Christmas Fun

Christmas time - the ground is covered in show and special TV-stations play Christmas carols all day and all night. Malls are so full of people that it's difficult to find a parking space and there's Christmas decorations everywhere you look. Christmas time is possibly the most stressful and most joyous time all at once. This year it's certainly mostly joyous for me.

Christmas shopping becomes considerably easier once you realize WHY it's so difficult to buy presents. There are two main questions with every possible present:

Key questions when shopping for gifts:
1. Would he like to own it?
2. Why doesn't he already?

Most gift ideas are discarded because of the first question - perhaps it's a pointless gift that the person would never in a million years buy for himself. Then he can't be too happy when someone else buys it for him and now he HAS TO own it. This includes tacky clothing, "practical" objects that are too cheap to do what they're meant for, and objects that don't even try to be practical and just take up space for years to come. Few gift ideas get to the second question. Usually when you really do find something that the person would like to own, they already own it! If they don't already own it, it costs tons of money. You have to admit, there's always a tight budget when Christmas-shopping because there are just so many people who deserve a gift. So if it's something that the person would like to own and it's perfectly affordable, THEY USUALLY OWN IT ALREADY!

This creates the first possible gift idea - upgrading. Some successful Christmas gifts that I've made or received include a new wallet, self-made dice bag, a casual blanket, good new mascara, etc. The recipient always already had the object but was happy to receive a better one. The reason the recipient hadn't bought a new one herself is practicality, "The one I have still kind of works". The second category are things that you can never have too many of. The recipient already has it, but a new one will still be welcome. An example is jewellery. I have never seen anyone turn down a pair of earrings, "I already have a pair! ". Same goes for books, eye shadows, and necklaces among other things.

The rest of good presents are usually things people didn't realize to buy for themselves. They never knew they needed it in the first place. This category includes some books (e.g. recipes), cool gadgets, specialized hair products, etc. Perhaps they would have bought that hair product if only they had known how good it is. Or perhaps it's a nice thing except if you actually have to exchange it for perfectly good money. Keep in mind, this is the riskiest category and many things will end up collecting dust. On a rare occasion, if you buy a gift from this category, it could be the most positive surprise for your friend or a family member.

Once you master these two questions, Christmas shopping suddenly becomes so much easier. This year it was the easiest it has been in a really long time. Me and Erkki ran through the store answering those questions for objects that caught our attention, "She doesn't have this. She would use it if she had it. Great!"... "Look at this thing. He has a similar thing but it's such bad quality it doesn't really work. He could definitely make use of this one.", "Look! She doesn't have anything like this.... uhm, and I don't think she would ever get one for herself. Never mind.". And in two hours time our Christmas was again stress-free because we had everything we were looking for. We did do quite a lot of brainstorming for gift ideas in the previous evening but nearly all the ideas were quickly either accepted or discarded, none pending for a long time.

Now all that's left is to have our own HUGE Christmas. We didn't really plan for that either. We usually spend Christmas out of town with Erkki's aunt and other relatives, but this year we have recently moved and we have a small addition to our family so it seemed appropriate to get our own tree and spend Christmas Eve right here. We assumed everyone else's plan would be the same as each year but then a brand new Christmas plan started to unravel. Erkki's parents weren't planning to go out of town for Christmas so we invited them here. Then it appeared this place is much more accessible to Erkki's brother and his family. And then we found out Erkki's aunt and her family are also in town on Christmas Eve. Basically it's the same people but a different location.

This Christmas shows promise to be very fun and chaotic. We have 4 seats by the table and there will be 13 people at the party. This is not a problem though. If everyone brings a good mood along, I'm sure it will be a blast. At the very least, I'm convinced it won't suck. The lack of space might even remove some tension and make the entire event less formal. We will share food list with others and most things will resolve at the last moment so we are not even pretending to plan everything in advance. We just need a decorated tree, a bird in the oven and something to drink.

One thing that adds to my positive mood today is the fact that we made a huge step towards freedom. A little after morning coffee, I proposed to Erkki, "Let's move Siiri's bed to the other room!". The reasons for this are quite clear to Erkki because we have been talking about it more and more often. We even got her a cute cuddly toy puppy for feeling of security when she wakes up. We hadn't decided what would be the best time but in the morning I decided the time has come. Yesterday evening we accidentally woke the baby while getting ready to go to sleep. I was quite tired at that time but apparently Siiri wasn't because it took me an hour to get her back to sleep. In the morning at 7 a.m I woke up, and again I was pretty sleepy, but apparently Siiri wasn't. She was playing and making as much sound as possible to make me wake up and keep her company.

