traveling fools

That's it. We're leaving. Jacob's taking his ball and going home. His parents are coming too. The next 2 weeks, we'll be traveling, and one or more of us will be in: Kyiv, Chernobyl, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Boston, Detroit, and Ann Arbor, before we finally land back in Madison in early September.

So don't expect to hear from us for awhile.

swing time

Jacob loves the swing. He can sit there for an hour at a time, watching the older kids on the playground as we push him back and forth.

Soon we will return to the U.S. It's been a fabulous 8 months, yet recently we've been thinking of things we will not be sad to leave behind (visa headaches, inexplicable bureaucracy, bad traffic, the national absence of bagels). Nevertheless, we will all miss having a playground just outside our door. We've promised Jacob that they do have playgrounds in America too.

As you may notice, we gave Jacob his first haircut recently. Just his bangs, which were falling into his eyes. He squirmed every time the scissors came near, and neither of us had cut hair before, so it is not, let us say, the straightest of cuts. Fortunately his curly hair hides it well. At first many Kazakhs assume Jacob is a girl. It is very rare here for a baby boy to have such long, gorgeous hair. Sometimes we correct the error, sometimes we just accept compliments on our "beautiful girl."

ice, ice, no baby

Last Sunday Amy gave me a lovely gift. She took Jacob for the day and sent me off to the mountains. I enjoy hiking with Jacob, but it was also fun to spend the day scrambling over loose scree and snowfields up above Talgar Pass.

This photo shows a small snowmelt pond on top of Bogdanovich glacier. Over the years so much loose rock has fallen on the lower part of the glacier that it isn't apparent you are actually walking on top of the glacier until you come to a section of bare ice such as this.

When I spend a day like this, I start to think that maybe I should give up photojournalism and be a nature photographer.

playground confessional

The best thing about our apartment, in Jacob’s opinion, is the playground, and the best thing about the playground is the sandbox. Amy bought Jacob a bucket and shovel set, and the boy has commenced to dig.

I have to confess: for me the sandbox is boring. There are only so many times I can fill the bucket up with sand and dump it out again before I go mad. The toy rake is not a lot of fun either. Things have gotten a bit better since we started bringing Jacob’s yellow ball with us. He can’t catch yet, of course, and doesn’t quite throw either, but some days, rolling the ball is not a terrible way to pass the time.

If I had someone to talk to, I’d be better off. The two-year-olds out there are not great conversationalists. The one-year-olds are worse. And their parents aren’t so great either. My Russian is good enough to fool people into thinking I understand them. We’ve now had all the conversations I know how to have. More than once. The weather. What we are doing here. Whether America is better or worse than Kazakhstan. How crazy the traffic and the rents are now. How old Jacob is and when he naps.

No, wait, there actually is one conversation I don’t think I’ve yet had with other parents on the playground: the fruits and vegetables I want to buy when I go to the bazaar. Maybe we can talk about that tomorrow.

There is one three-year-old, Denis, who likes to whine to me about what is wrong with his toys. I am pleased to say I understand most of his Russian. Jacob sits listening to him with wide eyes. Memorizing all those complaints to use later, I am sure. But like emptying the plastic bucket, there is only so long I can listen to Denis before I want to bury my head in the sand. Which happens to be conveniently located nearby.

And sure, I talk to Jacob. He understands, we think, at least 60 English words. And he responds with half a dozen of his own: ba[ll]. Ba[ll.] Bo[ttle]. Da. Mama? Uh. Ba[ll]. Remember that Far Side cartoon, What A Dog Hears? “Blah Ginger, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah, Ginger.” In this case, Jacob is like Ginger. He also barks, by the way.

Jacob completely disagrees with my assessment of the playground. Every day, he can’t wait to get out there. He has started to bring us his shoes when he thinks it must be time to go outside. Then he brings us our own shoes, to be sure to drive the point home.

