Explosion

The title is pretty damn literal. Two days ago we had an explosion in our apartment. Siiri was home with the babysitter when the living room light bulb outright exploded upon lighting. I don't mean "light bulb blew out", I mean exploded, as in, there were shards of glass all over living room floor, table was covered with glass and white dust and the *BOOM* was very loud. Usually Siiri sits on that living room floor and browses through her books or plays with her toys and when it gets too dark, babysitter goes and turns on the light. This time, however, they were running around, playing hide and seek or whatever and babysitter picked Siiri up and made a small detour and turned on the light. The light switch isn't even near the light itself - there's a huge bookcase inbetween. Neither of them were injured, except later when both of them found a tiny shard of glass that had remained even after clean-up.

Siiri found her shard of glass while climbing on the armchair. She knelt on it for a moment and made a sound of distress. A second later she had a tiny drop of blood on her skin. I don't think she had ever seen her own blood like that. I reacted quickly and told her, "Look, blood. Now we need a band-aid!" and I took a band-aid, made sure the glass is no longer in the wound and covered the wound. Siiri was so unsure how to react that she didn't make a sound. Suddenly she had something like a sticker on her leg and it was so cool! She wriggled free, ran to the mirror and admired her new decoration with a proud look on her face. Perhaps, for next time, I should get some band-aids with cartoon characters on them.

Also, I finished reading the "Assassin's Creed gone bad" trilogy. Khmm, I meant to say, "The Night Angel Trilogy" by Brent Weeks. It started out SOOOOOO well. The first book was among the best books I've ever read and then it went so bad. Suddenly everyone's a stereotype, having stereotypical conversations in stereotypical surroundings for exaggerated blot. Everyone becomes a ruler, except for the main character (and a few others). The women in this book range from cute and cuddly moral girls to hot and sexy objects of desire and the men are all undesirable! One's old and mean and ugly, another one is handsome but whines like a teenage girl during PMS and a third one starts out as truly beautiful and strong and ends up crawling in shit and loosing so much weight that he looks starved thin. In the end I couldn't read more than a few pages without huffing in annoyance. What was most annoying was that the cool main character can't do anything right after the first book and becomes a stupid kid who ruins everything all the time. He is indeed the main character because he drives the plot forward by screwing everything up. And even when it's finally his time to shine, he is so incapable that everyone else does everything for him. OMG, I so need to read something better to get that bad taste out of my mouth.

But not today. Tomorrow I give my first lecture, so I need to get back to work, but I wanted to share that.

Cute After Work

I'm a bit of a workaholic. I had initially decided to take on only a little work in the lab but now some weeks I spent 9 hours a day from Monday to Friday working. This week I'm "taking it easy" so I was in the lab for 6 hours on Monday, 4 hours plus one university lecture on Tuesday and 8 hours on Thursday. Honestly, I am kinda stressed because there is so much to do and so little time to do it, but I also feel so alive! It also makes me appreciate Siiri a lot more and I'm more eager to spend time with her. My relationship with Siiri actually got closer because of it. Before we were often testing each others limits and patience but now she goes around doing cute stuff and I give her as much slack as I can within her everyday rules (like It's-bed-time and no-running-around-naked ).

I don't even know how stuff at home gets done with me spending so much time elsewhere. It used to be so much more difficult. Laundry keeps piling up but I ignore it as long as I can and I do it in as little time as possible. We do dishes when we're running out of clean ones, and nowadays we often discover it after it has already happened. I don't even find the time to have weekly entire-apartment Roomba marathons, so I just run Roomba in critical areas when it feels appropriate and when I can find the opportunity. I even bake a little but I don't even plan it much because that would require commitment. In stead I try last minute recipes. I'd try almost anything that doesn't require ingredients that I don't have. Basically I shifted my values a bit and I stopped wasting all my energy on worrying about stupid things like weekly cleanings. I mean, sometimes it wasn't even all that dusty. And now sometimes there's dust on the TV and there's fingerprints all over the glass table in our living room and so what? When it crosses my tolerance level, I deal with it. When Erkki beats me to it, he deals with it. Often though, our adorable babysitter wipes the table and takes the dishes out of the dishwasher.

I'm still learning the art of spontaneity. Yesterday I found out about a stand-up comedy show in Tartu Vilde pub. Since me and Erkki wanted to go together we had to go on the same evening, even though the show was repeated in the following evening. I talked to our nanny and I so saw stand-up comedy in Tartu for the second time.

