Teaching Social Skills

I was talking with the father of three wonderful children, and I boasted how Siiri can recognize all the letters of the alphabet! Really! At 1 year and 5 months she immediately points to the correct capital letter when I ask her, "where is E?". She only mixes up letters when she's distracted by something and that doesn't happen often - she is occasionally more focused than I am. She is absolutely unnaturally focused for a kid her age. I would be worried if she sometimes didn't have completely excited and playful moods as well.

So I told about Siiri's wonderful skill to that father and he got quiet. He contemplated whether to say anything about it but then told me in a slightly concerned way that it is not necessary to educate children so much. He is actually right. Lately there has been much talk about Lost Childhood - children are no longer allowed to simply behave like children. They are constantly prepared for something, whether it's kindergarten, school, or university. Some Estonian children who go to kindergarten have already been tutored in English language to give them an advantage in life. Their parents are so eager to make them into something that they never allow them to simply be kids. He casually added that preschool children gain more from education of character (e.g. role-playing) than from the kind of education that school is meant for. I quickly reassured him that Siiri is genuinely interested in such knowledge and no wrong has been done. Learning the letters was simply a logical next step to learning different animals from books. Siiri pointed at things, whether dogs or cats or different letters, and grown-ups told her what she was pointing at, and later asked her to point to the correct picture, giving her an opportunity to show off her new knowledge. But it still got me thinking that role-playing is a wonderful idea. The following day I went to the store and bought a couple of glove puppets - Hedgehog and Monkey.

For most of my closest friends, when I say role-playing, they think: GOBLINS , magical armor, DRAGONS, priests kicking ass and vanquishing evil, damsels in distress, LOOT! For children less than three years old, it's something quite different. There's puppets and dolls, make-belief scenarios being played out and later Spiderman costumes and pretending a mere twig found from under a tree is a lazer gun. I haven't done much puppet theatre to Siiri but recently she has started to show readiness for such games. Namely she often offers snacks to her dolls and stuffed animals. One time she took a small toy cow and dipped it head-first into a bowl of snacks and made content sounds as if the cow was enjoying the meal. Another time she took the hand of a Barbie-like doll, submerged it into a bowl of snacks and pulled it out with a snack between her finger and doll's hand, or in this context, with the doll holding the snack and then feeding it to Siiri.

Role-playing for children can be quite educative because it can give them experiences that they hadn't yet gotten from real life. Lately I've been especially concerned with Siiri's paralyzing fear of other young children, perhaps because of some earlier experiences with loud children running and screaming like lunatics (something Siiri sometimes does herself ). So I got a wonderful idea . I should role-play positive social situations to Siiri so she's better prepared for when she makes her first attempts at being social with other kids. It's not absurd in any way. Role-playing is frequently used for improving social skills and it is one of the best methods for this goal, possibly second best after real experience.

My first puppet-lesson to Siiri was Sharing. As an only child, Siiri rarely has to share with anyone else and she is very unaccustomed to it, so I decided to show her how sharing works. Siiri brought Monkey a snack and Monkey happily ate it. But then phlegmatic Hedgehog came along and said, "Monkey, you have a snack. I don't have a snack, but I would also like to eat it". So Monkey said, "Hedgehog, lets share!" and they both started munching on the snack. Siiri looked at it with confusion and then with disapproval. She made an agitated sound, came and took back the snack and cave it back to Monkey. I snickered and continued with the lesson. Again came the Hedgehog, "I no longer have a snack. Could I have some, too?". Happy and energetic Monkey said, "Come! I have plenty, I can share with you!" and they both started eating the same snack. Siiri was not pleased! She came, took back the snack, pushed Monkey further from Hedgehog, gave Monkey the snack, and kept a close eye on Hedgehog. Of course Hedgehog came along and acted all hungry. Monkey proposed, "Lets split it!". I carefully made the small puffy snack into two halves and put one in front of Monkey and the other in front of Hedgehog and made munching sounds. That seemed like the perfect solution until Siiri came, took away hedgehog's half a snack, gave Hedgehog a mean look and ATE IT!

All is well that ends well. Siiri got to use her imagination to solve a recurring problem and I got a good laugh out of it. Everyone wins. Except for the Hedgehog.

PS! Siiri currently has at least 16 actively used phrases or words. There are so many that she has forgotten, but I'm not counting those. She can follow simple commands, such as, "Siiri, please put the rabbit in your cupboard". I don't point to either the rabbit or the cupboard but she does it anyway. She understands most of every-day talk. Perhaps I should have taken it into account when I was reading some child developmental stuff out loud to Erkki. "They say Children Siiri's age should already be drinking from a cup. We assist Siiri, but do they mean she should be able to do it without any assistance? They can't possibly mean that.". The entire next day Siiri demanded to hold the cup herself and by nightfall had learned to drink from a cup unassisted.

Spiritual Level-up

Tonight I feel odd. I feel like the entire day has been a journey to a next spiritual level. Actually perhaps it started on Friday. I was walking to my very first university lecture. My lecture, as in, I was giving it. I had a missed call and called back on my way to the lecture. It was my colleague who asked me if I was interested in being a Bachelor's thesis supervisor. I was all hyped up on pre-lecture adrenaline, but I gave it a brief thought - "yeah! Sounds like a totally new experience! I'm in!".

