The dangers of the parenthood

Watch out! Not only parenthood can destroy your social life, you are also likely to suffer physical pain.

Three weeks ago in the evening, while I was reading Katya a book, she suddenly raised her hand upwards and accidentally stabbed me in the eye. In pain and unable to read, I put her to bed and sat in the dark with tears falling down my face. As I was still in pain the next morning we went to GP clinic and were sent to the hospital’s emergency department by the receptionist. I expected to see a room full of chaos, gore and suffering (guess I watched too many episodes of ER), instead we found ourselves in a quiet clean room with only two other respectable-looking patients. My vision was fine, but I had a nasty scratch on my cornea and was prescribed antibiotic cream for my eye. For the rest of the day, according to my husband, I was behaving like a cross between vampire afraid of the light and a moaning ghost. I’m glad he managed to take a day off to look after Cat, so I could spend most of the day napping to avoid the constant pain.

I think Cat was slightly traumatized by the whole experience and kept on asking me to read her books, which I couldn't do for the next few days, and kept on saying
"Глаз, ou" pointing at her own eyes. (Глаз/Glaz = eye). For the next few days I was also unable to use the computer, watch TV, draw and craft.

Unable to do much, I did a lot of thinking. There were plenty of useful lessons in that experience: admitting inability to do everything by myself and asking friends for help; valuing the time I have to draw and craft; prioritizing important things instead of wasting time; doing things when I can instead of putting them off to a more convenient moment (which often never comes). I also had chance to contemplate how to organize my days better and how much I can practically achieve in a day – always not as much as I wish. It feels like an impossible feat to cross everything from my daily to do lists and so now I try to be realistic when writing them down.

With constant re-organization and improving of my life, I also wanted to re-organize and clean up my blog (notice that I still have the autumn header!). But at some point I realized that it will be easier to start from scratch and so you can now find me here.

Routine & first times

I'm glad that we are no longer traveling and finally established some type of predictable routine. I like to plan, I like to know what will happen during the day, I like being able to set myself few simple task to do and actually manage to accomplish them. Sadly blogging doesn't seem to be part of the current routine, though maybe I should just aim to write one post per week?

I'm trying to use my creative time in a more structured way and learn few basics. At the moment I'm concentrating on the colour theory (huge topic). However, I also want to have some fun, so hoping to make one simple item each week. Last week I learned how to make another Chinese knot and made this Pan Chang Knot necklace:

Last week Cat and I also got to try out felting in the Russian playgroup, which takes place only few train stops from us and was discovered by me complete accidentally after we made the decision to move to this area. (Did I mention that this area seems to have everything one may ever want?). The playgroup is very structured: dancing/exercise, singing & finger rhymes, snack with a short puppet show of a Russian folktale, simple craft activity (playdough or colouring) and free-play with lots of toys (I suspect that one is kids' favourite). Last week's felting took up most of the time. Like all the other kids, Cat is too young to concentrate for that long, so she choose the colours and the placement and I, like all the other mothers, got to do all the hard work of felting.

In a way doing or seeing something for the first time together with my daughter makes it more special to me. I'm aware of the uniqnuess of those moments to her, of the strong impression they have on her, of their power to expand her world view and therefore of the same effect they have on me.

We had another first last week - we went to the plantearium. I want to go again :-) and like my husband, who went many times as a child, wonder why I never did before.

Spring is here

The spring is truly finally here. On Sunday we went on a long walk and saw many flowers, bees, bumble bees and even a butterfly. And for the last two days I was able to get out of the bed early, before anyone else was up. It is such a pleasure to wake up to the warm house and the skies getting lighter, instead of greyness and chill air. I love having some quiet time to myself in the morning, even if it is only short 20 minutes that I use to make porridge or have a shower. Yet in winter I was unable to drag myself out of the bed. It's likely that there are still few cold gray days to come; but I'm glad to know that another winter is over, the days are getting longer and we can enjoy more time outside. Welcome spring.

Review of 2008

Some of the files on my Australian photo DVD got corrupted and my computer is struggling to read it. I asked my parents to make me another copy from the one they have and until the new DVD arrives in the mail I thought I’d do a review of 2008. It feels a bit premature to do so, as the year will truly end for me with the trip to South Africa. Lately the starts and ends of my years don’t coincide with the calendar ones.

