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.

Morons Slap

Violence is fun only in movies and video games. In real life, violence only suits criminals and morons. Absurd how many people think that good children can only be raised with physical punishment. Recently there was a lot of public debate about a new law that would forbid hitting children. I was surprised that this debate was very balanced. It almost seemed that some soft idealistic politicians are trying to introduce a stupid new law and then "normal" people are trying to talk sense into them. Politicians say, "With fear and violence you can't raise good people." and then people said, "but if my kid does a bad deed and I can't even punish him, he will turn into a crook!".

Whenever I hear such talk, that children NEED to be physically punished , I get really angry. It is unfortunate that some parents are only able to think that punishing a child involves a leash and a crying and fearful child. If a parent raises their child with a leash, they deserve to get beat up in the street. It's not very different: a stronger person beats up the weaker person for some obscure reason. Okay, I will admit that most of the time parents THINK that they have a good reason for beating their kid, but I'm saying that almost always the reason isn't good enough.

I imagine that there must be an enormously huge reason that gives cause for beating a child. I don't mean that there is cause when a kid behaves very badly one day and breaks something in rage. I mean, if a kid gets caught dissecting a live frog for fun or torturing another human being and laughing maniacally , this could be reason enough to give the kid a punishment to remember. Or perhaps one should consider, what would the beating help?! Perhaps even then it would be better to start visiting a psychiatrist and find a way to help the child before he becomes a serial murderer.

Beating is a harsh punishment and maybe I shouldn't generalize that all physical punishment is the same as violently beating a kid up. Some people say that beating a child is wrong but children are best disciplined with a short strong tap on the wrist. Well, is that okay? Hell no! Imagine your boss in your workplace used this against you. Whenever you break one of his hundred little rules, he slaps you! "I told you not to leave your coffee cup in the sink! *SLAP*". That's just degrading and it's wrong and disrespectful. Then why would it be okay when it involves a small helpless child who is prone to forgetting such little rules? It's much worse because he can't even report you to the police for constant violence.

A friend of mine said that that a lack of physical punishment doesn't necessarily mean that children get a good up-bringing, and that constant mental humiliating would be much worse than an occasional physical punishment. I agree with this. Indeed it is even worse when a parent constantly degrades and belittles their child, "you're so stupid, you can't do anything right, you'll never be anyone important". However, I don't imagine it's possible to pass a law: Don't Be An Asshole Toward Your Children.

I've voiced these opinions in some form before in this same blog, so I hope it doesn't seem repetitive, but in all honesty, this opinion deserves to be voiced again. Anything that's repeated enough times becomes more true. I really wish more people would see this child violence issue like I see it and it's nice to think that this blog post could convince people whose opinion still wavers.

Or perhaps all people who read this blog already agree with me. All the people that have ever mentioned that they have read this blog are way above average smart. I can't really imagine any of them thinking that the only way to discipline their child is by causing them pain. And all the people I have ever discussed this topic with, have said that they are against violence. So who are all those morons who are openly against a law that forbids physical punishment of small helpless children?! It's like with a populist Estonian political party Keskerakond: they get hundreds of thousands of votes each time but when you start asking around, you can't find anyone who voted for them. There are hundreds of thousands of Estonians who think it's okay to beat a helpless child but when you start asking around, no one will admit they share that view.

If you think that it's not "small helpless children" who need a good beating, then consider that big and strong people don't get beat up. People who are subjects of physical punishment are helpless by definition, because if they could help it, they wouldn't get beat up.

I know Siiri is very young and it's usually a bit older children who "need a good beating", but I'm still sure it would take a lot for me to change my views on this issue. Siiri is exactly in the age when she can barely understand the rules but it is impossible to make her understand why she should follow them. Because mommy says so will only help as long as she's in a good mood and very cooperative. In a bad mood she breaks one rule after another - pulls on the curtain, pats the window glass and plays with Xbox game DVD boxes. Sometimes when I'm not well rested I get quite annoyed after a while. It's not easy to tell something again and again and again and again . It sometimes seems like a short tap on the wrist could be much more effective and it would save a lot of effort. What holds me back is the idea how furious I would be if a person I trust and love - my husband - would deliberately hit me to teach me a lesson. I can't imagine him ever doing that, and I don't want my child ever to imagine that I could do that to her.

