Morons Slap

Violence is fun only in movies and video games. In real life, violence only suits criminals and morons. Absurd how many people think that good children can only be raised with physical punishment. Recently there was a lot of public debate about a new law that would forbid hitting children. I was surprised that this debate was very balanced. It almost seemed that some soft idealistic politicians are trying to introduce a stupid new law and then "normal" people are trying to talk sense into them. Politicians say, "With fear and violence you can't raise good people." and then people said, "but if my kid does a bad deed and I can't even punish him, he will turn into a crook!".

Whenever I hear such talk, that children NEED to be physically punished , I get really angry. It is unfortunate that some parents are only able to think that punishing a child involves a leash and a crying and fearful child. If a parent raises their child with a leash, they deserve to get beat up in the street. It's not very different: a stronger person beats up the weaker person for some obscure reason. Okay, I will admit that most of the time parents THINK that they have a good reason for beating their kid, but I'm saying that almost always the reason isn't good enough.

I imagine that there must be an enormously huge reason that gives cause for beating a child. I don't mean that there is cause when a kid behaves very badly one day and breaks something in rage. I mean, if a kid gets caught dissecting a live frog for fun or torturing another human being and laughing maniacally , this could be reason enough to give the kid a punishment to remember. Or perhaps one should consider, what would the beating help?! Perhaps even then it would be better to start visiting a psychiatrist and find a way to help the child before he becomes a serial murderer.

Beating is a harsh punishment and maybe I shouldn't generalize that all physical punishment is the same as violently beating a kid up. Some people say that beating a child is wrong but children are best disciplined with a short strong tap on the wrist. Well, is that okay? Hell no! Imagine your boss in your workplace used this against you. Whenever you break one of his hundred little rules, he slaps you! "I told you not to leave your coffee cup in the sink! *SLAP*". That's just degrading and it's wrong and disrespectful. Then why would it be okay when it involves a small helpless child who is prone to forgetting such little rules? It's much worse because he can't even report you to the police for constant violence.

A friend of mine said that that a lack of physical punishment doesn't necessarily mean that children get a good up-bringing, and that constant mental humiliating would be much worse than an occasional physical punishment. I agree with this. Indeed it is even worse when a parent constantly degrades and belittles their child, "you're so stupid, you can't do anything right, you'll never be anyone important". However, I don't imagine it's possible to pass a law: Don't Be An Asshole Toward Your Children.

I've voiced these opinions in some form before in this same blog, so I hope it doesn't seem repetitive, but in all honesty, this opinion deserves to be voiced again. Anything that's repeated enough times becomes more true. I really wish more people would see this child violence issue like I see it and it's nice to think that this blog post could convince people whose opinion still wavers.

Or perhaps all people who read this blog already agree with me. All the people that have ever mentioned that they have read this blog are way above average smart. I can't really imagine any of them thinking that the only way to discipline their child is by causing them pain. And all the people I have ever discussed this topic with, have said that they are against violence. So who are all those morons who are openly against a law that forbids physical punishment of small helpless children?! It's like with a populist Estonian political party Keskerakond: they get hundreds of thousands of votes each time but when you start asking around, you can't find anyone who voted for them. There are hundreds of thousands of Estonians who think it's okay to beat a helpless child but when you start asking around, no one will admit they share that view.

If you think that it's not "small helpless children" who need a good beating, then consider that big and strong people don't get beat up. People who are subjects of physical punishment are helpless by definition, because if they could help it, they wouldn't get beat up.

I know Siiri is very young and it's usually a bit older children who "need a good beating", but I'm still sure it would take a lot for me to change my views on this issue. Siiri is exactly in the age when she can barely understand the rules but it is impossible to make her understand why she should follow them. Because mommy says so will only help as long as she's in a good mood and very cooperative. In a bad mood she breaks one rule after another - pulls on the curtain, pats the window glass and plays with Xbox game DVD boxes. Sometimes when I'm not well rested I get quite annoyed after a while. It's not easy to tell something again and again and again and again . It sometimes seems like a short tap on the wrist could be much more effective and it would save a lot of effort. What holds me back is the idea how furious I would be if a person I trust and love - my husband - would deliberately hit me to teach me a lesson. I can't imagine him ever doing that, and I don't want my child ever to imagine that I could do that to her.

