The pacifier

Last Friday I set out for a ME weekend, a whole weekend in Berlin with only myself and one of the absolute best friends that a person can have. Berlin deserves its own post, now on to what happend the weekend when I was not around. Friday night Hendrik informed me that he had decided not to give the pacifier to Sophia anymore, no matter what. Of course the pacifier has been discussed at length for months, its a blessing and a curse and we have been well aware of the fact that we should get rid of it. I can admit that for me the pacifier has been a tool to calm Sophia down, make her stop crying, continue sleeping, shutting up etc. The reluctance from my side to stop giving it to her has been 'well, how will she fall back to sleep then, when she wakes up in the middle of the night' and 'how will we solve tricky public situations without it' etc. so, purely selfish reasons, altough its not like Sophia minded the pacifier, of  course not, many times she stated that she 'LOVES THE TUTT'. I strongly believe in preparation for what is to come, i.e. normally I would have told Sophia like a week in advance that on Friday we will throw away all her pacifiers, now there had been no preparation whatsoever, so not only did mamma go away but also suddenly she was faced with a life without her beloved pacifier. From a distance I started feeling so sorry for my little girl, but at the same time I was curious to see how it would go, especially the night. Well, Sophia slept through the first night, no problems, although all of Saturday was apparently a nightmare both for father and daugther. Night number two also went by without Sophia waking up and she woke up Sunday morning in an excellent mood. The two had a lovely Sunday together where the pacifier was hardly mentioned. I came home Sunday night and thought 'oh, well now the spell is broken, Sophia will surely wake up tonight and ask for the damn thing', but no, she slept through the night again. Monday morning when Sophia sees me for the first time since Thursday night she is happy BUT asks almost immediately for the pacifier, naturally there is some crying when she realizes that I too, will not give it to her, but she calms down and we move on. Next big test was how Sophia would be able to nap at the daycare without the pacifier, that too was no problem, she fell asleep faster than she usually does.When I picked her up later that same afternoon she also asked for it, but just to test me, just a quick little, 'tutten?', and then acceptance. We are now on day six without the pacifier and its safe to say that whatever happens we will stick to our plan, no more pacifier. She is having major withdrawal syndromes, they appear to be tantrums but are worse than tantrums, but these too will pass I am sure. I am very happy about the fact that it was Hendrik who initiated this strategic move, so thank you, thank you for that! Of course now I find pacifiers in all sorts of places, snapping them before Sophia spots them :-) An era is over, my baby is not a baby anymore, but a determined and strong minded little girl. The next strategic move will be stop with the diapers.