I'm not sure if that law was passed or not but I really hope it was. Anyway, thanks for listening to the rant and have a nice non-violent day.

Lip Balm for the Win

Experimenting is nice, even if it is uncontrolled human experiments where the test subject is me. Okay, I knew there can't be too many side effects to experimenting living without a lip balm. Lip balm addiction websites say that if you think you're addicted to lip balm, it's best to live without wearing any lip balm at all. They say that in enough time lips will simply adjust and start to rehydrate themselves. I sure was addicted to lip balm so I tried their suggestion and you know what I found out? It turns out lip balms exist for a good reason!

It's generally well accepted that people with dry skin ought to use skin lotion. People don't talk about letting skin peal off until it learns to rehydrate itself. When I researched chapped lips, I found that good quality websites, like different public medical databases, say that some people constantly have dry lips and that even healthy lips can become dry due to temporary environmental conditions, like dry air, cold air, or excessive sun exposure. Perhaps lip balm should be treated like skin lotion - some people simply have dry lips and they need to apply something to keep lips from getting chapped. The only difference is that there aren't too many skin lotions which are designed to irritate your skin to feel even more dry. Lip balms do just that. Several common lip balm ingredients are RUMORED to irritate lips and thus increase the need to apply lip balm. (I discussed it here: Chapoholic)

When I started this whole self-experimenting, I had something like five or seven lip balms hidden throughout the apartment. One in each bag and in every room. I had to re-apply very often, sometimes every fifteen minutes. Still my lips were so dry that I desperately kept buying lip balms. I even bought one extra nice lip balm that a make-up expert recommended. She said it is very effective and lasts for a long time. She also said that people who buy it usually stop using any other kind of brands. In hindsight, I should have made the conclusion that they stop using other brands because they become addicted to this one, because this conclusion would have been the correct one. This extra nice lip balm cost roughly $20 and when I got home, I discovered that the package stated in very fine print, "do not use when pregnant or breastfeeding" and it contains menthol. This lip balm gives lips a really pretty shine though so I might eventually use it despite the menthol.

The experiment was this: If I stop using lip balm (especially the kind with irritants), will my lips become LESS dry?

So I stopped using lip balm and within a few hours my lips became chapped and aching. They were visibly swollen and very uncomfortable. I only held out for two days until I found a safe ointment that's not specifically meant for lips, so it's guaranteed not to have such ingredients, and it even promotes skin healing. I started applying it in the evenings for overnight treatment. It helped for a few days but not as much as I would have liked. I tried applying olive oil a couple of times because it's all natural and then I tried butter because milk fat is more similar to natural human fat, but neither olive oil nor butter is very good as a lip balm. Then I read that dehydration causes chapped lips so I tried drinking water each time my lips felt dry and it helped a bit but again, not as much as I would have liked. Besides, I still dislike drinking water and it's a struggle to drink even a liter of pure water per day. After a week of semi torture I started became fond of greasy food for all the wrong reasons - after eating it, my lips felt slightly greasy as if I had just applied lip balm.

The most effective method to help my lips was to wash them! My lips felt the most dry when I had eaten something sugary and then licked my lips "clean". It wasn't much better when I left my lips slightly sugary because then it dried and the effect was the same. So in stead of licking my lips, I started to wash them with clean water. This was helpful for a while but once my lips got visibly chapped, water didn't help one bit. My lips were getting so more and more chapped and even my overnight lip treatment wasn't enough to help them heal.

