Shooting and Clubbing

That's what this week was all about - shooting and clubbing. Except in a really feminine and non-violent way.

I should start with saying that I got a glamour photo session for my birthday. That's a true journey of narcissism and vanity - a perfect gift for a me. I was excited but also scared. Someone will try to make perfect pictures of me. But I'm not perfect. Sure I'm in the best weight I've been in a really long time but I skipped sunbathing last summer so I have the complexion of Snow White. Perhaps it's to my advantage that I stopped dying my hair because I discovered that my real hair color is a nice shade of mocha in the winter. I also wanted everything to be as good as possible so I finally took the time to get a haircut and a facial. When I finally got the nerve to book the photo shoot I started to make effort not to walk into furniture and bruise my legs. A week before the photo shoot I had a silly clumsy second and my arm touched a burning hot over grill, probably leaving a scar for a few months, years or maybe even a lifetime. Great timing, right? I kept trying to ask the photographer how long it's going to last, so I can make arrangements for Siiri, but he always managed to either change the topic of simply ignore that I ever asked.

On Monday I finally had the photo shoot. I got a make-up done, then an outfit was picked out for me and I stood in front of the camera. Two hours had gone by already. Then photographer adjusted his lights and mirrors, and another hour had gone by. On the fourth hour I called Erkki who was already at home ready to relieve our babysitter. We decided it was too close to Siiri's bedtime to bring her out of home for a good-night breastfeeding because she would be too excited to fall asleep afterwards. Me and the photographer discussed which outfits suit me the best. He was really polite and respectful, always making sure he doesn't walk in on me changing outfits. Some clothes I had brought from home, some others were picked by the stylist. I thought there would be a ton of props in the photo shoot but I was just standing on an empty floor in front of a dark screen wearing pretty clothing, fine make-up and a simple fitting hairdo. How many positions can you stand in? Think about it for a moment. Would you still have ideas 5 hours from now? ...Because that's how long it lasted. I got home 7 or 8 hours after my photo shoot started. Siiri got a nice late meal and didn't even wake up to greet me.

I thought Siiri would be pissed. I thought she would cry and scream during the photo shoot and she would be pinching and biting the next day. No, nothing like that. During the day, it was like Monday had never happened. But at night, she suddenly started to have separation anxiety. She woke up very often and cried loudly. When I got to her she was already shaking and scared. It's a normal stage of development but Siiri already had that and got over it. Wednesday I left her with my brother in the morning to go to a lecture and in the evening I left her with her grandparents to go to my twice-weekly Bodycombat class. Again, Siiri was happy and active when I was gone but woke up scared at night. Gotta make it up to her somehow.

My active week continued with a Friday-morning laboratory seminar. I was supposed to have plans to bake a cake with a friend in the afternoon but she couldn't make it, so in stead I proposed, "hey, let's go clubbing in stead! Tonight!". I already had an agreement with Erkki that I can take the night off if I want to. I had no idea what I was going to wear because I hadn't been to a club in such a long time. I didn't even care what I was going to wear because on Friday, with all my unexpected spontaneity, it really did not matter! I picked an outfit half an hour before I went out and I didn't really bother with my hair. Long and loose is pretty and feminine, what more do I need? Club Atlantis had a 90ies summer hits party. In some clubs, like that hipi club Illusion, that means that the DJ simply plays a couple of theme songs every now and then. But in Club Atlantis, it was like a trip back in time. They played all the music that was popular when I had dance parties with my friends. I KNEW those songs. I had danced to them so many times I knew some tunes by heart. I was so full of energy. They announced they've brought hair-stylists to give free 90ies style hairdos and I just knew I had to have it! That's totally in the spirit of my narcissistic and vain week. A little time later I was dancing to Macarena with fluffy nineties hair decorated with funky iron waves. I got home three hours before Siiri woke up to start her day.

