Little pancakes

... for the little convalescent.  First solid food after tonsillectomy.

Thursday afternoon

How to wait for the bus to take you to the violin lesson. Mommy is many things, even two seats with back rest.

Blog went dead. Such a bummer. Life's been all work no time for fun for too long...

Temporary...

We've been renovating this apartment since forever, living in continuos state of temporariness. Temporarily sleeping on the living-room floor (for the last month and a half), temporarily moving the kids together in one of their rooms, temporarily having no bathroom doors, no inside entrance door, no working washing-machine. Grandparents will arrive on Saturday and will still be in a temporary situation.

But VV is getting better and better at fixing things, and I'm getting better and better at ignoring the mess and trying to make the best of the situation. If only I didn't get any more migraines while I'm growing this baby. Than it gets really bad.

Second breakfast of the day

Random stuff from a long break

So much has been going on and didn't feel like writing; renovation in the bed-rooms, living-room crammed with stuff, lots of after school hobbies for Andrei (if it's Monday it's music, if It's Tuesday it's kokki-kerho and kotava-kerho, if it's Friday it's art school and if it's Saturday it's swimming school), trying to keep balance with Andrei's school work, after school activities, my own work, renovation, the shop and keeping the house afloat.

Recently rediscovered the joys of music and it's help with concentrating on boring tasks (have been listening obsessively to Pink Floyd).

Both kids get more and more interested in clothes and I'm happy about it (shouldn't I be?). Ana wants to wear dresses now so this moment I've been half looking forward to has arrived. She has been wearing almost only hand-me-downs from three boys, but it seems this is going to change now. I've bought 3 new dresses for her this week (it's sale's season that's how I could).
She is getting lovelier every day, growing and learning and being simply adorable (when she doesn't have tantrums that is). Andrei is on his way of being a teenager soon. He is into cool clothes (but still believes in Santa) and I try to remember to give him a break. Not to tell him all the time what to do and how to do it. Let him make his choices and learn from his mistakes. But it's so hard...

As I was saying:



Covrigi (pretzels).

1 egg
100-115 g softened butter
300 ml warm milk
2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar
600 g flour
7 g dry yeast

1 egg and sesame seeds for topping

The process was the same as for the other pretzels.

It's been a hard day's night...

Mornings are hard for this little one. Still they go surprisingly smoothly. We have settled into a routine. I wake-up at 6, shower and pick-up things, or iron or something like that for half an hour, then put breakfast on the table and wake them up. They don't protest too much nowadays. Then they eat breakfast, brush teeth, get dressed and off we go to catch the bus.

Maybe I should try harder to get into a routine in the evenings too, and an earlier bed time. Then, I won't have to take pictures like this again.

Covrigi

Made a dozen of these yesterday evening hoping to have a madeleine moment with the first bite. I didn't, so it was a little disappointing. They taste nothing like the pretzels (or is it cracknels) at home which are baked in big brick ovens, but all in all they were quite satisfying (all gone by now).

(Ingredients: one egg, 100ml lukewarm water, 2 teaspoons oil, 1 teaspoon salt, 250-270 g flour. No yeast.

Put everything in the bread machine on the dough program, make the pretzels and deep them in salty boiling water for 1,2 minutes, drain and bake in the oven on 225°C until golden brown).

Next I'll try another recipe with more eggs, milk, butter and yeast. Yummy!
Cause I wanna be a pretzel maker when I grow-up.

A good evening

Manage tantrum of 3 year old in the shop. Checked.

Make house for Hello Kitty out of a shoebox. Checked.

Get Andrei to read out loud in finnish to earn his TV time. Checked.

Let the kids watch Franklin for 25 minutes. Checked.

Bath kids and put them to bed. Checked.

Cook chicken soup and green haricot beans with chicken. Checked

Also being frugal in the kitchen: cook two meals out of one pack of chicken legs; clean, chop and freeze one kilo of carrots half rotten and growing roots. Checked.

Slit open my forefinger while chopping carrots a la Jamie. Checked.

