Monthly Archives: May 2012

Time Travel

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Charlotte and I are off to Moscow this weekend for our final trip to visit J., who will finally move to Beijing this summer- woo hoo!

Everytime I go to Moscow, I feel like our airplane is actually a time machine: I step off the plane, and suddenly I found myself transported back in time one year.

Everytime I go to Moscow, I have these very surreal moments where I find myself living the life I had a year ago: I’m back in our apartment in Moscow, where I get to see my husband every day. I’m back to being a stay-at-home mom. Charlotte and I play her old favourite games (emptying the kitchen drawers, jumping off the coffee table, trying to get out on the balcony without me noticing). When we go out, it’s to our neighbourhood park (though Charlotte no longer calls it Anya), to meet J. for lunch at our favourite Uzbek restaurant, or to the supermarket where I stare in shock at the ridiculously over-inflated prices, and struggle to get by with my awful Russian. I walk down the same streets, ogling the women’s flashy outfits, ready with an apologetic nye zna-yoo (I don’t know) for the lost babushka who will inevitably choose me to ask for directions.

Everytime I go to Moscow, there are mornings where I wake up, tangled in the purple sheets with J. snoring beside me, and for a moment I wonder if China was just a dream.

Our visits to Moscow always end too soon, and then we’re back on the airplane/time machine. And back to the present day.

Charlotte and Stalin

Charlotte and Uncle Stalin, August 2011

5 Things I Love about Charlotte Right Now

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1. Charlotte’s favourite thing in the world right now: jumping. She’s happy to just jump and hop and leap on the floor, but she absolutely loves climbing up on furniture, chairs, stairs, playground apparatus, and various other high surfaces that freak me out, and then jumping off. Sometimes she asks me to jump with her, and sometimes I do. And I’m reminded of how fun jumping actually is.

2. Charlotte often brings me flowers. Not sure exactly where her and her ayi are picking them from, but I love them nonetheless.

3. Charlotte is on her way to being trilingual. In addition to her mad English skills, her Chinese is improving everyday. When I come home at the end of the day, I often hear Charlotte and her ayi chatting to each other in Chinese. Sometimes Charlotte even teaches me new words. And because Charlotte’s best bud is a French speaker, she is starting to pick up French expressions; her current favourites are “pas comme ca,” “plus haut” when I push her on the swing, and her too-adorable “ooh la la la la.”

4. She likes to hold my hand when she falls asleep, her fingers intertwined in mine.

5. She shares her blueberries with me. Which means a lot because this kid is crazy for blueberries.

Getting ready to jump off a statue’s base, and very likely thinking about blueberries- in English, Chinese, and French

Mama’s Day Off!

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On Monday, I took my first day off in years.

As a mother, I have two full-time jobs. There’s my formal job, at which I work 9ish hours a day. Then I come home and launch right into my other ‘job’: taking care of Charlotte. I get a bit of a break to relax, and sometimes even sleep, but I’m on call all night long, and then log a few hours in the morning before it’s back to job #1.

Yes, I’ve had vacations and statutory holidays, and yes, when J. is around he’ll often get up with Charlotte in the morning so I can sleep a bit longer or take her to the park for an hour so I can relax (or sleep or clean or maybe even take a shower). But it has been years since I had a whole entire day to myself.

On Monday, I had the day off work thanks to the very odd Canadian custom of celebrating Queen Victoria’s birthday (a custom, I should note, that is typically celebrated by drinking too much beer, and unofficially marks the start of camping season). Because it is a Canadian holiday but not a local Chinese one, it was a regular workday for Charlotte’s ayi (yet another anomaly of my workplace: we follow a hybrid schedule of some Canadian and some Chinese holidays. Weird, I know). Which meant that I had the day off from both of my jobs. A day of total freedom!

I had spent weeks daydreaming about my day off, how I would pass those delectable hours doing what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted. A part of me felt like I should take advantage of this time to finally go out to the Great Wall, wander around some hutongs, or do something else touristy that I wouldn’t want to do with a toddler. But then that started to feel like an obligation, and started to seem not really all that fun. So I decided instead to focus on what I really wanted to do.

So this is how my day went:

I woke up, but instead of rushing to get ready for work as usual, Charlotte and I cuddled in bed for awhile. When Charlotte’s ayi arrived, I took my time getting dressed, drank some tea and checked emails. Then I took a stroll to a nearby cafe, where I read a magazine and had a big cup of hot chocolate. Next, I visited the spa for two hours of pampering. And then it was off to the mall, where I took my time browsing, trying on, and buying. The next thing I knew it was 3:00 and time to head home (which was fine with me, because by this time I was missing my kiddo and couldn’t wait to see her). When I arrived home, Charlotte greeted me with a huge hug, and we changed our clothes and headed off down the street for her friend’s birthday party where she played happily with balloons and bubbles and I drank a giant beer and ate a giant hamburger. All in all, a pretty perfect day, wouldn’t you say?