Cherish the moment

Today is Wednesday and it means a family club day. This is my and my son's weekly ritual. After two days in a day care there comes Wednesday and my son knows and reminds me that this is our club day. So, after we say bye to Wanda in her day care, we walk few blocks away to a family club Betania, located in Punavuori and pictured above, in the yellow building with round windows. It's a very nice, cosy and really family and kids oriented place. Inside there is one room for playing, usually there are some activities like arts and crafts available for kids, so you can paint, draw, cut, glue etc. My son usually is not interested in putting his hands in it and he prefers to play with cars and trucks and airplanes. So we sit on a floor and play. There is a kitchen and they bake their own pullas there, so sometimes it smells of cinnamon and fresh baked rolls. That is our other ritual - to go and buy the goodies and eat together. If the weather allows we stay outside in a park, like today, enjoying first spring sun. And after such a long morning we are going to the metro and back home. I like it too, I like our routine, the precious time spent together. I do cherish those moments, because I know already they won't last forever.

Time flies and my kids are growing...

When we moved to Helsinki Wanda was same age as Tomek is now, or even couple months younger. She was two. Now he is two and four months. Sometimes when I go to some places where I used to go few years ago with two-years-old Wanda I have this strange feeling. Because I am the same, the kid is same age again, but it is not the same kid. Recently I had to go to a store in Espoo, I was looking for a bed for our son and he was with me. While driving there I thought - wait, I did this before, this driving to that particular store with a toddler on a back seat. Or when I am playing in those playparks downtown or in our neighborhood I have this strange feeling again and again. Same me, same places, same age kid, but not the same one. Time flies. Year after year. It is hard to believe that we have been in Helsinki for three and a half years already. When we came here with a five years initial contract we thought it will be long. Now we are pretty sure we will stay here another few years, maybe another five, maybe more and now this time perspective doesn't seem to be too long. Just that. Life goes on. Friends are moving back to their home countries or somewhere abroad. Yes, just recently we had to say good bye to our super good friends from Mexico. She was the first person I got to know in Helsinki and we became friends immediately and our daughters as well. All those play dates, all those chats, all those girls-nights-outs and now, bye, and maybe see you in few years somewhere. Sad.

My little boy. Oh boy!

Being totally dedicated to all sorts of machines and noises. To everything possessing a mechanism and being able to move, to spin, to ride and to make a noise. First it was his sister's doll pram. He was barely a sitting seven-months-old baby when he discovered that when you turn down the pram, you can freely make the wheels spinning. Amazing! Fun! Then there came duplo and some wagons, which can be attached to one another. A train! A car! Cars! Then there came the never ending exploration of the outside world with all its bulldozers, snow plow trucks, dump trucks, diggers, lawn mowers! Yes, that is. A lawn mower is a love from a first sight. Don't you think it is an extraordinary machine? It must be. He is absolutely fascinated by them. What he usually constructs from duplo? A lawn mower. And believe me, he is really an inventor. His own lawn mowers not only can cut the lawn, but in a very clever way he figured out, that such a tool should also water the lawn. So, when you take a look on his inventions, you can see on one end the cutting tool and on the other end the watering tool. He is very eager to explain it to you and present how it works. Oh yes, those lawn mowers have one disadvantage: they are loud. Quite a loud. The sweet noise of those machines comes form my beloved son's throat and for the first few minutes is cute, for the next few funny and for the next whatever just unbearable. The lawn mower can be anything. A stick, a box, an empty garbage bin (why not?), even a stroller or a push-wagon. The other fascination are a hammer and a saw. Before he got his own tool box, he used to built his tools from blocks or playing with those tiny lego tools (a drill for example) or pretending something is a hammer or trying to "steal" a real piece from his dad's tool box. Scary! So, the Santa decided for the goods sake our son is going to find one tool box under a Christmas tree. Some nights all the tools are going to sleep with theirs owner. Resting quietly next to his pillow. Other nights our little boy chooses to take to bed all the construction machines: a truck, a digger, a bulldozer and a crane. We need to read about fire trucks, which he calls in Finnish - palo auto. And for Christmas when I was doing with him some arts and crafts (usually he is far from such activities) and asked him what he'd like to draw on a Christmas card for grannie, he replied immediately: a digger!

