Some days seem like they could just be crossed off the calendar. Bad night, monday morning, dull weather, screwed up lunch, a constantly complaining baby…In order to make this day work, I used a long afternoon nap of the little one to make salted caramel and mini-scones (inspired by Reisefeder). Just what the doctor ordered 🙂
The funny thing about a blog: on some days, there is absolutely nothing happening whereas on other days, you have so many ideas what you should write about that you can’t decide which one to take.
I could write another comment about the weather (there was sunshine yesterday!! So nice!! We saw another cleaning car on the street – it drove by for at least six times just to ensure that also the last bit of gravel disappeared. I bet the driver is frustrated to see that it snowed over night…). I could also write about the absolute lovely day we spent at our friend’s place yesterday (Sushi! Pie! Great company for the little one! Great company for us! 45 minutes where both children slept and we played Carcassonne! Sauna!…). I could write about our night and how the little one decided to cry from 4am to 6am…
Instead I will write about some smooth persuasion going on here.
It is based on a fundamental difference between Karsten and myself: I am someone who thinks twice (or sometimes three times) whether I need to buy something or not. Often, that results in the fact that I don’t buy at all. My husband, on the other side, is quite a consumer. Although he can live under very spartan circumstances, he often feels the urgent need to own stuff. To own stuff that others (me) might not consider a priority.
As a teenager, he felt the urgent need to buy an e-guitar. Without being able to play it. Or the weight bench he bought as a 15-year old. Used it twice and then sold it to a friend. When his parents were gone for a weekend, he decided to surprise them with a terrarium. He bought the wooden plate for the base – about 2 square meters). His parents now use it as additional table when they invite guests. When we wanted to buy a board game two years ago, he got tempted and bought seven instead of one. He is prone to bogof (buy one get one free). When I send him to the supermarket, I am always a little bit scared of the things he will buy in addition to my shopping list. Do you know Loriot’s “Pappa Ante Portas”? The husband goes shopping and comes back with 150 glasses of mustard because that way the price per glass was cheaper. That’s Karsten. Sometimes when I am gone for one or two days, he would use the opportunity, buy 10 dvds at once and sneak them into the shelf, believing that I won’t notice it. And I won’t even get started with the Absinth spoons that he absolutely HAD to buy, although we don’t drink Absinth (“It seemed like a good idea at that time”).
It might sound like we have a lot of money to spend. We really don’t!
Right now, he is trying to persuade me of another thing. But he is doing it a bit more subtle since he knows that I am normally not pleased about the things he buys. His subtle persuasion goes like this:
“Darling? You know what tradition I really like us to start when we are back in Switzerland? I would like us to have a proper Sunday breakfast every week. All three of us. As a family! We’ll just take the time, sit around the table together and have a nice start of the day. You can drink a nice cup of coffee and read the news. Wouldn’t that be nice? (note: here I get suspicious, at the latest!). And you know what would go really well with the breakfast? (aha, here it comes…) A nice, fresh-made smoothie! It’s very healthy too, lot’s of vitamins and so on! And it tastes delicious!!”
Baseline: we absolutely need a smoothie-maker. Ab-so-lu-tely! He is not sure how we survived that long without a Sunday smoothie! It’s a miracle!
He does have a point though: the last times when we visited our friends, they served us really delicious fresh smoothies (thanks, Cécile and Nicolà s!). BUT: Karsten was mildly surprised when he found out that they prepare them with just an electric blender and nothing more fancy. Well, maybe his persuasion works this time. After all, it is Sunday today and a smoothie sounds like the right thing to drink right now 🙂
As you might have noticed in my last entries, I am becoming a bit frustrated with the weather in Turku. This is not how Finnish winter is supposed to be. When we arrived, we had freezing temperatures, sunshine, ice crystals and no wind. Actually really beautiful once you get used to the cold and to dressing the baby like a Michelin figure. That’s a good winter! That’s how it is supposed to be! But after two weeks, the weather changed. It got warmer, which was nice at first, but with that came the melting snow (and every morning new snow that could then melt during the day again), mist, wind and grey clouds. And that’s basically how it has been for the last five weeks. Grey and dull… every single day. With one or two small exceptions for about 3 hours. I am very tempted to snaffle some of the little one’s vitamin D drops!