Eventually I said, "Screw it! I have naturally dry lips and I need to use a lip balm!" I researched what are the best alternatives for those evil Blistex and Carmex type addictive lip balms and I found that some people use pure vaseline! They apply it on the lips in the evenings and don't need anything else for the rest of the day. I kept researching and found out about many cases where people got horribly addicted to applying vaseline on their lips. Someone said vaseline is so unnatural it makes lips much less able to rehydrate themselves in the long run. After reading about too many people addicted to it I didn't dare to start using it on my lips daily. The ointment I've been using has vaseline in it so I didn't want to use that anymore either.

Then I read about the ointment Aquaphor by Eucerin. People on the Internet say it's absolutely the best alternative to regular addictive lip balms. I would take that information with a large grain of salt but Eucerin is a pharmacy brand that specializes in making effective yet non-irritating skin products. I went to a pharmacy to buy Aquaphor but even the pharmacy with the best Eucerin selection in Tartu didn't have this product. In stead I bought Eucerin's regular Lip Repair and it's perfect. It's got minimal amount of ingredients and none of the horrible ones I've read about. It's simple and it simply works. I wanted to start with something that's as mellow as possible so I decided not to try Eucerin's Acute Lip balm until I get really desperate.

Result of the experiment: I'm no longer addicted to lip balms... but I can't live without my Lip Repair balm! I only need to moisturize my lips once a day. My lips still get a little dry on occasion but it's not a constant problem anymore. While using a lip balm every 15-30 minutes is definitely an addiction, using it only once a day is called skin care.

Also I learned to avoid licking my lips , I learned that sometimes lips feel more moisturized when rinsed with clean water than they do after applying the wrong lip balm, I learned that all lip balm labels need to be read VERY CAREFULLY. The general rule is, that if it's sold as a lip balm, it will irritate your skin. There are very few exceptions to that rule so be careful or you might end up with lip balm addiction, chapped lips, and half a dozen evil lip balms which only make the problem worse.

Birthday!!!

It's Siiri's first birthday and I'm sick. I'm suffering from involuntary-bulimia-induced-voluntary-anorexia. In other words, no point in eating anything because it won't stay down anyway. Siiri's also sick, but she was the first to get infected and she seems to be the first one to recover. Erkki is worse off than me because he's a guy. Is it just me or are men just really sensitive to being ill. Oh wait, I think I've read something about it somewhere sometime that women handle flu better than men.

This time even I am so ill that I spend hours during the day just sleeping and I just can't get up. Me and Erkki take turns trying to stay awake and babysit while Siiri is actively crawling around and playing. She hasn't made a full recovery - her appetite is still low and she's making long naps during the day but at least she's not completely apathic like she was a couple of days ago. Siiri really is sweet though. I was lying in bed and Siiri crawled to me, spent ten minutes playing with stuff in my bedside drawer, then took a paper tissue, ripped it in tiny-tiny pieces, stood up and started offering the pieces to me one by one. When I put them on the bedside table, she just picked them up and offered them to me one-by-one again as if was her gift from her to me so I would feel better. Besides, she's been doing her version of hugging a lot in the last couple of days. She comes and rests her head on my arm or my chest. It always makes me smile. It's very therapeutic.

Anyway, Siiri' first birthday is kind of ruined since me and Erkki haven't been that sick in years or maybe even NEVER. I even had a plan of making Siiri a fluffy pink cake. I would have dyed whipped cream with home made beetroot juice and I was even planning to light one candle in the center of the cake. I had a recipe that was baby-safe and I think Siiri would have enjoyed it. We still gave her her first birthday present which was a picture dictionary. It's small, a little bigger than pocket book format, it has lots of picutres and I think it might be useful when she's starting to expand on her vocabulary. Before that, it's just pretty to look at. Quite lame, right? A BOOK! Well, Siiri likes books and she deserved a book that she can "read" as much as she wants. She liked it so much she leaned forward and gave it a nice wet lick. She hadn't done this with a real book yet, only with cardboard baby books.

