Dirt Box

Before I get started, I'd like to announce that I will now be spell checking my posts. i know you're excited, because I am. I already went back and fixed two of them, but it's kind of tedious, so I suppose we'll leave the earlier ones as proof that my writing has evolved.

Now on to bigger things.

I am torn, as J gets older, about the idea of him playing by himself. I've never been one of those mothers who thinks I have to "enrich" her child's day with stimulating activities. In fact, the first year of his life we basically just walked around the neighborhood. I miss the slingin' days. We went to a Waldorf Class when he was about a year old, but it was a huge disaster. The class was two hours long, and he inevitably would either want to nurse the whole time, or start to freak out towards the end as it was interfering with his sleepy time. Note I did not say nap time, because the boy did not nap predictably until he was 14 months old, but I digress. Anyway, it was bad times all around.

Then we had a little music class at about the 2 year mark, because he was getting really interested in music and singing, and that didn’t work out too well either. It would be a battle to keep him awake for the 25-minute drive to class, and he would DEFINITELY fall asleep on the way home. Unfortunately, until VERY recently, like the last month, I've never been able to have a successful transfer while asleep. So lots of sitting in the car reading 30-year-old National Geographics. You know, magazines no one would break in to my car to steal.

Also, the class was run by the Peabody institute, and for the zillion dollars and prestige, I thought I would at least get a teacher who got dressed before coming to work. I'm so awful and judgemental about these things sometimes, but she seriously looked like she rolled out of bed and straight into the classroom. And she did that weird goofy clown thing that some people think kids like. My kid ran from her, and I couldn't stand her either. And she couldn’t hold a tune. To cinch it, J wanted to just run around the classroom the whole time. The room was pretty big, and we all know dogs and children react to the size of the space they're in. So with three weeks left in the class, we never went back.

He had a nice time there, but it just wasn't worth it for me. I'm also not concerned about preparing him for school, as I'm planning on unschooling/ homeschooling. And, if that falls through, and he has to go to school, it’s not going to take him that long to learn to raise his hand and stand in line for the bathroom. This kid is WAY used to standing in lines forever. Airport, anyone?

Back in Baltimore, we're in a wonderful parent-child Montessori class, 90 minutes, one day a week, and it is perfect for J. They don't make the kids share, and his type of intense concentration is respected. Next session he'll be one of the older kids there, but I think it will be a good thing for him.

As far as the whole playing by himself thing, which is where I got started, he's actually been really good about it since he was about two. It literally happened overnight. One day he was screaming at the top of his lungs if I went to pee, the next, 90 minutes of action-packed car races on the couch, complete with mechanics and birds and rockets and airplanes.

Since we've been here, it's not going as well. I assume it's partly the weirdness of being away, partly the lonliness, and partly my guilt over his lack of suitable playmates. SO when he asks for me to play cars and trucks with him, if I'm genuinely not doing anything that can't wait, then I play with him. If he's already playing, I always leave him alone. It's so much fun to listen to his stories, and also I like to encourage his concentration. That's one of the things I like about Montessori.

Lately I've been saying no to do computer stuff, or house stuff, or even read or lay down, and I’m always surprised that he whines a bit and then descends into his little world. Which always involves rockets and friendly bears. He played on the balcony with a box of dirt and some treasure for 90 minutes the other day.

It's not that I don’t like playing, but it's really hard for me to focus on the millionth game of, "cars and trucks" when we're in the house and there's other stuff I could be doing. Or sometimes it's just plain boring playing with a preschooler all day.

He is fantastic about helping with the laundry and dishes and cooking, and I think that stuff is just as important as "playing" with him. I read somewhere, I think a Waldorf handout, that it's helpful not to think, "Oh, I have all this STUFF to do and THEN I can play with my child," because really, it's not the toys your kid likes, it's being with you. Also, if you present housework as a big boring chore, you end up with battles the rest of your life over cleaning and such. This may happen anyway, but my kid really enjoys being a crane picking up the small things. And crayons are rockets, and the cars vroom into the garage at night.

I find an activity, like art or building things with Legos, is easier for me than open-ended stuff, but I wish I could be better at that sometimes, because I don't want him to think I don't like being with him. I'll even tell him that I like being with him, and that he's fun to be around, because he really is. I hope my actions show it, too. Today he said his toots were not him, but majic butt aliens. How funny is that?

