Mystically Nonscientific

I just lost an hour's worth of blog post and I'm mad but better I still finish it today than someday.

A couple of friends of mine have been into astrology lately. Not the kind where random people get paid ten bucks to make up something for the newspaper horoscope column. I mean the kind where people have their sun sign , Moon sign, Mercury sign, Venus sign, and also influences from sextiles, semiquadrats and oppositions between different planets in the Solar system. It's so complicated and requires so much memory that I don't expect to ever really understand it fully, especially because I'm not convinced it's even partly true.

Lets avoid the word "pseudo scientific" and lets just say that no one has ever really been able to scientifically prove that astrology is true. Yet most people believe it even a little bit. I read on Wikipedia that astrology has been around for more than a millennium and it has had a huge influence on our culture. Makes sense, especially because astrology (horoscopes and such) and astronomy (physics of planets) used to be united under astrology. I might be very unfaithful to the entire scientific community with my next thought, but don't you agree that it's truly annoyingly arrogant of scientists to scavenge through a huge field, pick out the most reliable parts, steal them and then act all smug , "Bhahahahaaa, you astrologists don't have anything you can prove!".

Well, astrology hasn't been proven and it seems like people treat it as greatly inferior to religion. At least religion can make you feel good because it makes you BELIEVE that you ought to feel good, not like astrology which only tries to explain the entire world and all the people and events in it. I don't suppose there's many daily newspapers that print "A Daily Prayer for All Mayor Religions" and not many that DON'T print a daily horoscope, which helps people of all sun signs make serious everyday decisions, for example, whether it's a good day to buy socks.

I like mysticism too much for a biologist. I still can't really ignore that my in depth astrological chart says I could have mystical abilities and another planetary pattern indicated that I have a tendency toward (mystically) sensitive mind. I also find it very flattering that my chart describes a mentally superb person with great intuition, full of original ideas, highly intellectual, energetic, practical, and most flattering of all, it describes a natural born propagandist who can pass forward information in a way that it can't be ignored. On the other hand, it describes a person who is very stingy with money and relies on constant stability. When I had read the entire thing, I had a feeling that the stars are really favoring me!

By the way, if you can read Estonian and this all made you curious, then I suggest you try www.horoskoop.net, pick "sinu horoskoop" and then fill out the form with your exact birth time and place. I'm sure there are similar websites in English as well.

Astrology is just a recent interest, or rather, it's an old friend I bump into once every few years. I never know how long the interest will stay fresh. Soon I'll find myself talking with someone who barely knows me and when I talk about my hobbies, I will rather mention that I cross stitch, which is a very stereotypically boring hobby for people with no grasp on the century we're in, and I will avoid expressing any serious interest in astrology with the fear of sounding silly and dumb. And then I will tone down how much I spend time with it because I can't even talk about it.

It's a real nice change to not breastfeed or grow anyone inside me - at last I get to party without obsessively counting glasses and staring at my watch. I went to a great party on Thursday and I went clubbing til the morning with my sisters on Saturday.

Today I had one of those super productive days when things just get done and more got done than I'd usually plan for three days. The vast amount of energy was all fueled by procrastination. Tomorrow I'm doing a really scary procedure in the lab and so much could go wrong. I could perhaps help my situation a little if I go over my notes again in detail, but I really didn't want to do that because I know it would do very little good and it would make me more nervous, so in stead I made sure I have something else to do while quilt kept gaining on me whenever I slowed down too much!

PS! Today I saw two young boys messing about in the car park outside our house. It looked and sounded like they were spray painting the pavement next to our car, but I only saw them huddled there next to the car. It was odd that boys this young would get their hands on spray paint so it caught my attention. Really I thought it must be something completely innocent but I wanted to take a sneak peak anyway. When I stepped toward them, they ran. As it turned out, those boys were letting air out of our cars tires. Oh so it wasn't spray paint after all. If I ever see them near our car again they'll be sorry. What a pair of apes!

Controlled Crying Method

The most controversial thing we've done while raising Siiri is using controlled crying method to get her to sleep better. I keep analyzing our reasoning and trying to figure out if I've done anything immoral or has it really been worth it.