Amazingly moving her bed went very smoothly. We changed the location of everything that might be necessary in her room (except clothing for now). I was concerned that moving her diaper station with all the little things (from tissues to diapers) would be really tricky but all of it seems to be much more comfortably set in her new room. Baby slept two naps there already and I'm not expecting to have much trouble with her night sleep. Her bed is on wheels so if indeed she panics during the night and NEEDS to sleep in our room, I can just roll the bed back to it's previous location. With everything I've seen so far, I think she loves her new room and this step will help us all sleep better at night.

Another thing - last weekend Siiri got her third tooth: one of those upper middle teeth. She was slightly moody on Friday with no tooth in sight and on Sunday we were really surprised to see it had already cut though. This weekend she has been going from moody to enthusiastic and back, which might mean that the fourth tooth is almost here but perhaps I'm just being too hopeful.

I recommend you all to take it as easy as possible. Christmas is just Christmas. Enjoy the fun side and don't stress too much over the rest of it. Christmas will happen no matter what you do so don't plan too much and just enjoy the ride.
And Merry Christmas!

Silver Helper

My life just got significantly better. I'm a big fan of cool gadgets and nifty electronics but this particular object is something that everyone would appreciate. We got a brand new shiny silver dishwasher!

Actually we got it a few days ago and we had already tested it, but it wasn't really part of our lives yet. It just sat there and looked pretty while I hand-washed dishes out of habit. Now we had a few guests over and we created such a pile of dirty dishes that we had hardly any clean dishes left. Suddenly the dishwasher was my new best friend.

Dishwashers aren't all that expensive. They're not cheap either but a dishwasher buys half an hour to one hour of free time each day. If I were to hire someone to wash my dishes it would cost much more in the long run... Actually that's all just empty reasoning. The truth of the matter is this - washing the dishes sucks. It's boring, mind numbing and just plain wastes your life. All that time every day that I stood there and washed dishes... Oh my god, I don't even dare to calculate how much of my life I've spent on such an activity. Eventually I was very good at it: I washed dishes fast and thoroughly without using any detergent on everyday dishes. It took a lot of very warm water but I preferred wasting water to using too much chemicals. And no matter how good I was at it, the problem just kept coming back.

Over time, I have learned that I am horrible at maintenance but I'm good at thorough improvements. I once spent 4 hours washing one really old and dirty radiator and I actually enjoyed it because I could really see the difference. The radiator started out looking like it needs to be replaced but when I finished it looked freshly painted. I took something old and turned it into something new and it took just 4 hours. Maintenance is never that rewarding. It's just plain old work. Things can never improve with maintenance. Actually it's a horrible concept: household is getting worse and all I can do is to help reduce the inevitable. I can wash a few dishes, I can dust, I can even mop the floors but this won't help anything and soon everything will be just as bad again. It's a race I can't win. In a way, cleaning is rewarding because I get to turn an unclean apartment into a clean apartment but every time I clean I get this frustrated sense of deja vu, "Haven't I done this already?". It doesn't matter how good I become at maintenance tasks (cleaning, dishes, laundry, etc) because I'm still going to have to do them again and again and again...

This is where the dishwasher steps in - it breaks the cycle. At one moment I have an ever-growing pile of dishes and the next moment I get all dishes done in just minutes. Too bad dishwashers don't also mop floors. Oh wait, I think there's people who do that.

The point is, all people spend their energy on something. Some people have more energy than other but they all end up spending their energy on only a few select things. About a month ago I realized I was in trouble. I aspired to be active in school but I was spending all my energy on baby and all the leftover energy on being a housewife. At the end of the day baby was happy and house was clean but I felt tired and spent. I didn't have any more energy for either school or the laboratory. All my goals and wishes were lost somewhere and I felt like I had fallen into the housewife role that I had really wanted to avoid. I felt like my career was slipping away from me and my PhD was in jeopardy. I discussed it with Erkki. I declared in a matter-of-fact way that too many household chores have become my area of expertise. We are going to have to redistribute household chores to make them more equal.