...and this is certainly worthy of it's own paragraph (probably worth even an entire post but I have other things I want to share as well)... but stand-up comedy IS SO COOL!!! Especially this group that has been going around in Estonia, well, at least in Tallinn and Tartu. Some stand-up comedy that's very popular on the Internet doesn't even come close to the quality of Tartu Comedy Festival. If you hear they're performing in your area, do yourself a favor and go check them out!

Meanwhile Siiri is getting more adorable every week. For instance, she loves playing hide and seek and she has one favorite hiding spot. When she wants to play, she drops all her toys, walks straight to her hiding spot behind an armchair and stands very still. I pretend not to notice and I say, "Siiri? Siiri... Where did you go? Siiri..." and she stays put. When she hears me walking around the room looking for her she can't always resist loud giggling. Actually it's more like little shrieks of joy from knowing she's so well hidden that I can't find her. Not much talent for being a catburgler but cute nonetheless. When she feels like it, she steps out of her hiding spot with a wide grin, as if to say, "HERE I am!".

Even potty training is going well and it's surprisingly effortless. I thought there would be lots of drama but nope. She says when she wants to go and sometimes she doesn't and it's all good. No pressure before kindergarten. She has lost nearly all interest in the letters of the alphabet and she is already forgetting most of them. For a little while she recognized quite many but now when she sees written text somewhere, she randomly points at letters and says, "aaaaaa uuuuuuuu oooooooo aaaaaaa äääääää".

Remember I told you Siiri got a stuffed toy, puppy dog, for bedtime. However, she doesn't notice it and she keeps it in the foot of her crib. Except, as it turns out, she DOES notice it. One time I used puppy to distract Siiri while getting her in her bedtime clothing and I forgot to put it back in her bed until I had already closed the door and it was too late. An hour later me and Erkki heard the bay monitor turn on. "woof. woof. Woof-woof." (actually Siiri said "auh auh-auh auh-auh-auh" which is the sound that dogs make in Estonia). And then quiet until Siiri started asking for something to drink. I used this chance to return puppy to its usual spot while I gave Siiri some water. Minutes later we heard puppy being rattled (yes, it's also a rattle) and Siiri contently playing and saying, "woof. woof-woof". It's secret friendship - the next evening when I offered Siiri the toy puppy, she tossed it in the foot of her bed and completely ignored it.

Siiri is now 1 year, 4 months and 2 days old and she can run and climb on beds. Fortunately she's even better at climbing OFF beds safely. We keep making pictures of her and she is getting more and more of an attention seeker. She loves grown-ups but unfortunately she is afraid of children her age. Babysitter thinks it might be because they're so unpredictable. Siiri feels unsafe with anyone under 10 years of age. In a way, it makes sense - when she was little, she had a few scares when children near her acted unpredictably, screamed and ran right by her. She doesn't realize that she's not much different from those children herself anymore.

It's quite amazing that children are like programmed to be so similar. Don't get me wrong, every child is unique and bla-bla-bla... But why does Siiri call out "woof-woof!" when she sees a dog, even though me and Erkki have always replied, "yes, it's a dog. DOG.". Why does Siiri love playing hide-and-seek and why does she get super excited when I play along? And most of all, as Siiri does not have any brothers or sisters and has never seen children aged 2-5 years put to bed at night, then how does she know to do the following: When she gets out of her diaper, she swiftly crawls away, climbs off the bed, runs a few steps away and stops at the door. Then she turns around with a wild look in her eyes, lets out a small laugh and then TAKES OFF as fast as she can! I catch her, get some diapers on her and then spend the next 20 minutes asking her, "are you ready to get into your night clothing now?". It's such a stereotypical scenario, isn't it? If Siiri hasn't seen other children do it, then how does she know to do it? I have no answer. I don't think anyone has an answer to that one.

Anyway, I often think, "OOOH! I want to write about this in my blog! I'll probably get a chance to do it tomorrow" and before I realize it's 2 weeks later and I think, "maybe I'll have a spare moment tomorrow.". I haven't given up on the blog, simply, my grasp of time has given up on me. I'm hoping not to get too caught up in work but it's too easy to get hooked, especially when it's team work and I can see that my efforts are useful to someone. Way more useful than scheduled home-cleanings just for the sake of being "a good housewife". OH I've missed being part of something bigger than dishes or laundry. I still want more kids even though I've seen other people being much better suited for "baby time" than I'll ever be. I hope I'll be better at answering Siiri's why-questions. Can't wait.