Nov 17 2009

Happy Birthday Dad & Babushka

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 6:37 am

I am pretty sure he will not see this post in time (as Jan is taking him to Prague as a present), but happy 60th birthday Dad 🙂 We all hope you have a brilliant day, and know that you are in our thoughts over here.

Happy Birthday Dad And Babushka

As you may have guessed from this post’s title, it is also Babushka’s (Ira’s Dad’s Mum’s) birthday today. We aren’t 100% certain how old she is, as her birth certificate wasn’t created until a little while after she was born, but we hope you have a great day with the friends you have coming over, and that you’ll enjoy your birthday meal with your family this weekend.

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Nov 09 2009

I Left It Around Here Somewhere?

Category: Anna's PhotosChrisM @ 11:35 pm

Shot three days later than the last photo (making it the 16th September 2009 when it was shot), this shot makes me wonder whether Anna or Ira and I enjoy her trying new foods more. We try not to take a picture each and every time she makes us laugh or smile, but this one showed Anna at her most playful with the pasta, and we couldn’t resist. She understands the concept of picking the food up from the table into her hand, and from there putting the food into her mouth, but the accuracy isn’t always spot on. She just looks a little confused here, as to where exactly it had gone!

Spag Bol Minus The Bol

Spag Bol Minus The Bol

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Nov 07 2009

A Football, Ring, Babushka & Anna

Category: Anna's VideosChrisM @ 12:28 am

This time we’ll have the videos first, and the photos later. I was previously posting both media types in the same post, where appropriate. However, this caused problems with duplications on Anna’s site, so they’ll now be split – whenever practical. Anyway, this was shot on the 13th of September 2009, at Irina’s parents’ house.

The first couple are of Anna playing with one of her teething rings and a ball.

The next is of Anna playing pass the ball with Babushka (her Babushka being Irina’s Mum. Babushka is grandma in Russian).

The last two are of Anna playing/rolling on the floor, on the same day.

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Nov 05 2009

Smiling Anna At Home

Category: Anna's PhotosChrisM @ 12:22 am

This photo captures how Anna looks in real life quite well. So Irina probably took it 🙂
Anyway, the 11th of September 2009 was the setting, back in our flat. You can see the blanket/duvet we put on the floor when Anna plays (to keep her away from cat hair etc.), and the sofa cushions from her room (did I mention she has moved into her own room now – big girl 🙂 ) that are just about still working as a way of stopping her from crawling away when our heads are turned. Which reminds me, we need to move the coffee table out of the living room, before she hits her head.
Anyway, back to the photo…

Smiling Anna With Her Cube And Ball

Smiling Anna With Her Cube And Ball

Ah, upon checking the folder this photo was taken from, I can see this is the first day with some videos in it. I’ll go and upload them to YouTube, and include in a separate post, as the import process to Anna’s site creates duplicate posts if I put both and photos and vids into one post (and correctly categorize it).

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Nov 04 2009

Farewell Summer.

Category: Anna's PhotosChrisM @ 12:14 am

Deciding to take advantage of what was then the rapidly ending of summer days in Astana, Irina, I and Anna walked across to Ali Ba Ba (the outdoor seating section of Farhi) and had a snack and a couple of drinks. Anna behaved brilliantly, probably helped by the face we were sat at the Kazakh-style tables, which are low and surrounded by cushions on a raised floor. This meant she wasn’t stuck on our laps the whole time, or in her pushchair.

Anna and Chris sat in Ali BaBa

Anna and Chris sat in Ali BaBa

Oh, and for making it easier to follow what is what when this picture is automatically imported into Anna Merriman‘s site, the photo was taken on the 9th of September 2009. 09/09/09, though not at 09:09. That would have been a little too early for all of us, and a little excessive just for obtaining a pretty time and date. That said, as the camera is still set to UK time, it thought it was 09:10 – only a minute off!

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Nov 01 2009

Anna Update – Early November

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 10:28 pm

So, with more pictures of Anna coming in the week, how is her progress right now?

Last week she managed to co-ordinate crawling forward. She has obviously been happy crawling backwards for months, but until now never seemed particularly bothered about moving head first. Rolling from tummy to back to tummy again, combined with backwards crawling had got her everywhere she wanted to go, but now (especially with a remote control on the floor as the motivation) she’ll often choose crawling normally instead.

Food and drink – most purée flavours have been tried, as well as creating our own from the fruit and vegetables stored from the in-laws’ garden. To be honest, Anna is only really interested in the purée if it is sweet – she’ll eat other types, but if there is a high fruit content, Anna will be found with her mouth open, asking for more straight away! We are trying to make sure the store-bought ones don’t have any added salt or sugar, which can take a while with having to read all the ingredients. (Anyone who knows my cooking/Russian reading skills we’ll realise the ‘we’ part is in fact Irina.)

Although still wearing nappies and pull-up-training pants, Anna is now happy using the potty, although being only 8 months old, we’re not at all worried when she does just let go in her nappy, as opposed to waiting for the potty. Without going into too much detail, you can definitely now tell she is eating solid food!