So I guess he's getting older, and I, like every other mother in the world, am just trying to keep up.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading,
-Anne

The Oven Hates Me

An attempt at biscuits this morning leads me to believe that it's not me, it's the oven. AGAIN with the weird gluey center. I even used real milk, because I like to live on the edge, and it made no difference.

I think it might be the water. The water here is chock full of minerals. It leaves white powder on everything it touches, so maybe it's hard to cook with rock water.

Or maybe it's the margarine versus butter. I'm just trying to keep the dairy to a minimum. I think I will do the next batch with real butter and see if that makes a difference. Our bread turned out OK, though, so maybe it's something else entirely.

We made plain biscuits, no buttermilk. Two cups flour, four teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, finger mixed with 3 tablespoons of butter, like you would with pastry. Then add 3/4 cup of milk, roll out to an inch thick, and cook at 350 for 15 minutes.

The weird biscuits are still edible, however, thanks to the blueberry jam we made at the same time. They have wild blueberries here, and they're perfect for making jam. They're really tiny and sweet, and even blue on the inside. All we did was boil equal parts sugar and blueberries, and viola! Jam! It's actually a little runny, so is behaving more like syrup, but I'm not hearing any complaints from the naked biscuit-eater on the couch. This was my first time making jam, and I think I should have let it cook longer before transferring it into jars, but it's still delicious. I highly recommend making your own jam, if it's this easy. I'm guessing it won't keep for 10 years in a jar, but we are eating the heck out of some jam these days.

In other news, J has been sleeping until 6 again, so maybe he's over the 3am thing. Hooray! I've learned not to get too used to good sleep, though. He seems to do better with no nap, although the afternoons require a little more management. Last night he slept from 6:30pm to 5:45 am, so that's pretty good. He did get in with me for a while, but then went back to his own mattress after some head rubbing.

We are going home in 2 1/2 weeks, which is very exciting for both of us. I really REALLY miss my dog. This morning, I was thinking about things I need to do, mostly people I want to visit when I get back, and couldn’t figure out how to see them all. I had FORGOTTEN that I have a car. Sheesh.

Strangely, when I realized the other day that it was three more weeks, not four, I got hysterical, because I'm going to miss my husband so much. He'll be here another month before coming home, and then home for a month before heading off on another job. Luckily, his next job is on an island where they speak English, so he’ll have a very nice time. It will almost be like a vacation for him.

Speaking of his work, we are going to visit him on set today, and pick our very own wild blueberries and strawberries. So hopefully I'll get some pictures from that.

That's it for now. Not too much exciting, but thanks for reading anyway,
-Anne

Storming the Castle

Roly Mo, what a long day!

I had been planning all week to take J to Trakai, a city with a giant old castle about 30 km from Vilnius. Sunday, was H's only day off, and I like to get J and I out on adventures on his days off so he can sleep. I was planning to take the train both ways, after a successful train ride to Kaunas for the zoo, and was really looking forward to it. Here's a picture of it from their tourism website.

What is it they say, life is what happens when you're making other plans?

To begin with, J woke at three am for the second day in a row. I have no idea what this is about, but I'm guessing it's either an intellectual growth spurt, or the whole nighttime peeing thing still. I don't really care, but I'm kind of tired of it.

Then, I checked the weather and it called for Thunderstorms all day. I figured, thunderstorms pass quickly, and the weather forecast is always wrong over here, so I packed our things. I checked the train schedule, and our choices were to leave at 8 am and be ther 90 minutes before the castle even opened, or wait until 1:30 and deal with a crabby kid and being rushed in the afternoon. I couldn't even get the bus schedule to load online, but the receptionist at our hotel/apartments called some unknown bus gurus, and wrote the outbound schedule down, which was roughly every 20 minutes from the station.

