Happy First Birthday, The Star!

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On Merry New Year (Orthodox) Christmas.

It’s the 7th January.
If anyone wonders why you don’t, as a rule, get that Christmas tree up until the last possible moment before (British) Christmas, then the fact that in the Solnushka household you are still deep in the holiday season should be reason enough. The midwinter blowout won’t be over until Old New Year [...]

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On myths and mucus.

“You will soon,” say numerous leaflets and other great works of literature about babies, “become familiar with the different cries your baby makes and what they mean.”
“Bollocks you will,” is what you say.
Best Friend even had a baby manual which aimed to give you a shortcut across the learning curve which aimed to detail the different [...]

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On sticky backed plastic.

So it turns out that what made the Star laugh yesterday was Sellotape.
Your menfolk were innocently wrapping a birthday present for your Mother, and had just ripped their first bit of Sellotape when the Star burst into loud laughter which, apparently, went on and on.
Slightly stunned, they waited until he stopped and tried the Sellotape again.
The [...]

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On Christmas Puddings.

Today you assembled two Christmas puddings and then tended them while they boiled for six hours.
This actually feels like an achievement when it is combined with a day’s worth of baby wrangling.

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On Guy Fawkes Night

The fact that the 5th November went completely unmarked in Russia was always extremely disconcerting to you.
It’s always been a holiday you have celebratedwith vigour, and a trip to the local fireworks display, followed by baked potatoes and your Dad setting up a tray of sand at the far extreme of the garden so that [...]

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On Halloween.

You managed to restrain yourself from kitting the Star out as either a pumpkin or a little red devil this Halloween. He is, after all, only four months old and it would have been pure self indulgence.
But only because you have promised yourself that you will buy not only a little reindeer suit, but also a [...]

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On discoveries.

You are not in the least Scottish.
This has always been a source of faint irritation because you are able to conjure up in almost equal amounts a Welsh background, an Irish one, a Northern English past, a Southern English birthplace and a strong connection to the Channel Islands out of France. So to miss out on being [...]

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On Sergiyev Posad.

Sergiyev Posad is one of the Golden Ring towns. That is, it’s one of twelve towns floating around Moscow which are historically significant and are recommended as worth a visit if to anyone who is going to be in the region for any length of time.
You’ve actually been to two. The other one was Suzdal.
But you tended to [...]

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On Women’s Day.

Today, ladies, it is International Women’s Day, a phrase with all the semantic meaning of the Americans’ World Baseball Series. It’s big in the Former Soviet Union though.
You are rather fond of it as it means flowers and a card without either having to get up early and make pancakes or go to the effort of producing [...]

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