THE DAYTON FAMILY

With readership reaching its highest point in years, I (David) figured now would be a perfect time to make my first post on our blog. Question: Why do people follow blindly what their parents, or society has set as the standard? (No offense, Mom) Yesterday, I decided to go to work without a jacket. To get to work I have to walk about 15 minutes to the Metro, ride the Metro for about 20 minutes, and then walk another 20 minutes to the office. On this walk I see a significant number of people (the Metro I take is headed into the city center, and my first walk takes me past a large market, and my second walk is in the heart of the city). Of the millions of people in the city, and the thousands (this could be a slight exaggeration) of people that I saw, I was the only one without a jacket (and by jacket I am not talking about a light windbreaker, but most people were wearing something more akin to a coat). You might think that I was going to work in a snowstorm, or that rain was coming dow...

So Tay definitely has NOT adjusted to the time here yet. He was up crying for most of the night and didn't sleep a wink from 1:30-4:30. It was awful!!! Especially because the walls here are paper thin and we live with 8 other people and there is nowhere else to go. Pretty sure they all got woken up from him crying. David felt really badly for them. I just felt exhausted and frustrated and really badly for Taylor. *** Yesterday evening was fun. There are 2 other little boys that live here and Taylor bonded with one of them, Tima, yesterday. I got a cute picture where they both totally smiled for the camera and then an adorable little video of Taylor tickling Tima. Today I went out with the bishop's wife, Natasha, she speaks perfect English and she showed me the market and several stores and went through and explained all of the brands and what to buy/not to buy etc... It is especially helpful with buying baby food/products. The Ukrainian church members are all such wonderful peo...

Tay says goodbye to Uncle Daniel - they sure will miss playing with each other this summer! *** Well, David told people to check our blog for updates on how we are doing in Ukraine, so I figured that I better get started. I have much more time to blog here - no house to clean, no kitchen to make food in, no dictations to type, not many English speakers, etc... so maybe I'll actually get up a few good posts for once! We lucked out on our flight to NY and nobody sat in the seat next to us...so Tay got to use it for a bit :) *** Well, our trip here was a long one, but it went really well considering we have a 10 month old baby. We flew to NY on Friday evening and then left on a direct flight for Ukraine on Saturday. Tay did awesome on the first flight (4.5 hours), and then on the Ukraine flight (almost 10 hours) he actually slept 2 different 2 hour chunks and then only actually cried for about 15 minutes one time. Needless to say, we were still exhausted when we arrived here because ...