Tag: anna

Spending Time With My Girls

I took this whole week off work to spend time with my daughter and granddaughters, and all the things we are doing together take all the time I have. Everything is great and wonderful, and I am enjoying every moment of our time together, and I hope they enjoy it, too.

We went to the Botanic Garden, and we drove to Chicago to Millennium Park, and there are still tons of activities we planned for the remaining two and a half days.

More stories to follow 🙂

House Cleaning

The reason why this weekend ended up being as it was – my girls are coming to visit me tomorrow. Yesterday, Kira turned two months, and their pediatrician allowed them to extend the circle of contacts slowly.

I was planning to come and visit them in Wisconsin, but since the parents, understandably wanted me to quarantine before meeting the baby, and Mayor Lori wants me to self-quarantine myself after I visit Wisconsin, Anna decided to give me back two weeks of my life.

Nadia is old enough now to sleep in her bed, not pack-and-play. That meant that this time, everybody would stay downstairs, where I have two guest rooms. These rooms usually stay ready to host people who come to visit me, but nobody lived there for the past nine months due to the pandemic.

I never entered these rooms for the said nine months, because there was no need. Usually, they would be in use at least once in two months, and I would change the bedding and possibly dust and sweep, and they are ready for the next visitor. I do not remember when it was the last time they were vacant for nine months!

I am walking in, and I feel like I am walking into the cellar, that’s how it smells! There are cobwebs in the corners, and there is dust on the surfaces. The first thing I wanted to do was to open the windows, but there was no window screen in one of the rooms. A trip to the ACE hardware revealed (as usual!) that this size is no longer used. I ordered the “cut it yourself” kit on Amazon, but it will only arrive on Tuesday.

I took all the bedding fro that room upstairs and hung it to ventilate. Then I cleaned the floor and all the surfaces. I also had to put back the railing on the stairs (because I didn’t do it yesterday, remember?)

I called Boris so that I could consult him about drilling the holes and screwing the screws in. This plus a couple more trips to the stores – that’s how my day was!

However, I can even describe how ecstatic I am to see y girls and see Kira in the flesh for the first time! I am so looking forward to all the activities and conversations!

***

Each time I read any of my children’s posts on any social media, I feel … not proud, because “proud” means that it’s somehow related to you, inspired by you… and I do not think I did something in this regard.

I am simply happy that my children are so active in promoting their ideas, time permits or not :). I am happy that they are such good citizen, that they never go numb, that they care, and that they would never hesitate to speak openly about their position.

I think they are so much better than me in all these things, and I did not do anything!!! I do not know how they turned up to be who they are!

Pictures From September 1995

I promised several people, including my children, that I would post more pictures. I am always trying to combine pictures with stories, but I can’t say much about these, except that it was a family gathering in our house. Judging by the guest list and the fact that this picture was taken in fall 1995, it must be Igor’s tenth birthday.

We lived in extremely crowded conditions. This one room of fewer than 200 sq ft was the place for everything. All four of us slept there. All our belongings were stored there, all the desks, including mine for working from home, all the toys, the piano – everything was packed in this one room. Our beds and the desks were folding, the jungle gym, which you can see on that picture could be lifted up.

From left to right: Aunt Kima, her son Dodik, my Mom, me, Igor Sr (Igor’s father), Sasha – my cousin’s husband.

The next two pictures look almost identical, but I could not choose one, so I decided to post both. On the first one, you can see me in the far left corner. The older kids from left to right: my late nephew Petia (my cousin Ania’s older son), my half-brother Slava (my father’s son) and Igor. The smaller kids from left to right: my niece Iya, Anna and Vlad. (Vlad has a cold sore on his lip).

Everybody is dressed warmly because all the houses had (and still have) a centralized heating system, which was usually turned on only in October, so September would end up being one of the coldest months.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

A Girl With a Monkey

I’ve scanned lots of photographs from 1995, and now I can continue with our family story. Here I want to show just one picture to illustrate “how things were” back then.

I am coming to daycare to pick up Vlad and Anna, and their teacher tells me that there was a photographer with a monkey (?!) and that he took a picture of Anna with a monkey – see below.

I do not even know why and how, and why anybody would find this idea appealing. Anyway, I didn’t know anything about that. Anna said she wanted a picture with the monkey, but then she got scared, which is also visible on the picture, and then she didn’t want to back out of that!

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

The Fall of 1995. Anna’s Ballet Classes

Since now Anna is wondering where her older daughter got the idea of wanting to be a ballerina, I have to remind her about her ballet classes.

Here is the story. My cousin Anna is a musician, and one of her side jobs in 1996 was playing piano for ballet classes in one of the nearby schools. For my life, I can’t remember whether the lady who ran these classes was affiliated with the school, had an independent “circle,” or whatever. But she ran these ballet classes for children of different ages, and the youngest dancers were six. As an exception, she would admit children who were five and a half and were exceptionally gifted.

Let me tell you that there was some rationale behind that age limitation.

For smaller children, coordination of the movements of different parts of their bodies is challenging. Anna just turned four, and she wanted to be a ballerina :). I was trying to teach her that when asked, she has to tell that she was five and a half, but I didn’t hold much hope. My cousin suggested that we will pretend we were a little bit late and that I should push Anna into the audition room when all the children already start to repeat to movements. Then, my cousin was hoping the instructor will already like Anna and will be more willing to make an exception. She showed Anna the moves which she most likely would have to repeat during the audition, and Anna was practicing on her own, tirelessly. It was unbelievable.