So at 9:30, stroller raincover and handwritten schedule in hand, J and I went to the bus station. We tried to buy tickets for Trakai, and the ticket lady said we had to go to information. Information said it was a holiday, apprently for summer solstice, and the next bus was in an hour. She said I had to wait two minutes to buy the ticket. I was confused until I realized I was really waiting for the ticket-selling girl to come back. The ticket girl started to sell me a ticket for an earlier bus, and I was worried about getting confused, but after much conversation between info girl and ticket girl, it was decided I could take the earlier bus. Apparently, the reason info girl didn't offer it to me as a choice is I had to buy the ticket on the bus. Why would that even matter?

J was very excited to get on the bus, never having been on one, and we got decent seats by an open window in the back, and the Quinny Zapp stowed nicely under the seats. We even had Americans sitting in front of us, although I didn't talk to them until later.

Things went pretty smoothly, and for the low price of about 50 cents USD, we were on our way. The bus stopped a few times picking up people, and the only truly smelly person near us at least only rode for about 20 minutes. A man got on with a rolled up carpet and sat right behind us. I quickly realized the carpet was soaked in cat pee. Yum. And then he had a sneezing fit, which sprayed all over my neck. Now, I'm not a huge germophobe, but I don't share drinks and I use a paper towel to open public restroom doors on my way out. So being sneezed on by Cat Pee Man made me shudder.

J fell asleep and had a nice 40-minute nap on the way there, and the American women in fron of me helped me get all our stuff out. It was a 2km walk to the castles, and we had fun stopping along the way to throw rocks in the water. We also saw a swan family. Swans are gigantic. I had no idea.

We toured the castle, and J was mostly excited by the cannons and rocks in the courtyard. I thought he barely noticed the castle, but at bedtime he told H all about the different things we saw. H had filmed there a few years ago, and I had visited set, so I took a few shots of J in some of the locations. Like, "Daddy assassinated a monk here!"

We tried to get a sailboat , with a skipper of course, to go out on the lake, but even though I offered to pay the full group rate, the guy in charge refused to let us go out. I have no idea why, since the entire time I was there not a single one of his boats was rented. Maybe it's a front for Russian Mafia money.

We had lunch by the lake, and J was very friendly with the other children around us, just picking up things and naming them. "Apple! Baby! Fork!" He was trying to teach them English. How cute.

I planned on taking the train back, to avoid any rush hour traffic, but right as we got to the bus station, to walk past it, a HUGE downpour started and I thought we'd better stick to the bus. Like I said, it was a holiday, and I didn't want to walk the ten minutes to the train station in a thunderstorm, have there be no train, and then have to walk back and have missed the bus.

The bus came a few minutes later, packed full of people, and I realized we would have to stand all the way home, about an hour's drive in a bus. So we got in a cab, while J screamed "I want to take the bus!" intending to just go to the train station. We ended up taking it all the way home, but it was so worth it.

The taxi driver told us he had a brother who lived in Florida, and then put in a disco 80's DVD for us to watch. Very entertaining. They have these driver's on-board DVD players here, and I'm not sure if it's for the driver to watch or the passengers, but it's always entertaining.

Overall a great day, and J slept until 6 this morning, so I'm feeling like an entirely new person. Now it's time to shower while J watches Bits and Bobs.

Thanks for reading,
Anne

Bread Success

Remember the flat bread? Well, we made another loaf from the dry mix I mentioned. And guess what? It worked! We only did one rise, and it was nice and chewey and good.

We ate the entire loaf in one day. This was partially due to my son's three-day sandwich binge. He's over it now, but it seemed every time I turned around, I was making him another sandwich. Luckily, as I may have mentioned before, meat with jam makes a pretty good sandwich, and I used the leftover chicken from Milk Chicken night in his sandwiches. I will write about Milk Chicken as soon as I find the fancy picture I took of some of the ingredients. It may be in my home computer, so that could be a while.

Other than the Eating Machine, things have been pretty quiet. J and I had a discussion about pushing after we went to the zoo and another kid finally pushed him back. I told him instead of pushing, he can wait for his turn, or go do something else. We were at the playground the day after that, and he started to get upset that other children were climbing on the slide he used. He started to go up to them, but then caught himself and sid, "I will wait my turn."

That worked for a few minutes, but then he got impatient as the iother kids kept sliding, and J is not quite as fast as other kids his age. He went up to a younger child and put his arms on eiothre side of the kid, without touching him, and made his frustrated, "grrrrrr" noise. It was pretty funny, and overall, I think he did well. It's nice to know he is listening about that kind of stuff.