And now that he can walk, the playground is an even more exciting place. He has been so delighted to walk his way from one part to another. He grins enormously with the thrill of voyaging from the park bench to the swing. He is still not very sure-footed; he grabs my hand for tricky moves like stepping from the sidewalk onto the grass.

Watching Jacob explore and enjoy himself is the sole redeeming facet of a morning on the playground. Every time we go out, he finds something new. This week, his favorite game has been picking up handfuls of gravel, studying them, and then passing them to me. Try as I might, though, I can’t find anything marvelous about them.

Sometimes I feel like a bad father because I often don’t enjoy playing with Jacob. Amy has been reading new-parent discussion lists like those at babycenter.com, and she assures me that there are plenty of stay-at-home moms out there, also going slowly mad in their own sandboxes.

backpacks!

Jacob loves being outdoors. Mike's parents bought us a baby backpack, which makes it much easier to haul him around. Earlier this month we spent a night at the GAISH Astronomical Observatory in the Zailiysky Alatau mountains near Almaty, then climbed the dirt road up to Big Almaty Peak. Behind Jacob and Amy is 4317-meter (14,163-ft) Peak Sovetov.

Jacob has a new word: backpack ("bah pah")! We were practicing our B words: ball, bird, banana, bath, boat, baby, bring, bye bye. Jacob may think that every important thing starts with the letter B. (Except mama, of course). Our beautiful bright bouncing baby boy brings back bluebirds before breakfast.

Then I tried some P words, and he was mimicking me but not quite getting the sound. So we introduced him to backpack and he took to it. Now he has been talking about backpacks all day. He definitely knows his backpack and he is glad to tell the world about it. It's a little scary how fast he learns.

Here there be dragons

During a Sunday afternoon picnic at Lake Issyk, in the Ili-Alatau National Park, Karolina Reno (age 3 1/2) decided she was a monster on rampage, ready to eat small boys like Jacob. After much growling, it all ended well, however: they later gave each other wildflowers.

Almaty has been hot this summer. Every weekend we try to get out of the city and into the mountains. Fortunately it isn't hard to do. Lake Issyk is about 35 miles (60 km) from Almaty, at 5,775 feet elevation (1760 m). It is fed by glaciers on nearby 16,332-foot Talgar Peak (4978 m); the water is a frigid 48 degrees F (9 Celsius). Despite the chilly water, I still went for a swim. It took me 15 minutes to get myself in, and 15 seconds to get back out!

See another photo here.

where's your mustache?

Jacob has discovered how much fun it is to play with markers. Sometimes he actually gets some ink on the paper. His favorite part is pulling the lids off the markers. We have learned to strip him down before he starts, to keep the ink off his clothes.

breakfast of champions

At fourteen months old, Jacob is often eager to feed himself. He grabs the spoon and won’t let go. This morning he did fairly well with the spoon at first, until he decided that palming the yogurt was more appealing.

Father's Day

Amy and Jacob and a mug for the camera.

Jacob and I spent our second father's day together today. We started the day by going back to sleep for a long morning nap. I didn't mean to nap with him, but he was so cosy and then I became so drowsy... he curled up on my belly and I just relaxed and closed my eyes until suddenly it was almost noon!

Then we went for a long afternoon walk around town, ending with a picnic dinner, joined by Amy and some new expat friends.

Pictured above with us are: Giada Ripa di Meana, an Italian photographer; Masha Rasner, a Ukrainian-American who works for Internews; Eugenia Benigni, an Italian who works for OSCE; Eva Binette, from Quebec, and Julien Garoste, from France, who are biking their way home across Asia from Vietnam!

Of course, we were thinking about John today, Amy's dad, Jacob's grandfather, my second father. Today was our first father's day since he died last August, and we didn't talk about him, but we were all missing him.

What a difference a year makes. Last father's day, our bouncy curly-haired boy was bald and tiny! For comparison, we’ve posted a photo from our first father’s day here.

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.