Earning money

From quite an early age I realized that by earning my own money I could buy the things I wanted, without having to ask for them from my parents, with the very strong likelihood that they would say no. I cannot remember how old I was when I started receiving a weekly allowance "veckopeng" but perhaps I was around 7. At home my brothers and I had various chores that belonged to us but there were also chores that could be carried out and a small amount could be earned. For example, clearing off the table and cleaning the kitchen after dinner, could earn you about 0,50 euro cents (5 Finnish Marks). I have a very strong memory of a pair of golden small earrings that I wanted to have, but they cost around 70 FMK, so I cleared the table and did various other chores for weeks, the amount earned per time written out on a piece of paper on the fridge, eventually it summed up to 70 FMK and I could buy my earrings. I remember the earrings as well as the great feeling of having earned my own money to buy them. I also went job hunting at a very early age, actually I must have been around 6 or 7 when I tried my luck for the first time. At the time I was hanging out with three sisters that lived in the same building as we did, their father owned a music store and the three sisters cleaned the store in the evenings and this way they could earn some extra pocket money. Inspired by this I walked into our local candy store in Jakobstad (Holländers) and asked the sales assistant if I could start cleaning the candy store in the evenings (my choice of location was not a spontaneous one, after all it was, and still is today, a candy store)...The lady in question stared at me and said 'come again', I suddenly realized that this might not be appropriate and suddenly felt ashamed of my question so I ran out of the candy store and did not dare to go back there for a very long time. Naturally the lady was surprised by my question, its not every day that a 7 year old walks in to ask if she can have a job, and definitely not a cleaning job...but I did. I don't think I told my parents about this until years later and they were, to say the least, somewhat surprised. Around the same age I told my father that I would like to have a summer job and that maybe I should open up my own kiosk in my playing cottage on the island where my parents have their summer house. Impressed by my entrepreneurial spirit, I guess, my dad agreed and together we went to the wholesaler and bought candy and lemonade. By hand I wrote my own marketing leaflets that I handed out to the other summerhouses on the island, we still have one and its hilarious to read today, I would share it if I had it here with me. By the end of the summer my father and I concluded that I had made a loss but I still claimed that I had the right to a salary, after all I had worked in my kiosk all summer. My father explained to me the basics of profit and loss, but nice as he is I kind of got a small bonus anyway. When I was 16 I had developed such an affection for clothes and shopping that I just had to get somekind of job next to school. my weekly allowance did not cover my wants. At the time we had a cleaning lady who cleaned our house and I told my mother to let her go and let me do the weekly cleaning instead, 3 hours every Friday after school I would clean the house. In addition to cleaning our house I also asked my dad to get rid of the cleaning lady who cleaned his office and took over that. I cleaned his office three times per week + then cleaning our house. My earnings were good for a 16 year old :-). I bought my own television set and stereo and went to Greece with friends, all paid for by myself. After awhile I realized that I needed a back-up for when I could not clean my father's office and my grandmother who was still very energetic by then said that she would not mind having some extra money so she said 'I'll be your back up'. I thought this was pretty cool and decided to call us 'Städmaffian' (the cleaning mafia). I asked my father to sponsor two sweatshirts where 'Städmaffian' was printed on the back and on the front our names. At the entrance of my father's office I put up a sign where it said 'The cleaning mafia cleans here'. I also had various summer jobs, amongst other's working as a guide at 'Jacbostads Wapen' (a ship relic build in the same way that boats were built hundreds of years ago). I truly enjoyed being in control of my own finances. After high school (Gymnasium) I wanted to take a year off and work, to get some work experience, I was to become a business women :-) A family acquintance had connections to the Chamber of Commerce in Lyon and I managed to get myself an internship there. I spoke no French whatsoever but decided that Lyon and France would be a great place to live and work for a while. I did not earn much money there, but instead I earned life experience that money cannot buy. When I started studying in Maastricht it did not take long before a good friend asked me if I wanted to start waitressing at Château Neercanne, an old castle made into an expensive restaurant. It was hard work but I truly enjoyed it because the colleagues and the setting were so nice. I especially enjoyed seeing all the beautiful gowns that some of the women wore to the various parties, sometimes if felt like standing inside of a fashion magazine. I used to love coming home at maybe 04.00/05.00 on a Saturday or Sunday morning aching all over my body, because I had been walking and carrying stuff for sometimes 10 hours in a row, feeling that I had worked and earned money, instead of coming home drunk and having spent money. YEEEES I did that too plenty of times, but it felt better coming home sober having earned money :-) During my student years in Maastricht I also worked two times at the Formula 1 races, once in Japan and once in Belgium. In Japan I got to work in the VIP tent of McLaren the year that Mika Häkkinen became world champion, that was a very cool experience. Although I have to say that working for a Viennese company was slavery, wow we worked hard, blisters on feet and hands, working hours were mad and the brakes few. Still, it was an experience that I would choose again if I had the choice and the money was good. I also did some promotional work for Bison tobacco, the kind that you roll yourself and together with my friend Veva we drove around in various German cities going to bars with UGLY promotion clothes, needless to say I became quite good at rolling my own cigarettes :-) During my University years I did not have any summer jobs, I felt that since I worked throughout the year next to my studies, I could spend my short summer holidays relaxing, so I did. In 2002 I started working full time as a professional and have been since then, with the exception of my maternity leave with Sophia. Sometimes people say 'oh if one only did not have to work and could be on holiday all the time' but I truly think that we would not function well and would loose our purpose in life if we would not have a job. If we would be on holiday all the time it would not feel special anymore. One can absolutely argue about how much one should work and where to draw the line, and with what one should work to feel satisfied, but that is a different topic altogether.