You might remember that the first months of Siiri's life we reacted every time she cried even a little. We decided crying is bad for her and we have to help her however we can every time she cries. It worked just fine until she started loathing going to sleep. She had 3 naps during the day (she must have been 8-9 months) and she woke up a few times per night. With her weight increasing she got too heavy for me to cradle to sleep several times each day. Erkki helped when he could but during work hours and night time it was mostly just me (except when I was so exhausted that Erkki woke up even before I did). But even then I kept cradling her to sleep.

Then things got even worse - Siiri needed help falling asleep but when we tried to help, she protested. I remember using my last strength to cradle her to sleep while she screamed and wriggled because she didn't want to go to sleep. It took me up to 30 minutes to cradle her asleep and even then she sometimes woke up an hour later. Enough is enough - the situation clearly wasn't for anyones benefit. The worst of it was that Siiri was starting to depend on it, so when she woke up for even a moment at night, she cried louder and louder until someone helped her asleep, and she kept crying while I was helping her. Sometimes she was wriggling so much she risked falling out of her sleep-deprived mother's arms.

We started with the controlled crying method carefully, trying to ease into it. We made a bedtime routine which ended with a lullaby. It was going well until Siiri realized that we only sing lullabies when it's bed time. After that she started screaming when she heard even a couple of notes of it. We tried staying in the same room to make her feel less abandoned but she spent all her time displaying how upset she is at us by crying extra loudly and not even trying to fall asleep, so our presence just made things worse. Besides I had planned to stay calm so I don't make falling asleep even harder but I became fidgety after having spent 10 minutes in an intolerably noisy environment and that wasn't helping anyone. Then we tried to at least leave the door open so she doesn't feel like a prisoner in her bedroom, but then she saw all that awaits her on the other side of that bedroom door, and cried even louder because she couldn't reach it.

So finally we settled into the approximately 10-minute long cycle. We signaled that it's bed time (bed time routine!) and we sang a lullaby, and then closed the door behind us when we left. It seemed important to portray a very calm aura even though it was very stressful for us. Siiri cried and tried to get us to stop this nonsense but we just occasionally, perhaps once every 10 minutes, went to her to say a few kind words and to offer her water. It took a couple of weeks to get used to it but then it all worked out. It usually didn't take her more than 20 minutes to fall asleep in this way, which is FASTER than when I cradled her. When she woke up during the night it was because she was hungry and even then fell asleep faster.

This sort of changes work best if they're universal so we tried not to make too many exceptions, at least not without a good reason. The worst time was when we were visiting Erkki's relatives. Siiri had settled into one nap per day but this time she also had a second nap not long before bed time. So when it was bed time, she was habitually sleepy but unable to fall asleep. It didn't help at all that she was supposed to sleep on a mattress on the floor and she constantly went wandering. We tried several things to get her to fall asleep - until we let her cry alone in the room for a while (after making the room safe). It was probably more stressful for me than it was for Siiri. There were too many curious people coming to spy why Siiri is crying. There were too many people coming to check if they can perhaps save the day and I was explaining to them that Siiri is already able to fall asleep if she chooses so. I told them I can't FORCE her to fall asleep and I can't help her if she doesn't want to be helped. Maybe it was just in my head, but I felt like I got at least a couple of looks saying, "what kind of a mother are you?!". Eventually it turned out that with enough determination, a baby can be rocked to sleep against her will if she's sleepy enough. All in all, it was a very uncomfortable situation.

I also told our babysitters about how we put Siiri to sleep. I told them that they may do the same. One babysitter asked, "But don't you cradle her at all anymore?" "no, I haven't done that in a while. It just doesn't work on her when I cradle her. It doesn't help her fall asleep faster, it just makes her more dependant on my presence when she needs to fall asleep." I kinda left it up to the nanny how she puts Siiri to sleep, but hinted that controlled crying might be better because it's more consistent for Siiri and she does know how to fall asleep on her own, even if she doesn't like it. So when I came home, the nanny said she put Siiri to bed like I suggested and Siiri was asleep in less than 20 minutes. She also said it was ghastly and said something along the lines of her not being used to this sort of thing and preferring cradling. The way she said it sounded very judgemental in an annoyingly polite way. Damn it, girl, you don't even have children! I was very polite to her and have never called her again.

