Thursday 19 June 2008

Lara Update


I guess I ought to give you an update on Lara! She's been sleeping OK since we got home, and is slowly recovering from the jetlag, in that she is waking later and later now, it was 4am on Monday, and is closer to 5am now. There has been the odd occasion where she's woken at 1am, but this has only been a one-off, thankfully, and she was back asleep by 1.45, after some time with Olga. We are trying what we usually do, which is bring her to bed with us when she wakes between 4 and 5am, she has a quick feed and usually drops off again, until 7am, which suits us; however, maybe it's the jetlag but this week she's consistently woken up "for good" at 6am, so we've taken it in turns to get up with her and take her back to her room to play, so the other person can have an hour of undisturbed sleep.

She's starting on mushier, non-milky food now too. We tried her on banana, apple and courgette on holiday (not all at once!), and banana was the one she hated the least. Since we got home she's been started on baby rice, which has gone down very well (literally), and tonight she's going to have carrott. Olga's tried it already today and reports that it's lovely. (Steamed, then liquidised with some water, apparently).

We also did some work on her sitting while we were in PK (my abbreviation for Petrokamensk), and she's OK at it now, until she gets tired, when she does more falling that sitting. So long as it's on a soft surface, she quite enjoys the falling though.

Lara's also been weighed today - we were interested to know how she'd be after 3 weeks away; although her feeding regime didn't change other than we introduced some fruit and veg, we thought that all the travelling and strange places might have reduced her appetite... but it seems not. The little fatty is 16lbs 10oz (7.54kg) which is still on the 75th percentile.

Here's a video of her this morning, demonstrating that she's turning into quite a bully...

Monday 16 June 2008

We're back!

We made it back OK! I'll not get started on a long post, suffice it to say that Petrokamensk was pretty much what I expected it to be, if a little bigger than a village, but set in some spectacular scenery; it's hard to get across the size of the area unless you've actually been there, but it's big.
We had snowflakes falling in the first couple of days, although they didn't stick, but I did need to buy some warm socks and a better hat when we went to the nearest big town. By the end of the week the sun had come out and it was lovely.
The journey home via Ekaterinburg was one of the easiest flights I've taken from a non-European airport, with no queues and a plane that was barely a third full (we were assigned all six seats on our row).
Here are just a couple of photos from Petrokamensk and the surrounding areas, I'll be uploading a proper web album in the fullness of time, of course.

Baba Shura's (Olga's Grandma) house. Baba Shura is the one sitting down

The author blending naturally into his surroundings

Olga, Lara and Luda by the river where we went fishing on our last full day

Baba Shura with Lara

Sunset over the lake, around 11.15pm