We've been doing lots of painting and drawing, and yesterday, he drew this.

He says it's his butt. Obviously, we've been a little butt-centric lately. Now he wants me to read to him every time he goes, specifically "Toot and Puddle: Top of the World". On the last page it says, "Are you getting pooped?" which is, of course, hysterical.

Now I must return to the leftover chicken, sizzling in Marks and SPencer BBQ marinade. That and sweet corn. Mmmmmm.
Thanks for reading,
Anne

No Whole Foods for Miles

I actually let my child eat canned ham the other day. On purpose.

I don't rememeber if I've ever had it, but H was really excited about it when he saw it in Marks and Spencer, so I picked up a can. For some reason, I thought he was excited becase it was good food. Apparently not. I forgot that he loves ChefBoyArDee and bacon sandwhiches. I like salad. I opened the can to make James a sandwich,a nd nearly threw up at the gelatinous glob reveled before me. I scraped off most of the goo and made a sandwich anyway, becasue hey, it's protein, and we've got to balance the Cheerios somehow.

I cannot wait to get back to Baltimore and go to Whole Foods. It's not so much that there's no decent food here, as far as meat, but the cuts are so different that it's a crapshoot whenever you buy it. Even my mother-in-law, who is a great cook, said she made some lamb the other night and it wasthe worst thing she had ever made, due to the unrecognizable cut, or some other x factor. So it's not just me.

The other problems with food here are the substandard refrigeration and the scattered nature of the groceries. They're real big on saving energy here, which is good, but the grocery store smells like nearly rotted meat whenever you step to the back. They don't have the refrigeration cranked nearly as high as American supermarkets. The hotel refrigerator is pretty lousy too. The milk often goes bad before it's even opened. I gave a friend a homemade popsicle, and it molded IN THE FREEZER. What's that all about?

We have to walk everywhere, or take a taxi, and the food H likes is scattered across the city. The tea he likes in in one place, the store with a good bread selection in another, the good dairy in yet another. Having to go to the store every day with a toddler makes it a challenge, but certainly having a babysitter has relieved some of that burden. I still have to buy milk every single day. Luckily, I can usually squeeze that in after a trip to the playground.

OK, J is screaming for juice. I have to go help him rememeber how to say, "please", which he of course says to everyone but me.
Thanks for reading,
Anne

British Ambasador Mint

J and I went to the British AMbassador's house for a playdate with his son, who is about 2 months older, and the usual 4 inches shorter. They had a huge house, their own policeman, and a gigantic herb garden which was overgrown with mint. As I am a helpful person, and also needed mint for my father-in-law's mint julep maker, I offered to take some off her hands.

Why do they call these things playdates? At this age, it's still both mothers trying to manage the children half the time, and playing with them the other half. There were perhaps 5 minutes in 90 where the children played together, or just weren't begging us to play with them or fighting.

It's no big secret that we mothers do this so we can hang out with each other, not the kids, and I suppose as they get older, and break through the "parrallel play" stage, it will take me less than four days to have one conversation.

The hardest thing for me about J's social interactions is that because he is so verbal and focused, when a child DOES want to play with him, he yells at them to go away, or asks me to "grab him out of here away from me." I am inclined to let him fight his own battles, and don't really mind if the kids push each other and scream a bit, but it's so hard to gauge how another mother will take it.

Luckily, J defers to me, although he has begun pushing the other children and taking things from them. I actually think this is sort of a good thing. He is developing the independence to stand up for himself, and not just immediately turn to me. When he pushes or grabs, I "reset" the situation, remind him to talk to the other child, and work through it that way. I try to give him the words that will help him, stuff like,"You really want to play with that toy, but E is using it right now. What else could you play with?", but this of course doesn't always go smoothly. Sometimes he tries to ask the other child for the toy, but unfortunately, the other kids don't have the verbal skills he does, and he tends to get blank stares.

I do not force my boy to share if at all possible. I tell him if he wants to bring toys, he has to share the,m, but he if he thinks he can't share, he needs to leave them at home. Often, he'll say, "I'd better bring two cars for sharing, " but usually opts to go to the playground empty-handed. I just don't think it's a reasonable expectation for an almost 3 year-old, but he tends to share with children he's known for a while, just not new kids. This makes perfect sense to me. And he shares fine with adults.