You'd think that's quite enough for one week, but actually the "busy day" was only just beginning. We had two parties planned for one day. In the afternoon we took Siiri to her grandparents home and went to the first party. It was with Erkki's colleagues. We tasted rotten shark meat or Hákarl, a delicacy of Island, which was a memorable experience. (See, I can be diplomatic, if I really try! ) We picked up Siiri from Erkki's parents home and went to a friend's birthday party with almost as many children as there were grown-ups. A completely different party during the same day. Siiri had a hard time falling asleep and then staying asleep so we went home a little earlier than I thought.

The week had given me enough chance to feel like a real person that Sunday belonged to Siiri. I spent the morning hugging and crowding her and we went on a wonderful Sunday afternoon walk in the warm March sun. Siiri closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth of sun on her face. Adorable. We bought her a new a wooden pull-along cat toy because she was running out of age-appropriate toys and her very own mug with Disney princesses on it. I loved such girly stuff when I was young. Yes, it's partly pink. After a day dedicated to her, Siiri went to sleep with a smile on her face and sleeps as well as before Monday's photo shoot.

Pre-Toddler

Somewhere between 9.5 and 10 months of age, Siiri became a pre-toddler. Technically toddlers can walk. As I understand it, toddlers are the little balls of energy stumbling around on their own feet, climbing over stuff and throwing food. There is no proper link between baby and a toddler. Siiri started out as a baby, then advanced to a big baby with improved mobility and now she is almost everything I'd expect from a toddler.

Siiri has gained the most important skill of all - the ability to communicate what she wants. It came very suddenly. One moment she was simply pointing at things for the heck of it. It was simple entertainment for her. And then she started pointing at things to point my attention to that object. Feeding solids changed the most: in stead of passively being fed, Siiri is actively showing what she wants and when. She'll eat for a while and then she'll purse her lips and point toward her glass of water. She drinks a sip or two and then points toward her plate again.

Sometimes it's not easy to understand what she's trying to tell me so I start checking the options, "Do you want water?". She looks unimpressed and points again. "How about porridge?", again no. "Are you pointing at that banana there?" No, "Or that pear?" No. "But Siiri, there's nothing else in sight. ...I'll get these tissues out the way, maybe I just don't see it." And suddenly she gets really excited, YES YES YES. "What? Tissues?" YES YES YES. "No you can't have paper! You'll try to eat it! I know you!". I hold up a tissue and shake my head before I get them all out of her sight. "Well you can't have a paper tissue, but do you want porridge?". She looks at me, sighs and opens her mouth in expectation of the spoon.

Also, like a toddler, she has become a lot more energetic. She crawls over obstacles, uses anything OR ANYONE in arm's reach to pull herself up and apparently she has discovered that breastfeeding is much more fun when she's upside down. I was wondering when the upside-down phase begins. I had noticed that little children like to do everything in original positions. For 3-year olds sitting on the couch is most fun when dangling upside down over the backrest. And already at 10 months Siiri crawls over my stomach and suddenly stops, just so she can dangle there with a happy smile on her face. No one encourages children to try out creative positions, it's something they start on their own.

We also started potty training! By Estonian standards, some mothers would think, "WHAT?! You didn't start at 6 months?! How lazy you are!" and by USA standards, mothers would think, "WHAT?! Children are incapable of controlling their bladders until they're 3 years old! You are potty training her way too soon!". This is one of those very varied issues with strong opinions in both extremes. Me and Erkki just thought that we will start when the time is right. Well, the time seemed right so we introduced potty. We take it out about once a day and always offer lots of praise when it is used like intended. It's a method of persistent positive reinforcement and so far it's working perfectly. Kate, from a reality show called "Jon & Kate plus 8" used a similar method but she took it a step further. In stead of simply offering praise, she took photos of her children smiling next to a potty, inside was their very first diaper-free crap. Intention was to show her children that it IS a big deal and they should be very proud of themselves. That's the kind of picture the children would never want their future boyfriends to see.