Inspiring culinary trip to Copenhagen

Denmark's capital is now famous in a modern culinary world with Noma and some other Michelin' spotted places. But this is not why I visited the city and my culinary inspirations didn't come from their best chefs. My visit was, say, more local. A weekend with my best friend who happens to be also a cooking savvy. First - I have learned something about salt. Yes, NaCl as simply as it is. So far I used to buy whatever cheapest I could find in a grocery store, usually iodized, either sea or rock and didn't think much of it. I couldn't understand recipes asking for some sophisticated strangely sounded names of particular salt like Fleur de Sel or Kosher Salt or Himalayan Salt or others. I used to fully ignore them and used my cheap stuff. Why not? Salt is quite important in our life and in our cooking. First: Different salts do have different taste - at least to some. At least if you just add it for serving the food, not for cooking itself. Artisan salts can have better quality, better taste, different structure. But also be careful - they are usually not fortified by iodine. And as we all know iodine is essential in our diet. So, although my friend promotes salts with no additives I would still be buying those with iodine. Why? Making my own research about salts I have read a lot about iodine deficiency disorder and how easy it is to prevent it by simply consuming iodized salt. Even mild deficiency can cause learning problems and lower IQ (think about your growing kids!). So, even if you'd prefer to pass the fancy artisan salt, try also so smuggle the regular iodized one for the sake of your and your kids well-being. Second - I have learned to make bread. My friend is a regular baker and she shared one of her basic recipes with me. I have made my own sourdough which I keep tightly closed in a fridge and feed it once a week or whenever I bake a new loaf. I've bought several different kinds of flours: rye, whole wheat, oat meal, spelt. I keep different seeds like sunflower or pumpkin. And I bake. And it is so simple and the final effect is so delicious you almost wait for a new fresh loaf. Like this one:

Third - I sort of changed my mind or maybe a way of thinking about hunting and eating game instead of meat from factory farms. Have you ever thought about that? You buy that cheap pork or beef sold in supermarket but you can't stand a thought about shooting a deer, right? For most of us unfortunately the answer is yes. As if pork would be grown on a tree and not coming from a poor treated pig, who never experienced any freedom in her life and was slotted in quite a horrible way. So yes, if you really mind, you should a) become a vegetarian b) buy only organic meet or meet from small traditional farms, where animals can have a decent life c) hunt and eat game. At least this deer enjoined free life in his natural environment. Fourth - some simple but delicious recipes for side dishes and how to smuggle vegetables into your family members plates. For ideas visit this tallerken blog, my Copenhagen' friend used to write.

Finnish day care

I probably didn't mention before that we've got a place in a day care for our little boy. This time was so different from the time I looked up places for our girl right after we moved to Helsinki. Because our daughter's day care doesn't take kids less than three and potty trained I had to find another place for our soon-to-be-two boy. And we decided it would be OK to place him in a regular Finnish day care. I applied on-line through e-services, I have chosen few places around Wanda's day care, I payed a visit to one which was my favorite and number one on the list and I waited. The whole application process takes at least four months. I applied early and got the response in May. We were lucky enough to get our most wished place. The day care is a so called family day care, which means very small place for only up to twelve kids and three teachers/nurses. I've already been there with Tomek to say hi and better know the place. And I like it even more. The teachers are such lovely women. You can see that they take care of the kids with love and joy. After summer there will be only children ages one to three and I think it is quite good. I've already made arrangements for the August and during the first week I am allowed to stay with my child. What's more during the coming week I can join the group when they are playing outdoors. At first Tomek was quite shy and reluctant to go there, but after a while he started to play and after I finished talking with the head teacher and wanted to leave, he insisted to stay longer because he was already busy playing with cars and trucks. I hope he will like the place, will pick up the language quite fast and we'll all gain from the new situation. 

My kiddos

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by them. Sometimes I loose my temper. Sometimes I do yell at them. But most of the time I spend with them I hug them, I give them kisses, I chat with them, I listen to what they want to tell me, I play with them, I read to them, I cook and bake with them. I love them. Every day I think how amazing they both are and how lucky I am to be their mother. Tomek started to say "auto". He is a big enthusiast of mobiles, vehicles, bulldozers. Basically all the tough guy stuff. He is screaming that "wow!!!" whenever he sees one of those trucks. In a sandbox he always plays with the trucks and bulldozers. At home crawls pushing a car. I'm always laughing to myself, because I am really not a kind of mother who gives a car to a boy and a doll to a girl. But this is something like his basic instinct or I don't know. But he loves to play with a baby doll too, he likes to feed the doll with a bottle and press her belly to make her cry, he loves to hug his teddybear. And he is totally into dogs. Now more and more he is also into his sister. Whatever she does, he wants to do the same. He repeats her with everything, what she eats, what kind of noises she makes or what she wants to play with. And they do play together time to time. Of course there is lots of fight and screaming and an adult has to be always around. And Wanda? Well, as I said before she writes a book. She is so creative. Recently she made a little boat from a piece of bark she found outside on the yard. She made a musical instrument. She loves to color and draw and cut. She mastered riding a bike. She's my girl. He's my boy. Happy and good feeling.