So, what I'm trying to say is that even though it wasn't what I had planned for Siiri when she was younger, and it wasn't always easy, we used controlled crying method and it was much better than the alternatives. There was even a study about it recently which concluded that controlled crying method or sleep training doesn't lead to later emotional and behavioural problems. Sleep problems often don't magically go away when the child gets older and by ignoring the problem, the child might not grow out of it until they're 4 or 5 or something. I think there a lot of important stages in child development during those years and it's certainly not good if the child spends all that time being constantly somewhat sleep-deprived and the mother is almost always stressed. That could easily be worse than letting the child cry a little.

"The findings form part of a longitudinal study by Murdoch Childrens into infant sleep, which has shown intervention during infancy significantly reduces sleep problems in children and depression among mothers during the first two years of the child’s life." source

Before I intervened, Siiri was cranky not only during the night but also during the day. I didn't even know she was being cranky until sleep training started working and she became much happier during daytime.So perhaps sometimes it is best to simply let a baby cry. It's certainly not something I'd advertise as the best option for all babies but sometimes it's much better than the alternatives.

Epilogue: months after we started sleep training, Siiri almost seems to like going to sleep. She doesn't cry when I place her in her crib, and one time she actually cried when I didn't put her in bed fast enough. She no longer tries to force me to take her out of her crib whenever she sees me so it doesn't bother her if I stay in the room. I keep her company by quietly reading my book in the same room. I'm not sure she needs it but I think she likes having me stay in the room, as long as I don't make any noise. She sometimes smiles to me while resting her head on her pillow. I give her water whenever she asks and then she puts her head on her pillow and falls asleep without crying.

Books

I've started reading books lately. I never really fancied reading when I was younger. I remember reading a 200-page book completely voluntarily when I was around 15 and it seemed like a big thing. I was very proud of myself for years because I had READ A BOOK during my summer vacation. No one had forced me. Yesterday I finished Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy that consists of three books (DUH! ) that have 2130 pages altogether.

Yes, I might enjoy reading a good book but I can't help but count the pages. Assuming my reading speed hasn't improved much, it took me 71 hours to read this one trilogy. For comparison, Naruto original anime series was 9 seasons and 220 episodes. With each episode only 23 minutes, it would take a little over 84 hours to watch the entire series from beginning to the end. So was it really worth the time? I can tell you that Naruto series gave me a lot more emotion. It was intense - there were times I giggled manically about silly cartoon romances, there were times when I were sitting on the edge of my seat at the end of the episode and when it ended, both me and Erkki said in unison, "Next episode!". With this book trilogy the feeling was never this intense. I got an inner nag, "want. to. know. what. happens. next." and then I casually took the book and continued reading. At the very end I even preferred reading to watching a TV-series.

After finishing, I'm not sorry for the time spent and it really was a very good book. Well, it must have been good because I read it. I'm very picky about books and if it kept me intrigued long enough to finish it, then it must have been very good. And when I finally did finish, I took the next book in the queue: Brent Weeks' "the Night Angel trilogy". Another 2000 pages, here I come. I've actually read the first book a long time ago. I even mentioned it in my other blog: San Diego travelogue last days. It's the book with the bad-ass 11-year-old who is just so cool that it gives me goosebumps. The "second" book I bought from San Diego, Raymond E. Feist's "Magician: Master", was so horrible that I made it Siiri's first paperback fantasy novel. It was her practice book when she could barely fold the pages and hold herself back from licking the book.

The worst book I've ever really tried to read was "Myrren's Gift" by Fiona McIntosh. It's even worse than "Magician: Master". It just kept getting worse with the courageous hero squeezing through the toilet hole to escape a fight and with the long self-pity thought descriptions and awkward conversations where the main character is still praised for being eloquent and charismatic. The best book I remember reading was "The Last Wish" by Andrzej Sapkowski. It's a collection of stories about one monster hunter called the witcher. I can't even remember why I liked it so much. I just know that when I read the book I felt I had truly been missing out on a lot during all that time when I avoided books. This book is the reason why I've been trying out so many books ever since. So perhaps it's fair to call it my favourite book even though I can't even remember why it's so good.