Apparently, the Finns have given up hoping for a real winter too. During the last days, the streets were cleared from all the gravel which was quite impressive. I wasn’t always able to figure out what the cars were doing, but it involved a lot of noise and dust. And when I now go for a walk with the little one, there is no more clac clac clac clac clac clac clac anymore, but the stroller rolls almost silently.
So, dear weather god, since the streets are clear and the Finns are hoping for spring, you probably don’t need to send tons of snow again. But how about a little sunshine? Please?Â
And for the record: the two days of bright blue sky and sunshine didn’t happen…it is as grey and miserable as it has been for the last month.
This evening when Karsten came home from work, I was busy doing three things at the same time: cooking, doing the dishes and putting away the clean ones. Karsten lay down to relax a bit. I complained that, in the whole flat, he kind of chose the worst spot he could find.
He still doesn’t know what I am talking about…
Yesterday, the weather forecast promised a little (little, little) bit of sunshine today. So a friend of us invited me for a walk along the seaside at Naantali, about 15 km away from Turku, since we are all a bit desperate for sunshine right now.
Well….there was no sunshine. I am not sure about what to think about weather forecasts by now. This morning, it said “partly cloudy”. All I could see was a thick, grey layer of clouds, no parts whatsoever. Two forecasts promise bright blue sky and sunshine for the next two days. Somehow I doubt that, but we’ll see.
Anyway, Naantali is worth a visit. It is a nice little town with an old convict church. The main attraction during the summer time is the Moomin World and I can imagine the streets being terribly packed with tourists then. At this time of the year, however, the streets are empty and the Moomin World is closed (and so are the cafĂ©s). It was grey and windy, but great anyway! The good thing about the Scandinavian houses is that even on a day like this you still have some colour in your life. And hopefully we’ll be able to visit it again before we leave, maybe with a tiny little bit of sunshine…
Again, I am joining Frische Brise with her weekly retrospect in pictures. Our week has been rather quiet since the baby activities are on pause due to the ski holidays. Also, the weather has been really shitty (excuse the language) for weeks now and it is getting a bit frustrating. On Tuesday, the sun came out for about 3 hours, but that was it. Anyhow, we tried to get the best out of it and we are about to visit some friends this afternoon. So we wish you all a nice Sunday and have a great start into the next week!
Hot chocolate on a gloomy afternoon
  In the neighbourhood
Tidying up (according to the little one)
Our improvised bath tub….(and a chance to clean the kitchen floor)
Another gloomy morning
Lunch on Saturday
Baking bread (better: Foccacia) on Sunday….since our friends just moved to a new house, we follow the German tradition and bring them some bread and salt.
Toilets are, in most Western societies, places of privacy, of tranquility, a way to shut out the world for a few minutes and let the mind wander. Or, if you are a proud owner of a smartphone, to cultivatedly check the news and your emails. A safe place to retreat.
That changes as soon as you stay at home with a baby. I have used all kinds of toilets – clean ones, dirty ones (unfortunately sometimes one doesn’t have a choice), with toilet paper, with a water bucket to splash your backside, toilets to stand on, toilets where the toilet bowl is also used as sink to wash your hands (funnily enough, that’s the common public toilet in Switzerland), tree trunks, holes in the ground above which you shower as well or simply a small hole in the corner of a family living room. I used to feel very uncomfortable if I wasn’t able to lock the toilet. But with proceeding age, you care less and less. And as soon as you have a baby, you are forced to give up even the last bit of reservation.
There are four scenarios right now which I face when I have to go to the loo. Naturally, all of them involve an open door. Otherwise you can’t see or hear what is happening and that is deeply disturbing!
Scenario 1: You just have to go to the loo very quickly. So you leave the baby in the kitchen or the living room, trusting that it won’t break anything within the next 60 seconds. As soon as you placed yourself on the toilet, you can hear a shuffling sound and small hands on the floor and you see a shadow coming closer to the bathroom. After 30 seconds, the baby looks around the corner with a big smile on its face. Because obviously you are playing hide and seek! Makes it a bit hard to concentrate, but it’s so adorable!