In the coming weeks, Anna is going to be trying out both yoga (for mothers and babies), and swimming (with an instructor) which should be interesting. I’ve got about 10 Anna photos to post, and then I need to finally crack out the firewire cable and put the (very limited amount of) video on the camcorder onto YouTube and this blog. I think it may just be a few minutes from around the time when Anna was born, back in Britain.

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Nov 01 2009

Eight Pence To Cross The Road?

Category: Kazakhstan,PicturesChrisM @ 6:26 pm

Once again the gallery function in WordPress decided that I didn’t really want to choose this post for the uploaded pictures. You’ll just have to survive reading this text with the photos thrown in at the end. A difficult task, I appreciate…
Anyway, these pictures were took back in September, Irina noticed that the button you press to cross the road was broken, and had (eventually) been fixed with a 20 Tenge coin. (Roughly eight British pence). For a while, if you wished to cross the road in one direction, you either had to wait for someone from the other side to press the button from their side, or shout at someone passing to do so. If passing pedestrian traffic on that side of the road was too light, and you had a wife and baby waiting to cross with you, run across (imagine a game of frogger, with different lanes of traffic moving at different speeds, and no extra lives – hit one Kamaz and it is ‘Game Over’ immediately.
Anyway, someone came along and fixed the faulty button by wedging the aforementioned coin in. This didn’t last that long, however policemen have been noticed trying to fix it again with the coin trick. One even offered 50 Tenge to anyone who could give him a 20 Tenge coin! Good to know that some of the force are genuinely concerned about the safety of Astana’s residents – you often feel as though if you aren’t driving a car, the authorities concern about your well being is somewhat diminished.

Pedestrian Crossing In Astana With Coin

Pedestrian Crossing In Astana With Coin

Sharper Zoom Of Pedestrian Crossing In Astana With Coin

Sharper Zoom Of Pedestrian Crossing In Astana With Coin

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Oct 31 2009

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh. Oh, you’re not dressed for Halloween?

Category: Eating Out,FriendsChrisM @ 10:22 pm

So we have just returned from a tasty meal at Sligo, with Walton and Assel. We realised that the last time we had visited the Irish-pub themed location here in Astana, Kazakhstan was just over a year ago, which was another Halloween themed event. Today the fire steak (yes, that was indeed a steak that arrived at the table on fire), chocolate dessert (currently only displayed on their Russian language menu) and vodka were all lovely. Anyway, when we arrived the male waiters had already changed into their themed costumes – scars/pirate paraphernalia were abound. For some reason the female waitress’s costume changes didn’t occur until later on, and were comparatively weak – a ‘bloodied’ bandage around one neck, and a witch’s hat on top of the other lady’s head. I then spotted a woman who caught my eye. I spent a few seconds trying to discern the inspiration for her costume, before realising there was none – she was just a (slightly older than) middle aged woman in tight jeans and a top. Given that I gave the ‘pub’ a plug in my recent guide to Astana, I don’t feel too guilty in calling out her dubious choice of fashion (she is thought to have been the owner), I just wish she’d dressed either more conservatively, or gone the whole hog and added some accessories to her otherwise scary outfit! Anyway, this time there were no signs in the bathroom warning people not to fish in the toilet bowl, which is good, as I’d forgotten our proper camera, and despite the band being worthy of a few shots, as I’d forgotten our real camera (the camera phone couldn’t handle the low lighting), I wasn’t overly upset at the lack of humorous text in the washroom.

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Oct 28 2009

Real world, Electronic or Non-Existant?

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 11:24 pm

Irina has been ordering a few items for Anna on e-bay, but obviously concentrating on larger sizes, so we can just pick up the clothes when we next return to Britain, rather than having them all reposted to Kazakhstan. So far, we don’t seem to have suffered problems with the Royal Mail strike having delayed anything (touch wood), but according to the BBC’s article on the changing habits of British people sending postcards more and more people will be sending electronic cards this year, in an attempt to save money, and also bypass the whole ‘lost in the post’ issue that occasionally put a damper on proceedings. We sort of operate a half way policy – there is no point in us actually sending real cards from Kazakhsan to people on their birthdays/Christmas, as the post isn’t reliable (see Lucky’s video which will be embedded in an upcoming post) and the selection of available cards over here still isn’t great. So for immediate family, we use an online service that prints a personalised card and then posts it, and for everyone else, we just hope they won’t be offended if we don’t re-start the whole greeting card thing when we move back to Britain.

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Oct 23 2009

Shopping At Ramstore or Astikzhan?

Category: Kazakhstan,PersonalChrisM @ 1:22 am

If you shop at a Ramstore shop, or Astikzhan store, here in Astana, PLEASE be careful with your receipts, if you pay by card. Irina was just going through her purse throwing out old docs, when she noticed that the stores stupidly have their c/card terminals print out your FULL credit card number, the expiry date, and worse, even your name! So, burn or rip into rice-sized shreds before you bin them.

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