First Day Of School

Well the day finally came that the kids started school. When we arrived in Poland and I knew the kids were going to be with me every single minute of the summer and back then that seemed like it was going to be SUCH a long time - but I can't believe how fast it flew by. Their first day was on that Monday September 3. The night before they were both really excited but once the morning rolled around they were a little nervous. The school is pretty far from our house, at least 20 minutes without traffic, so we signed them up for the taxi service to shuttle them to/from school. They would be in the taxi with 6 other kids from nearby and would most likely have the same driver each morning. At first I was really nervous about the thought of them being shuttled around, but I guess if we were in the U.S. they might be taking a bus to school anyway. The good thing is that I can at least put their car seats into the taxi (are there even seat belts in school buses these days??). Neither of them wanted to take the taxi and I have to admit I was a bit nervous about the first day as well, so I drove them in. I was planning on dropping Ava off first (they are in different buildings) because I figured Jack would be really clingy and not want me to leave and I didn't want Ava to be late, but the security in the parking lot made me park near his building and so I just went in there first. He looked around nervously a little but when I pointed out the play doh table that he had seen at the Open House (and that we wouldn't let him stay and play with) he made a beeline for it and didn't even say goodbye to me. Finally he at least gave me a hug and a thumbs up and off he went. I was in shock! Next we walked into the main building where it was slightly chaotic. There is a small locker room for the younger kids instead of having lockers line the hallway, so Ava went inside and dropped off her bag and we walked into her class. She already knew two kids in her class, Ellie was already there but seemed to be busy with her old friends (she was in the school last year), and Danny from Boston (who is also new) wasn't there yet so she was nervously looking around for him. They didn't have assigned seats so she chose a seat near the girls and the teacher explained that there was a game they had to play while they waited for the day to start, sort of an ice-breaker I guess where they had to walk around and find out different information about people in the class according to the worksheet left on their desks. I really thought she was going to struggle with this, or at least complain to me and act scared and ask me to stay and help her, but she picked up the paper and pencil and quietly started walking around the room. I said my goodbyes to her and then off she went. Wow that was easy!! I think they were just so bored with being at home all day with me (well it's not like we spent all day every day locked inside our house)-so they could not wait to start school. I got in my car and had to fight back the tears. I just felt like they were my two babies, all alone in that big school and I wanted to be there inside with them. I have to admit I was mostly nervous about Jack and really feeling like no one other than me could keep a really close eye on him - there seemed to be too many doors for him to sneak out of or something. 

To take my mind off of this, and because this is all I ever do any day of my life, I headed to the grocery store. When I got inside it hit me again and I had to fight the urge to cry. I just had a big, heartbroken pain in my chest from being at the grocery store without the kids. This was our thing to do all summer! We had fun most of the time, I was amazed by how well-behaved they were (almost) every time we went shopping. I roamed around the store in a daze at first but then finally realized I needed to get my shit together and stop moping around because I had a big list in front of me. When I was finished ( I did it in under an hour - yay! But of course I couldn't find tofu - boo!) I walked out to the car and got that stab in my heart again - whenever we went shopping Ava always wrote down the number and color of our parking spot so we wouldn't forget where we parked. Okay I admit this wasn't a big parking garage and I always park in the same place there so I knew where I was going, but it still reminded me of her and I got sad again. How was I going to get through this day being at home all alone without my two best buddies?? Ugh I was so depressed. But of course the perfect cure for depression is to just get really pissed off, angry and annoyed about something else, so that's what I did. Because I had a certain recipe from The Program that called for tofu, I left Tesco and went on a day long search for the frigging tofu. Because how else would I rather spend my new found freedom than by wandering aimlessly around three giant grocery stores looking for stupid tofu??? I ended up finding it eventually (and the recipe ended up sucking to add even more insult to injury) but by the time I got home, made lunch, took a shower and maybe paid a bill or two I had to go back to pick up the kids. Well that was a fun day - NOT! I had to leave the house at around 3:00 to pick them up (since then I've hit really bad traffic, so if I were doing it every day I would have to leave at 2:45). So after a day or two of driving them I decided, it's much easier for them to take the taxi. It picks them up at 7:40 am, and doesn't drop them home until almost 4:30pm. How can I pass that up - the alternative is me scrambling around trying to get us all out of the door by 7:45 am, then napping/eating bon bons/surfing the net having a super-productive day cooking/cleaning/ironing our underwear/paying bills/organizing the closets until 4:30. I'll see how it goes, if the kids are really unhappy I may have to drive more but I will take advantage of it while I can! Here are some pictures:

Jack heading into his building with his super-sized back-pack, filled with a change of clothes, a snack, and a pillow and blanket for nap time

big boy happy to be at school

Ava's ready too. Although I had to make her leave her dog at home, no toys/dolls/etc allowed in 2nd grade!