I haven't talked about Siiri for so long. She learned to walk and then she started practicing walking faster and faster. I've even seen her spinning on foot until she gets dizzy. Having confidence in her walking skill has made her a lot more adventurous. Just recently she followed me around as much as possible and suddenly I'm following her around. She's very independent and opinionated and I really like that about her. She keeps learning new words and forgetting old ones so her vocabulary stays pretty much the same. She can use a spoon and she has even managed to take a sip from a mug without help. Usually she tilts the mug too much and pours water all over herself so I rarely let her practice. She has gorgeous yellow blond hair that's really soft and I haven't seen anyone her age who has as much har as she does. I'll soon be able to make two pony tails. And she's so vain! She found my bracelet in my drawer, took it to Erkki and extended her arm with a demanding tone. She waited until Erkki had put the bracelet around her arm and then walked in front of the mirror and started to admire the bracelet around her arm, looking at it from different angles.

With my long days in the lab Siiri has become more demanding of my attention and I've started to miss spending time with her. So when I get home, I take Siiri out to the sandbox behind my house. Yes! A sandbox right outside. I didn't know about it until I got an SMS from the nanny mentioning that they're playing there. It turns out it's always been there. It was simply abandoned and had some plants growing in it. And, because of this sandbox I realized that I'm much worse at calmly relaxing than I thought - I've started to weed it and throw out any leaves or twigs. I'm about half done and it looks much-MUCH better than before. ...And I always wondered about parents fixing up things for their children. I never thought I'd be such an activist. I even had my book with me but I was too busy to read.

So I guess I'm still not a book person even though I've been spending so much time reading lately.

Cat Person

I'm not very fond of dogs. They bark and drool and bite. One time me and my sister were taking a scenic shortcut through a patch of trees near our home. There were only a couple of houses there on the hill so we didn't expect to run into anyone. We didn't expect to find two insane dogs charging at us either. My first instinct was to stay calm and not to run but this tactic didn't seem to work. When the dogs had already crossed half the distance to get to us, and they were getting awfully close, me and my sister turned and ran. Dogs chased us quite far from their owners house. I got away clean but one of the dogs bit my sister's leg and ripper a hole in her JEANS. Fortunately the wound wasn't very deep and my sister did not get rabies!

The owners must have simply left their gate open because there was no owner nearby who could have been walking the dogs at that moment. Dogs wore collars but no leashes. We later heard that those dogs are often running around free. So basically the owner leaves the gate open for the dogs to crap in random places and charge young girls who are taking a walk. How is that right? If I didn't hate paperwork so much, I would have gone to the police to file an official complaint. Such dogs should be put to sleep. Or perhaps it's the owners who made the mistake?

I started thinking about it when I read an article about Estonians being too prejudice about dogs, calling all dogs dangerous even if there's no clear reasoning for such an opinion about a particular dog. Well, ALL DOGS ARE DANGEROUS! Dogs have the instincts of a killer, whether or not they've killed someone already. They're carnivores and they have evolved to attack. Horribly, they are more likely to attack those who they are not too terrified of and those who make them angry - for example, little children who want to pull on that furry tail or those cute killer ears. Especially with children's throats and faces so conveniently close to those sharp and pointy teeth. Happy little dog owners might think that sort of thinking is indeed prejudice, but when you think about it, even dog owners themselves say revealing things about their pets, such as, "My dog is so good with children. He hasn't tried to bite them even once!". In my opinion it's about as good as someone describing an employee, "She's such a good employee. She hasn't stolen from me even once!". Such a comment would make sense only in a world where employees are assumed to steal and dogs are assumed to try to bite children.

Perhaps calling all dogs potential killers is just as good as calling all people potential killers. That second one is, of course, also a true statement. It's not at all unusual to read about a disgruntled employee killing a few people and then themselves. One moment it's a normally functioning average person and the next moment body bags are being zipped closed. The scary part about most murder news is that most of the murderers were perfectly normal people until they suddenly killed someone. Some "normal" people look more like potential killers than others: a twitchy looking man with prison tattoos is worse than a friendly Sunday school teacher, even if neither of them has killed anyone. I would rank a vast majority of dogs in the more dangerous group. Just as the twitchy prison guy, dogs can suddenly flip and attack for no apparent reason.