1,2 and 3

This little girl is getting sweeter by the day. Mind you, she is as stubborn as ever, but three is a great age when it comes to playing. She can play by herself for hours. She has a plan and carries it on. And it can be quite elaborate. Here she is playing in her favorite spot on the one square meter of free floor right at the entrance in the kitchen:


In case you are wondering why all the animals are lined up while the farmer is in the pen, take a closer look:


Here we have a birthday party: the farmer is the birthday girl, the animals are the children invited to the party, the bale of hay is the birthday cake with candles and everything. And she sang "Happy birthday to you" for the birthday girl.

In the corner of the first photo you can see the head of one of her babies. She's got three of them. I told her I'm jealous I only have two. She is a fussy mama, dressing and undressing the babies, kissing their booboos, diapering them and most of all reading to them when they go to sleep. She is in love with Peppi Longstockings (books and movie) and I'm in love with Lauren Child's illustrations of Pippi.



"Ana, what are the names of your babies?"
"They are called: One, Two and Three"

Weekending...

We've had a lovely weekend. Andrei has slept for 14 hours, from 6 p.m. on Saturday until 8 a.m. on Sunday. We had pancakes for breakfast:



We've made up a new reading nook:



Took decadent bubble baths in the afternoon:




And played, played and played:



As for today, I made Ham and potato creamy soup. Delicious and very filling with cheese and karelian pie:

Go to bed!!!!

This weekend two days, two different ways. Both nights went to bed way too late (like 2 a.m.). Saturday morning had to wake up with the kids who on a week day have to be dragged out of beds at 8, but on weekends won't sleep later then 7. Today I refused to wake up so V. obliged and got up with them. He fed them and played with them while I continued to sleep. Mind you, they were so loud that I was dreaming our house was full of people and kids and pets and don't ask how the kitchen looked, but it was good that I could sleep until half past ten. Woke up groggy with a headache but still I was a different person.

Yesterday I was pissed off all the time without a specific reason, short tempered, yelling a lot, badly handling everything, from kids to cleaning and cooking. Today I've cooked, cleaned the house, played with kids (a little), prepared parcels for the shop, did two loads of laundry, and had patience for things that would have made me mad yesterday. Like Ana wanted ice cream before lunch, took it from the freezer, and would not put it back. And when I took it away from her she went ballistic and smashed her plate to the floor into pieces. So for the first time I took her into the corner for a time-out, and to my surprise she understood and stayed there crying for a while, then we talked about what happened, she calmed down, came to the table and ate nicely. Who would have thought?

Now could someone please force me go to bed no later then 10:30 p.m. so my kids would have a nice mom tomorrow?

Father's day

We have prepared a little surprise for father's day at the low budget end. I fell in love with the silhouettes ever since I've first seen them on Molly's blog. After that I've noticed them here and there on the web, NieNie makes her children's every year and hangs them on the entrance hall, Lu made wonderful ones last year, but I've never made time to try it. Until now. And I have to thank Lu for that. She decided to make stencils on a T-shirt with her boys' silhouettes this year. I have considered the idea also but in the end I made the simple paper ones. I've used Molly's method: take pictures, upload them on the computer, crop and adjust the size of the pictures to fit the frames, trace the contours with a soft pencil on baking paper, then cut with a scalpel both through the baking paper and the black paper, put it in the frame with white background et voila!

The background doesn't match the matting, I'm gonna have to change that later. The CD is also part of the present. I don't know much about Michael Nyman's music except that I love the soundtrack of Jane Campion's "The Piano" (as well as the whole movie). This CD is not exactly what I hoped but I think I'll grow to like it. Hopefully V will like it too and will not read this tonight to spoil the surprise.

So making the silhouettes was easy and it was fun for the kids. They didn't really help much but they enjoyed watching. I mean, there was playing and bickering and even screaming going on next to me while I was working, at some point I've lost my nerve and went to the other room because "I can't do ONE thing with you guys!!!", which has upset terribly Andrei. He started crying and gave me a heartbreaking "Mommy, you are mean FOR us", which woke me up. I've apologized to them, hugged them, told them I was sorry and I shouldn't have said such a thing, and "Let's try to work together!". All was well after that. They were excited to see how their form appeared from the black paper, and can't wait to give the present to daddy.

