September 25: 'Nother Walk in the Park

Have I mentioned the sleeping arrangements? Brian is on a mattress on the floor, which is actually considerably more comfortable than the bed. I am on the bed with both babies. The nights consist of turning back and forth between each child, making sure they are both covered by blankets, nursing or rocking them back to sleep, and checking that they are both still breathing. And I get a few winks of sleep here and there as well. They're both sleeping very well, actually. Josie's cough is getting a little better every night. Last night she only had one little coughing interlude, and it didn't even wake her up. She sleeps until about 6:00am, at which time she nurses a little, then has a bottle. The past few mornings, they have both managed to find a nursing spot together in the mornings. I'm sure that will get tiring for my body, but it sure feels great now.

The apartment owners come and clean on Sundays. So we spent the morning just getting ready to spend the day out of the house. We had plans to meet another American family, Angie and Brian Chostner, at Murphy's for lunch, but unfortunately Angie has not been feeling well, so we took a rain check.

We walked through Panfilov Park again, as we did last Sunday. Liam spent some time in the playground. Two older girls, about 5 and 7 years old, decided to encourage him on the slides, etc. He was rather overwhelmed, but he got used to it in the end. It was very sweet, they kept looking at me for approval, and I just nodded and said "okay". So they kept pushing him to climb and slide. Kids everywhere are very, very sweet. It is no different here. We also noticed that there were a lot of dads with kids today. In fact I think we saw 4 or 5 dads in the playground, and only one mom. Josie stayed in the Bundle for most of the walk and park-time. she was facing out, chewing on my hand, and taking in all the new sights and sounds of the outside world.

We made our way through the park, past the War Memorial (fairly overwhelming sculpture — I hope the picture does it justice). We found the musical instrument museum, but it is closed for renovations. A woman called us around the side of the building, and led us in the back door, to a room where she was practicing a traditional Kazakh stringed instrument. She invited us in to the room, and played several songs for us. She pointed to her scribbled sheet music, indicating (we think) that she had written some of the songs. Then I think she explained that this was a traditional song, and played a few more, that certainly did sound a little more traditional (read: strange harmonies and rhythms that don't match with the structure of music we are accustomed to).

(Vanessa went to bed mid-authoring, so Brian is finishing this one up)

We then went to Mad Murphy’s (Irish pub) again, and hung out for a while. It started to rain a little. It stopped. We walked home.

OK, my heart wasn’t in this one. I have no social commentary, or much to add at all. However, I experimented tonight with VIDEO - at the bottom of the page, after the photos.


Josie's diggin' the Bundle.


This horse spends his days going around a small circle within the park giving rides in his cart.


War Memorial. Notice the bride and groom posing for pictures below that intimidating thing. It's huge, and quite a lovely artistic tribute to the fallen soldiers. But the last thing it says to me is, "Wedding bliss". Yet, all weekend long, bride and groom after bride and groom come to the memorial for pictures.


The whole War Memorial square.


Grandma and Josie

Videos...
Feast your high-speed connected eyes on these. If you’re using a dial-up internet connection, they'll take a couple minutes to download before they play. I tried to compromise, speed vs quality, so they're less than a meg each. Each is only 20 seconds long, so if a couple minutes isn't worth 20 seconds, I won't be hurt if you don't view them.

Brides in the park
This is the first video. It's my attempt to capture the number of wedding couples that really do come and go through this park. I forgot the camera only does 20 second videos at a time, so it didn't catch "6,7, and 8", but you get the idea.

Private Show
This is the woman playing what we think is called a kobyz. It's simlar to a violin, held like a mini cello, but the strings don't touch the fretboard. She presses the backs of her finger nails against them, rather than holds them down.

Mesmerized
And the kids were into it.