Men and women are different and Erkki does have a job as well, but both of us had a child and it simply happened that my everyday life was affected more than his. It still does not mean that I have to do the laundry and nearly all the cleaning from now on just because I'm a woman. Hey , this is not a Cinderella story - I really didn't mind doing those chores because, simply, I'm better at them than Erkki. But I don't love those chores so much that I'm willing to give up my (non-existent) career just to do the dishes and the laundry a bit better than Erkki. I proposed to Erkki that perhaps he could take a couple of tasks off my hands, like perhaps washing the floors because that's just the most horrible task ever but it simply needs to be done. No reason why I should be the one who does it. Erkki listened to my analysis of household chores, thought about it for a moment and then told me, "I think we should hire a maid to come in every once in a while. And we need more babysitter time. And a dishwasher will also come in handy."

So there you have it. My husband would rather get a dishwasher and pay someone to do the dirty work than mop the floors himself. I understand him perfectly well and I agree with any plan that involves someone other than me washing the floors and us getting a dishwasher.

Meaty Story

I have been experimenting with solids quite a lot now. Today I reached a total horror zone...

Doctors say that babies need to eat meat. It's wonderful for it's iron content and that's what babies need the most. Babies need to start with solids because at some point they don't get enough nutrients from milk anymore. The first nutrient that they become deficient in is iron and this could lead to baby anemia.

I'm all for meat. I love meat and I have no moral anguish involved with happily feeding my baby as much meat as she might possibly want. I actually sympathise with vegetarians because they're totally missing out on so many wonderful dishes and I'd even go so far as to say: if it ain't got meat, it ain't real food. Fish or cheese nicely substitute meat for a day or two but then it's time to have some more meat.

When baby crossed the magic 6-month line I added solids to her menu. Vegetables first and then fruits and all sorts of combinations I can come up with. Mashing food with a fork or pressing it through a sieve totally failed because food ended up looking like tiny bits in liquid. I bought a good quality hand mixer from Philips and suddenly it was like a miracle. After a couple of failed beginner attempts, whatever I put in the beaker turned into pretty and delicious-looking puree. Zucchini, well-boiled carrots, oven-cooked apples, plums, etc.

Then I tried pork. For myself I fry slices of pork on a pan with a little bit of oil and I eat it with fork and knife. For baby puree I boiled it which I would normally never do. I sliced it in thin slices, covered it with water and increased the temperature to "boil meat until soft". Then I went to do other things, occasionally removing foam or trying if it's soft. Time passed. More time passed. It wasn't getting any softer. Then the water boiled away so I had to add more... three times. Then I decided it's as soft as it ever will be. I let it cool a little and then tried to puree it. What I got was less than appetising. It was dirt gray chunky goo with tiny strands of meat in it. It stuck to the sides of the beaker like cement. I tasted it - the texture was so bad it got stuck on my tongue and it felt like I was eating sawdust. I kept blending but it didn't get any better.

I gave baby a try and she made a face that said, "WHAT THE HELL IS STUCK ON MY TONGUE-EWWW-ARE YOU TRYING TO POISON ME?!" . She took a couple of bites and then pressed her lips shut. Until then I didn't even know she knows how to clearly show me that she dislikes a certain food. I still had a few meals worth of pureed pork which I put into the freezer. I can thaw it when I have nothing better to do than torture baby with inedible food.

Baby still needs to get her iron so she ought to eat meat. I decided to try beef next. So we finally reach today. I bought a nice piece of beef from the market. I sliced it thin and boiled it in plenty of water. Again, I kept boiling, removing foam and adding water for a really long time. Must have been at least a couple of hours, if not even more. I'm not sure what had gone wrong last time and I wanted it to work this time so I googled how to make baby puree out of meat. I found a wonderful suggestion to cool meat down before blending. They said meat blends better this way. I started when I was convinced that meat is soft. I lifted the meat out of the water and, like they suggested, I blended it dry and cool. I turned into nice beef powder. It actually looked pretty good, except it was dry and it needed to be mixed with some liquid.

I had earlier decided to be extra smart and add some vegetables to "glue" meat together. I boiled separately some carrot, potato and onion. I blended it all together and then tasted it. OH MY GOOD, it has the same texture as that pork horror! Potato and carrot didn't help one bit. And powdering it dry didn't help either. I gave baby a taste. At first she really liked it, the first moment she was really excited with the taste, but then she felt the texture. It was stuck on her tongue and throat. It made her cough so I offered her some water to wash it down. She ate a few bites with some more water and then lost interest. I put the rest of the failed beef puree in freezer for future use. Perhaps I'm able to blend it further after it's thawed. Or perhaps Siiri will develop a liking to gooey sawdust.