Pfff, Siiri is growing up so fast. Such a stereotypical phrase, right? I actually like it. I love how Siiri points towards her water glass, I love how she shows more and more character and she is growing up to have a wonderfully strong personality. The downside is that I didn't have enough room here to talk about the non-baby topics, like the time on Monday when I casually opened the storage room door and the boiler was leaking like crazy! The light was turned on and even the power light on the boiler was on. GAAH! There was half an inch of water on the floor and our backup computer gadgets were in a cardboard box sitting in water. With Siiri on one arm, I resisted the initial urge to rush in and start saving stuff. I kept thinking, "Electrocution! Panic! DANGEROUS!" and I called Erkki for a voice of quick reason what to do. I put Siiri in her crib and ran to turn off electricity. She was so dumbfounded with the sudden rush she didn't even cry. Then I closed off water to the boiler and started to lift things out of the water. Siiri became restless but I couldn't have her crawling around so I rolled her crib out of the room so she'd have a nice view of me mopping the floor with a towel.

Our landlord is so amazing that we got a new boiler the next morning. The apartment is not damaged and everything returned to normal in no time. Yet I still get an adrenaline rush when I hear water trickling and I can't see the source of the sound.

Virtual Exercise

I've been bouncing ideas entire week, planning what to write a blog post about. So much to write, so little time to write it... I mean, I have as much time as normally have with Siiri crawling around. Except now I rarely spend my time at the computer since I re-discovered Xbox.

I played Assassin's Creed a while ago and I loved it. There is something inherently cool about being a sneaky cool assassin in a time without any electronics or even proper weaponry. This involves lots of stabbing and running and climbing. I love the freedom and the athletics of it. Except, sadly, there was no story behind all of it. Now they came out with Assassin's Creed 2 and I must say, WOW UBER COOL! It has all the coolness of the first game, and it has a very compelling story. I was so happy with the game that I went and got myself all of the 1000 Achievement Points. I even found every treasure and I did nearly all of the assassination side-quests before I realized I didn't need them for maximum Achievement Point score.

Meanwhile, Siiri practiced her skill of feeding herself. It's not as bad as it sounds. I placed her securely in her feeding chair, fed her anything pureed that I had for her and then placed her finger food in front of her, so she can practice eating without me constantly rushing her on, moving her food around. When I sit beside her I soon find myself micromanaging her meal. I start lifting "favorable" pieces closer to her and "unfavorable" pieces further away. I'm way too fidgety and restless to sit in one place for up to an hour and simply observe without interfering. The solution is to keep an eye on her from a few meters away while climbing up virtual walls and stabbing baddies. Feeding solids just got way more fun.

Solid food issue has somehow resolved itself. Siiri can handle textures so she'll gladly eat purees with meat in them. She also doesn't mind new food and some of the purees she eats are quite tasteless but she still likes them. In our feeding approach it's obligatory to taste everything I offer her but she is still free to choose how much she eats. Sometimes she only takes a couple of bites and decides she doesn't like it one bit. Oddly, she can't stand apples. It's not that she gets any allergic or other kind of reaction. She simply doesn't like the taste of apples. I've tried apples in several variations and all I get is a cautious tasting and a disappointed look, "it's got apples in it, mommy. Couldn't you have made me anything edible?". Fortunately it's now much easier to make it up to her. I give her some rye bread and a slice of pear and she's happy and fed. Later I top it off with breastmilk and she's happily crawling around again.

Yes, at nearly 10 months she still eats breastmilk. Initially I thought I'd stop at 6 months margin but breastfeeding is simply too pleasant to stop. She's so excited, cute and cuddly when she starts to eat. However, I still plan to wean at 12 months so I ought to be making some changes already, perhaps start limiting the number of breastfeedings per day or maybe it would be easier to introduce a meal of bottle milk. I've heard goat milk is easily digested by babies so I might investigate if that's a good alternative to formula milk. I know it's not recommended to very young babies because of a high solute load (probably means it's osmotic pressure is too high, essentially meaning it's too salty) which could lead to dehydration if baby doesn't recieve anything else, but my baby is already eating solids and drinking water as necessary, so it should be okay for her.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I don't like feeding her stuff with obscure list of incredients. I've seen what formula milk is made of and it seems so synthetic that it makes my skin crawl. I know it's just prejudice and baby formula is SUPPOSED TO BE synthetic. After all, it's laboratory-engineered breastmilk. Goat milk, however disgusting, is at least REAL.