I'm not sure if that law was passed or not but I really hope it was. Anyway, thanks for listening to the rant and have a nice non-violent day.

Lip Balm for the Win

Experimenting is nice, even if it is uncontrolled human experiments where the test subject is me. Okay, I knew there can't be too many side effects to experimenting living without a lip balm. Lip balm addiction websites say that if you think you're addicted to lip balm, it's best to live without wearing any lip balm at all. They say that in enough time lips will simply adjust and start to rehydrate themselves. I sure was addicted to lip balm so I tried their suggestion and you know what I found out? It turns out lip balms exist for a good reason!

It's generally well accepted that people with dry skin ought to use skin lotion. People don't talk about letting skin peal off until it learns to rehydrate itself. When I researched chapped lips, I found that good quality websites, like different public medical databases, say that some people constantly have dry lips and that even healthy lips can become dry due to temporary environmental conditions, like dry air, cold air, or excessive sun exposure. Perhaps lip balm should be treated like skin lotion - some people simply have dry lips and they need to apply something to keep lips from getting chapped. The only difference is that there aren't too many skin lotions which are designed to irritate your skin to feel even more dry. Lip balms do just that. Several common lip balm ingredients are RUMORED to irritate lips and thus increase the need to apply lip balm. (I discussed it here: Chapoholic)

When I started this whole self-experimenting, I had something like five or seven lip balms hidden throughout the apartment. One in each bag and in every room. I had to re-apply very often, sometimes every fifteen minutes. Still my lips were so dry that I desperately kept buying lip balms. I even bought one extra nice lip balm that a make-up expert recommended. She said it is very effective and lasts for a long time. She also said that people who buy it usually stop using any other kind of brands. In hindsight, I should have made the conclusion that they stop using other brands because they become addicted to this one, because this conclusion would have been the correct one. This extra nice lip balm cost roughly $20 and when I got home, I discovered that the package stated in very fine print, "do not use when pregnant or breastfeeding" and it contains menthol. This lip balm gives lips a really pretty shine though so I might eventually use it despite the menthol.

The experiment was this: If I stop using lip balm (especially the kind with irritants), will my lips become LESS dry?

So I stopped using lip balm and within a few hours my lips became chapped and aching. They were visibly swollen and very uncomfortable. I only held out for two days until I found a safe ointment that's not specifically meant for lips, so it's guaranteed not to have such ingredients, and it even promotes skin healing. I started applying it in the evenings for overnight treatment. It helped for a few days but not as much as I would have liked. I tried applying olive oil a couple of times because it's all natural and then I tried butter because milk fat is more similar to natural human fat, but neither olive oil nor butter is very good as a lip balm. Then I read that dehydration causes chapped lips so I tried drinking water each time my lips felt dry and it helped a bit but again, not as much as I would have liked. Besides, I still dislike drinking water and it's a struggle to drink even a liter of pure water per day. After a week of semi torture I started became fond of greasy food for all the wrong reasons - after eating it, my lips felt slightly greasy as if I had just applied lip balm.

The most effective method to help my lips was to wash them! My lips felt the most dry when I had eaten something sugary and then licked my lips "clean". It wasn't much better when I left my lips slightly sugary because then it dried and the effect was the same. So in stead of licking my lips, I started to wash them with clean water. This was helpful for a while but once my lips got visibly chapped, water didn't help one bit. My lips were getting so more and more chapped and even my overnight lip treatment wasn't enough to help them heal.