Off we go!

In front of her new school. She was mortified that I took her picture in front of all of the students

Ten Years!

Yesterday was our 10 year anniversary. Wow how times flies! Mike was saying, it feels like just yesterday that I was sitting in traffic on 2nd Avenue that morning, when you left me a huge list of things to do and I was almost late. Oops! Well, I had to get my hair and make-up done so I didn't have time for things like getting the place cards, favors, menus, etc  to the restaurant where we had our reception. Ah, the stress relived. Anyway, I was really struggling to come up with a nice enough gift for Mike, 1) because he is really hard to shop for and 2) I have not mastered shopping for things besides groceries here so I had no idea where to even begin to look. I ended up spending the last several weeks going through all of our old photos (that Mike has rarely seen since they are stored on my computer) and putting together a little video for him. It was my first attempt at doing this, and thanks to google and youtube for showing me how to put it all together I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I just wish I had better quality photos from our early years but what can you do. Here is the link if anyone is interested!

10 Year Anniversary Video

I ended up finding him a pair of Polish cufflinks, and he gave me a beautiful ruby and diamond necklace! We went out to dinner last night in the area Kazimierz which is sort of the hipster part of town (more about that in another post). The meal was delicious and we had our own little private table

then afterwards we went to a bar next door and had fun people watching and drinking extra-large mojitos!

 Happy Anniversary to us!

Bobo Test

I saw this in the grocery store yesterday and I had to laugh. Just in case you want to make sure your baby is not a bobo, there is a test for that lol!! This isn't even Polish I don't think so I have no idea what it is. I am assuming a pregnancy test?

Babysitters

Before moving to Krakow one of my big concerns was finding a babysitter as soon as we got here since the kids were home with me all summer and I knew I was going to have to be out doing a lot of errands.  We really didn't know how to go about doing this before we moved here and in reality I didn't even have time to think about it before we moved. So once we got here and we were staying at the Sheraton Hotel we asked them for some leads. They gave us the name of two agencies and we used one of them during that first week, so we could go out and pick up the rental car. They charged 60pln/hour - that's €15/hour (or about $18), a lot more than we paid in Dublin - our sitter there was €8/hr, and the older one who cleaned our kitchen was €12. We really didn't have a choice though. After we got settled into our house I asked around more, and Michal the Relocation Guy gave me two names. One of them said she would be in Ireland until September, and the other one responded so we had her over to the house to meet the kids and they really liked her. She is Polish and she was so excited to be around people speaking English because she said she doesn't get to practice it enough. We used her a few times (she cleaned our kitchen too!) and I was all excited to bring her grocery shopping with me one day to help me out, but of course she ended up getting a new job so she would only be available in the evenings (except Saturday night) and the weekends. Figures! We didn't have any other options, one day I was desperate because I had to go to the doctor during the day so I hired the Sheraton agency but I didn't want to get into a habit of doing that. During all of this a woman that one of my Dublin friends introduced me to sent me a list of babysitters - she is German but lives in Warsaw, I am not really sure where she got the list from but the other day I finally got around to texting some of the girls. I ended up interviewing one, she is Polish and doesn't live too far from us (she's studying in Krakow). The kids liked her and she seemed responsible enough. I used her one night to go for a run (BBH is participating in the Krakow Business Run, a charity 20k relay through the city) so I am doing it with them. When I left I asked her to head upstairs to get the kids ready for bed at around 7-7:15, and that Jack was really tired so he would probably be asleep by 8:00. When I got home at 8:30, the kids were still downstairs playing on the computer and coloring. I was so annoyed!! I mean, maybe if they at least were in their PJ's with their teeth brushed I wouldn't have been so mad. I asked Ava after the sitter left if she had even attempted to bring them upstairs and she said 'yes, but I told her I had one more picture to color so we stayed downstairs'. I know Ava has a tendency to try to get away with things with the babysitters so I need someone who isn't going to let Ava walk all over them. The time we used the sitter at the Sheraton the same thing happened, except we got home at 11pm and both kids were still awake, watching TV.  The sitter said she asked them if they were tired and they both said no so she let them stay up...?! Funnily enough both of their names were Madga, so we won't be using anymore sitters named Magda.  I went back to Michal who gave me the name of another agency but I was hesitant to call them since I figured they would be expensive. Finally I called and it turns out the girl she found us is only 20pln/hour ($6), so a bargain but she doesn't have a car so we have to pay for her cab home (which turned out to be over 100 pln ($32) after we took the cab back from town). When she showed up for the interview she asked me where I kept the first aid kit so I was happy. The kids seemed to like her, they were both asleep when we got home, and she even left little notes of when she brushed their teeth and put them to bed so we were happy. She is a student as well and college starts back up on October 1 so I am not sure how available she will be after that, but hopefully between the 2 we will always have a sitter when we need it. Now if I had only found them months ago, life would have been a little bit easier. Oh well!

