Siena update

We had the ultrasound today and there were no polyps, yay! So no surgery needed. They saw "crystals" in her bladder so she is going to take a week of antibiotics and some other anti-spasm medicines AND they want us to change her food for 2 months. 

But no surgery is huge! I was so worried. Now we can leave the country with more peace of mind. I also think she will be feeling some relief from the infection / crystals soon so that is good too. Hooray!

Take Your Little Guy to Work Day

This morning Beau and I went to visit Scott at work. Fun for Scott to "show off" our little man, since they've all heard a lot about him.

all set and ready to go in the car

Everyone watching "Beau TV"

The star of the show. 

Scott, Beau and Stephen

My fur baby is sick. :(

My poor Siena-girl. She has a bladder infection. No idea where she picked it up, but Moscow is very dirty and they are putting chemicals down now all over the street to force the ice and snow to melt. She also had a couple accidents in the apartment on Sunday (which is VERY rare for her) and yesterday there was some blood in her pee. :(  

So yesterday I had to collect her pee to get analyzed at a lab. How do you collect pee from a dog, you're wondering?

Basically you scoot a salad plate underneath her rear right when she squats to go. Then pour whatever you capture on the plate into a plastic container and hope you got enough and that it's not contaminated. I did get some on my hand during the process, which was gross, but not horrible...and as Scott said, "urine is sterile!" Haha. Says the guy who doesn't have to do the collecting!

The analysis came back and the numbers indicated that she has stones and crystals in(?) her bladder, which cause irritation and inflammation, resulting in much more frequent need to go, uncomfortableness and some blood coming out whenever she goes. Poor thing, I wish I could make her feel better! When I take her out now, she pees like 4 times during the walk and still doesn't seem to get any relief.

So today the vet said we need to get an ultrasound to check that there aren't any polyps in there too. Not sure what they do if there are polyps, but we'll cross that bridge if we need to. So instead of packing tomorrow afternoon I'll be going to a dog ultrasound appointment. In Moscow. The only upside of having this problem here is that it's probably cheaper here than in the US because the "pet industry" isn't regulated here. :-/

We are leaving on Saturday for the US, so I really hope we can sort this out and have her on the mend before we go!

Shopping at Metro round 2

Another successful trip to Metro under my belt. Still can't get over how huge that store is! But it's fantastic because they have such a range of products.

Some new (funny) take aways:

1) when I told R the nanny where I was going she thought I was talking about the subway (as in the public transit system which is also called "Metro"). I even said "May-trah." She only realized what I really meant when I got back and she saw my shopping bags. She said, "ahhhhh, Mee-yeh-trah," so I guess my pronunciation was juuuuust a bit off. This is so typical.  I try all the time to say things 'pa ruskie' and they never understand me. I know my accent is awful, but it is so frustrating!

2) been looking for hot chocolate -- I mean, it was 9 degrees farenheit outside the other day, so kinda perfect for hot chocolate. Found these pretty packages in the instant coffee section and thought they might be hot chocolate. They were next to some canisters of powdered chocolate Nesquik, so why not?

Got home and looked up the words on the packaging....which means cocoa powder....darn. Should have looked it up while I was at the store but I didn't want to waste time. :( So now I'm stocked for life with 3 boxes of this fancy cocoa powder!

3) Found SKIM milk in my favorite brand for the first time ever! This was the only carton to be found, which makes me nervous but....still exciting!

4) bought this big bag of Brussels sprouts and the first bag I picked up had a hole in it so I dumped Brussels sprouts all over the floor. Ugh, so embarrassing in any country!

5) got some more mysterious chocolate covered cookies. This time I know they're gingerbread. But the question is, with what are they filled?? :-)

6) Finally, who knew the word for "bandaid" was SO LONG in Russian!?

Pigeon Russian 101

Our good friends M and C left Moscow in July and we 'inherited' their very experienced Russian nanny/housekeeper, R. Makes things easy when you have a personal recommendation from people you trust!

The only issue is: R NO SPEAKA DA ENGLISH.

Really none. Even though she's worked for at least two other expat American families. I think she's just decided she's not going to spend time learning much more beyond a few basic words for housekeeping and nannying purposes (e.g. "washing machine"). Suffice it to say most of the day, she and I look like Marcel Marceau. I'm sure Siena gets a big kick out of it all. 

On the plus side, it's really upped MY game on learning some new Russian [baby-related] vocabulary. 

So here's a chronological breakdown of how our "lessons" have been so far. I feel like I'm two years old with this stuff. So frustrating. 

November 29 (this was a big day)

pacifier: соска -- "SAUS-kah." Also can mean nipple I just learned. 

pacifier (slang): пустышка -- "poo-STEESH-kah."

hands: рукы -- "rooh-key"

I go: я уеду -- "ya oo-YEH-due."