I might be sick but I'm quite busy this week. I have a practical course: 4-hour days in a lab near my home. The first day was quite difficult to endure - it was mostly a lecture while sitting on really uncomfortable lab chairs. I'm hoping I'll feel better tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Siiri!

How Time Flies

It's really been an interesting year. Yes, it's almost been a whole year since Siiri was born. And I've decided to review some of my previous ideas and thoughts to see what's changed and to admit how much of a house hen I've become.

First things first - Any regrets? No. I've been living with an idea that parenting must be minimal effort task. Any parent who says that their child "only sleeps in a moving carriage" or "only falls asleep in the car" has obviously given their children such habits which are time-consuming for the parent and needlessly tiring. Siiri has been a total dream child with no gas pains, good health, decent sleep habits and a happy outlook on life. It's easy to give baby advice when there are hardly any real problems! Still, there were those few months of teething which were horrible for my sleep and there were several times that she had a cold. She didn't take the bottle so I had to be with her whenever she was hungry during the first months of her life. You get the picture. It's all subjective. I say she's a godsend, but someone else might only remember the teething months.

By the way, she got her 8th tooth this week. Teeth are supposed to come in pairs, but she's been crawling around with 7 teeth for three months already and finally her tooth is here. It was getting quite suspicious already. I kept checking on that part of the gum. At first Siiri was resistant but eventually she got used to it and almost showed it to me herself.

Lately it feels like everything that's got nothing to do with children is just same old stuff. Like TV-shows. There's always been some TV-shows and people talk about them but it's become somehow distant for me. Movies are also somehow same stuff over and over again. Don't get me wrong, movies are fun to watch, but they're just so casual. It's as if all the entertainment in the world that used to be an important part of life has now been demoted to the status of being just background to real life. Some of this has become just random noise. Facebook keeps emailing me but I never quite have the time to see what's going on with my account. Yet I always have time for baby-topics forum where people discuss how many layers of clothing do babies need to wear on a drafty day.

In a way I have become distant from life but it's not in the way I expected. When I stay indoors it's because I have chosen to not make plans for the evening. I'm rarely sad and lonely home alone and feeling like I'm missing out on life. It really just depends on the week. Sometimes there's just one plan after another but sometimes nothing really happens and I end up being completely exhausted anyway. Lately I've been increasingly overwhelmed with how much work it is to take care of another person. Erkki has been very busy with work, doing longer hours and even bringing work home with him and involuntarily I have been doing extra hours as a housekeeper and a babysitter. Also, my primary babysitter found a stable position in another home and can only help me out after hours. All this is already resolving itself. Erkki has a vacation coming up and I'm already on the lookout for new babysitter alternatives.

Last week I was mostly just trying to conserve energy while living in Siiri's life pace, preparing for her meals, getting her ready for naps, making sure she's feeling good. It was very exhausting. This week I was rushing to do one thing after another - visiting lab, exercising, shopping, taking the baby out - I even made it to a REAL stand-up comedy show in Tartu and it was AWESOME! Now, after this busy week, I feel alive and full of energy. It seems I'm not really made for quiet family life. Currently laundry is piling up and there's too many toys on the floor but I'm just happy that I got to run around actively. I'd love to take my family to the park or to go traveling with my many children in the distant future, and I even see myself baking a cakes or piles of pancakes, but still I don't see myself using up all my energy to keep my home tidy, kids fed and clean, laundry nicely folded and for the rest of my time, slouching in front of the TV watching soap operas. I tried the low-energy life and it just kept making me have less and less energy. During my more active week Siiri was also well fed but I felt better so I was happier with Siiri which made her happier. Next week I'll aim high: I'll even do the laundry!

So perhaps I am a house hen since I keep talking about how cute Siiri is and about fun stuff that happens here but that's mostly because I just really want to share what a fun experience parenting sometimes is. Yet, I am most definitely a different from the stereotypical soap-opera-watching-candy-munching-fat-house-hen whose life only revolves around her children and soap operas and candy. I'm the kind of house hen that I like to be, nothing more nothing less, and I'm happy with that. No regrets.