Here are the pictures I've used:

I think Ana's profile is a bit too small but I wanted to have her ponytail in the picture. Our frames are quite small, they hold 9x16 cm pictures without matting, but with bigger frames it would be even easier to cut the silhouettes.

Now will have to pack everything and wait till Sunday. Happy father's day to everyone!

The up-date for last week: Ana has had chickenpox. We've been together at home and she was a trouper. Barely had any fever, playing happily, we've been cooking together, painting together (so I've had my share of fun). On Wednesday I had to go to work so she had fun with daddy.

That's her doll's dummy in her mouth. We've thrown her own away more than one year ago and she still misses it.

And so, coming to this week's news, daddy is traveling abroad and we are on our own. This is the first time since before Ana was born that I'm alone with the kids for such a long time. I am anxious to see how we'll do. Piece of cake ! I'll have to

-feed kids in the morning

-take the kids to school/ day care by bus/bike

-prepare parcels for the shop and take them to post office (bus/bike)

- work from home until 4 p.m. (meanwhile tidy -up the house, start first washing, unload machine, start second load )

-pick-up the kids from afternoon club/ daycare (again bus/bike)

-cook dinner

-feed kids

-do homework with Andrei

-keep kids happy (draw, read, play, cook, watch TV)

-bath kids (keep them from killing each over over GoGo's or something else)

-put kids to bed (start at 7:30 so they would sleep at 9:30)

-clean up the " remains of the day"

-hang laundry, iron the dried stuff, load washing machine for next day

-prepare parcels for the shop

-finally go to bed

-wash, rinse and repeat.

Also tomorrow Andrei's friend will come with us in the morning and afternoon to and from school, tomorrow evening they go together to this club where they build cool mini models for cars and planes and ships, and on Wednesday Andrei has soccer practice. And a million other little things, like preparing a surprize for father's day.

And have I mentioned the laundry? We'll go to the library one evening, we'll have friends visiting us and try to make the best of the situation.

Also, let's not forget the laundry!

Yes, we'll be fine!

Wednesday, Nov 4th

It seems I can't keep- up with writing AND posting in time. The last two days have been chaos. The kids were ill so they have been at home with me. Andrei has lung infection AGAIN and he is taking Amoxicilin , Ana is mostly OK , but poor souls I had to drag them with me to run my errands walking, changing buses, cycling. It was very hard on Andrei, but they were both cheered up with a little Kinder chocolate egg. There's nothing like a little bribing to get you out of trouble.

Autumn holiday

This is a long overdue post. I've been trying to post it for three days already so it is a bit outdated, but since it is finally done I'll post it anyway.

We've had a veeery loong weekend. Andrei was at home on holiday on Thursday and Friday, so I decided to keep Ana at home too. I was envisioning all kinds of instructive, creative and fun activities for the three of us. I was going to be a stay at home mom for those four days with a big plan for playing, learning and cooking with kids. But all these good intentions went out the window when I decided I could also tackle the laundry, here and there, in the mean time. I guess you could say in the end that I have chosen the laundry over the kids. How lame am I? And it is a battle I keep losing. No, not just a battle, a war. The laundry always wins.

But we killed the boredom of four days at home with some good ol' jumping on the sofa cushions,

some cooking,



and some secret messages decoding as part of an imaginary game Andrei and I are playing. It is a little bit of story telling, a little bit of dreaming while learning on the way. In the game I am Donald Duck and he is a little hamster (his idea) living in my pocket. Together, we are on an epic journey with lots of challenges and obstacles that can be overcome by solving different math problems or deciphering messages encoded with the Bionicle alphabet or a simple Cesar code.

We have now completed the first level of the game and go to level two although Andrei seems to lose interest. I have to come up with some new stuff. Any suggestion?