Eventually I said, "Screw it! I have naturally dry lips and I need to use a lip balm!" I researched what are the best alternatives for those evil Blistex and Carmex type addictive lip balms and I found that some people use pure vaseline! They apply it on the lips in the evenings and don't need anything else for the rest of the day. I kept researching and found out about many cases where people got horribly addicted to applying vaseline on their lips. Someone said vaseline is so unnatural it makes lips much less able to rehydrate themselves in the long run. After reading about too many people addicted to it I didn't dare to start using it on my lips daily. The ointment I've been using has vaseline in it so I didn't want to use that anymore either.

Then I read about the ointment Aquaphor by Eucerin. People on the Internet say it's absolutely the best alternative to regular addictive lip balms. I would take that information with a large grain of salt but Eucerin is a pharmacy brand that specializes in making effective yet non-irritating skin products. I went to a pharmacy to buy Aquaphor but even the pharmacy with the best Eucerin selection in Tartu didn't have this product. In stead I bought Eucerin's regular Lip Repair and it's perfect. It's got minimal amount of ingredients and none of the horrible ones I've read about. It's simple and it simply works. I wanted to start with something that's as mellow as possible so I decided not to try Eucerin's Acute Lip balm until I get really desperate.

Result of the experiment: I'm no longer addicted to lip balms... but I can't live without my Lip Repair balm! I only need to moisturize my lips once a day. My lips still get a little dry on occasion but it's not a constant problem anymore. While using a lip balm every 15-30 minutes is definitely an addiction, using it only once a day is called skin care.

Also I learned to avoid licking my lips , I learned that sometimes lips feel more moisturized when rinsed with clean water than they do after applying the wrong lip balm, I learned that all lip balm labels need to be read VERY CAREFULLY. The general rule is, that if it's sold as a lip balm, it will irritate your skin. There are very few exceptions to that rule so be careful or you might end up with lip balm addiction, chapped lips, and half a dozen evil lip balms which only make the problem worse.

Birthday!!!

It's Siiri's first birthday and I'm sick. I'm suffering from involuntary-bulimia-induced-voluntary-anorexia. In other words, no point in eating anything because it won't stay down anyway. Siiri's also sick, but she was the first to get infected and she seems to be the first one to recover. Erkki is worse off than me because he's a guy. Is it just me or are men just really sensitive to being ill. Oh wait, I think I've read something about it somewhere sometime that women handle flu better than men.

This time even I am so ill that I spend hours during the day just sleeping and I just can't get up. Me and Erkki take turns trying to stay awake and babysit while Siiri is actively crawling around and playing. She hasn't made a full recovery - her appetite is still low and she's making long naps during the day but at least she's not completely apathic like she was a couple of days ago. Siiri really is sweet though. I was lying in bed and Siiri crawled to me, spent ten minutes playing with stuff in my bedside drawer, then took a paper tissue, ripped it in tiny-tiny pieces, stood up and started offering the pieces to me one by one. When I put them on the bedside table, she just picked them up and offered them to me one-by-one again as if was her gift from her to me so I would feel better. Besides, she's been doing her version of hugging a lot in the last couple of days. She comes and rests her head on my arm or my chest. It always makes me smile. It's very therapeutic.

Anyway, Siiri' first birthday is kind of ruined since me and Erkki haven't been that sick in years or maybe even NEVER. I even had a plan of making Siiri a fluffy pink cake. I would have dyed whipped cream with home made beetroot juice and I was even planning to light one candle in the center of the cake. I had a recipe that was baby-safe and I think Siiri would have enjoyed it. We still gave her her first birthday present which was a picture dictionary. It's small, a little bigger than pocket book format, it has lots of picutres and I think it might be useful when she's starting to expand on her vocabulary. Before that, it's just pretty to look at. Quite lame, right? A BOOK! Well, Siiri likes books and she deserved a book that she can "read" as much as she wants. She liked it so much she leaned forward and gave it a nice wet lick. She hadn't done this with a real book yet, only with cardboard baby books.

I might be sick but I'm quite busy this week. I have a practical course: 4-hour days in a lab near my home. The first day was quite difficult to endure - it was mostly a lecture while sitting on really uncomfortable lab chairs. I'm hoping I'll feel better tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Siiri!