But back to the food. I took the giant mint home and gave half of it to my inlaws. Then I made a marinade for pork chops which turned out delicious, so I am back on the horse after the steak disaster. To make a mint marinade for pork chops, take half a cup of fresh mint, 8 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of red wine vinegar, one peeled garlic clove, a teaspoon of sugar, and a half teaspoon salt, and process. Then marinade the chops in the fridge for up to four hours.

Cook the chops on medium high for about 5 or 6 minutes each side, depending on the thickness. I served this with a quick salad of lettuce, tomatos, onions and cucumbers. Good food for a hot night, and H was very happy with it.

I feel like I'm beginning to figure out the tricks to the cooking environment here. For example, I bought the chops bone-in, but cut off the fat and the bone so they would fit in the cooking area of the pan.

I miss my stove.

Tonight J and I had Marks and Spencer Minestrone, and H and I had prociutto and cheesesticks. I didn't eat any cheesesticks, but had WAY too much prociutto, so now I feel ill and dehydrated. If I drink anything, though, I'll be up all night peeing, and I'm already pooped. J was up for three hours in the middle of the night, after waking to pee and not being able to get back to sleep. When will THAT end..

That's it for now. Thanks for reading.
-Anne

I Heart Soup

My goodness it's hard to write while having a conversation with the two-year-old in the next room about the diving fireman in the sink. You try it.

Last night we made a soup, which is one of my favorite things to eat. I like cream soups in the winter, and broth-based soups in the summer. I am a big fan of bullion as an quick flavor enhancer, but I don't think it's always necessary. My personal secret to soup is to add some olive oil, and then parmesan cheese once it's served. I see my mother-in-law do this, and everything she cooks is amazing, so why not copy her. If I know I'm making enough soup that some will get frozen, I keep the olive oil out of it until it's served. I actually don't know if this makes a difference, but I figure since I add it when it's reheated, I don't need extra.

To start nearly any soup, vegetable, chicken, beef, bean, I sautee some chopped onions and celery and carrotts in olive oil for about 5 minutes. Not very much, like half of each vegetable, finely diced. Last night we made a bean and vegetable soup. We soaked the beans all day, some red kidney beans and navy beans, and cut up the vegetables while the beans were cooking. I used chicken bullion for flavoring, and actually didn't do the onion sautee thing, as I felt like a bland soup last night.

J cut the zuchinni and some broccoli, and we added potatos and carrotts too. The whole thing cooked for about an hour, maybe a little more. We added the carrotts first, then the potatos, then broccoli, and zuchinni about three minutes before serving. Apprently, I made some kind of horrible timing mistake, where the beans were undercooked and the vegetables were overcooked. Luckily, J likes his food mushy, and he actually ate some broccoli. He spit out the one red bean he tasted, though, but I understood. It was a bit yucky.

I turned the burned back on to try and save it, so now the beans are cooked, and the veggies have completely disintigrated. I'm going to let J take the potato masher and mash it up, then I'm going to try to find a way to bread and fry the resulting sludge, but I'm not sure it will work. At least he'll have fun mashing. I tried to get him to use the masher on our homemade playdoh, but it's too stiff. The soup disaster will be just right. After all, it's halfway there.

That's about it for today. Here's the fish bouquet I promised, of smoked fish in the Maxima. Thanks for reading.
-Anne

Squash and Squishing

There's been no real cooking after the steak disaster, but we have been sort of drained by the heat, I think. Plus I haven't been to the store recently to get more than cucumbers and milk. I like my cucumbers with lemon, dill and nothing else. I think I just really like lemon. In college, I would sit in front of the tv with a cut up head of iceberg lettuce and a lemon and eat it like chips so I could have a snack. I like lemon on my fish, in my water, and in most things I cook. Yay for citrus in general around here.

But tonight, I shall tell you about squash. I mentioned before there was no good squash here, beyond yellow and green summere squash, but one appeared at the store last time I went.

