that his life without him has no meaning and decides to create a hero to take Metro Man's place.  Unsurprisingly things don't work out as planned, and the situation is complicated by the fact that Megamind has fallen in love with sassy reporter Roxy (Tina Fey) who believes he is a nerdy librarian...

Movie suitability:  Have to admit that whilst watching it I did wonder if the plotline might be a little sophisticated for the Boys, and lacking in the requisite action.  I mean, there are some super-duper action sequences, but they're quite short, as opposed to quite long sections where the story focuses on clever twists on life as an evil genius, and the developing relationship between Megamind and Roxy.  I needn't have worried, of course - the smart people at Dreamworks know how to keep kids engaged.  The Boys loved it, and of course were far more interested in Megamind's side-kick (Minion, a fish in a robot suit) than they were in any lessons on being yourself and not judging a book by it's cover...

Value for money: the download cost was £9.99.  Bearing in mind that the boys will definitely watch it again, probably in a week or so (but only because we have an embargo on watching the same movie or tv show more than once in 7 days), and the relative price of taking them out to a movie (plus of course the added hassle of doing so here where I would need to find an English showing, pay a fortune for popcorn and drinks, and battle the traffic before and afterwards), I would say that yes, this move provides good value for money.

If you would like to join in with this, please feel free to link to your own movie reviews in the comment box; I'll drop the link onto the bottom of this post if you do...