How Time Flies

It's really been an interesting year. Yes, it's almost been a whole year since Siiri was born. And I've decided to review some of my previous ideas and thoughts to see what's changed and to admit how much of a house hen I've become.

First things first - Any regrets? No. I've been living with an idea that parenting must be minimal effort task. Any parent who says that their child "only sleeps in a moving carriage" or "only falls asleep in the car" has obviously given their children such habits which are time-consuming for the parent and needlessly tiring. Siiri has been a total dream child with no gas pains, good health, decent sleep habits and a happy outlook on life. It's easy to give baby advice when there are hardly any real problems! Still, there were those few months of teething which were horrible for my sleep and there were several times that she had a cold. She didn't take the bottle so I had to be with her whenever she was hungry during the first months of her life. You get the picture. It's all subjective. I say she's a godsend, but someone else might only remember the teething months.

By the way, she got her 8th tooth this week. Teeth are supposed to come in pairs, but she's been crawling around with 7 teeth for three months already and finally her tooth is here. It was getting quite suspicious already. I kept checking on that part of the gum. At first Siiri was resistant but eventually she got used to it and almost showed it to me herself.

Lately it feels like everything that's got nothing to do with children is just same old stuff. Like TV-shows. There's always been some TV-shows and people talk about them but it's become somehow distant for me. Movies are also somehow same stuff over and over again. Don't get me wrong, movies are fun to watch, but they're just so casual. It's as if all the entertainment in the world that used to be an important part of life has now been demoted to the status of being just background to real life. Some of this has become just random noise. Facebook keeps emailing me but I never quite have the time to see what's going on with my account. Yet I always have time for baby-topics forum where people discuss how many layers of clothing do babies need to wear on a drafty day.

In a way I have become distant from life but it's not in the way I expected. When I stay indoors it's because I have chosen to not make plans for the evening. I'm rarely sad and lonely home alone and feeling like I'm missing out on life. It really just depends on the week. Sometimes there's just one plan after another but sometimes nothing really happens and I end up being completely exhausted anyway. Lately I've been increasingly overwhelmed with how much work it is to take care of another person. Erkki has been very busy with work, doing longer hours and even bringing work home with him and involuntarily I have been doing extra hours as a housekeeper and a babysitter. Also, my primary babysitter found a stable position in another home and can only help me out after hours. All this is already resolving itself. Erkki has a vacation coming up and I'm already on the lookout for new babysitter alternatives.

Last week I was mostly just trying to conserve energy while living in Siiri's life pace, preparing for her meals, getting her ready for naps, making sure she's feeling good. It was very exhausting. This week I was rushing to do one thing after another - visiting lab, exercising, shopping, taking the baby out - I even made it to a REAL stand-up comedy show in Tartu and it was AWESOME! Now, after this busy week, I feel alive and full of energy. It seems I'm not really made for quiet family life. Currently laundry is piling up and there's too many toys on the floor but I'm just happy that I got to run around actively. I'd love to take my family to the park or to go traveling with my many children in the distant future, and I even see myself baking a cakes or piles of pancakes, but still I don't see myself using up all my energy to keep my home tidy, kids fed and clean, laundry nicely folded and for the rest of my time, slouching in front of the TV watching soap operas. I tried the low-energy life and it just kept making me have less and less energy. During my more active week Siiri was also well fed but I felt better so I was happier with Siiri which made her happier. Next week I'll aim high: I'll even do the laundry!

So perhaps I am a house hen since I keep talking about how cute Siiri is and about fun stuff that happens here but that's mostly because I just really want to share what a fun experience parenting sometimes is. Yet, I am most definitely a different from the stereotypical soap-opera-watching-candy-munching-fat-house-hen whose life only revolves around her children and soap operas and candy. I'm the kind of house hen that I like to be, nothing more nothing less, and I'm happy with that. No regrets.