greetings from Kazakhstan

Family self-portrait in the Koktobe playground.

After a three week hiatus, we're back in the modern world. We all landed safely in Almaty, and we now have an apartment, our phone finally works, our landlord installed cable TV and a clothes washer, and now we've gotten our DSL modem hooked up.

Until now, doing anything online felt like trying to fill a bathtub with an eyedropper. (Actually, I shouldn't complain: compared to the dial-up connection we used to have when we lived here in 1999-2000, the modem speed is not bad.) Really it's now more like filling a bathtub with two eyedroppers.

Next time we go abroad, we keep telling each other, we're moving to a country for more than 4 months at a time. Jacob has not minded the move, but he certainly does not make moving easy. (More on the moppet soon).

This afternoon, we took a family walk up to the top of Koktobe, a 1060 meter (3450 foot)-tall hill on the upper edge of Almaty. I should point out to our flatland Wisconsin readers that this is not as tall as it sounds, since the city below is at 870 m (2830 ft). Nevertheless, it is high enough to give a grand view over the plains below and up to the mountains above.

View from Koktobe. Almaty is nestled tight against the Zhungarskiy Alatau range, with peaks as tall as 5000 meters (16,000 ft) nearby.

There's a stunning wall of mountains just 10 km from downtown. Anywhere you go in the city you can see this vista. At least, you can see them whenever the smog and new high-rise apartment buildings don't obscure your view!


Of course, Jacob was much more interested in the playground at the top than the view. Amy recently read that babies Jacob's age (now 13 months) typically have an attention span of 3-5 minutes. Not Jacob. He played with these rings for 20 minutes and still wasn't ready to leave when we pulled him away.

a moving experience

Jacob plays with his nanny Larissa Onischuk during their last day together. Later, as Larissa was leaving, there was not a dry eye in the apartment — the adults because we were saying goodbye, and Jacob because we were not yet eating dinner.

This week we are uprooting ourselves as we move from Ukraine to Kazakhstan. It's hard to believe that half of our year abroad is over! Amy and Jacob flew to Almaty today, via Istanbul. I fly on Friday, after I try to tie up about 1 million loose ends here.

We will probably be out of touch for a week or two until we get an apartment and figure out internet access.

Thanks to all who recently helped us find a new home for our cat!

As I leave Ukraine, I feel I've just now started to understand the multitudinous problems surrounding Chernobyl. I am starting to look into grants so that we can get ourselves back here, possibly as soon as a year from now.

breaking news

Some recent surprises in our world:

• Sunday we discovered Jacob has a new, third tooth!
• Monday, Jacob took his first step!
• Today is May first and it is snowing in Kyiv.

Jacob has a new tooth (not pictured). Photo by Sarah Forster.

On Sunday, Amy and Jacob went to the zoo, where Jacob's favorite animals were the geese. (Mike was spending the day in Chernobyl.) Amy and Jacob stopped to eat a banana, and then went on to watch the monkeys, also eating bananas. In the middle of all this banana-eating is when Amy saw it, right there at the top of his gum: tooth #3. It looks like it's been there a few days, but we've been so preoccupied with Jacob's cough that we overlooked it.

On Monday, Jacob and Mike were running in circles around the living room. Jacob is now quite good at walking – as long as he holds on with both hands. He likes to run this way as well, although he stumbles a lot. We paused after our thousandth lap, and Jacob was leaning back very casually against the sofa, his elbows on the seat. Then he decided he wanted to come to Mike, so he pushed off, took one step on his own, then promptly lurched forward and grabbed Mike's knees just before falling on his face.

This morning, Mike got up with Jacob at 6:45 while Amy slept in. Then at 10 Amy took a shift while Mike went back to nap. When Mike arose again, and complained how cold it was, Amy announced: "it's snowing." Mike looked out the window and didn't believe it. "Those are apple blossoms blowing around," Mike said. He was wrong. It is snowing. Happy May day.

Let them eat cake!

Jacob and Samuel Bregard threw a party to celebrate their first birthdays. (Samuel turned one on April 9.) They invited babies from near and far, along with their parents and some other old folks. There was cake and candles and toys and diapers for all. Here, Jacob (and Amy) blow out Jacob's candle while Samuel and Max start to dig into Samuel's cake.

happy birthday!

Jacob is ONE YEAR OLD today. We'll post some photos from our little party. But really, who has time to keep a blog with a toddler running around? In the past month, Jacob has started to crawl, sprouted 2 teeth and stood on his own (without holding on) for 40 seconds. Wow!

Baby group

On Wednesday afternoons we usually go to the baby group run by the International Women’s Club of Kyiv. Jacob has a chance to play with (or ignore) other babies from around the world (including Canada, China, Finland, France, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, the UK, and the US).


It's fun to compare how the babies are progressing. Compared to a statistically insignificant group of his peers, Jacob has been slower to get teeth and stand on his own, but faster at growing hair and learning to pick up and eat minute objects, such as grains of rice or individual cat hairs. Meanwhile Mike, normally the only dad to attend, hangs out with the mothers.

This week, Roman and Mikael bopped heads, Maia upchucked her fruit salad on her mother's shirt, Jacob gnawed on a plastic apple, Rose bawled, and generally a great time was had by all.

dresser for success

At 11 months old, Jacob has now learned to open the bottom drawer of the dresser and pull out toys and clothes, or better yet, try to climb in with them. Coming soon: installation of our first baby-proof latch. Also note Jacob's first two teeth, which emerged from his lower gum last week.

We're goin to the zoo, zoo, zoo

We went to the Kyiv zoo with our friends Andrea and Andrew. To be frank, out of all the exotic animals we saw, Jacob's favorites were the fish. The cockroaches were pretty cool too, he thought. The elephant was just a big stinky gray wall and the hippo was a pair of ears in a dirty pool of water. He liked the lions but I don't think he realized that they were big cats that were far away.

Feed Me!

If you won't feed me, says Jacob, I'll just eat the table. We were out at a cafe in downtown Kyiv. Jacob had borscht and liked it – maybe it's time to start feeding him a wider variety of dishes. His favorite foods remain bananas and yogurt. And tables.

Move over, Matisse

Jacob Forster Rothbart, 2006 -
Ink with food-coloring pigment on recycled office paper.

The artist at work: Jacob made his first artwork today with his new markers, which he mostly used to stab the paper.

tofu you

A lunchtime conversation. We were having a fine lunch of tofu goulash:

Take 1 rice cake.
Add tofu and frozen peas.
Pour boiling water over it.
Mash with fork.

Jacob happily let me feed him for awhile. Then suddenly, he'd had enough and pushed me away.

Ok, Jacob, I said. Do you want more? (I sign "more.") Or are you finished? (Sign "finished.")

Jacob screwed up his face as if I was suggesting torture not tofu. He shook his head and said, quite clearly, "No!"

I got out a jar of Gerber mixed fruit. Ok, I said. Do you want tofu or fruit? I asked, holding each one up in turn. He pointed to the fruit.

Parents are so slow to understand sometimes.

When he finished the fruit, I gave him some more tofu to smear across his tray and across his face. Sometimes he took a bite. But if I tried to feed him anymore, this is what happened:


Who needs speech to communicate? This is a boy with opinions!

Takes two to snooze

Jacob and Mike sleep together on the living room floor. Lately, Jacob has been refusing to sleep when put back in his crib in the middle of the night, and so often one of us ends up sleeping with him.