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!