We just celebrated Mashenka’s birthday. She turned 15 and somehow, our family has gotten into the habit of having a theme behind everyone’s birthday. It might be an activity, sport, interest, or hobby of one of the children, around which we build their cake. This year, hers was masks. Our oldest daughter loves masks. She…
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “Johnny-come-lately” as a late arrival or participant “circa 1839 and derives from the phrase ‘Johnny Newcome’ used by British officers during the Napoleonic War to describe new recruits”. When my kids started coming home from Russia to join our family, I was a first-time mother over 40, already married over two…
Hello, my name is Alexandra, and I am an overdependent doo-doo head. Some of my blogs are about how I can’t live with my family, and this is one about how I can’t live without them. Yes, they often bug and irritate me, but, I need my peeps. My family, particularly my husband and oldest…
I have related on previous occasions that some of my children believe me to be Russia’s wicked witch, Baba Yaga. It’s because I insist on things like school, manners, and cleanliness. The horror of it all. But we are now in that period of time, that magical era that’s the first half of May. This…
Hello, my name is Alexandra and I am a Master Scheduler, also known as a mother. With almost four teens in the household (one joining the ranks in about six months), it’s all I can do to keep their calendars clear. Not as in empty-clear, but as in understandable-clear. Simple blocks on a piece of…
Sashenka, our 12-1/2-year-old, was walking the dogs in the large backyard at the dacha. She returned with a pocket full of posies… for me. Her older sister was having another massively manic meltdown and it touched me that Sashenka would think of some kindness to share at this particular moment. I slipped them in my…
We have a city house and a country house, not that the country house is in the country at all, more like the beach, but we call it a dacha. In Russia, a dacha is a country house, or a shack, usually with no running water, which means a well to pump for water and…
As the children grow and mature, many onlookers take things at face value: the kids are attractive, and bright, and well-mannered. Usually. And I agree. But then we get into the gray areas of life, that honestly, have me stumped. How to say no to an onlooker who feels that Pasha should be taking flying…
As adoptive parents, most of us have missed some of our children’s milestones. Whether it’s as brief as their first few hours on Planet Earth, or years of learning to talk, walk, eat, and dress, we sense the loss. When our first son came home at almost eight years old, I took pictures of everything: …
Girls of all ages can act stupid… if their parents let them. Mine never allowed me to act “cute”. (Yes, I know, this could explain a lot-!) Not that I was not attractive, I mean, I was not allowed to use looks, or acting dumb, to get me out of hard work. Are you following…
