Liisa has grown a lot. A couple of days ago she learned how to crawl!
She crawls backwards and doesn't quite realize she's doing it but she moved half a meter or even more in minutes. That means I have to be careful with letting her sleep in the large bed while I'm not there to notice her wake up and crawl towards the edge. Liisa is a delightful baby. She's very cheerful and smiles a lot. She lights up whenever Siiri pays attention to her and she loves seeing Erkki after a long workday. It's odd - I didn't think she would perceive the time Erkki is away but she is especially happy to see Erkki when she hasn't seen him all day. I'm not jealous of the smiles Siiri and Erkki get because Liisa is the cutest when we're alone. She tells me long stories (gooo-gaaaaaaa..brrrrr...ghhhhh) and I repeat what she says and she is so happy that we're communicating. I don't remember if I used as much baby-talk with Siiri. I know I sometimes mirrored her sounds because she always had a positive reaction to it, but I think I enjoy it even more with Liisa. With Siiri I felt silly making odd sounds and I was afraid it would lead to me being a silly baby-talking mother. ("awww looky at cuuute doggy woof" 
). There will be a time when we forbid dumb baby-talk around Liisa as well, but it will be months before she actually starts learning words so I can baby-talk all I want.Around 4 months of age, babies start noticing the world around them. I suspect their eyesight improves a lot very quickly, but they also learn to analyze their surroundings better. That's the time when many babies have trouble breastfeeding or sleeping because they're just too distracted. Fortunately Liisa is a very easy baby to breastfeed. She eats quickly and fusses very little. Unfortunately, falling asleep got a lot more difficult in the last month. I really wanted to avoid one major mistake that we did with Siiri - cradling the baby to sleep. It was okay when Siiri was very tiny but it was horrible for my back when she weighed 9+ kg and had several naps each day. I refused to cradle Liisa (except when she was already over-tired and very sad) because I know where it will lead. I was so sure I don't want to cradle and sent Erkki to Google for alternatives while I was with the sleepy baby. He returned looking quite grim. "Internet proposes two solutions: either cradle them to sleep or let them cry until they fall asleep". That's very bad!
I tried to intuitively find a third solutions and I did: when I lie next to Liisa, she is very vivacious and playful and tries to engage me in a conversation... and then falls asleep. I don't know how it works because she doesn't seem to get any sleepier but right now it seems like a good solution. I get to browse the Internet on my HTC Desire while I wait for Liisa to suddenly magically fall asleep.Siiri's world is quite different. A couple of days ago I woke up to the sound of Siiri running around the apartment saying, "Mickey, Mickey,Mickey, where are you? I'm going to find you. Where are you hiding?". It would be great if she found Mickey because Mickey is completely lost! We live in an apartment so it can't be that easy to make a 10-15 cm stuffed toy disappear without a trace. Siiri looked for it, Erkki looked for it, I looked for it. I checked under every closet, I took a flashlight to check behind the closets, under the beds, in all the drawers, behind the curtains, etc. I looked everywhere! It wasn't even such a big deal - Siiri has other toys that are also her favorites - but I was sure I would find it if I looked in the right place. Usually Siiri hides everything under her bed. She hoards hair clips and small toys beside her pillow and some of them fall under the bed. Once every two weeks a cleaning lady comes and helps us (I absolutely hate washing the floors). The last time she found 8 hair clips, 3 hair bands, 4 tiny dinosaurs and a tiny angel figurine under Siiri's bed. No Mickey: of course I knew that because I had checked already. I have no idea where Mickey is. Siiri sometimes plays hide and seek with Mickey even though the game is quite one-sided.
Siiri is very smart. She loves to learn new things and absorbs information from anywhere. At her age (2.9 years), she's supposed to be able to count to three. She counts to twenty! And she counts to 12 in English. She can also translate the numbers directly, "There are six pens, "six" (in English)" so it's not just a sequence of words that she memorized. She knows all the colors, and some of them also in English. She can read all the letters and some symbols (e.g. +, ?, !) and can write some of them although she doesn't yet understand how letters make words. She's supposed to be able to draw a simple circle. She knows most shapes and can draw circles, triangles, squares, sphere (identical to the circle, so I have to ask which one she drew) and today she made a (slightly crooked) parallelogram (Estonian rööpkülik). "Mommy, look, I made a parallelogram".
I can't help but think that her fondness for numbers and geometrical shapes will lead to good mathematical skills. She just really loves numbers. If she ever gets an imaginative friend, it will probably be "three".I didn't really tutor her to know all that stuff. We played with letter cards a long time ago, and she learned English while watching videos on YouTube. There are some rather harmless "educational" videos targeted to English-speaking toddlers that she watches while I'm asleep or busy with Liisa. Siiri also has an amazing memory and a really vivid imagination. Just last week she was telling me how when it is summer, we will go to the beach: Mommy, Daddy, Liisa, Siiri together, we'll apply sunscreen, play by the water with lots of toys, Siiri will have a bikini, etc. Her story was full of details that she remembered from the summer but it also included Liisa, which is nice.
Siiri has been falling asleep a bit better now.
Lately I expect her to fall asleep in 30-90 minutes. It sometimes takes longer but overall we have so much more time during the day, she's better rested, wakes up less during the night and is more enjoyable to be around. I'm supposed to be better rested as well, but both me and Erkki have been really sleepy lately. It's a comfortable kind of sleepiness. Lately all soft surfaces just seem so much softer and exercising feels like too much effort.During the global ACTA protest day, I went to the protest in Tartu town hall square. It was freezing but well worth it. Estonians just suck at protesting. I was hoping to yell protest slogans with the people (over 1000 people were there) but the most activity was when we bounced up and down. I also gave a signature against ACTA on the Estonian petition (~7400 people) and the Avaaz letter to EU Parliament (~2.5 million people). I've done all I could do. Now I can just sit back and wait for either the next wave of protests in the summer or for the treaty to crumble and disappear.
By the way, recipe recommendation. I forgot to tell Erkki to bring more fresh yeast and eggs so I can't bake anything with a yeast dough. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to. So I found a recipe that used up most of the almost-too-ripe bananas and the last egg in the refrigerator and was easy enough to have Siiri join me in the baking process.
Banana bread (simplyrecipes.com)
Ingredients with European units (and sugar amount adjusted to European normal sweetness, 50% of original)
3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
80 g butter, melted
100 g sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda (I used 1.5 tsp of baking powder in stead)
Pinch of salt
190 g of all-purpose flour (I used 9,8% protein flour, no. 405)
Smashed bananas, added melted butter, then beat the egg and added sugar and vanilla, then in third bowl mixed flour and baking powder and salt. Combined ingredients, poured in a buttered bread pan and baked at 175 C for 1 hour.
Really little effort and super delicious. Next time I'll add chocolate chips and a shot of espresso/Kahlua like the comments suggest.