It will be a while before I try to make baby puree with meat again. I learned a lesson - sometimes it's best to buy ready-made food.

Babbling Words

I know all mothers think this about their children but it's still worth mentioning: I think Siiri is really smart. For a while she's had quite a babbling-vocabulary. She said mommy, daddy, Erkki, Siiri, yes, no and cool. Lately she also says outdoors and sometimes almost seems to say eat and drink. All in Estonian of course. I've heard that children speak their first words at around 6 months.

4 to 6 months
At this stage, your child will start to babble, combining consonants and vowels (such as "baba" or "yaya"). The first "mama" or "dada" may slip out now and then. Though it's sure to melt your heart, your baby doesn't equate those words with you quite yet. That comes later, when he's almost a year old.
(from Babycenter)

Well, Siiri said her first words when she was only a few weeks old. Yes, it did melt our hearts, and yes, we knew that our baby didn't equate those words with us. It was just really cute. Now that she's 6 months old she says mommy when she is looking for me and she says daddy when she's looking for Erkki. One time I was holding her and she got really enthusiastic when I walked past Erkki. So I handed her over to Erkki and suddenly she said, "daddy, daddy, daddy". She DOES equate those words to us. I can assure you she's still almost a lifetime away from being almost a year old.

Some of it is getting lost in translation here. She doesn't really say "daddy", she says, "dada" or something like that. The Estonian word "issi" is pronounced Ihhi. To make matters even more complicated she barely makes a difference between "issi" and "Siiri". Yesterday evening, a little before Erkki got home, Siiri was relentlessly saying her name, "iii iii iiiikhii iiiii ii iiiiuiii" I repeated after her, "Siiri... Siiiriii". After a while she got a little agitated even, still repeating her name over and over, making small changes in her pronunciation. I realized she might be trying to say "issi" in stead. I showed her a picture of Erkki and she was momentarily overjoyed.

She loved touching the framed photos on the wall so I started to play a recognizing game with her - she touched the photo and I said who she pointed at. She pointed at me, "Mommy", she pointed at herself, "Siiri", she pointed at Erkki, "Daddy". After a while it became quite clear what (or who) she was thinking about. Game went continued like this, "Mommy, Daddy, Mommy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Mommy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy"

Perhaps some of you remember that me and Erkki have decided against teaching Siiri stupid non-words. It always seems so childish when grown-ups use nonexistent words when talking with children. Actually it's not childish, it's unfair towards the child - Why hinder their development just because you think they can't cope with a real language. Why make up simplified non-words for the sake of the child if grown-ups would never use that word in a conversation and it will not help the child understand your language. Teaching a child to talk is basically teaching a language to an eager student. It's just plain cruel to substitute real words for ones that don't exist. If you don't understand what the fuss is about, imagine it this way: imagine you're teaching a foreign friend to speak your language. He points at a dog, "what do you call that?" so you say, "doggie". So in the future, whenever anyone says the real word "dog" in any context, he's just really confused. Don't you agree it's just cruel?

As a quick side note, the spell-checker in Blogger is awful. It does admit that "doggie" is not a real word but then it offers "doggies" (plural) as a correct word.

When it comes to the words mommy and daddy, I know they are not in the dictionary, but I still happily teach them to my child. There is a good reason for this. The proper words mother and father are wrong in other ways. When I imagine a child saying "mother" to a parent it just feels really distant and cold. As if they never really got along to begin with. Oddly, in this imagined scene, the child always has a posh British accent. And when I imagine anyone using the word father, I always end up thinking about a lightsaber duel and a guy losing his hand.

Other news, I got a THIRD babysitter in the hope of actually finishing the article before next year. I also have a couple of exams this month. I mean real university exams that I'm actually going to have to study for. Fortunately they're not too horrible and, to be honest, I'm not really reaching for an A. I can't even be sure I'll get any sleep right before the exam so I don't feel it's worth investing myself emotionally into these exams.