2008 was definitely a year of travel: starting with our New Year trip to Berlin (Germany), followed by Utsunomiya (Japan), Odessa & Kiev (Ukraine), New York (USA), Melbourne (Australia) and few small trips in UK. I’m planning a quieter year at home: maybe do some camping in summer, explore London and surroundings, do a lot of walking and train riding and less air travelling. Long trips to far away lands feel wrong for our family at the moment.

I made few things this year, not as many as I could’ve if I was more organized and less timid in starting new projects.

However I learned to knit thanks to my mum, attempted to sew few simple things and discovered the joy of embroidery. I’m looking forward to improving my crafting skills and making many items for our new home (despite the horrified look on my husband’s face, who is probably imagining floral curtains and crocheted doilies covering every surface).


And my main project is growing well and bringing me more joy than I ever could imagine. Should I have another one?

In love

I thought we managed to switch back to London time, but yesterday Cat fall asleep at 1 pm and slept until 4 am today. After being stuck inside the house all day yesterday I really wanted to get out and we went for a very early morning walk. Navigating in a new area in the dark was hard, but we got to see a fox and after finding a big park had it almost all to ourselves.

On the way back I went to a little local veggie shop to get some potatoes. After all the cold of outside Cat wasn’t in the mood to interact with the sales lady, but it didn’t stop her from giving Cat a mandarin. Made my day. I’m sure it makes business sense to be extra nice to the new customers, but I think the little kind gestures like that make a world much nicer place. And with my desire to be part of the community I definitely prefer shopping at the local shops instead of the big supermarkets.

I was completely in love with this area before we moved here and was slightly worried that I was seeing everything through the rose-coloured glasses. But I keep on falling more and more in love with it everyday. There seems to be so much to discover and enjoy here.

In Melbourne

I haven't been back to Australia for almost four years. It is incredible how much can be forgotten in the few years and even more incredible how many memories can be triggered by simply opening a car window and breathing in the fresh evening MEBLBOURNE air.

Back from New York

Katya and I came back from New York yesterday. The poor thing didn't handle the flight very well this time. I'm always impressed by people, who travel extensively with small children. However, I'm starting to accept that traveling far away with a toddler isn't for me. I would rather find interesting things to do close to home while keeping our routine intact, avoiding having to search for the food she would eat and having to discover the new tricks to get her to sleep while she is overexcited about new surroundings.

I'll post about all the things we enjoyed in New York once my husband comes back with my camera. He had to stay behind for few more days and I left my camera with him as I wanted to have as few items of luggage as possible and it wouldn't fit into my backpack. (Should I buy a bigger backpack, smaller camera case or both?).

Today the fire alarm system went off in our building during Katya's nap. There wasn't any smoke, but I didn't want to take a chance and decided to get us outside. Despite the loud noise right next to her bedroom, she was still sleeping, but talking in her sleep saying "Папа там" (papa is there), which just proves how much we miss him. The fire alarm was due to the system malfunctioning, but it took fire brigade almost an hour to get it to behave again.

Comfortable challenges

A challenge is something that will stretch your powers, with the likelihood of confirming them; you want to take on a challenge because you have confidence enough that you can succeed. A threat is a task that seems beyond your powers to accomplish or cope with.
John Holt How Children Learn

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Recently I stopped by a Julie's Pictures blog, who sets herself yearly challenges. Her first one was to walk for at least one mile from home everyday and record what she saw. Her friend, Fiona, just started a challenge to stitch a small picture everyday – they are so simple, yet interesting and visually pleasing.

I admire and respect their dedication, but recently I came to realise that for now I’m unable to commit myself to one year long daily challenges. I set myself simpler goals, like trying to make Russian pirozhki following these two Russian recipes: with apples and meat.

Recently I also joined Everyday Matters group, which has weekly drawing challenges. There is a list of 193 previous ones and so I’m trying to complete one old one alongside each new one. Here is the watercolour painting of autumn leaves for the challenge number 34.

The best guides

Parenting is a process of mutual growth, in which parents and children grow in different levels through their interactions and through the elements they bring into one another’s lives.
Rahima Baldwin Dancy You are Your Child’s First Teacher
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Few months ago I pulled out my husbands discarded photos and made a collage from one of them. While making it I contemplated the important influence other people have on our lives and our personal development. And how the best teachers and guides are often the ones, whose intention isn’t to teach us or to lead us down a certain path. Because their intentions are far removed from directing us, we are able to freely journey next to them; to choose the lessons we accept, reserve for later or reject; to grow at the pace comfortable to us.