Siiri has started learing words again. Our favorite game this week is point-and-tell. She points with her finger and I tell what she's pointing at. And then she tries to repet after me. Unfortunately, everything pronounced by a less than 10 month old baby sound the same: "emme" (english: Mommy). Table = "emme", window = "emme", door = "emme". But there is great progress! Today when Siiri pointed toward lamp, which in Estonian is astonishingly also spelled lamp, Siiri said "emp" or even "amp". Oh, and Daddy is still daddy ("issi"). That's one word she hasn't forgotten.

I MIGHT be getting my cake-mania under control. I haven't baked anything entire week. Oh wait. I made that large apple cake 2 days ago. I mean, uhm, I managed to NOT bake cinnamon rolls today despite the urge to make them. I was such a good girl, it was an amazingly strong temptation to supress. Honestly though, I think the only reason I managed to NOT make cinnamon rolls was because I was fresh our of cinnamon and I would have had to go to the store to get it.

PS! I'm still addicted to lipstick.

Cute Baby Sleeps

It worked. It really worked! A great new truth to remember: if you want a baby not to assume that she'll be fed at night, then don't feed her at night!

My plan was to prolong the feeding-free time by one hour each night. I started with 4 hours of feeding-free time. That meant we skipped her favourite meal - her 12 o'clock feeding, but it was perfectly manageable because it was only one hour of postponing and shushing. The next night was a bit more difficult. By third day Erkki had developed a new habit. Each evening he asked, "so... No feeding until 5 a.m. today? Oh THAT will be tough." The next morning I breathed out a sigh of relief that everything is still going by plan. As days went by Erkki's prediction of problems ahead started to get hopeful. "If you keep this up, she won't eat AT ALL during the night." Well yes, that's the general plan.

I was persistent and it paid off. Until I got to the final feedings. Starting from 7 a.m. there is a real risk that if Siiri is awake for an entire minute () she might decide she likes being awake. That really tested my skills of getting her back to sleep without feeding. It had been so much easier to just pop in a breast and see baby drift back to sleep. The problem with that was that I couldn't sneak back to bed for the risk of waking her up. So I just took an early morning nap in stead. I had thought if I just don't feed her she won't even wake up at 7 a.m. and I'll get to sleep until morning. I'll be so much better rested without all those nighttime interruptions. However, I overlooked one tiny detail: without all those nighttime interruptions Siiri too was so much better rested and was no longer sleepy after 8 a.m.

After some experimenting, I reached a compromise for us. I feed her at 8 a.m. and she's welcome to stay awake if she wants to. Except I won't. I give her a few toys to play with and I turn off the baby monitor. I can hear distress-crying without it but I can just sleep thought her "entertain me, mommy"-crying. She's fed and safe and I'm happily asleep. She's already getting used to it. Today she played alone for half an hour. I almost went there to take a peek that she's still okay.

A few nights ago Siiri made her all-time sleep record. She had 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I haven't been so well-rested in months. I am almost able to participate in conversations now, without my brain short-circuiting from all that mental strain. My IQ grew a few points overnight. Oh that's why stereotypical mommies are so simpleminded. I can honestly say that for a long time it was really difficult to follow a group discussion. It felt like everyone was talking so fast.

Sidenote... She's been asleep for nearly an hour and she started crying in the other room. I resisted an urge to get up and go check on her. There's a 3-minute rule I read in a book. If I manage to wait for 3 minutes, my baby might actually fall asleep on her own. Even better if I manage 10 minutes because then it's pretty certain she'll just fall asleep. I had no plan. I just sat and listened. It took 20 seconds for her to fall asleep again.

I also managed to write a decent second draft of the article. It kept me busy for a while. I'm almost happy with it. At least now that it hasn't come back all red with corrections and suggestions. I actually managed to read scientific articles. That's certainly a step beyond social conversations when it comes to mental strain.