Board Games

I think it's quite unexpected that board games have become a part of my life. It's not like there's anything REALLY wrong with board games... Or actually there is. Board games are amazingly antisocial. It's the perfect way to hang out with people without worrying about what to talk about because it's impossible to really talk about anything meaningful while playing a board game. Playing fills in all the awkward silence moments so any topic will do and none of them are even really discussed. Imagine you start talking about a movie, "I went to the cinema last week - your turn - and I saw a comedy- that's MY avatar - with Brad Pitt. - my turn already?". The only benefit with such horrible conversation atmosphere is that whenever you realize you started talking about a boring topic, you can just stop talking and no one will even notice.

In a way having board games in my life makes me feel old. When I was 18 I really protested against people bringing a board game to a perfectly good party. We had these really loud parties - cocktails, beer, sauna, Rammstein playing in the back, lights are dim and people are jumping up and down and vigorously headbanging. Now that's what I call a party! Until someone brought along Alias or Trivia (popular board games). You can just imagine someone coming to that sort of a party with their own requests, "It's too dark to read the cards so can we please turn on the lights? And turn down the music, we can't play like this. And you can't dance here - we're playing here!". I developed a dislike for board games very early on. I concluded that board games are for people who are too boring to really party, or well, you know, for OLD people*.

Now that I can't really party like that anymore (because I'm old), board games have become an ideal excuse to invite people over. I love to invite people over and have a fun social event. One problem though - when you get a bunch of people in the same room and create the worse possible conditions for conversation, is it really a social event anymore? Compared to sitting at home and visiting Internet forums, I'd say the answer is YES, a board game evening is indeed a social event. Still, I usually prefer simple dinner parties to board game evenings.

One game redeemed board games for me - Arkham Horror. You see, with most board games there's only one winner and a bunch of losers. Doesn't really help create a sense of a united group of friends. However, with Arkham Horror either everyone's a winner or everyone's a loser. All players work together for a common cause. After Arkham Horror Erkki found us another cool game - Pandemic, which might actually be my favourite board game. Not because it's better than Arhkam Horror, because it's not better. I like it more because I always enjoy playing it. It's pointless and repetitive and I've only ever played it with one other couple. They're great people but they have quite different background from mine. We don't share common hobbies so we don't really have common topics for discussion. And this right here is the only situation when board games are the best activity - I get to hang out with them while avoiding all those awkward moments when we run out of small talk.

So perhaps board games can be called "social training wheels". Makes a lot of sense if you think about the major board games - more specifically role-playing games, like Dungeons and Dragons. Plenty of socially inexperienced geeks find friends by playing role-playing games. Don't think I'm pointing my finger at any of my friends here. I myself found nearly all of my social network in Tartu through role-playing. Excellent way to meet smart people.

As social training wheels, I feel board games are quite pointless to play with friends. I can even offer a real-live observation that supports this idea. My friends happily get together every week to play a role-playing game and it's a common problem that people just start to discuss out-of-game topics and simply forget to play the game. Game provided an excuse to get together and it seems they mostly do it for company. The game is very intriguing and my friends are curious to experience what happens next but it really is an effort to keep out-of-game talk to a minimum.

All this combined, the perfect board game event goes like this: people are invited together to play a board game but then they have so much to talk about that people forget to play the game.

Baby update: The frequent wake-ups got so tedious that I put her on an eating schedule during the day. The logic behind it is to get her used to eating less often so she doesn't get that hungry during the night. I started using the practical schedule my mother mentioned a long time ago and I feed the baby at 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21 o'clock. At night I kept to the same 3-hour pattern although I won't wake her up if she misses a meal. So while she woke up every hour asking for food, I only fed her every third time. I started this on Monday and I saw real progress in a couple of nights already. And then she got ill. She had a one-night-only 38.0 degrees Celsius fever but because of a stuffy nose she woke up ALL THE TIME. I only got 4 hours of disrupted sleep three nights in a row. Then she got better and she really does sleep three hour stretches in between feedings. I'm trying not to get my hopes up after only two good nights but I'm really happy about getting some sleep.

I also introduced my own version of good-night porridge yesterday. The ready made brands in the store all had fruits Siiri hasn't tested or they contained gluten which I also haven't introduced to her diet yet. I found a baby rice porridge powder with no additives. I mixed it with some water and a little extra virgin olive oil to produce a bland oily greenish goo. It looked quite horrible and it's not what I'd call food but surprisingly it tasted much better than potato puree and Siiri liked it.

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* "old" people - all settled down and living a grown-up life, often with a family. It's not about age. It's about life stage.