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September 9, 2003
***Pregnancy***
I'm 8 weeks pregnant, and have a confession to make: I'm a Coke addict. It has to be Diet Coke and it has to be ice cold. Diet Coke is the only drink that actually helps my round the clock morning sickness. Unfortunately, I'm certain the American Association of Obstetricians (or their Russian equivalent) does not advise substituting Diet Coke for those recommended 8 glasses of water a day. The strange thing is, before getting pregnant I actually did drink 8 glasses of water a day. Usually I LOVE water. Now for some reason, water is disgusting to me. Before I am inundated by messages berating me for abusing caffeinated soft drinks, I will reassure you that I limit myself to one small can of Diet Coke a day and choke down the aforementioned glasses of water, even though I really don't want to.
I have never had food cravings during pregnancy. In "real life" I love food. Sweet food, salty food, dairy, fish, meat, carbs, proteins, veggies, if it's not fried, I'll eat it. And coffee, oh coffee! I could write an ode to coffee, my only true addiction. Ten dollar lattes in a Paris cafe, Starbucks, french press, office coffee-maker coffee, turkish sand coffee, Nescafe and Maxwell House. I'll drink it and enjoy it all! During my first pregnancy, I fought the coffee addiction, but never could come completely off it, and drank a cup a day the entire 9-months. With Anna, I was so sick, I didn't drink coffee until I was 7 months pregnant. This time, that primordial protection mechanism seems to have set in (you know, the one which makes "dangerous" foods and substances seem repulsive to pregnant women). I cannot even imagine wanting a cup of coffee. Blech!
Food aversions, yes. Aversions to all food, yes. My newest and weirdest food aversion is warm and room temperature food (even worse are room temperature drinks). Food tastes better when it's right-out-of the refrigerator cold; drinks, as mentioned above, must be ice-cold. That might seem normal if I were living in Texas, but I'm about as far away from Texas as a person can be without actually leaving our planet.
Also on the pregnancy front, (and my front is already showing signs of pregnancy), I had some spotting for a week, ending last week. It began after I had a vaginal ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy, and I didn't really pay too much attention to it. I spotted (actually bled) with both Andrei and Anna. With Andrei it was a subchorionic hemhorrage, and with Anna, the cause was never determined. So this time, I was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing until last Thursday I had a couple of spots of red (not brown) blood. I called the doctor, whose response was to wig: "You want to say that you've been spotting for a week and you're only calling NOW?! What are you THINKING?!" I reminded her that this is my third pregnancy, and that I'd had the same in both my earlier pregnancies. She calmed down, and we decided that if the spotting didn't go away, I'd come in on Saturday. Well, on Friday, it went away, so my next appointment is this coming Friday, September 12. Keep your fingers crossed that everything is OK.
***Andrei***
DID YOU KNOW that 60% of Russian children are considered unhealthy? Except for roseola when he was 2 years old, Andrei had never ever been ill. Then, last year, he began going to state pre-school. He went for exactly 4 days before getting a horrible ear infection which required antibiotics and which he passed on to Anna, then 8 months old. This scenario repeated itself 3 more times, after which we pulled him from pre-school. Andrei was devastated. He loved pre-school and he missed his friends. But the state-run pre-school, despite its friendly and caring personnel, was not good for him. It's sad, but the parents of most children do not have the financial opportunity to feed their children high-quality balanced diets, buy them multivitamins and appropriate clothing. Kids would come to pre-school with full-blown bronchitis, bad colds, you name it, and inevitably, they would infect a good portion of the other kids.
Andrei began pre-school yesterday. He's going to a private preschool Mon-Fri, from 8:30 - 12:15. In Russia, most pre-schools are state-run, full day (8:30 - 5:00), and there are way too many kids in the group. I looked long and hard for this pre-school and though it is by Russian standards outrageously expensive (monthly fee is more than the average minimum monthly wage), I am hoping it will suit Andrei, and that last year's situation will be to some extent avoided. His group has 11 kids in it, him included.
Andrei LOVED his first day of pre-school. When we came to pick him up yesterday, he refused to get dressed to come home, saying that he wanted to stay at pre-school. It took 10 minutes and our solemn oath that he'd get to come back today in order to convince him to come home with us. The nanny says that today the whole scene repeated itself. I never doubted that Andrei would love pre-school and I'm happy that my suspicion was confirmed. They have 4 "classes" a day: math, language, music, physical education, art, and some others that I don't remember offhand.
***Nyusochek***
Nyus is, well, she's NYUS. She took Andrei's absence much better than I thought she would, though she gave him a huge python hug when they picked him up today. Anna's such a paradox. She is incredibly independent, dressing and doing many other things for herself. Her physical and linguistic development shocks other parents on the playground, yet ... Anna refuses to have anything to do with the potty. You may be thinking "what potty? She's only 1 year and 8 months", but here in Russia, most kids are using the potty at around one year old. Andrei was potty trained late at 22 months, one fine day we just took the diaper off and said "that's it for diapers. When you have to pee, pee in the potty", and he DID. Andrei had very few accidents. We thought that because Nyus has Andrei as an example and because she is so advanced in other areas of development (again, partly because of Andrei), that she'd have no problem using the potty. WRONG. So the potty is on the back burner.
***Indian Summer***
Is it politically incorrect to call it that? In Russian, it's called "old woman's summer", thus avoiding any references to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Which reminds me of how I miss my very very best friend in the whole world, Marion, who is half Kwakiutl (Pacific Northwest indigenous people), who after my kids, husband and parents I love more than anyone in the whole wide world, and whom I haven't seen since the summer of 1998. Marion's an opera singer in Toronto, and man, do I envy her. If there were one thing in the world I would change about myself, it wouldn't be my butt or my jug-ears or my wrinkles, it wouldn't be my hypochondria or my tendency to be way too uptight about things like getting the kids into bed on time or letting them snack. If I could change one thing about myself, I would give myself a voice! While I have a very good ear for music, I have the singing voice of a Giant African Horned Toad in heat. Spending my free and wild youth in the company of singers and musicians, who were constantly bursting into song, I wanted with all my heart to join in. Anyway, that was way off track. What I wanted to say, is that here in the Great White North, we are now enjoying that unexpected burst of warm weather that comes before fall really sinks its claws in. Just when we thought summer was over and we were doomed to wear parkas until next May, the temperature soared. OK, it's not warm enough to wear sandals and shorts, but at least the kids can go outside without mittens.
Warm regards from warm St. Petersburg
Lisa
p.s. For more infor about health of Russian children, try this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2580775.stm
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