My dear daughter, thank you for changing my life.

Enjoying London

Last two weeks our Gymboree class was extremely crowded; today I didn’t feel up-to spending my morning in the small room packed full with loud, energetic kids and since we’ve been listening to the first 5-10 minutes of the Paddington Bear narrated by Stephen Fry I took Cat to the Paddington station instead to look at the stature of Paddington Bear, .

Cat loves trains at the moment and was highly impressed with the big loudly humming ones there. Afterwards we walked to the Kensington Gardens to look at the birds and the fountains, chase the squirrels and observe the slow fall of leaves. And we got to see few tractors pulling the wagons with collected leaves. Cat loves them almost as much as trains and even started saying tractor/трактор few days ago.

I’m reading John Holt’s How Children Learn and am surprised by how much I’m learning from this book as a parent. For example instead of seeing dangers everywhere, I am able to relax more and trust Catherine to know her own limits. Today instead of grabbing her to prevent the potential fall into the fountain, I peacefully watched as she first sat on the edge and later leaned in to take a closer look at the water. Free from worrying thoughts I was able to see perfectly well that she wasn’t in any danger. Being a relaxed parent is more fun than constantly worrying one - I'm glad we stopped watching news in the morning as they constantly have conflicting segments on dangers surrounding kids, negative effects of overprotection and various debates on parents failing to do the right thing, whatever it deemed to be on that day.

Flashbacks to my education

I mentioned previously that I worry about my parenting style, but at the same time I agree with Rahima Baldwin Dancy:

Our task is to do our best, and trust in the best. We need to trust our children to be resilient, to be able to heal, to be terrific people despite our flawed efforts and our most regretted actions. (from You are Your Child’s First Teacher)

I’m glad that before having a child of my own I accepted that my own parents did their best based on their knowledge, their resources and their emotional/psychological fit with me. I feel that my acceptance of their parenting style gives me more confidence in my own and allows me to be gentle with myself, to forgive my own mistakes faster. I know I’ll make many mistakes, but all parents do.

I started reading R. B. Dancy’s book as part of my research into various educational streams/theories: Montessori, Waldorf, homeschooling, unschooling, autonomous education. I just finished reading John Holt’s How Children Fail. Here is excerpt from his own foreword to it:

But there is a more important sense in which almost all children fail: Except for a handful, who may or may not be good students, they fail to develop more than a tiny part of the tremendous capacity for learning, understanding, and creating with which they were born and of which they made full use during the first two or three years of their lives.
Why do they fail?
They fail because they are afraid, bored, and confused.

His book is so easy to read and I had no trouble agreeing with him throughout the book, because, despite being a good student, I disliked school and as result skipped some of it. Yep, I was a truant. According to my mum I even disliked kindergarten.

At school I was often bored, because the subject matter was irrelevant to me, too easy or plain boring. I still remember listening to my uncle’s stories about Catherine the Great when I was 10 or 12 and being surprised to discover that history can be interesting, that it involves real complex people, that it isn’t all about poor underprivileged people rebelling against the rich.

The whole life in Soviet Russia was full of fear and confusion to me. There were so many unwritten rules, that no one explained to me, but plenty of people were eager to tell one off for breaking them. I think my capacity for learning and creating was getting squashed long before I started school. But specifically at school, I was afraid of being presented as model example to the other students (it had great side-effect of cutting me off from the rest) and being ridiculed for the wrong answers. Being in the middle of the pack was the safest option. I still remember being asked to tell what the classic composer was trying to portray in a short musical piece and being laughed at by the teacher for saying that I heard a train speeding away and the sound of the train horn. The correct answer was the hunters on horses chasing prey and blowing a hunting horn. Trust me when I say that hunters and galloping horses weren’t part of my childhood experience in small Soviet town. So the whole situation seems totally ridiculous to me now. Actually all of us dreaded music lessons, which mostly consisted of learning patriotic songs, because our teacher was sadistic bastard. I learned a lot of things at soviet school like how not to show initiative, not to ask questions, avoid responsibility, hide my thoughts and feelings, cheat, pretend to be dumber than I am, not to stand out.