Scenario 2: You place the baby right in front of the open bathroom door so that you can keep an eye on it. The baby is happy and in a good mood and as it loves to watch you on the toilet, it starts laughing and applauding enthusiastically. Might bother you if you like to have some private time, but actually, it is really heartwarming. Who else would applaud you on the toilet?
Scenario 3: Again, you place the baby right in front of the open bathroom door in order to keep an eye on it. But the baby is in explorer mode and immediately starts to crawl into the bathroom. You are already sitting on the toilet, so while you stay seated you have to try your best to keep the baby away from a) the rubbish bin, b) the toilet brush, c) the washing powder and d) the shower sink, which is in this flat directly next to the toilet on the ground and can easily be removed, exposing a big, scary entry to the drain… Not an easy task, but still manageable with a little bit of practice.
Scenario 4: See scenarios 2 and 3….place the baby right in front of the open bathroom door. The baby is again in explorer mode. But this time, it doesn’t want to join you in the bathroom, but finds something even more interesting out of your sight. So it crawls away and you know exactly that it is probably taking the chance to go after one of the things you always forbid to touch (the loose internet modem installed ca 30 cms above the ground. The dirty wheels of the stroller. Your muddy shoes. Or the trash bin with the diapers). This is normally the case when you actually have to spend a little more time on the toilet. So you start shouting “Noo! Nooo! Come back! Now! Stop it!” and all you hear are little cries of joy, because for your baby “no” is a synonym of having some fun. This situation is the least restful of all. You quickly think of the good old times when your toilet was your place of retreat. And then you probably decide that, for the sake of the baby’s health (and your internet connection), it is better to postpone your need until your partner comes home.
It’s the week of Finnish ski-holidays (not that the weather is appropriate for ski-holidays, but I guess further north you might actually have a chance to do some winter sports). So there are no baby classes taking place and since the sunny period of yesterday afternoon is gone again, I needed some distraction today in order not to get cabin fever.
So, after lunch, the little one and myself went to the Turku Art Museum. Fortunately, Finnish museums are real fun, even with small babies, so it didn’t surprise me that I was greeted by a very friendly and supportive guy who showed me around, showed me the elevators, assured me that I can take the stroller into the exhibitions, showed me the baby chair in the café, opened the doors for me and so on.
The exhibition itself was interesting but not overwhelming. There is a nice temporary exhibition about Emil Wikström, a Finnish sculptor. Three or four Finnish paintings which I actually liked (I am a bit conservative here: while I appreciate modern art, I actually prefer looking at older paintings). And a whole lot of scary paintings which looked like some of my worst nightmares had come true. A video of an old man with wide open, almost blank eyes who was frantically jumping up and down to classical music. A big red picture with a photo of a snarling doberman. Snow White spiked on a sawblade. What is that supposed to mean? Are the fairy tales in danger? Does it symbolize some brutal cut between childhood and the earnest of adulthood? Or did something bad happen between Snow White and the dwarfs?
In the next room, we saw a silver banana, half-peeled, with a shiny top. Since I accidentally stumbled into an exhibition by Helen Chadwick, I know what that means….(At that time, I still thought the chocolate fountain was just a chocolate fountain).
How good that the little one is too young to understand what she is looking at.
After 20 minutes, we arrived at the ground floor again. I always feel slightly bad if I am done with exhibitions too quickly – it is as if I don’t appreciate the art. Which I do, but 20 minutes were enough. I had a delicious cinnamon bun and a hot chocolate at the café and left with a small sugar shock.
And in the end, the little one found the coolest piece of art in the cloakroom: the huge mirror with a funny little baby inside…
(Left: Winter landscape by Victor Westerholm, middle: A dog on Red Background by Jouko Lehtola, right: Mother and Child by Emil Wikström)
You know that there have been far too many grey and rainy days if…
….your daughter bursts into cries of joy seeing the sun is shining through the window
…and you start taking pictures of random motives in your neighbourhood just because it looks so much nicer with a little bit of light!
familial entropy 