The Bunster is 3 years old today. Wow, what a journey this little man has had already. Talk about a wild ride, not that he will ever remember any of it. But we sure do have a lot of pics and videos. One day we can show him how his first 3 years were.

Being a dad is magical and exhausting. And yes, I am just another dad. No big deal. I know. Please excuse me. I do love this new dimension to life, but throw in the war, and everything else, and, well, we are seriously tired just about all the time. Marta is a trooper – I am very lucky to be married to her. The Bun has one helluva cool mom. He is lucky this little man.

I feel confident that the Bun man is nurtured and loved to the maximum. We are hands on parents and we don’t outsource his days to a TV set. He is active, and we walk with him, talk with him, ride bikes and scooters, build things with Lego, learn magic (well, er, I am trying to teach him some stuff, but he eats the cards), read books (in English and Ukrainian) and more. He is often not easy on us our busy little Bun and he still does not sleep through the night. But we love him too bits and he makes us smile, and sometimes cry.

I imagine a purpose of every parent is to leave the world in a better state for the next generation but it looks like we are all failing. What a mad world the Bun will grow up in – it often scares me. Between the wired kids and the digital devices everywhere, and the violence, this evil war, toxic social media, a hotter planet … it is a very different world to when I was a kid.

The war has been so traumatic and it is not ending any time soon. We just want to return to where Bun was born, to his home city, Kyiv. The devastation of this insane war can be seen in the divorce rate in Ukraine which has more than doubled since the start of the full scale invasion. And then there are the children that Russia has “taken”. Hundreds and thousands of innocent young souls. It is frightening to think about this. And the world just watches, and no one can do anything to stop it. We do thank God the Bunster knows nothing of this evil.

We sometimes talk about a brother or sister for Bun. But we would only ever consider this when the war ends. For now, the Bun man is our focus, and we are doing all we can to try give him a good life experience. So far so good, we think … war and all.