Baby Update: Siiri weighed 8,61 kg at her 9-month check-up and she's 70 cm in length. There is hardly a surface she won't use to pull herself up. She learned to make careful side-steps while holding on to furniture and she's actively flexing her legs while standing. Her physical development then went to be background and she has started to pay more attention to words again. She doesn't get tired of the game where she points toward the ceiling lamp and I say "lamp". As simple as that. She can play it in every room and even when we're visiting someone else. And today when I was going to the lab for a little while and waved to Siiri, "Bye Siiri, I'll see you in a couple of hours", Siiri stared with a happy expression and suddenly lifted her hand and waved right back at me! Super cute!

No Teeth No Excuses

I've gone soft. I remember being determined that babies are not supposed to eat at night after 6 months of age. Now Siiri is 9 months old and I still feed her. She does sleep in her own bed but she wakes up every couple of hours to be fed. I'm sure she doesn't need to be fed and I sure as hell don't enjoy getting up at night. So why do I let her walk all over my precious nights? Why do I let her push me further and further into sleep deprivation land where all social life goes to die? Because I'm too lazy to stop her. Or should I say I HAVE BEEN too lazy to stop her?

A few days ago I woke up at 7:45 a.m. at night. Some call it morning. Tell them morning is defined as "the time period between dawn and noon" and sun comes up at 7:52 a.m. which means they're wrong. So I woke up at night in the wrong bed, where I nurse Siiri. I looked at Siiri with tired confusion and a hope of putting her back in her bed. She looked back with lively energy and a hopeful look asking "wanna play?". I quickly offered her food because it usually makes her sleepy. She took a few sips and then looked at me with that after-Christmas-meal stuffed look. Then she quickly rolled away and started to make her way toward the edge of bed. I caught her ankle and shook my head to get my eyes to focus in the same place. I was desperate for more sleep. I tried leaving her to play alone in her bed while I sleep another hour or two but she - surprise-surprise - did not cooperate with that plan.

So I lay in my bed trying to ignore the annoyed complaining coming from the baby monitor. It had been a while since I properly slept in my bed so my pillow felt extra comfortable. I thought, mhhh, there have been too many nights when I barely even get to sleep in my bed because I'm woken up with crying only an hour after I fall asleep and then I go and I try to get baby to fall asleep. I try cradling for a minute at most and then I take the easy way out and i just nurse her back to sleep. It really is a vicious cycle. If I didn't feed her, she might not even wake up and I would get more sleep. But I haven't been getting enough sleep so I'm too tired to do anything but feed her. What would happen if I simply didn't feed her for a little while? Sounds so familiar - wait, I've done that. And it worked!

I remembered Siiri used to sleep so well! And then her sleeping got worse and then I corrected it. And then she slept well again. Rinse and repeat. This is the longest she has had frequent wake-ups. Her sleep has been getting worse ever since teething started at 4 months of age. With nearly every tooth there has been a time when I feed her almost every hour at night. It was so hard to make her feel better any other way and, to be honest, breastfeeding is a really pleasant and relaxing activity. Almost like getting high on happy-hormones without any life-threatening side effects. Teething was a great excuse to let her wake me up and not do anything to correct it. She woke up from pain anyway and I could really make her feel better by offering her food. Babies are creatures of habit - if a baby is fed to sleep at night, at many nights in a row, several times during a night, she will really start to expect her parent to feed her to sleep. Now Siiri is not growing a tooth even though her 8th should be almost here. Now I could be the one keeping her bad habit alive. I only have to stop feeding her and problem is solved.

Right there and then, with Siiri complaining in the background, I decided (AGAIN) that enough is enough and Siiri must be weaned from night-feedings. I made a plan to start postponing her first night meal by one hour each night. Today her no-food time range is from 9 to 3. In a week it will be from 9 to 9. Twelve hours of baby starvation. And after that it must be a helluva good exception for me to feed her between 9 and 9. I'm so excited. If it works, I'll get to go to parties again. My brain will have some processing power. My muscles will get the rest to heal from heavy workouts.

I'll be a fresher and newer me. And perhaps I'll think about anything else besides baby sleep habits and teething.

