Front-Page Ieva

Today around noon I walked into our cafeteria to have my friend, Ilona, one of the cafeteria employees, wave me over with an excited look on her face. “Did you see Ieva?” she asked me. I was confused – Ieva was at home with our nanny Aurelija. And then she picks up a Russian version of the local Klaipeda newspaper & points to a picture on the front page. “Ieva!” she says excitedly. And she was right...in the lower half of the front page of the daily newspaper was the article & picture you see here. My daughter was on the front page! I borrowed the paper and showed everyone within the vicinity of the cafeteria.

On our way home from work, we picked up 4 copies of the Lithuanian version of the paper, with the intention of giving one to Aurelija. We thought she’d be so surprised to see herself in the paper with Ieva! We got home & I excitedly handed her a paper...to which she responded “Oh yes, I forgot to tell you yesterday.” She went on to tell us that she was on the street with Ieva, on her way to LCC to bring Ieva to us yesterday when a newspaper journalist approached her. Interestingly, her first question to Aurelija was “do you speak Lithuanian?” as she apparently thought she was a foreigner. This makes us wonder if the assumption was made because Ieva was in a backpack (you NEVER see babies in packs here), or because people have seen Andrew & I carry Ieva around in the pack and know that we’re foreigners. Since Klaipeda is a small city, there are different local “personalities” that we’ve gotten used to seeing over the past 5 years. It’s strange to think that we may actually be one of those personalities to the local Klaipedans!
The journalist was doing an article on the lack of schedules of the local mini-buses and she asked Aurelija to pose like she was flagging one down on the street. Even though Aurelija is looking at the bus, I love that Ieva is looking at the camera! We thought you’d enjoy seeing the article, too. We never thought our Ieva would make the front page this early in life...especially here in Lithuania!