So far so good.....

Eating a yoghurt by himself..fun but messy.

I'm having a blog fog...well that's what I call it anyway. The dial up internet in this hotel is driving me to distraction and i'm becoming sulky and irritable about it. The problem is that the thing that suffers most is this blog as I'm losing my patience. If people can stick with me till the end of the month then we should be okay as I will be entering the world of high speed tinternet (that's not a typo, I meant it) again and we'll be off!

So newspaper article of the day  - the Russian parliament are putting through stricter laws regarding dog walking in Moscow...one of the laws is 'you can't walk your dog when under the influence of alcohol'  - that's the human not the dog. This will cause me untold problems and so i'm making dog walking one of Arthur's chores - it's easier that way. To tell you the truth there definitely hasn't been enough PIVO time and I look forward to this in the future months.

I have been awfully busy in the last few days organising our lives out here. I should put 'we' and not 'I' as Graeme has been busy too. Our flat seems to be going through although the 'negotiating' part which is what we are doing at the moment does take a while but we are signing the contract on Monday all going well. I'm super excited about this as although it only has two bedrooms which does cause problems when guests come, it is a rather lovely place and it is in the best position ever. The Kremlin is literally 2 minutes walk away so you can't get more central. It has a 24 hour supermarket across the road and is above a huge toy shop...not that Arthur will be allowed to know it is there. It even has a Macdonalds 30 seconds from the door for those hungover mornings. Fantastico. We have managed to organise a dog walker which is important as we are so central and we need Alice to get a proper run. We also need her to have someone with her that knows how to control dogs as there are a lot of strays in Moscow who can get a bit vicious with dogs walking past - poor Alice, she is going to get a culture shock! There are loads of shops for coats and boots for your dog when the snow starts in November, I can't wait to get some boots on Alice - boy, that will be funny. I'm hoping to get her a proper fur Russian hat just to make her feel at home....; ) We have also sorted out Arthur's nursery which is only 2 minutes walk from the new flat. We took him there today and he loved it! Although whilst all the other children were singing and pretending to ride horses, Arthur found a huge plastic luminous yellow pole that he decided to swing about like a light sabre nearly taking out half the children. He has spirit, what can I say! He'll only go for 6 hours a week to start with but i'm sure he'll love it! Plus all the classes are taught in Russian which means he will definitely be speaking fluent Ruskie in no time.

We have also hired a Nanny/cleaner - I know, it sounds posh but really she is like an aupair/babysitter. We don't know anyone here and so it's a useful thing to have when I go to the shops or do anything out of the house as it is difficult to do stuff with buggy. As we have no family and friends here it is also great to have a break now and again. Anyway, everyone has a nanny here, it's pretty normal and nothing like what you'd think if you had one at home as there isn't anything like childminders here, you just get a nanny! Bloody brilliant if you ask me especially the price of them. I better not get too used to this sort of thing or i'll get a shock when I return to G.B! So folks, we are pretty much getting there, Oh and the landlord dropped the rent on the flat just to add to our good day! Whoop whoop. We are waiting for something to go wrong now...our cynical minds can't stand too much goodness.

Yesterday Arthur and I went to a group 'classical music for children'. After travelling on my beloved Metro and climbing the usual amount of bloody steps we finally found the place. I opened the front door and to my surprise (highly sarcastic tone on that) there was a steep staircase that seemed to go on forever. I was so distressed to see this that I nearly turned around and walked off in a stair huff. Luckily though there was a very sweet English gentleman with his young daughter who helped me and I then reciprocated so all was well until we got further in and then there was another huge staircase.....one day I am going to take a picture of every staircase I have to climb in one day and then you will truly understand my pain or laugh at my pain...whichever takes your fancy. So, we finally get up to the room and to tell you the truth it was definitely worth it. Everyone sits on pillows and most people there were Russian which was great and then a string quartet play different melodies.  The videos will show that at first Arthur was at the back but then moved to the front of his own accord and was absolutely awestruck!

This is at the beginning but he soon moves to the front - 

Bless my little man, he managed to stay still for all of 10 minutes but that 10 minutes was worth all the stairs! The most exciting part of the afternoon was the fact that he decided to get up and walk around the room as if he'd been walking for months! I was busy telling the English gent how Arthur was still crawling when suddenly out of the corner of my eye I see him whiz past on two legs! Since this point he has been walking non stop and feels no fear. When we took him to the nursery this afternoon he was up walking around with the other children, picking stuff off the floor and carrying stuff - even though he does look like Charlie Chaplin on a few litres of vodka but heh, you gotta start somewhere!

Children and music chaos

Life is starting to fit into place and Arthur has decided that walking is the stuff of men. I have included some videos of him taking his first steps as it makes me laugh so much - there really is a massive comparison to a drunken old man....is this what Graeme is going to look like in a few years time?

Arthur has also decided that if he doesn't get his own way or if you say 'No' then he will scream the most high pitched scream I have ever heard - it sounds like I'm trying to strangle him. He decided this afternoon in the hotel lobby to start this mad screaming because I had told him not to go up the stairs - well, the whole reception area (which is massive) just stared over at us and I had that total goldfish in a bowl experience but instead of getting angry I just burst into hysterics as it was just soooo funny. This obviously didn't help my reputation in this situation because not only did people think I was trying to kill my child but they probably thought I was drunk as well. Isn't parenting a hoot?!