And This Is Why I Hate European Shopping Carts

And This Is Why I Don't Listen To The Radio In My Car

Ice Maker Is A Bust

I am SO annoyed - after finally figuring out how to order the ice maker, when I took it out of the box it smelled horrible - like the smell any kind of new electric appliance might smell - gas? plastic? chemicals? When I opened the box I put it on the dining room table and that night Mike couldn't even eat next to it because it smelled so bad. I was hoping it was just a newness thing, so I plugged it in and made several batches of ice with it. The cubes were perfect, not too hard,  a little wet and almost chewy if that makes sense - perfect for crunching!! I figured once I started using it a lot the smell would go away. Sometimes I wouldn't smell it but then other times I would - I washed the inside a few times with vinegar and water as per the instructions. One night we came home and it was pretty hot in the house, I made a nice big glass of ice water to bring to bed with me and when I got up into the bedroom and bit into the cube all I could taste was that smell. YUCK! I was so mad. Obviously I am not going to use it because who knows what kind of carcinogenic chemical is covering my ice cubes now. My bigger problem was how in the world do I find out if I can return the thing. And even if I can, the thing is huge so how much was it going to cost me to mail it back, and how would I even find a UPS-type place to do it. I have noticed that European return/exchange laws are pretty strict, i.e they really suck in that things usually have to be returned within 7 to 14 days. How stupid is that? On a side note Mike once bought me an expensive wallet in Dublin (that I didn't really want, I liked it but thought he spent too much for a little wallet and that it was a waste of money). I tried to return it but he had bought it for my birthday so bought it a few/several days before he gave it to me, so by the time I got to the store to return it and get my money back they wouldn't let me. Things like that really piss me off. It's not like going into a Babies R Us with some Carters clothes you got for a gift that you don't even know if they came from BRU, but you go in and they don't even give you a hassle when you try to return it - without a receipt. Anyway, I digress. It took me a day or so to open the ice maker and then by the time I finally got around to cleaning and using it, then letting it sit for a few days and then using it some more to try to get rid of the smell and then finally deciding to return it, a couple of weeks passed. Finally I forwarded the confirmation email I received after I bought it to Michal to translate to see if he could figure out the return policy. He ended up calling the company and of course, the policy is 10 days. They did say they would go to the manufacturer and see if it could be replaced by the warranty, but I am not really holding my breath. I am so upset, I was so happy with the thought of fresh, juicy ice cubes constantly at my disposal. Bum-mer

Mystery Notice

Earlier today someone rang our buzzer and when I went outside he started rambling on in Polish. When I told him I didn't understand he seemed to walk away. Later when I went outside I found this notice along with a clear blue plastic garbage bag. I have zero interest in spending the time to translate this - anyone care to take a Google translate stab at it? The last time this happened it was the plastic bags we needed for recycling, luckily there were pictures on the bags so I figured out what they were for, and the Polish neighbor/landlord happened to be over that day and used hand gestures to show me where the hidden clear string was to tie them closed. I really do just need a personal translator at my side at all times.