Chapoholic

I am completely addicted to chap sticks. I've been using chap sticks frequently since my early teens I guess. In recent years, I have to apply a lip balm several times a day, in the winter sometimes even several times each hour. I have a lip balm in my purse, backpack, baby carrier pocket, desk drawer and bedroom drawer. I had one in my winter coat pocket as well but I used it all up. I've tried every Blistex, Labello, Nivea, ChapStick, SebaMed, and a few others marketed in Estonia today. I've even tried some cheap lip balms without a proper brand name. Still, in the winter the skin on my lips is so dry it peels off!

I researched it a little. There is and isn't such a thing as chap stick addiction. Many people report being dependant on lip balm but medically it's not really an addiction. Usually it's caused by a bad habit of licking one's lips. I don't lick my lips! I've ruled out this cause since forever. When I read about it this time, one website asked, "Now that I mention it, did you lick your lips just now?". At that moment I found myself sucking on my lower lip. BUSTED! I really hadn't thought about it but I do it quite often. Frankly, it does not matter if I wet my lips by pushing out my tongue to touch my lips or by pulling in my lips to touch my tongue. So I do actually lick my lips in this different sort of way. Guilty as charged.

The second thing that I found was that some typical lip balm ingredients CAUSE lips to dry. Menthol, camphor and phenol are thought to be the real culprit in many lip balm addictions. Conspiracy theorists and nature freaks claim that menthol, camphor and phenol are ineffective as lip moisturizers and are added to create the feeling of dry lips. Soon after applying lip balm they feel they need to reapply lip balm. Hence they have to keep using the product. If they try to quit cold turkey their lips get extremely dry and chapped and many people even report having swollen lips soon after they stopped applying lip balm.

Now I'm trying to kick the habit of applying lip balm so often. I keep observing myself so I don't wet my lips and try to use only the best lip balms that I have, hoping it won't have any of those bad ingredients. So far no help. Sometimes I manage two whole hours without applying lip balm but not much longer, except at night.

By the way, did you know there is such a thing as Lip Balm Anonymous! Chap stick addiction is still underestimated. Lip Balm Anonymous website was listed as number 327 in a book called "505 Unbelievably Stupid Web Pages."

Meanwhile, Siiri has learned to pull herself up so fast that she can even do it in her sleep just before she wakes up. Standing in her bed is like a compulsion. She can't NOT pull herself up. It's starting to get in the way of learning to fall asleep. She doesn't seem to realize that standing up is not the best position for falling asleep. Who knew, right? I'm very proud of her for pulling herself up with such ease. Her body is quite solid and still when she's holding balance standing straight. Yet her hands are clutching the bed like her life depends on it. There she stands with a straight body chanting "mmeEmmeEmmeEmmeEmmeEm!" (mmyMommyMommyMom)

Currently she has two bed toys. There's the Worm and Puppy. Worm is very comforting to hold and chew but Puppy is much more huggable. For a while it seemed Puppy will not come even close to how much she likes the Worm but now there might be some toy drama unfolding. Today she was standing in bed busy holding balance. She saw the Worm in her reach. She let go with one hand and grab hold of Worm but then started to lose balance and pulled her hand back, ending up with Worm dangling over the edge. Siiri looked at it and then just let go. Worm fell to the floor with a quiet thump. Siiri was overjoyed and laughed. She ENJOYED seeing Worm fall! Later I had returned the Worm to her bed and what did Siiri do? She carefully pushed Worm between crib bars and watched it fall again and then laughed. I wonder what Worm did to deserve such harsh treatment...

Spamming Theft

OH MY GOD! My online ME is in danger! Last weekend someone hacked into my email account and sent spam to all my contacts. I don't just mean any email account. I mean THE email account. The one I've had for about a decade. The one I've used when making a personal account in any other website, including Blogger. The one that I use in MSN messenger. This email account is so thoroughly rooted in all my Internet activity that it is practically like my online spirit, my Internet alter ego. Sending out so much spam has got me listed in some email black lists and now several emails that were sent to me bounced back with some comment about untrustworthy recipient. I can still use the email address to log into Blogger, for example. At least Hotmail didn't freeze my account because I got a few new emails today.