My favorite is butternut squash in all it's many forms, but especially in soup. I haven't made the soup myself yet, but I'm never dissapointed when I get it in a restaurant. Here, they do not have butternut, but they do have this beauty, which I made for J and I recently.

I think it's a small pumpkin, but whatever it is, the taste runs more to sweet than squashy, adn I add honey and margarine for J when he eats it and it's wonderful.

To roast a medium squash for mashing or soups, you simply wash the outside, stab it good five or six times in the side facing up, and then put in in a 375 oven for about and hour. After it cools, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, and spoon the flesh into a bowl for mashing. If you find an hour isn't enough, you can out the halves back in the oven flesh side up until it suits your needs. I have to do this about half the time. It's really easy, absolutely packed with nutrients and vitamins and stuff, and easy to freeze half the mash for later use.

I've tried to roast the seeds, but I found it tedius. It's definitely one of those things best left to the David's people. I've always liked the taste of Pumpkin seeds, and will continue to roast them on Halloween, but any other time, or maybe just any other squash, it's just not worth it. Also, in my old age I've developed TMJ, so crunching seeds is no longer an every day activity for me.

J's still struggling with the potty sensations, but at least it's going in the potty, which I STILL need to break. He's now waking in the night to pee, and it just sings and sings "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" until you wash and dry it. And the Baby Bjorn people, makers of an OK carrier, but the world's best potty (The Big Potty), have come out with a green model, which I will be purchasing for J as soon as we arrive in the states. He loves green.

I hope you're all having a fun weekend. We certainly are. We're going to the HyperMaxima tomorrow, and I promise to take a picture of the smoked Fish Bouquets. Stay tuned.
Thanks for reading,
Anne

Vinegar Beef

So I didn't set out to make Vinegar Beef, but it sure did end up that way. I found arecognizable cut of meat, a T-Bone, at the MAxima, which is Lithuanian Wal-Mart, including the smell, and brought two of them home yesterday morning. I was looking for a quick marinade that involved cabernet, as I have a bottle of it just for cooking. I found a recipe that was a marinade for grilled steaks, but I figured, hey, a marinade is a marinade, how different could it be?

My first clue that this might not have been such a good idea was it called for a cup of cabernet. In the states, I use burgundy as my red cooking wine and pinot grigio as my standard white. Here, my choice was the Bulgarian or Californian wine sold at the Rimi, a 7-eleven type near the apartments. I figured I'd go with what I knew. Everything I've cooked with this wine has been substandard, but I honestly don't know if it's the other ingredients, the manner of cooking, or what. I'm pretty confident now that it's the wine. It stinks like old vinegar, and after 2 hours in this marinade, there was no going back on the pickling if the t-bones.

I had to cut the bones out before marinading them, because even though I have a large enough pan for two t-bones, the heating element on the stove is so small that you have to cycle the meat or whatever through the center of the pan to get it to heat. This makes for the worst possible reduced sauces, as the center will be boiling, and the ousides will be lukewarm, but I like a challenge. Plus I think someone told me once that a strip steak, my favorite part, is just a t-bone without the T. I should look that up.

So into the marinade, from Food Network recipe for grilled steak and mushrooms. Cup of cabernet, 1/4 cup each of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, some basil and oregano, and smashed garlic and finely chopped onions. Sounds like a winner, right? SImeple, easy, and stuff you probably already have in the house. But turned out very nasty.

It also didn't help that the steak was overcooked. I have a fear of the meat here, as my father-in-law got ill from an "already cooked" chicken the first week or so he was here, so while I usually take the steaks off after about 7 min each side on medium heat, or a 6 out of 9, these were in a smidge longer. plus the weird having to scoot them around constantly probably changed things, too, as I had to turn down the heat to make sure I didn't burn the stuff not directly over the burner.

I do have a good pan here, a Bratpfanne enamelled cast iron, but I think nothing can help this stove.

Anyway, H ate it, and I just stuck to the mushrooms. I saved the leftovers, just to torture myself, and am pondering throwing them in with some beans to make a stew. I think I'll just stick to oven dishes for the meats from now on. Except Pork Chops, which seem to work out OK.