A day in wooden Käpyla

That is a perfect half a day trip or Sunday walk with the kids. As you could know from one of my previous posts I am a great fan of those old Finnish wooden houses, the remnants of the past. And it is quite astounding how many of those buildings are still enjoying their being in Helsinki. I've read about the time in Finland, around the 60. and 70. when in many towns those wooden buildings or all parts of towns were destroyed and replaced by new but quite ugly and definitely not romantic concrete blocks. But apparently Helsinki managed to save quite a bit of those neighborhoods. So there is Vallila, Kumpula and Käpyla and around downtown you can spot some of those houses too. But Käpyla is so different and so amazing for me. Walking around I couldn't stop feeling being in a different town, some small town somewhere in the middle of Finland and not in Helsinki. It has it's long and broad Main Street with a tram lane in the middle which ends up with a big square. There is a park, a playground and a school building around that square. And other streets are surrounding that place. There is this quietness specific for small towns. And of course being surrounded by all those wooden houses, some of them single family houses and others more like detached houses, made me feel like I would travel in space and time. This time I did some pictures and I promise to upload them, but I need some time to browse though all of them.

Sad kids

I've read a letter from a Reader published  in a Polish magazine. The Reader was a woman, staff psychologist in an elementary school. She wrote about her every day encounters with pupils and their parents. And it was sad. It was about a lack of love. About loneliness. About acute longing to be loved, to be accepted, to be hugged. She wrote about a little boy, who very ofen is very sad because he knows his mother would never hug him, never kiss him. He is not allowed to play with his sister, because he is said he would always make a mess. His mother yells at him whenever he doesn't behave as she wished him to behave. He is scared. Another boy is sad, because he has heard from his mother several times that she's going to put him to a orphanage because he doesn't behave.
Every time I get mad because my kids do something stupid or not listen or whatever, I feel guilty. Whenever I do yell at them, especially my daughter, my son is still very little, I feel terrible. I know how wrong was I. I know how scared it was for my little girl. The angry mom is like an angry monster. The kid is scared and is vulnerable. As a mother I am learning every day a lot about being patient, about having tons of smiles and hugs to give, about not getting irritated and instead to laugh, about the unconditional love I do have for those two little kiddos and about how amazingly this love is growing every day. And still even with this love I do have bad days. I know it is normal, it is OK so far as we still give our kids love and appreciation and awareness and smiles and hugs and giggles. It is sad that not all parents know it and not all children are lucky to be nourished that way.

My broken heart...

After the first two perfect days in a day care there came a drawback. When I came Wednesday afternoon she bursted out crying and yes, her teacher said, she was missing me. Thursday she was still very happy in the morning and on our way, but started to cry when we got there. I left her crying with my heart totally broken and cried myself after I left the place. That was such a stressful day! I came earlier, she was sad for the first couple of minutes. It must be stress for her too. She woke up late in the evening crying and came to my bed. In the morning she said she doesn't like the daycare anymore and wants to stay with me and go for a walk with me. I was fighting myself to keep cheerful mood and encourage her to dress and get ready. But when we came there it was same as yesterday. Tough time for her and for me too. And those questions in my mind, do I make the right thing? I'll pick her up earlier today and I thing I will do this for the next week so she can easier adjust to the new schedule. It's just a long day for her and all of a sudden a huge change in her life. I love her so much.

The "why?" question

It started just recently. Wanda wants to now "why?" About basically everything she sees around her. Like yesterday when we went to a nice park on an island (Tervasaari). To get to the island you have to walk along the little marina - now full packed with boats. So she saw the people around those boats. "Why they are standing over there?" "Because they probably want to get to their boat." "Why?" "Maybe they want to have a ride, go to the see." "Why?" "The weather is so nice and they enjoy spending time on their boat". OK, she's watching them, than she sees a lady walking on a pier. "Why is she walking there?" She sees people lying on a lawn. "Why do they lie there?" She sees a dog's playground and there are some huge wooden dog statues. "Why there are those dogs?" And so forth. Sometimes it's fun to answer her questions, but sometimes I feel I get lost and I feel a lack of more explanations or just no more creativity in finding a quick and simple but still sufficient answer. Oh, and she found her old book "The very hungry caterpillar". She used to love this book, but we didn't read it for ages. So I started to read it to her. "In the night in the moonlight a little egg was lying on a leaf" (this is just my not accurate translation form my Polish version of the book, sorry for any errors). And my little daughter immediately asked: "Why?" "Why what honey?" "Why is was lying on that leaf?" "Hm, good question, I don't know actually, where the egg came from and how it got to that leaf, they don't tell us this fact in the book, but let's read what's next". The caterpillar is very hungry and eats constantly. On Monday he ate one apple, but he was still hungry. "Why?" "Because...." etc. etc. It was really funny to read the book now, cause I realized that this book is definitely for younger kids. My girl is already too smart to take such facts for granted :) And it's cool that we can now really discuss things. Another curious period just started!