double digits

Munchkin considered a couple of options to mark his double digits, including a VR experience with his closest friends, before opting to reprise last year’s festivities with another pool party in our condominium. The gifts he received reflected well his current interests — both new ones and those acquired long ago: anime and manga, sports and board games, and plenty of books. Observing the utter chaos in the pool felt like watching a rerun. Looking at our growing son, now a year older and wiser, we see many of the same tendencies and characteristics that defined him as a nine-year-old. We see important changes too as he continues to approach what he already told us will be his “sassy teenage years.”

six and counting

Amidst all the end-of-school-year hoopla, the kids’ summer vacation trip to the States, and our own travels, our little girl turned six.

beginning of the end

Our last missive, penned at the beginning of the month, feels like a note from a lifetime ago given everything that’s happened in the intervening weeks. There are usually two reasons our blog experiences a lull: a work crunch upsets our work/life balance or we’re too busy traveling to find time to write about it all. Our recent hiatus owes a bit to column A and a bit to column B. Returning from the Volcanic Tournament, we had only two weeks left before the end of the school year and the start of the kids’ summer vacation in the States; we also had at least three weeks’ worth of work that we had to cram into those two weeks. Long workdays bled into one other, and D worked weekends without break to cram it all in while S tied up the logistical loose ends that would enable us to send the kids packing for five weeks to see their grandparents.

the long and short of it

In a hilarious stand-up routine, Jerry Seinfeld pokes fun at the way we order and pay for food in restaurants: “Before you eat, money has absolutely no value,” but when the check comes, “people are mystified. We’re not hungry now, why are we buying all this food?” Coming back from a really good, long vacation has a similar touch of gaslighting to it. You return to a house that clearly hasn’t been lived-in and needs some clean-up; there are piles of dirty laundry to wash and no groceries in the fridge; maybe you’re sunburned or itching with mosquito bites (mosquitos, no-see-ums, AND fire ants all got us good this time — and on top of it all, we’re still recovering from the colds that brought us low at the tail end of our travels); bills need to be paid and, heavens forbid, you think ahead to the next workday and the thousands of unread emails awaiting in your dumpster fire of a work inbox. You survey this desolate landscape of unpleasant tasks ahead and think to yourself, “this isn’t what I signed up for when I took a couple weeks off to unwind.”

rollercoaster of love

Parenthood is a rollercoaster of emotional contradictions….or, perhaps, contradictory emotions. The same minor developments can bring simultaneous joy, pride, sadness, and heartache. You watch your kids grow and master life in front of your very eyes and your heart swells with happiness, but at the same time you can’t help missing their sweet, awkward baby moments, whose loss feels profound and irrevocable once they are gone. You commit every precious moment to memory, convinced that they will be etched in indelible ink in your mind, and then realize a few years down the road that you were operating in a sleep-deprived fog and hardly remember a single thing. And, in fact, those sweet baby moments came amid the chaos of stress, worry, and frustration that are part and parcel of parenting young children even for the most well-adjusted among us.

cousin time

D was today years old when he learned the difference between second and third cousins and what Munchkin calls “my removed cousins.” In Russian, everyone is simply a cousin — or an aunt/uncle if they are a generation older — no matter how many branches away one’s distant relations may fall on the family tree. And the truth is that our kids do not spend enough time with their cousins — first, second, or third, removed or not — this is part of the price we pay for serving overseas and leading the lives we lead.

COVID roulette

After two years, our COVID bingo card was nearly full. We’ve experienced full-scale lockdowns and completed post-travel quarantines. We’ve double-masked, worn face shields, and submitted our vehicle and luggage to pointless disinfection protocols. We’ve done virtual school and homeschool, socially distanced outdoor playdates, and remote telework. We’ve taken more PCR and antigen tests than we’d care to count. And, of course, we got inoculated as soon as vaccines became available. The one thing missing from our COVID bingo card was actually contracting COVID, which is of course a good thing, though we always knew it would be a matter of when, not if. As of a couple of weeks ago, we can now check that box as well.

before the war

The last month has felt a bit like living in suspended animation, our focus halfway around the world, the joys and everyday struggles of our ordinary life somewhat muted. Life, of course, has continued apace; the Earth keeps spinning irrespective of what may be happening on its surface. In our quiet corner of the world that meant celebrating a birthday and preparing for family visits.

crossroads

“Papa, we want the good guys to win, right? Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?” Junebug wants to know as she clambers up on D’s lap. “This bad guy…he’s not really an evil person who makes wrong decisions and does bad things; he just plays for the bad team, right?” Junebug is not really into sports themselves (we tried, but could never get her interested in playing soccer, for example), but she’s got the cheering spirit down pat. “Go, good guys, go!” she’ll yell before noting as an aside, “It’s ok if I don’t like baseball because I have swimming lessons and ballet.” She has taken to dance like a bee to honey and will instruct anyone who’ll listen on first position, pliés, and relevés.

mushroom kingdom

Happiness is many different things to different people — a lover’s embrace; an old favorite song that tugs at one’s heartstrings; a hard-to-find bird bursting suddenly into view; a quiet afternoon with a book and one’s dog curled up at one’s feet; the unrestrained, contagious laughter of one’s children. For D’s parents, happiness is a wild mushroom, or — more precisely — a forest full of them.