December 4

I'm finished: я закончил -- "ya za-KAN-cheel"

December 5

asleep: уснул -- "oosnohl"

awake: проснуться -- "prahs-NOOT-seeyah"

December 6 (another big day)

to warm/heat up: греть -- "grayht"

to smile: улыбаться -- "oo-leh-BY-yetza"

to laugh: смеяться -- "smay-YAH-tzeh"

December 11

burn (n): спирт -- "speert"

first aid: первая помощь -- "pyair-vie-yeh pamohsh"

[I burned my hand the other day with hot water, so nothing to do with the baby!]

December 12

to like: нравиться -- "nrah-VEET-see-yah"

It's just SO hard. Often we end up at the computer together with Google Translate as our interpreter. Thank goodness for the Internet!! 

And thank goodness R is pretty much THE most patient woman in the world. She just keeps saying what she needs or means a bunch of times and then waits as the wheels in my brain start slowly revving up into gear. Eventually we work it out...

Good news and bad news

I'll start with the bad and just get it out of the way. 

Yesterday I made a stir fry for dinner, which is one of my go-to dinners. Fail-safe most of the time.

The plan was to get chicken, but at the last minute I saw a package of beef all cut up and perfect-like for a stir fry, so I went for it. Mind you, I had no idea what the label said (of course it was in Russian, and I didn't recognize any of the words), but I knew it was definitely beef because it was in the section with the little cow. :) So how bad could it be?

So here's what my stir fry looked like. Not bad.

And my sauce smelled great: fresh garlic, ginger, onions.

That's where things went downhill. The meat was SO tough. Scott and I were chew-chew-chewing each bite and the whole thing was very unsatisfying!! All that chopping and marinating for nothing. Should have gone with the chicken. Boo. :(

Score, to date...
Moscow: 25,001 CB: 0

Okay, now on to the good! This one was a HUGE SCORE for Miss Siena!

There's a school behind our apartment building and they have this sport court (rectangular and self-contained, a little smaller than a tennis court). It's got 4 walls and seems very secure (ie no openings for someone to squeeze her little body through) and looks absolutely perfect for, yep, you guessed it, ball-throwing and running and general dog romping fun stuff. Whenever I'd considered it before, it appeared to be all locked up. Well yesterday I took a closer look at the gate and while there was in fact a padlock, it wasn't actually locked! Woohoo!

Here's her majesty's first freedom run (video) in our new "dog park." Such joy, this little dog has for living. 

And here's another fun video (longer). This sweet girl always cheers me right up.

Updated score, to date...
Moscow: 25,001 CB (and Siena): 2

Guess who found his feet? :)

10:00 a.m.

This is how our street looked at 10 this morning. Still so dark!

And then it starts getting really dark again at around 4 or 4:30 pm. No wonder they all drink excessively!

A Wall of Mayonnaise

Finally did some shopping at Metro Cash & Carry. Quite an experience. Metro (pronounced "may-trah" by the Russians) is Moscow's version of Costco and Walmart all rolled into one. You need a membership card, it's in a giant warehouse out near the Ikea and a lot of their products are sold in bulk, but then again some are sold individually, which is why it's kind of a combo of those 2 stores. As I have mentioned in the past, grocery shopping in Moscow stresses me out. At Metro however, I actually wasn't stressed out; instead, I was just exhausted. The store is so big, it's a workout just walking from section to section!

The other interesting aspect of shopping at Metro is that the Russians go crazy there, loading up multiple carts with everything but the kitchen sink and then maybe even buying a kitchen sink (since they sell appliances there too)! The amount of consumption occurring at these stores is astounding.

I took some highlight photos. What I didn't manage to capture was someone at the checkout with 2 hugely overloaded carts, because it just would have been too awkward and too "Americanski" of me to whip out my phone to take a photo. As it is, I got some funny looks taking these.

Xmas decorations on steroids

more holiday decor

speaking of steroids....here's the fireworks...new year's is a BIG DEAL in Russia (bigger than xmas really). of course they have a security guy watching the explosives.

One thing that's different from the States, people just leave their carts at the end of the row and walk down the aisle to get what they want. So there appear to be stranded carts everywhere, when really it's just their shopping norm.

Gouda cheese. 965 rubles, which is approximately $30. Holy crap this cheese is made of gold!

The Wall of Mayo! Seriously, 2 out of the 3 sections on this wall were dedicated solely to MAYONNAISE.

Meat locker, aka freezing room stocked full of meat, meat and more meat.

the ubiquitous RECEIPT STAMPING to make the purchases official. you can't see here, but the receipts are printed in triplicate on dot-matrix style printers.

Here's my receipt -- I wasn't kidding about the dot-matrix printing. Note the official STAMP at the bottom. And then, just to be safe, we have the normal receipt too, stapled on top. I didn't even buy that much stuff!