And J is feeling better, although he says he doesn't want to do #2 because it feels weird. I agree.
Thanks for reading,
Anne

Encopresis

Do you know what this is? Because I sure do now. Go ahead and google it.
J has been a champ with the potty, giving warning for pees, holding it until the appropriate time, all that good stuff. Maybe he felt that the pressure was off or something, I don't know. Mr. Perfectionist, however, got himself good and blocked up from holding the poo in. He wants so badly to get it right, even though there's NO pressure from us. He spent two days running to the potty every 30 minutes for poo. Nothing was coming out, and on the second day, the screaming began. He'd be all hunched over, saying, "I'm afraid!" and crying. He stained 6 pairs of underwear, all due to leakage, not missed signals. The poor guy told H , "Sometimes I don;t know what to do about pooping and peeing."

I wish I could get him to relax about it. I think, though, the worst is over, but I did buy baby food stewed prunes to put on his pancakes tomorrow just in case. And he's going to have straight soymilk, no more rice milk, from now on. They have it in powdered form here, all vitamin-fortified and stuff. There was no staining or BM today, so I'm glad his body got a rest.
Other than that, he's slept poorly the last few days, so I'm not exactly flowing with ideas. He woke up at 3 am to go pee, which is great, but then never got back to sleep. I think I'll disable the little song his potty plays, to help keep it nice and quiet for him when he pees at night.

So I'm off to break the potty, and then bed.
More when I'm rested, thanks for hanging in there.
-Anne

Eating out in Lithuania

It's only been three days , but I feel like it's been an eternity since I wrote. H had both days off this weekend, so I didn't have an opportunity to write. We all had some fun together, and an actual good restarant experience Saturday night.

O and A, both players, came over Saturday night to watch J so H and I could go out. J has had his Nana put him to bed before, no problem, but these girls, being all young and not having children, were unsuccessful, and said whenever they told him it was time to read a book he cried. I talked to him on the phone and told him to read with them until I got home. They spent the time making him an intricate Lego playground, though, so it was a good time for all.

He said he was afraid if he went to sleep I wouldn't come back. When we got home, he pushed past his father to get to me, and as soon as the girls left, he said, "Let's go in my room so I can go to sleep." I'm sure he was a little confused becasue A usually comes in the daytime, but it was no big deal. H only has two whole weekends off per month, and the alternate weeks he only gets Sunday off, so it's not like it's something that would happen every week. I think next time we'll go out earlier and come home earlier, though. I was totally bored by 8:30, not to mention my feet still hurt from the crazy boots I wore.

As far as our dinner, we went to a marginally reccommended Indian restaurant, and I was quite pleased with the meal, although the speed was on par with other restaurants around here. It's completely noraml here to be the only people in the restaurant and have it take and hour for the food to come from the time you ordered it. In that hour, you will have to be satisfied with your tiny, room temperature mineral water that tastes like dirty hair to keep you from starving. Because the waitress will not check on you. Ever. The food will also be cold when it gets there, and you will have exactly one cocktail napkin with which to clean yourself and your food-snorgling toddler.

If you are lucky, the food will be what you ordered, but have no resemblance to the picture on the menu, or to previous dishes of the same name that you have had in a real country. See my earlier post about pizza. And they will bring your child's food 10 minutes after they bring yours. Who does that? Not to mention their national dish, Cepelinai, which is pork in some kind of boiled potato dumpling, looks like this, and tastes just like it looks.

At the restaurant, Sue's Indian, I had the tomato mushroom soup, cooked with a lamb base, I beleive. It was well balanced, expertly spiced, and delicious. The chicken kabob I ordered was perfectly cooked. The waiter asked us if we wanted ice, and didn't even have to write down our orders. So hooray for comparatively good service.

Even in the States, we don't eat out much. I've found that I can cook food that tastes better at home, and if I have some time to myself or just with mu husband, I often don't want to waste the time on a marginal meal. I'm a big fan of the Whole Foods salad bar when I'm out by myself. I'm also at a point wheer I can taste what's wrong with the food, like a freezerburnt fish I once had at a place called blu, or the perrenial favorite, overcooked, gluey pasta with wilted, overcooked vegetables. Available everywhere.

But with all that, we had a nice time, and it was fun to get out. J even had a good time with his team, and I'm sure thay appreciated the opportunity for more cash.
That's it for now. Thanks for reading.
-Anne