A normal day in my life

I wake up bright and early, well forget the bright, just early, 6.10 to be exact. Then I try to sneak off to the bathroom without waking up Sophia IF she is in our bed. If I am lucky I can shower and get dressed until Sophia walks into the bathroom. If its a good day Sophia agrees to wear the clothes that I have chosen for her, if its a bad day we have to choose a new set (this can be very frustrating both for mother and daughter, if daddy is in charge he just lets her pick whatever she wants, but she might look like a catastrophe too). After brushing the teeth, which also is a bit of a challenge, we are faced with the next pitfall, going down the stairs. Sometimes Sophia agrees to walk hand in hand with me BUT sometimes she demands that Teddy "walks" between us, you can imagine how safe that is, so I sneakily try to hold her shoulder so that I hold something in case she slips. Coming downstairs Sophia will want to put on her outdoor clothes herself and also here she might have opinions on the various layers of clothes that I introduce. Once dressed I "insert" Sophia into her stroller together with Teddy and a water bottle and can concentrate on gathering my stuff and getting dressed. On a good day we are out of the house at 07.15. By 07.35 we are usually at daycare where I undress her various layers and kiss her goodbye, off to work I go. Again, on a good day I am in the office by 07.50, I make myself a quick breakfast and sit down and start going through e-mails. I love the mornings in the office, the mornings when I am by myself, my colleagues don't come in until 8.30 so I usually have 30 minutes to just focus. By 15.30 I head out of the office to go and pick up Sophia. Before picking up Sophia I might run by the supermarket to get some groceries. The best scenario is when I arrive to daycare and they are just heading out for the park, this means that Sophia will be dressed and ready to "hop" into the car. Other scenarios usually take more time because I have to dress Sophia and she might not be very cooperative OR she is playing in the park and does not want to come home quite yet. Once we get to the car and Sophia is all buckled up and her DVD is playing its usually an easy ride home, we both unwind. Depending on what she is watching it can be a bit of a challenge to get her out of the car, but also this is very doable, sometimes with the help of a small bribe such as a xylitol tablet...Once in, unless she decides to stay outside and play, we both head upstairs to change to "fitness clothes", she has her set, I have mine. Before we head downstairs again I usually put on the laundry machine. I fix her some carrot sticks and water and open her toy drawers and start my 30 minute Tracy Anderson workout, during which she entertains herself, regularly checking if I am ready with my workout yet :-) Sometimes she rolls out another workout mat and does some leg lifting next to me, but this is very rare and very short. After the workout session she usually wants to watch Pippi on my laptop as I prepare her food, which is half prepared by the time my workout finishes since I put potatoes to boil or pasta, whilst I do the workout. We have our kitchen moment and she has her dinner. After dinner I bike 45 minutes and Sophia usually watches a DVD and plays with her panda, jumping off the sofa etc. We chat and I read the day's newspaper and various other magazines. After the biking session we head upstairs, I take a shower and Sophia takes a bath. On a good day, Hendrik comes home whilst I am biking and he can play with Sophia and make her a bath. Around 19.45 pj's are on, välling is being drunk and she has picked out two bedtime stories. We all cuddled up in our bed and read and talk about the day. 20.00 brushing of teeth, which again can be challenging but lately has gone rather well. 20.10 I lift her in to her bed, tuck her in, say a prayer and tell her good night. She has many opinions on how this procedure should be and one sidestep and we might find ourselves in the land of impossible, negotiating with a 2 year old, when all you really want to do is sit down and do NOTHING (which never happens). But again, on a good day, she tells me to stay outside and NOT go downstairs, so I fold laundry, check e-mails etc. and eventually go downstairs. By now its time for food for me and Hendrik, food and e-mails and other household related matters. My goal is to be in bed by 22.00, to be a really good person I need 8 hours of sleep, I usually get 7 hours so I am not at my full potential every day :-) If I am lucky and its a good day I also have time to talk to Hendrik before I fall asleep. I sometimes wonder what on earth I did pre-Sophia, especially since I went to the gym in the morning, before work, so I had a big part of the afternoon and the evening to?! Now, when you have two, three, four, five, six etc. children your day must be so full of events that you miss half of them?!?

Have a nice weekend!!!

Our house(s)

The MEGA happiness about our absolutely lovely new townhouse apartment has been replaced by a MEGA fear that we will not get our house sold. I am pushing our real estate agent to the maximum and am wondering what more can we do, serve cocktails and barbecue on the terrace during the viewing, for the viewers of course? Its madness to do what we have done, but when you find THE apartment you cannot wait.....or? I just hope we will look back at this one day when we are old and grey and say 'thankfully we took the risk'. I am not a risk taker, far from, so this whole thing also surprised me. I guess that when you have had enough of something, like really enough, then you are suddenly willing to take a risk to get away from it. Its nerve wracking, I am really trying to look at it optimistically, I mean there must be someone out there looking for exactly this kind of house, toch?!

I take it back

A couple of posts back I claimed that Sophia's pappa is fearless, the other day I realized that this is not true. Hendrik is fearless when it comes to dark alleys, sleeping with windows/doors open, traveling to third world countries on his own, going out at sea in stormy weather, driving in crazy traffic etc. However, he is not fearless when it comes to horses, pigs, i.e. normal farm animals. I almost peed in my pants of laughter the other day as we were visiting a farm with Sophia, Hendrik, my father and myself. Hendrik did not dare approach the horses and when he saw the pigs he also moved away from the fence, so I realized that there are some things that he fears that I don't. I did not grow up on a farm but I have probably frequented farms much more than Hendrik who grew up in big cities, born in Rio de Janeiro. We went to the farm because Sophia has been talking about horseback riding ever since she started watching Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking) and I asked her if she wanted to go riding in Lapland, she said yes. We came, we saw the pony, paid the fare, stood in the queue and tried to watch the other animals (although Hendrik was scared). When it was finally Sophia's turn she agreed to the helmet and she was almost sitting on the back of the little pony when she said 'nej, bort' ('no, off'), I asked her if she was absolutely sure that she did not want to ride and yes she was absolutely sure. She said that she was a little 'blyg' ('shy') and that she would try again this summer. So that was that, but at least she tried and she now knows what it is to sit on a horse back. As far as her father is concerned, I don't know, I guess he also learned a thing or two :-)

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Holiday

For some reason this Easter holiday came exactly 'on time' and at a 'bad time'. Work wise both Hendrik and I are both extremely busy (Hendrik ALWAYS is) and also the 'to do list' at home is growing, but I guess that is when a holiday really is needed. Also my mind is not as sharp as it usually is (yeeeees) and this I "blame" entirely on the pregnancy, pregnant and breastfeeding women become somewhat "dumb", its hormonal, i.e. I forget things, do things the wrong way and some things I simply just don't get....Since I have been through this before I know that it is something that will pass, but its scary :-) That said I will now get dressed, dress my daughter and then head out for the slopes, check out Ylläs 2012. I wish all of you a happy easter, remember why it is celebrated and embrace the ones you have around you. Be nice and maybe the easter bunny will find you.