Stand with your back to the rows of benches outside the entrance to the Blue Mosque facing Hagia Sophia (how lucky I am to have stood here, feeling like I was at a point depicted on a map so old foreigners were thought likely to have extra legs or one eye!). Turn to your left and walk, and on your left you will see some stairs down to the Arasta Bazaar. This market area was built at the same time as the Blue Mosque and walking here gives you a great sense of the larger mosque complex. The things sold here are beautiful examples of Turkey's famous textiles and tiles and mostly well out of my price range, but it's a lovely place for window shopping, quiet and car-less  About half way down on your left there is a gap and here you will find the entrance to the Grand Palace Mosaic Museum.

The mosaics in this small museum belonged to the peristyle court (columned porch or open colonnade within a building that might contain a garden - thank you Wikipedia ) of the Grand Palace of Constantinople and are thought to be from the 6th century. I love how fresh the designs still feel, especially the trees and stags. It only takes an hour to look at everything carefully but it is an hour well spent.

In my quest to experience 50 of Istanbul's museums over the next year there will be many like this that are not particularly places you would choose to entertain a baby and a toddler. The thing is that I have to survive their childhood with some semblance of my former personality intact! I know that I cannot help but nurture the children, the question is more about how I will feel when I get to the other side of this intense mothering. Ultimately, as well as opening their minds to life's possibilities, I want them to learn to delve inward when there is no external stimulus and to be still for a little while when it is needed. At the end of their childhood I want them to be able to see beauty rather than me having improved my finger-painting or cutting and sticking skills  (though of course they have their place). I want to help them feel they can change the adult world they will inhabit, and not lose myself in the childish one they will one day leave behind. Somehow despite the hours re-counting transport adventures, or reading the same story till Anton can correct errors made when my mind wanders, I have to try and remain a person that another adult can have a conversation with. Sometimes when Ville comes home I feel I have so little to tell, so little to offer. Not that he expects something other than I am, but I miss babbling out real thoughts to him. Children pull you from your thoughts with such regularity that it becomes easier not to try and go any distance, because I am there for them and I want them to feel the truth of it.

The other truth that I am tackling is that being happy to be here is something that we work at, it doesn't happen naturally. My big frustration this week is that I need to go to the school Anton will attend and ask for them to start a playgroup to prepare the children. A couple of hours a day would really help Anton have enough Turkish to start school with but I just don't have enough Turkish for this conversation. I keep putting it off. Whereas in the UK I would feel I could do everything possible to help Anton settle into school, here I feel out of my depth. Thankfully I have just started Turkish lessons (with the kids in tow of course!).

So visiting museums has plenty of purpose in my life right now. They are an adventure that works for Ruskin (well sometimes, he is 16!), Matti, Anton, Neve and ME! They remind me of the wealth of this city and the privilege it is to see its sights. They give some structure to my determination not to let the pavements or the interference hold me back. And a museum of mosaics is perfect of course, helping me imagine putting the picture together one tiny square at a time.