***********************************************
Last night I went to bed at 1 a.m. and today I had to travel to work (two hours commute), so woke up at 5:30. But around 4 a.m. Ana woke-up crying so we set together in the Poang and rocked until she went back to sleep. This is something very dear to me. Ever since I was pregnant with her I've wanted a rocking chair for the two of us. We didn't get one, but Poang does a decent job. Ana and I have spent many hours in it rocking. And last night as I was holding her, tired, knowing I woud have to get-up for real in less than an hour, I thought: she is almost three, she can dress herself, eat by herself, knows exactly what she wants and gets it, but she is still my baby.

"Art" project for a two year old and her mommy...

Here is a little exercise we made inspired by Kathy Barbro from art projects for kids.
We used watercolors, masking tape and a black felt-pen. I've made a border out of the masking tape, then I've cut the buildings and taped them randomly on the paper. I could have done a better job at this but didn't think it through. I was just trying to keep Ana busy while doing the real thing (winter birch trees) with Andrei. In the end the real thing didn't come out as planed. Andrei insisted he'd paint the bark cracks in electric green just because he has to put this green on everything (we, bad parents that we are, didn't paint his room green). Anyway, I let him do what he wanted and helped Ana put her choice of colors with a sponge on her paper. Than I let it dry, peeled the masking tape off, draw the buildings with a black pen, and here's what we've got:

This is the original picture scanned, which I have then opened in Gimp and started playing with:

• brighten-up and enhance colors

• oilify and add supernova effects in the up-right corner

• erase little color spots from the buildings

The result is quite neat I think. Now the original lies into little pieces in the waste paper basket (Ana had fun with the scissors). Good that I have saved the files.

How to eat breakfast on weekend...

Picnic on the living room floor...

Snuggled in comforters on the sofa...

On ironing and other important stuff

 

I used to love ironing. Before I had kids or even when Andrei was little it was one of my all times favorite housework. Things started to change little by little as I had less and less time to do it. Then I started procrastinating about it and there you have it, now it ‘s a burden.

But wait! I’ve just come-up with a new routine.  It involves a number of steps and some preparing events:

1. Wait until your husband has a Swedish class in the evening, your son has football practice and you have a pounding headache.
   
2. You will have to leave work early, pick up your son from the afterschool club, pick up your daughter from the daycare and take them to the football practice thing.
   
3. Negotiate on the way with your son that if he doesn’t want to go to the training session you could all just go home but there will be no TV or Play Station that evening. He will try to bargain with you for an extra hour of PS2 playing if he goes to football but don’t give in.
   
4. The weather should be freezing for this time of the year (late September) so all of you will not be dressed well enough for one hour outside with no sun to warm you up. You will be pacing up and down trying to stay alive while he is training.
   
5. Then you will hurry to the bus stop but the bus will be just passing by as you are crossing the street. Another 20 min of waiting.
   
6. You will get home finally but your head is ready to explode. The kids are happily playing in the tub while you fix some 5min meal for them.
   
7. You feed them, put them to bed, fall asleep with Ana and move to your own bed later when your husband gets home. So you go to sleep at HALF PAST NINE PM! Has that ever happened in the last seven years?
   
8. You wake up at 5:15 and debate whether to go back to sleep or get up and start the day. You’ve read many a time about the sleeping cycle and the chances that you will wake up all groggy when the alarm clock goes are quite big given that it is set to 6.
   
9. So you get up and attack the Everest of clean clothes waiting for ironing. It means about 5 washing loads. At that point there will be no clean pants and T-shirts for the kids in their closets, so you start rummaging through the pile looking for them. Then you get some gray cells to start working and sort up all the clothes by type and owner.
10.  Set up the ironing board in the kitchen (it's the only relatively clean room in the house and the big table perfect for piling ironed clothes) and get to business. Take all of Andrei’s pants to the kitchen and iron them, take all his T’s and iron them, take all of Ana’s pants and iron them, take all her T’s and iron them… You get the point.

The thing is if you’ve sorted them like said before you will iron them very fast (1min per item -Is it fast or not?), you won’t have to mix operations ironing-sorting, ironing-sorting, and in the end you will have the piles ready to go to their closets with ALL their clean clothes. You won’t have to wonder 2 days later where are the red pants from this red T-shirt that Ana insists on wearing today.

So this is the big discovery. Or you could just buy a tumble dryer and forget about ironing all together. That’s my plan B.