It is distressing that THE email address is now unreliable, though. Not to mention it's quite embarrassing to send spam to all those people , including professors, ancient romantic interests, former acquaintances, and all the other people I had gladly forgotten. I really hope no one fell for the "DEAR FRIEND" beginning and I hope no one clicked on that link.

It would be wise to avoid relying on one email account for everything. I have had several other email accounts but I keep forgetting their passwords and then forgetting I even had an account there until it expires. It would be easy if I used one of those (whatchama-call-it) email browsers like Outlook so I could just direct all my emails there but they are all SO UGLY. Like the 90ies exploded all over freeware. Just white boxes and gray edges. Oh I'm sure you can visit options and make it green boxes and blue edges if you want, but in the end it still looks worse than your average beginner web page made by some friendly colorblind highschool geek.

Yet I'm not nearly as freaked out about the entire event as I could be. I wasn't even all that freaked out when I thought Hotmail froze my account and I have to make a new account in every website I use. At first I thought I'm taking it so lightly because I'm mentally in some serene breastfeeding mother's limbo. I have been unusually serene and blissfully calm (most of the time) ever since Siiri was born for which I "blame" breastfeeding hormones. Now I realize my reaction is mostly RELIEF! I'm so calm because I'm relieved!

Think about it this way: I sent all my friends and former friends and all the important and less important acquaintances an email promoting low price "Computers, Televisions,Cell Phones,MP3/MP4 Players,Digital Cameras, Camcorders, Video Games Consoles,GPS and Motorcycles". I COULD have sent them advertising for penis enlargers, xxx-content sites, 50% off breast implants. Or I could have sent them a horrible malware that wipes their computers clean, and not in the good and tidy way. Even those money scams "please send me money so I can give you the millions you inherited" would have been worse. I don't even know how my email account was stolen so it really could have been any random spam. Actually I don't know if I linked everyone to a nasty malware site. I didn't try clicking it.

On other news, Siiri has started to pull herself up. She crawl to a higher obstacle and then just keeps on crawling. Carefully places her hand, then the other one and then tries to pull her knees closer for better balance. Then she carefully places one feet sole to the floor and becomes very wobbly as she tries to get the other sole to the floor and both legs straight. And then she falls down sitting. But sometimes she doesn't fall - she gets a good starting position and manages to get both legs straight with her feet firmly on the ground. She gets really excited with her success and tries to jump up and down, except she CAN'T jump yet. As she tries to flex her knees, her legs get all stiff and start trembling. She can't even sit back down carefully so she lets go with her hands and falls down sitting from quite a high position.

So far I have managed to ease her fall a bit but now she learned that pulling herself up is much easier in her crib. She can simply slide her hands higher and gradually straighten her body. She got an unusual mischievous laugh when she discovered it, as if saying, "What a neat trick! This I have to practice when Mommy's not here to read stories to me". I can already imagine waking up to horrible pain cries and running in to discover that Siiri pulled herself up and then fell head-first into crib bars. I have crib padding but it won't protect her.

Oh well, it appears I'm trying to protect her against the most baby-safe object in out apartment so perhaps I should just forget those over-protecting thoughts.

Meanwhile, during daytime Siiri crawls around this electronics-friendly apartment with barely any doors to stop her and we haven't even begun to turn this place child-safe. It seems it won't be necessary. We'll eliminate some obvious lethal hazards but other than that it's not worth the trouble! An 8-month old baby is perfectly capable of understanding that No means No. We keep a perfectly good laptop on the floor with it's keyboard in Siiri's reach, yet Siiri just sits nearby and plays with boring plastic shapes. No violence or punishing or "quick hand taps" involved. Not even yelling or anger. Simply a lot of persistence with clear serious voice, "No, don't. No, don't. No, don't. No, don't. No, don't. No, don't.". She has a lot of freedom with a few rules she already understands. Lovely smart baby.