When I think about it this way, I'm not completely sure why anyone would get a dog. There is perhaps one good reason: a dog is a legal weapon. As far as I know, it is completely illegal in Estonia to attack someone simply because they are on your property. Even attacking in self defence is an iffy topic and I wouldn't try it unless it's absolutely unavoidable. However, it's perfectly legal to keep a dog that requires a sign, "beware! Dog will bite!". Perhaps people wouldn't need dogs if they could just put up a sign, "Beware! I'll shoot you in the leg!" . For some reason the first is a common sign, the second one is not so typical, even though the damage could be similarly bad. Unless it's war time, there is very little excuse for anyone to own a gun "just in case" but too many people keep a dog in their back yard to ward off strangers.

How can I bash dogs so much and not even mention cats... Well, cats are just as dangerous, perhaps even more so, but cats are much cuter!

Not Truly Mommy

Most people think that summer is an excellent time to take a vacation. However, it has turned out that I have done the exact opposite. I've been spending long hours in the laboratory. I've been planting and watering, wearing latex gloves and pipetting, I've arranged numbers in tables and tracked lines on graphs with my finger. Sounds like so much fun, doesn't it? Well, sure there's also some work stress about experiments not succeeding and everything taking too much time, but my thoughts finally have some complexity. My main problem of the day is no longer, "what shall I make for lunch?".

Figuring out what to make for lunch is no easy task. And unfortunately I'm still not able to escape this responsibility. When I know I won't be home during lunch, I simply have to prepare lunch even earlier or to figure out something simple enough for the babysitter to prepare. I'm not evil enough to give her a chunk of raw pork and a jar of sun dried tomatoes with a comment, "do something with them". That would be especially evil taking into account she's vegetarian!

Vegetarians are a truly rare breed in Estonia. She's the first Estonian vegetarian I've seen in years. Or perhaps there have been vegetarians who are hiding their eating habits. This could seem odd to anyone who hasn't seen how little respect vegetarians get among Estonians. This particular vegetarian spent her Jaanipäev (summer solstice) in the same place as us. Grilled meat, especially pork, is a traditional food during Jaanipäev celebration. She doesn't mind other people (including her own children) eating meat but apparently other people truly mind her NOT eating meat. "I see you don't have any FOOD on your plate. Why don't you eat meat? Is it some allergies? What's wrong with eating meat?". Eventually it got really nasty. "Why don't you like real food? What's wrong with you? ". I eat easily three times as much meat as an average Estonian and I would restlessly argue with anyone who says that meat, a rich source of both protein and iron, is unhealthy food to us omnivores. However, this babysitter simply feels sorry for the animals and has decided that she herself won't eat meat, and somehow her choice makes me respect her more.

Siiri gets along with this babysitter so well that I can leave for work without worrying about Siiri's well being. I plan her meals and I'm free to think about other topics. It feels so nice to be useful for things besides housework or helping Siiri. Stereotypes make us believe that mothers ought to be near tears when they don't see their children for a few hours but I really enjoy spending time in the laboratory. So maybe I'm not really made for motherhood because I'm happy to go to work and later I'm equally happy to come home to Siiri again. Erkki barely sees Siiri at all, but it doesn't make him a bad father and he doesn't seem torn apart by it all! Perhaps it's simply sexist to say that good mothers must hate working because it separates them from their children!

Sometimes it seems Siiri is also happier if I work. I'm really bad at playing with Siiri. After a few hours of playing I get bored and I start to dominate the game. In stead of Siiri pointing at pictures to ask "what's this on the picture", I end up asking her, "Siiri, where is dog?". When I don't dominate the game, I get really sleepy because my mind is so under stimulated. Usually I try to do anything else to keep myself vivid and I play with Siiri only as background activity. So even when I'm at home, Siiri doesn't get my full attention. Babysitter plays with Siiri for real and Siiri loves her for it.

Not the entire summer is about work. Tomorrow we're going on a 4-day vacation. We don't want to take Siiri on a plane so we rented a small house in Estonia, near Otepää. We won't have to worry about cooking and we can spend time in a sauna or we can grill meat and drink cider outdoors.

Speaking of cider, Siiri is completely weaned from breastfeeding. Her last remaining breastfeeding was some time between 5 and 7 a.m. so now she wakes up at 7 a.m. and won't fall back asleep. Me and Erkki take turns in keeping her company in the morning. It took time for her to get used to not being breastfed anymore and she was very upset with me even during daytime. It all ended a couple of days ago. Siiri asked for breast milk during daytime and I chose to give it to her because she was asking so nicely. She took a taste and looked like the happiest baby ever. She just wouldn't stop grinning widely , but then she let go and asked for water in stead. She thirstily drank half a glass of water and hasn't asked for breast milk ever since.