I had my lecture. At first I was trembling a bit but then it passed and I even stopped looking at my lecture notes. I walked back and fourth, clicking on next slide, sketching on the blackboard and pointing at diagrams with a long wooden stick. A wooden stick beats a trembling little red laser dot any day. It went quite okay! There were a few things I explained horribly because I realized during the lecture that I missed some important details when I was studying the slides, but I think I explained the important things well enough. I had 49 slides for 90 minutes and I still finished 20 minutes early. But when I sat down and assembled my notes I felt at peace. It was a conscious effort not to grin as everyone was gathering their things to leave. I was suddenly a grown-up. There was only a few years gap between me and the people leaving the classroom but I felt like those are pretty damn important few years. My growing up had nothing to do with getting married or even having a child. I grew up when I gave my first lecture and accepted my first Bachelor's supervisee.

Today I gave my second lecture, also the last lecture this year. This time I knew exactly what I was talking about. I made more slides just in case and I finished the lecture in 88 minutes with only 2 minutes to spare. I had so much to tell that I rushed through some things that deserved more attention but I paid enough attention to things that will be in the exam. At the end of the lecture I met my supervisee. I invited him to the lecture because he wanted to do the thesis on the exact same topic as my lecture. He seemed potentially lazy, but motivated to finish school. I think he'll do fine. Curiously, I'm not at all intimidated by the task. I'm actually eager to find out more about him - what his strengths and weaknesses are and I'm even more eager to show him all the cool tricks that help with writing the thesis. There will also be a co-supervisor who is more experienced so I won't be alone.

Perhaps it's not by chance that I was strongly pushed off balance by a lecture that I attended today. The lecturer told us about near death experiences and events that can only be explained with the existence of a soul that does not depend on any brain activity. The course is called Science and Religion. It's my yet another attempt to find faith. I've been on strange terms with faith for years. The last time I was a good Christian was when I was about 15. Then I got interested in psychology and learned about suggestion. After that I never felt comfortable in a church sermon. I felt I was being manipulated into thoughts that were not quite my own. I still kept trying to keep my ties to church. I even went to a minister one day - I was walking past a church and I just went to see if he was there and if he had a moment. It seemed like one of those moments from movies where the main character does something impulsive to find faith and she finds it. However, life is not the movies. The minister gave me some boring politically correct reply which was so unspectacular that I can't even remember what the question was, let alone the answer. I thanked him politely and walked out just as unwisely.

I had been baptized nearly all my life so I went to confirmation for some "real" faith. My quest was never about not believing in the existence of God. I simply really had a problem with Christianity. Jesus was great, but he lived a whole lot of time ago and his view of the world might have been progressive then but it was completely too restrictive for me. I simply couldn't fit his teachings into my world view without distorting one of those to a point of nonrecognition. It was completely unfair to distort his teachings and I wasn't willing to completely change my world view for some dude who lived 2000 years ago!

Anyway, confirmation steered me toward a more balanced liberal Christianity but it still wasn't enough. Christianity has so many inner flaws that no one could possibly take it seriously. For one, Jesus was a pacifist. And Bible teaches more evil violence than any other book I've ever attempted to read. Whenever I saw a "pink and fluffy" quote from the Bible, I felt like quoting something from the Old Testament. And don't tell me Old Testament is not a part of Christianity because the entire creation story, ten commandments and much else came from there and it's all a part of this religion. Simply, someone is preaching their own version of an old and outdated semi-evil religion and calling it Christianity. I never really agreed with most of it. I felt more and more disconnected from God and oddly, more and more at peace with myself because I didn't have so much Christian guilt wearing me down. I was nearly an atheist, except for the minor little detail: I still intuitively assumed there was God.

So finally today at the Science and Religion lecture I saw a picture of a soul leaving the body and I thought, "who am I kidding. Of course there is a soul and a God and all that. I'm not a materialist! Not by a long shot. I have to find a way to connect my body and my soul." It was little more than a mental note. In the evening I went to see "Eat Pray Love". It was quite good, except with a target audience 40 years old, female and divorced (At least I got the sex right). It still had some wonderful thoughts about one woman's journey to find herself through Hinduism.

So I walked out of the movie theater, ears whistling from the loud speakers in the movie theater and my steps echoing in the empty streets. I continued my thoughts about finding more inner peace. Happiness is not about what we do or what we have. A lot of happiness comes from within. I am a happy person by most standards but I feel I have the potential to be much more happy if I figure out my spiritual beliefs and find peace within myself. I have tried so long and I have failed. So it seems I have been going about it all wrong. I will not find faith in Christianity. I have to find my own way. That's it. Yes, that is my big revelation: Christianity isn't for me. Seems so common when I see it in writing.

Now I have a lot to think about. At this point I feel I'm much more likely to end up worshipping Taara, an ancient nearly forgotten Estonian god, than a Christian god. Perhaps it would even be the more respectable choice in Estonia, the official least religious nation in the world .

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.

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.