PS Oh and here was my treat for myself for successfully navigating Metro alone: chocolate dipped heart and star-shaped pretzels! Just kidding, not really pretzels. They turned out to be gingerbread cookies dipped in chocolate, SHAPED like hearts, stars AND pretzels. Oh well.

Marine Corps Birthday Ball - 9 November 2013

This is a short post...just wanted to share that we went to the Marine Corps Birthday Ball on 9 November. It's a neat event because all around the world, the Marine Corps honors its birthday in exactly the same way, with a fancy dinner ball, a ceremony honoring the youngest and oldest Marines in the room and of course, a birthday cake. This was birthday #278 and we were proud to have the chance to participate.

Us heading out to the ball

Mimi was still in town so Scott and I left our boy knowing he was in excellent hands. Bonus!

A little bedtime reading.

Nice is so nice

So after Cannes, we spent about a week in Nice, waiting to get Beau's passport back from the Russian Consulate in Paris. The first two days were sunny and beautiful. Our hotel was directly on the Promenade des Anglais, that iconic C-shaped pedestrian walkway on the Mediterranean Sea that you see in every photo of Nice. The rest of the days were unfortunately overcast and/or rainy, but it still wasn't very cold compared to Moscow and since we were on vacation it really wasn't that big of a deal.

Jogger on Promenade des Anglais @ sunset

Nice's Park Messena water fountains in full glory on a glorious day.

The no-sleep, short-nap party continued in Nice, so the days were not AS action-packed as they used to be when it was just Scott and me visiting a new city (depends on how you define the term "action-packed," because we were really quite busy waking up every 3 hours, ugh.). So again spent a lot of time in the hotel room. 

Me and Beau, hangin' in the hotel room.

Beau demonstrating his maaad sitting skillz (and 'jazz hands' lower right)...

what, me SLEEP? what is this thing you call Sleep???

Nonetheless, we did still manage to hit up some museums and do a lot of strolling, people watching, and sipping of wine, coffee and FREE, POTABLE tap water, something you can't get in Russia! It's the little things, really. 

We went to the Matisse Museum and the Chagall Museum. Beautiful. 

There was a special chocolate 'show' in town that we'd seen advertised in Cannes for the following weekend (and we had actually lamented that we were *just* missing it, because we were going to Nice - little did we know!) and it turned out to be conveniently located right across the street from our hotel. We took it as a sign we were meant to go. Yum. 

mmm, chocolate!

Holiday chocolate figurines

Macarons at the chocolate show. 

We took a cute, old train called "Le Train des Pignes" on a picturesque ride up into the mountains to a quaint little village called Puget-Theniers, had a coffee / soda and walked around. 

old-fashioned train, old-fashioned photo

father and son ridin' the train :)

view from the train

Puget-Theniers and foggy mountains

happy little boy after his first train ride!

And then there was the eating...in Nice I was better about taking food photos vs Cannes. :)

Creme brûlée dessert from Yuca Mia. Gorgeous presentation and delicious tasting.

Food, glorious foooood!

So tired....but...Must. Eat. Moules.

All in all, a fun trip and a nice break from the grey-ness of Moscow in November.

"Merci, Nice, j'espere revenir bientot! Et encore, vraiment, je ne suis pas fatigue!!"

Bonjour!

Hi from La Cote d'Azur! Scott had a conference in Cannes, France this week so what better idea than for Beau and me to accompany him to the South of France?

Coincidentally, Beau's Russian visa is about to expire next week (because of various snafus, in October we were only able to get him a tourist visa which is good for 28 days) and then we learned late in the process that we actually had to leave the country to get his longer term (ie 1 year multi-entry) visa. So why not get it from France, where we planned on being for a week in November already?

View of Nice from airplane on our way in.

As a result, this week I've been eating my way around Cannes with my sidekick Beau. I'm only half-kidding. I seriously cannot. stop. eating. the BREAD! It is SO good. Alas, no real foodie photos because I keep eating everything before I can take any. Oops.

But here's a photo of the water from the hotel room and one from one of our walks. Pretty terrific location! I'd appreciate it a lot more if I wasn't always closing the curtains to get the boy to nap for more than 30 minutes at a time.

hotel room view (curtains parted temporarily for this shot)

not bad, not bad at all.

  And look at how cute he is most of the time when he's awake...irresistible!

Captain Beau reporting for duty on the French Riviera!

Anyway,  due to his lack of schedule right now, Beau and I have spent a lot of time in our little hotel room, nursing, pacing, rocking, singing and trying not to go crazy from lack of sleep. On a side note, how cute is this hotel room chair? I love it.

It swivels, too! Cool-looking AND comfortable, especially for nursing.

"home" for 5 days

Here's a nice shot of Scott giving Beau a bottle while I ate dinner. 

Once Scott's conference is over, we're going to Nice for another week or so (still waiting for the visa...I know, such a rough life...), which should be very 'nice.' :)