Sometimes I wonder: am I really a "mommy" or am I just someone who has a child? Perhaps there is a difference and not all people are really able to truly be mommies?

Happily Obsessive

I really hope my neighbours don't completely hate my guts right now, as I just finished making this year's third "Final end-of-rhubarb-season rhubarb pie". Ain't my fault that a proper rhubarb pie needs 8 eggs separated and perfectly beaten...

I've got news: Siiri can walk! ***DING! Upgrade Complete!*** She kept playing with the idea until she got up on her two feet and, with a clever look on her face, just started making careful steps towards me. At first it was 4 steps and she thumped diaper-first on the floor, then she got to 7 steps, then over 10. The next time you see her (since so many of the readers here actually see her every now and then), you might ask with disappointment, "you wrote she can walk so why is she crawling?". I'll save you the trouble of asking and I'll give you the answer in advance: Just because she CAN walk on her own, doesn't mean she constantly uses the skill as a way of getting from one end of the room the the other.

I finally hooked up to Xbox Live and now I've got a freaky new goal! I want all my favorite games on the maximized achievement score list. When I told Erkki, he *paused* and said in a quieter tone, "I think it will take a while." That's his way of saying, you're really gonna spend a LONG-LONG time on this obsessive compulsive idea of yours. At least now I know it's not impossible. I already have Prince of Persia, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Assassin's Creed 2. I'm missing Assassin's Creed 1, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. I'm currently working on Mass Effect 2 and I'm only 2 achievements away from complete list. Problematically, one of those is the Insanity achievement which simply states, "Complete the game on the "Insanity" difficulty level without changing the setting."

Eeek, if my neighbours didn't hate me earlier, they might hate me now. Siiri woke up and she's completely hysterical. I tried to calm her down but she was so angry at me in her sleep daze hysteria that I only made things worse. She's currently crying it out. I'll go offer her water again when she's calmed down a little but right now it won't do any good. I've grown used to ignoring such situations. If I can't do anything then it won't help to get all worked up over it. There's enough stress over things I can control.

There's a spider on the wall. I wish it was just a saying, like there's a skeleton in the closet, but it's not. It's there and it's stalking me. It's trying to make me leave the room and you know what? It's succeeding. I'm glancing at it every 10 seconds or less and I'm typing as fast as I can.

Siiri fell asleep, the spider still hasn't moved, a pie awaits tasting and I found a new tip on Mass Effect 2 Brawler Achievement and I NEED to try it! Obsessive compulsive tendencies may seem odd on the outside but it can occasionally be so much fun to really get involved with these small goals.

Perhaps I'm not obsessive compulsive if I choose to happily obsess over achievement scores on Xbox or getting eggs perfectly beaten for a cake.

My Little Hobby

I had an epiphany: child is a high maintenance self-upgrading entertainment center. It's also interactive and personalized. I can understand some people being too busy for maintaining one but it's no wonder most people want at least one. My child has become my primary hobby. Sounds pretty miserable, but in hindsight it seems inevitable that this happened.

It's not easy to think in terms of how active I still am or how much energy I have for hobbies outside home. For a few months it was so much trouble to get out of the house that I quite started to enjoy staying in. Before I had a child I went out for a social event (I mean PARTY!!!!) once or twice a week, sometimes even more often. Nothing out of the ordinary really - I didn't drink much and I always went home to sleep. Now I go out to such a party about once a month, or perhaps every couple of weeks. I drink less and I drink only things I know the exact content of. I don't let anyone else mix me a long drink, if I can help it. I've even brought a measuring cup to a party to make sure I don't drink more than planned. In restaurants I ask waitresses exact content of drinks and when people pour me too much wine I don't finish my cup. I've gotten used to it. It used to be a big deal but I don't notice it anymore. Now I don't fret over a glass of wine a few hours before breastfeeding and I'm not upset about not being able to have three or four. Partying as a hobby is still much more on the background and no longer a remarkable part of my weekly plans.

