Tag: parenting

Sometimes I really hate my work. Now is one of those moments. While I am sitting here in the NOC, my son passed yet another milestone of his development – he rolled. Olga just phoned to tell me that Maxim was laying on his changing table when he rolled from back to his side even though he was wearing a size 2 Pampers. Damn it! Why did I have to miss it?

I am trying to reason myself with that he will be doing this sort of thing more and more over the next few days, but that doesn’t help much. All sorts of crazy thoughts are running through my head. Mostly they are of the nature: “If I missed his first rolling, how am I sure I won’t miss his first step, his first word, or whatever esle first thing he will be doing?”.

My mother left Cyprus and went back to Moscow, Russia today. She stayed with us for one month, from 27th of February, which was exactly the day Olga and Maxim left the clinic. This means that today is the first time Olga and I are left to all parenting wonders alone. Noone will be helping us for some time now. In the clinic we had the assistance from all the trained personal. At home, my mother was doing lots of work and sharing the knowledge. Not any more though…

Two hours after I came home from the airport, Maxim started crying, looking around and demanding something. Someone. He was looking for grandma. I calmed him down with some tea and songs. It was enough for a mere half an hour. Than he started again. Three hours later he was growling and jumping at me like a mad dog. I couldn’t believe my eyes! He was as furius as an animal. I was almost afraid of him. Almost. That is because he doesn’t have any teeth yet.

Anyway, the fact is that Maxim is missing his grandma and there is nothing I can do about it. He is looking for her. He is crying. He is begging to bring her back. This is sad. But there is something which is even more sad – Maxim’s grandma is crying all over the place in Moscow. She is missing him already. I know that because she started it even before she left.

Sometimes I wish I knew some magic…

Day time saving is cutting yet another hour of sleep. This seems totally unfair from a young parent point of view. We don’t see more of the day light just because we moved our clocks one hour forward…

One of Maxim’s recent hobbies is barbering. Since he is still way too young to use any machinery or even scissors, he uses his bare hands. When someone picks him up, and holds him long enough for him to realize that person has hair, he opens his fist maximizing the distance between fingers, than he stucks it into the person’s hair, than he closes the fist as strong as he can and pulls. If not stopped, he repeats the procedure. Once he got stuck in Olga’s hair and she had to ask my mother to help her free the baby.

But, of course, person who suffers the most from this habbit is Maxim himself. He is still learning that his hands are in fact his and that he can control them. This thought can be seen in his eyes when he can see his hands. The problem comes when he moves his hands too far to the side or to his back. In that position he forgets that these are his hands. Often he would catch some hair on the back of his head, close the fist and pull. This hurts. So he cries. And repeats. Someone has to actually take his hand from his own head. Otherwise he can pull some hair out. The skin on the head becomes read from all the pulling…

Sometimes I feel pity for him. That makes me want to cut his hair. He never did it long enough though for me to actually barber him. Poor thing…