Food or Not

Imagine you're in a strange new place full of curious objects with various textures and smells. How do you decide what's edible and what's not? Well Siiri, in her fresh baby wisdom , has figured out the solution this question: if it's on the floor it's edible!

Siiri likes going treasure hunting for food. When she gets tired of her toys she sometimes crawls to her feeding chair. The floor there is often covered with food crumbs. Siiri is quite a neat eater but still the floor often has something to discover. That's because Siiri makes sure to maintain her secret food stash. Almost like a squirrel hiding nuts in the soil, Siiri casually throws bits and pieces of her food on the floor. Just a couple of days ago she spent minutes eating half a slice of bread and then she asked for the other half. I looked away for a moment and suddenly the bread was gone! "Siiri, what happened to the bread I gave you?". She gave me an innocent look , as if she had never even seen that bread. I went closer and stepped on something - then I saw that she had carefully ripped the bread into inch-by-inch pieces and tossed them all around her feeding chair. I laughed, collected all the pieces and asked her with a smirk if she knew why there's bread on the floor. She stretched out to see the floor and started to giggle.

She has obviously already learned that you reap what you sow because she often finds a moment during her eating time to sow some of her food for future need. I check that part of the floor at least twice a day. I'm usually not that fond of cleaning floors but I need to make sure she doesn't eat any spoiled food. A day old bread is dry and crunchy but otherwise perfectly okay. Even a week old cereal puff is still a cereal puff. However, if she finds anything moist with meat in it that's been kept at room temperature for more than 24 hours she is likely to get food poisoning.

She finds food elsewhere as well. I keep raisins, nuts and dried fruit in a drawer that Siiri can reach. She likes to take out the packages and shake them. I make sure they're all properly sealed and if she does manage to get her hands on any raisins, I simply confiscate them. My babysitter (the one I found on the Internet) is less skilled it seems. I came home and found some nuts and raisins on the floor. She didn't comment any of it but one bag was ripped open seemingly in an attempt to confiscate it. I didn't think much of it. I collected everything in sight and forgot about it. Until later that day. I was cooking and Siiri was free roaming on the floor. I noticed she was quite concentrated and she was eating something. I jumped to her and asked her, "Siiri, what are you eating? Please open your mouth." I pried open her mouth and retrieved one complete hazelnut and another one chewed in pieces and half gone. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests avoiding peanuts and tree nuts until the child turns 3. Hazelnut is the food that Erkki is most allergic to which means Siiri is in the risk group for also developing an allergy to hazelnuts. I was planning to wait for a LONG-LONG time before I offer any hazelnuts to Siiri but apparently she had other plans.

Obviously, not everything on the floor is what I'd call food. She likes to try anything she gets her hands on, even if it's a lamb wool tuft or a piece of paper tissue. When she finds anything odd she picks it up, shows it to me from across the room and quickly flips it in her mouth. Then she turns around and crawls away as fast as she can while I go after her. I thought she's only eating such things to get me to chase after her so I taught her, "no, don't eat it" and I pointed at the trash she had found and I shook my head. She knows head-shaking means "no". She looked at me, looked at the piece of trash in her hand and shook her head, then gave me another glance, flipped the trash in her mouth and turned around to crawl away as fast as possible.

I only wish she was that adventurous about food when she sits in the feeding chair. In my opinion her menu seems a bit too bland. She likes cereal puffs (Estonian product called "Kamapallid") but she doesn't want them them with milk or yogurt so she eats them plain and dry. She often likes yogurt as well but only plain yogurt. She is suspicious about any new foods that I offer her. Perhaps I should just leave any new foods on the floor for her to discover on her own. Perhaps I would if it wouldn't be so similar to how people feed their dogs!

Although I myself would never try eating random bits from the floor I've heard such behavior is great for the immune system. Bon appetit!