Paris

On our 5-day trip to Paris in May we have met my mom who was in Paris at that time for a conference. Mom was happy to see us and especially Mark who grew up into a much bigger boy since the last time she saw him.

London Zoo

My lovely cousin with uncle has recently visited us in London. It has been a while since the last time I saw them and I really appreciated they made all this effort to get a visa to come to London. In one of the days Tania took me and Mark to the London Zoo. Another good news is that Tania got a visa for 6 months period, and she has already booked flights to visit us again in July. I am glad :)

School madness over

It's not a secret that many parents in London would go through whatever it takes to place their kids to a good school. Good schools in London, who would imagine, is a big deal. Before having deciding to have a kid most of the parents would try to move to an area where good schools are situated, so that when a kid becomes old enough to go to school they would get a place in a nearby school. And you should be careful and only move within 0.5 miles radius (sometimes even closer) from the desired school to get into it's catchment area. So there is no need to explain why properties within 0.5 miles around good schools cost much more expensive than other properties in the same area. The way to check if a school is good or bad is very easy, you don't even need to go there as the results of every school's performance is available online. Those results are updated on a yearly basis, so it's relatively easy to see how schools are progressing. There were two schools we wanted Mark to get a place in. I would be happy if he got place in either of them, but a little more happier if he got into our local Catholic school. He was already going into a nursery class in this school, where we managed to get a place last year, but this fact didn't have any impact if he would get a place in the same school for reception year. If you get into reception year, however, you are offered a place in the school for good - until you turn 11. Our house was on the edge of 0.5 miles away from our home that is why I was worried. The school also gave advantage to the kids whose siblings were already going to the same school, which was even more worrying as many Mark's classmates already had a brother or sister going to this school. But when time came I received a letter confirming that Mark was offered a place there. I am really relieved and happy and can now forget about school hunting for another 6 years!

4th Birthday

For quite some time I felt uneasy about Mark's upcoming birthday. Local kids that we used to know in our area either moved away or we lost any contact with them, so we were slightly worried about whom to invite for his 4th birthday. Inviting all the kids from his class at school/nursery did seem slightly mad, as there were 19 of them in his class, but we couldn't be selective in that case as it would look disrespectful just to invite ones and not to invite the others. So we sent invitations to all of them adn most of them came. And it was a good idea, because kids seemed to have fabulous time. Mark was extremely happy to get so many presents and kept talking about his very happy birthday for a long after the birthday was over.

Russian book store

I have FINALLY found a good Russian children book store in London. I got overexcited about the variety, quality and novelty that I couldn't resist and spent so much money on them - I don't wanna see the status of my bank account this month.

We had many Russian kids books at home however all of those were already known to me from my childhood. There certainly are plenty of good ones that Mark loves, but I never could find anything "new" that would be no more than 30 years old. There are plenty of lovely English children books which could have been a solution, but as Mark protests against me reading in English, I ended up synchronously translating every English book to Russian for him. That's quite tiring and far from ideal - not unless I wanna train my synchronous translation skills, but that's not my primary priority at the moment.

And that lovely bookshop is on the first floor of a big Waterstones store near Piccadilly Circus. I feel like I am gonna be a frequent buyer there from now on, I just need a slightly bigger salary.

Thank you, Anna, I have managed to find it!

Little painter

Mark has recently started taking drawing lessons. His teacher has shown him how to mix colors in order to get a bigger variety of colors, which made Mark very interested. A few days back I bought him a set of different acrylic colors to practice with mixing and painting. He tried them now and then when supervised, but I was on skype talk today when Mark decided to experiment with colors mixing again. I just told him to be careful with colors, and try not to touch anything around.

Mark was really into it and was concentrated and so quiet the whole time that when I finally came to check his paintings his hands were all dirty as well as all the things around him. But the worst was coming. I was still on skype call when I asked him to go upstairs to wash his hands. He did but then got back to me saying that colors were too sticky and he needed some help. I was on my to the bathroom when I looked at the walls. They were colored brown and black and red and green and not just slightly...

It took me almost an hour to clean the walls and as the color was fresh I have almost managed to give them their original look back. Almost... the only problem was in some particularly black-brown colored spots I was using a little bit more pressure and as a result we've now got some visible spots of bare plasterboard. I guess repainting the walls is gonna come a little sooner than we have originally planned. In the meanwhile lesson learned - do not leave a 3-year old painting unattended!

Bekonscot Model Village

We have 2 days off work due to Queen's Jubilee and yesterday I decided to take Mark to a place called Bekonscot Model Village. When we arrived to the village and which was more than an hour of drive I realized I left my wallet at home and I've got absolutely no cash with me. I already gave up with the thought of getting into the park when I decided to ask if there anything that could be done at the ticket counter. Turned out it wasn't completely hopeless, I could tell them payment card details and they could try to perform a transaction. So I called Andrejs and he gave me his card details, and it worked! We could get into the park! God bless internet and credit cards! And mobile phones!

Bekonscot is the oldest model village in the world. Mark's primarily interest were little trains going around the village. This was a real half km long outdoor model railway with the block signalling system. It was especially entertaining for Mark to watch how the little trains would stop by themselves and let the other train pass and then continue their journey. And there was much more than just trains