Continue reading “The Fall of 1995. Anna’s Ballet Classes” →

Adding Some Missing Pictures

I was going to write a blog post about our travel to Poland in 1995, but when I started to look for the photos, I found two more, which I forgot to scan. One is from Vlad’s and Anna’s daycare from 1993 (it was taken at the same time as this picture). I hope everybody can recognize Anna and Vlad in the first row. A boy sitting between them, Dima Golyak, was from a “socially unstable family,” and I remember the teachers were constantly worrying about him. If I remember correctly, both teachers were Tanias. They were great with kids, kind, caring, and usually added a lot of common sense to rediculous rules. A girl in the red dress in the first row is a daughter of Tania, which is on the right 🙂

Another one is Igor’s school picture of most likely 1994. Because of what I’ve explained about the schools for special needs kids, the classroom size was small. Most likely, two boys wear the same kind of vest because it was a part of a set of clothes given to the boarders as a state provision.

It’s so weird to see that the kids are not smiling on these pictures, but that was a norm at that time.

The last picture I missed is another Vlad’s and Anna’s daycare picture from fall 1994:

I like it a lot 🙂

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

Pictures From Summer 1995

For the benefit of my older granddaughter, I am skipping right to the summer of 1995, so that I could show some pictures. The first two where taken in June 1995.

Anna, Ania, Igor and Vlad in the Summer Gardens (Letniy Sad)

My friend Olga had a daughter Ania, who was just several months younger than Vlad and Anna. We lived in the same building and knew each other since our children were babies. When they grew a little bit older, we started to plan our adventures together. On that day, we took subway (Metro) to the city center to the Summer Gardens, the oldest park in Saint Petersburg

On our way back home, with the Church on Blood on the background. Guess, how I know that it’s on the way back, not on the way there?

The next picture was taken later the same summer, when we were staying in the University boarding house. Here we are visiting the Peterhoff park with the fountains. We met Inna and her daughter Kira when staying in the boarding house a year earlier, and once again, now the kids were old enough to take longer trips.

Igor, Vlad, Kira and Anna in the Lower Park of Peterhoff

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

It’s a Girl!

My second granddaughter was born today! Her name is Kira, and she is a big girl 🙂 I have no idea when I will be able to see her in person, but I saw her on google hangouts today.

I think she looks a lot like Anna!

Reflecting on The Rest of 1994, and Welcoming 1995

Once again, there is a gap of several months when I have no pictures of the kids. The daycare picture was taken at the end of September, and the one below – on January 1, 1995.

During fall 1994, I was still working at the Operations Research Lab of the University. That job still paid close to nothing, and I was still in constant search of gigs. Also, I resumed my postgraduate studies and was slowly but surely getting through all of the required exams.

That fall, Anna first developed her chronic bronchitis, which she had for many years after. Nobody could tell me what the reason for that condition was, but one of the hypotheses was that she had an underdeveloped lung because she was a premie. As a result, any slight cold would develop into the obstruction bronchitis within several hours from onset. Most of the time, a pediatrician won’t recognize that bronchitis is coming, and I had to learn how to diagnose it.

It was scary, and it was not something you could get used to. Roughly every six weeks, it looked like your child is dying. There were no children’s versions of the regular medicine for that condition (and no inhalers, if you are curious about it). I would buy the pills, which helped with the spasms and crushed them into powder. I always had these pills both in my purse and on the nightstand. And when Anna would start coughing non-stop and wheezing: “Mom, open my mouth!” I had to manage to get that power in her mouth, along with some water. I knew that it would help, but it was scary each and single time.

I learned how to listen to her breath and catch an onset of yet another bronchitis. I learned to perform a special massage, which would help to get mucus out of her airways.

As a side effect, it would often happen that I could not send her to the daycare, and then I would take her with me to my postgraduate classes. One of the classes was philosophy, and I had to take an exam at the end. Fortunately, that class taught by the same professor Alexeev, whom I had during my undergrad studies, and who secretly taught us about existentialism :). Anna was sitting there very quietly, and I was always allowed to take her to my class. Could that trigger her future interest in social studies?!

Back to the picture below.

Our family tradition continued: everybody celebrated the New Year’s Eve with their immediate families or elsewhere, but on January 1, everybody would gather at the Aunt’s Kima house to celebrate her birthday with the extended family.

I know that I had several pictures from that particular gathering, but now I can only find that one. I have no idea why Igor is not on that picture because he was most definitely present.

Vlad and Anna wear animal costumes because, as I’ve already mentioned, costumes for the New Year go back to the old tradition Sviatki – the time between Christmas and New Year. Anna is in a squirrel mask, and Vlad wears a hood with bunny ears, and both of their faces are painted with animal features.

In the back row from left to right: my cousin Dodik (David), Kima’s son, with his wife Alla, then Aunt Maya, Uncle Slava’s wife. In the middle row – I, Aunt Kima, and my mom.
My shoulders were not intended to be bare to that extent, it’s just my dress pulled down, and I was still very skinny back then. I made that dress myself. I got the garment as a fee for teaching English to the son of one of “a friend of a friend.” It required only minimal work to fit my small body, and it looked spectacular, or at least I thought so back then.

Here was the start of 1995, and many things were going to happen that year.

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My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.