Yet while reading a book I was also trying to think about studying in Australia and I realised that I can’t form any judgement on their schools as by the time I got there I just wanted to get good grades at school to get into university and at uni to pass to get a well paying job. Learning wasn’t one of my goals. There were some great teachers, some average ones and only one I truly disliked.

I hope my daughter will have better educational experience than I did. After I started working I made sure I enjoy my jobs most of the time and didn’t dread going to work every morning. I don’t see why a child should dread going to school where they spend so much of their time. To keep our options open we are trying to move to an area, which has a range of good public and private schools/kindergartens including Montessori & Waldorf.

On Saturday we actually went to the Waldorf kindergarten/school open day. How could I not like a place that is full of wood, balls of yarn, crayons, music, kindness and respect? I loved it and think I would enjoy chatting to the people, who work there, and creating my own things surrounded by its magic atmosphere. But I’m still not 100% convinced that it is perfect for my daughter, though she enjoyed playing with all their toys, was happy to be away from us and didn’t want to leave.

And since this is supposed to be a craft blog, here is a picture of the shoes I crocheted for her last week, since we were asked to bring slippers as outdoor shoes aren’t supposed to be worn inside the Waldorf school. Crochet pattern from DROPS Design - there are many other free crochet and knitting patterns on their website.

Reality check

I often worry about doing things correctly, what lessons I’m teaching my daughter unconsciously and if I can be a better parent. I’m faster at noticing the negatives than positives. I occasionally get into the complaining about everything mode. And then I’m violently pulled out of it by the reality check. This time it came in the form of a book – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The main character of the book is an orphan German girl and the action takes place in the small town in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. She has real Problems. In comparison whatever problems my family or I may have at the present moment are solvable with a bit of creative thinking; we don’t fear for our lives and have reasonable confidence in our child having comfortable and secure existence for the years to come; we don’t have to make any hard decisions; our morality isn’t tested on any big scale. Basically our lives are good, profoundly beautifully good, and I can see that easily if I stop for a second my fast chain of complaints and actually think about them.

Since I have no idea of how to write useful book reviews, I’ll just point you to the ones here. Hopefully they’ll give you a better idea of whether this book could be worth reading for you. Myself, I fall in love with the book from the first few pages and cried at the end of it, though I seem to be crying at books very easily nowadays.

Visas & spider webs

Yesterday I received my new UK Visa - spousal one this time. The changes in visas are good representations of my life: from Working Holiday Maker to Highly Skilled Migrant to Spousal.

On Saturday I went out to photograph the leftovers of the fog, but ended up taking photos of spider webs instead.


1. Spiderweb low in the grass, 2. Behind the vase, 3. Caught leaf, 4. Detail of spiderweb

Multitasking

TATE Modern

Have you ever attempted to push a pram with one hand against the oncoming crowd, to keep an eye on your child to make sure she doesn’t fall off the bridge or get stepped onto and to take photos all at the same time? My multitasking abilities are improving daily. Luckily for me the Millennium Bridge has a small mesh section, though which one can see the shore beneath and while Cat was looking down in fascination I snapped one good photo to remind her about our Friday outing to get Papa from his work place.

Millennium Bridge & St Paul's Cathedral

Reading & Listening

I went on the book reading binge, which means that I haven’t done much crafting and my brain turned into the muddled confusion of ideas. Once I’ll sort them out, I’ll try to write about some of the books I read in the last two weeks.

Actually looking at my short craft list of 8 items, most of them start with “figure out the materials required” or “buy the materials required”, so hopefully I’ll find time to go shopping on the weekend.

I do manage to draw almost every day – there are very few things that make me as happy as drawing. Fresh flowers come close.

I’m also knitting a baby blanket while listening to TED (highly recommend) and interviews with Sir Ken Robinson, but the blanket deserves its own blog post. I used to love listening to the radio as a child and glad to discoverer the availability of online podcasts that can be listened whenever one has time.

Colour Inside and Out

I love colour, but until recently was afraid of it: I struggled to tell which colours worked well together; I would often wistfully walk past bright clothes; I would settle for safe blacks, whites, browns and neutrals. And then I started beading and taking photos and looking at the incredibly beautiful photos and creations of others.