While it wasn't so easy to go out partying, I needed to make sure I had some hobbies left. I used to like playing pool but I haven't played since my pregnant tummy really started to get in the way. I also liked to go clubbing but I've only managed to do that a couple of times since I had a child. It's not caused by a difference in mentality - I don't think I should avoid clubbing now that I have a baby at home. If anything, now I have even more reason to make sure I don't fall back too far in the female vs. female competition. The real reason I don't go clubbing anymore is that I don't have any new clubbing outfits. Besides, 90% of the time I went clubbing, it was mostly just to hang out with one certain friend. Now I rarely see her at all.

I thought my indoors hobbies would really start taking up more time - for example extreme cross-stitching. HUGE canvas and millimeter-by-millimeter stitches. Think about it for a moment. This means there's 100 stitches per one square centimeter. With a project this big, hands always need to be washed while I stitch and I don't let any staining foods near my cross-stitching canvas. When I have unpacked all my stitching gear it's not easy to put it all aside for a minute to watch over a baby. For this reason I have barely had an opportunity to continue my cross-stitching hobby. Perhaps I'll finish it when I'm old and gray.

I love beginner level web programming but it needs a bit more concentration than I've had the opportunity for so that too has been on pause for the past year. Watching TV is nice but it is horrible for child development to see too much TV or completely wrong movies. For this reason, I'm not very familiar with what's going on there and I rarely even turn it on. Well, I did manage to keep one hobby: watching TV series, except not from TV. Jon Stewart's Daily Show is so much fun that sometimes I feel like I'm more up to date with USA's politics than Estonian.

Perhaps the best hobby that I managed to keep is Xbox games. I was playing the new Prince of Persia when I was waiting to return to the hospital to have a baby and I'm playing the new Prince of Persia now that my baby is learning to walk and talk. The games are completely different. Prince of Persia (2008) was simply so much fun. I recently finished 1000 achievement points there, just to find out it's got a downloadable epilogue! The main character had some nice dialogue and he was bad looking in a good way. In Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, the main character is an ugly dude with disturbingly British accent. Very off-putting. Despite that, I'm on my way to getting all the achievements. I did the toughest one already, now I just have to finish the rest of them.

For the loss of so many hobbies, I compensated by getting a new one: cooking! I love hosting dinner parties and I love baking cakes. I'm not too fond of daily cooking because it's so difficult to think what to give Siiri for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner. That's a lot of thinking for each day. After all that, I barely have any creativity left, but it's always refreshing to stumble on something new. It's even better to seek out new recipes and prepare them. Just thinking about it makes me want to browse recipes!

And the rest of my free time I hang out with Siiri and try to keep to her schedule. Five meals and a nap is quite a lot. She sure has gotten smart, though. I still tend to think of her as a baby who barely understands anything but this is certainly starting to change. She's learning new words so fast. She only says a few words, perhaps around 10: mommy, daddy, water, milk, whatisthat (mis? misseeon?), whatchadoing (mis teed?), this, bread etc. She recognizes a lot more words. She can even understand simple questions. One time we were outside she was holding a flower. She pointed, I said "flower", we did this a few times. Then she forgot about the flower and was looking at trees and cars when I asked, "Siiri, where is flower?", so she raised her hand and pointed at the flower in her hand, "this!". Another time we were out playing in a sandbox. It was her very first time. I was telling her about sand and rocks and then asked her where rock is, so she picked up a small rock, placed it on her palm and pointed at it! I was just, you know, making conversation. I really didn't think she would learn it so fast and I was surprised to see it.

It's nearly half past 9 in the morning and Siiri is still asleep. She ate breast milk once in the early morning, as usual, and she could wake up any minute now. She always sleeps this long now, sometimes even until 10. I'm wondering if today will be the day that my primary new hobby gets a new upgrade: will today be the day when Siiri learns to walk? Don't get your hopes up - I've been wondering that for over a month now, but this Monday she stood up without any help from her hands and yesterday she made two tiny independent steps when she didn't notice.

By the way, I had my PhD review and I passed. It was decided I had achieved enough during this year that I can go on the the next year of PhD studies. I also finished another version of the article manuscript and perhaps I'll be less busy now. I took a few days off and spent time with Siiri and it was a lot of fun. This week it's just the two of us because Erkki is in Washington, USA, performing at a huge conference.