Month: April 2005

Gases are a well-known souce of pain for infants. Thus, parents are usually very concerned about their kids passing gases. If gases get out – all is well. If they don’t – expect sleepless nights.

Olga and I are not an exception. We watch Maxim closely on the issue and share information on how often and how “hard” he did it. Needless to say that Maxim is not very good at controlling his body yet. Passing of gases occurres sporadically. One of the helpers seems to be the stress. When he is nervious about something, his muscles contract and he farts. Hence the expression “nervious fartdown” (“нервный Ñ?пук”), which is based on “nervious breakdown” (“нервный Ñ?рыв”).

It has been one week since my mother left Cyprus. Similarly to how I said that last month was the longest month of my life that I can remember, last week was the longest week of my life that I can remember. I drove my mother to the airport last Sunday, and by Tuesday lunch time I was thinking that it feels like a month has gone by already.

The strange thing is that managing things without my mother wasn’t that difficult. Luckily we already had some sort of routine and we only had to modify it slightly. What turned out difficult was the absense of the backup. When mom was here, I knew that even if I wouldn’t wake up when Maxim cries, she would. Or if I would forget to wash the floor in the bedroom, she would either remind me or do it herself.

Also, there are times when I am just tired. Especially, if Maxim needs to be put to sleep and he doesn’t want, I have to sit with him for an hour or more until he falls asleep. He hates it with me when he doesn’t want to sleep and I am trying to hypnotize him. With my mother he calms down and starts dreaming silently in a matter of minutes. She just has this grandma magic thing.

So we were managing everything without any help for one week now. We learned our new routine and Maxim got used to us being the only people who take care of him. He knows now that no matter how hard he would cry, it is either me or Olga to calm him down. This is good.

But we are not the kind of people who would want Maxim to forget his grandma. He was “talking” to her on the phone today for a few minutes. Firstly, I put my mobile to his ear and my mother talked to him. He heard her voice and started his “Au!” and “Bu!” routines. He was shouting back. He also tried his best to hold the mobile with his hands. Oh, and his eyes were the size of a small apple, like he just saw David Copperfield’s performance or something. This was fun to watch. Really.

If everything goes as planned, we should have Olga’s mother arriving on 18th of April. Hopefully, she would spend a month with us. And if everything goes totally perfect, than my mother will come back in July for another month.

Until than we’ll be doing all of it ourselves…