I started to notice my yearning for having brighter colours in my surroundings and clothes, my desire to confidently use colour in my own work, my wish to understand the colour theory. I read, but more importantly I looked for colour lessons in other’s work and nature. And is there a better colour theory teacher than nature?


Eventually I joined A Year of Color group on Flickr, created and run by HappyThings. Last year, every week, she choose a combination of two colours, this year’s the theme is Colour Inside & Out. Having to photograph a certain colour each week really makes me pay attention to my surroundings and find colours in the most unexpected places. I didn’t think we have much red in our house, but I found some and finding red outside during autumn is too easy.


Since the new year of colour started just last week, you can also join and discover the colour in your life.

Back to posting

I am back to blogging, at least I think I am, though I’m starting to give up any idea of the regular posting. Cat was sick for last few days and slept really badly: waking up often at night and getting no more than 45 minutes of sleep in the afternoon. Any disturbance to my routine makes me feel lost and unable to find energy and time for writing down my thoughts, even though there is some free time left.

The oatmeal bread (recipe from Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course) worked out really well and I'm eager to make it again. I decided to improve my cooking skills and so borrowed Delia's book from the library intending to go through all the sections and recipes systematically. However looking at the contents I straight away realised that my plan will fail - there are SIX chapters on various baking and desert making and I couldn't resist trying these recipes first.

Today, after Cat woke up at 5:30, I made scones for breakfast. They came out lighter than I expected, but are delicious. There is slightly different scone recipe on Delia's website. There are plenty of other great recipes there and useful cooking tips.

Here is some miscellaneous info for you about me - I tried scones for the first time at 19!

One year ago

Exactly one year ago Cat had her first cold (though I didn’t blog about it until the day later) and we spent most of the day cuddling up on the couch. The only reason I know this is because I finally bought some photo albums and today started to choose photos to put into them. This year I have a cold and would’ve loved to spend all day long on the couch. Instead we entertained each other the best we could. Bored with my sluggishness Cat went to explore, found the case for my glasses, took out the wipe cloth and proceeded to wipe all her books in turn. Thankfully we have many, so I had a nice break lying next to her watching her clean.

P.S. It is hard to believe that a year ago she couldn't even crawl

Online networks

Since I want to stay in touch with few old work colleagues, who are not on Facebook, I finally caved in and created an account on LinkedIN (professional networking site). On opening a new account I had to choose one option that describes my current employment situation: employed, a business owner, looking for work, working independently or a student. I hate labels when they are used to reduce something complex into a tiny easily explainable stereotype and I certainly didn’t feel that any of these choices describe me.

It was easy to dismiss the first three options. I’m not in the paid employment, though I certainly work hard everyday. I don’t run a business. I’m not looking for a new job. And for everyone who asked (mum, you aren’t the only one :-)) - I don’t plan to in the nearest future, as I enjoy having time to think, learn, plan, design and craft. I enjoy being able to sit still on my own with a cup of tea in the middle of the day in order to regroup and re-establish inner balance. I love being able to spend lost of time outside. I enjoy feeling that I can meet my obligations to my family and myself without overstretching to the breaking point. Few weeks back I saw this quote in my diary:
It is necessary to be somewhat underemployed if you want to do something significant.
James Watson (American scientist)
And to me raising a child is something very significant.


I could describe myself as a student as every day is full of lessons in the child development and psychology; in the needlework, painting and drawing; in self-discovery and self-improvement; in patience, gratitude and humility.

After considering all these and many more things I choose “working independently” option, only to find out that once profile is created it is possible to re-write this selection into unique professional headline. Though this could end up being even harder than Rachael’s six words challenge. I think opening account on Stitchin Fingers community instead would’ve been more enjoyable.

Refreshing naps

Long past the days when I would collapse anywhere at any chance to get some sleep. Yet when I reach a point of feeling frustrated, irritable, unable to treat anyone with patience or compassion I know that it is time to get some extra sleep and after putting the Little Girl down for her nap, I curl up on the couch and have an afternoon snooze myself. And for me the best afternoon naps always happen in the summer warmth with a light breeze coming from the open window. Afterwards I feel cheerful, energetic and enthusiastic. Occasionally a regretful thought about all unaccomplished tasks passes my mind, but I chase it away knowing that I can accomplish even more in my refreshed state.