7/7

Children and screens are a never-ending topic.

I totally agree with the scientists who say that toddlers under the age of three shouldn't have any real screen time. We have not shown L. a single cartoon. The truth is, I would like to get rid of the tv altogether but I am yet to convince S. of the brilliance of my plan. 

On the other hand, a phone is a normal part of my everyday life and I don't want to run around, hiding it from L. all the time. The more I'd want to hide something from him, the more interested he'd be. Rather I want him to know what it is and what it's for, and so I let him hold and play with my phone occasionally. 

He hasn't managed to post anything on FB nor transfer any money but he does manage to open the camera every now and then. The results are, as you would expect, hilarious. Sometimes I have to delete ten identical pictures of his sock. Or the living room carpet. But the videos are the best. They are slightly psychedelic, and the angle - close to the floor - has something captivating in it. 

I think the best video he has taken is this one. And with this amazing piece of cinematographic art, I am done with my week of blogging. :)

 

6/7

After five days of blogging the inevitable has happened and I have completely run out of ideas and topics. I was already heading to bed, having given up, but something in me urged me to get up again and stick to my promise.

Lucas has been in bed for a while, so I have had a nice cup of tea while reading Toni Morrison's Home. The food scraps from under L's kitchen chair have been wiped away but I have no energy to wash up all the dishes tonight. S. is out jogging, preparing for his first marathon next summer. My little brother sent me a video clip from the jazz concert he went to tonight, and we have had a discussion about what kind of jazz we like or dislike. The weather is wet and unpleasant, and it is depressingly dark in this part of the world. Despite it, I still managed to go out for a brisk walk when S. came home from work. 8000 steps today, claims my app; not bad at all. All is quiet and ordinary, and I am surrounded with best people in the whole world.   

That's it. That's the post.

5/7

A couple of words about my experience with the Swedish parental leave system.

In a nutshell, Sweden is one of the best places in the world to have children. The maternity / paternity leave is long and flexible, and staying home for several years is a societal standard rather than an exception.

So, basically, you get 480 paid days of parental leave (some of these days need to be taken out by the father - so it's not just the mother who gets to stay home with the child). You can take these days out in one big block, or you can stretch and divide them up in all sorts of ways if you want to work or study part-time. The latest change in Swedish laws lets even grandparents take out paid parental leave days (isn't that cool?). But the coolest thing is that you can delay taking out these days altogether until the child's 1st birthday. 

This is exactly what we decided to do. So my 480 days started ticking on 10th of November when L. turned one. Before that, well, we just lived on S's salary and savings. I liked that "experiment" for several reasons. First, because it really makes my leave a long one! But secondly, we have proven to ourselves that living on one modest salary is doable, and it is not a rocket science! In this context, I am so grateful for S. who is very responsible with money. We had no major expenses last year - we didn't travel almost at all, the car didn't break down, our teeth didn't need fixing lol. So it was just the most simple everyday expenses we had to cover and we managed to do that very well. If ever we need to survive like this again, we know it is possible.

Now that my maternity leave is paid, it almost feels like I am swimming in money! We can even afford an occasional cafe date haha!

Before L. was born I watched hundreds of reels about having a baby. I went properly down the rabbit hole, and the social media algorithms kept feeding me those videos. One of the topics that popped up all the time was breastfeeding and pumping and storing milk etc. For many women pumping is their reality and there were a lot of tips given how to do this and how to increase the milk supply and how to store milk properly. It was months after L. was born that it suddenly hit me - all these reels come from America, from a country where a lot of women go back to work two weeks after delivery. And if this is your reality, you really do need to know everything about pumping and storing milk. Uhh! Here in Scandinavia, it is hard to fathom such a life, a life where the government doesn't offer you any safety nets. Here you can just stay home. I do count my blessings.

We are trying to use every trick available in order to lengthen my maternity leave. If at all possible, I would like to be home until L. turns three. It is such a precious time for me - except for some very early and grumpy mornings I enjoy this phase in my life immensely! 

4/7 Book Business

It's been about half a year since my book was published in Estonia. 

The feedback has been lovely and warm so far. My favorite moments are those when I hear from someone whom I really didn't expect to hear from. The last two people who have contacted me and given me feedback have fallen precisely into that category. It was just last week when I got an unexpected phone call from a relative of mine. He is not a Christian but he called me to say that one of the sermons he had read recently really touched a nerve in him, and asked me where he could purchase my book for a friend of his. And about a month ago I got a message from a lady who is the general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation - we had brief contact when we were both members of the Estonian Council of Churches. I went on to become a local church pastor, she went on to, uhmmm, run the Lutheran church worldwide. She said she had picked up my book on her recent visit to Estonia and thought it was wonderful that a woman would write and publish such a book. I was so moved.  

I am completely new to publishing business so I don't really know what numbers they operate with or what is considered a success or a failure but my gut feeling tells me my book has done pretty well. Only one fifth of the books that were printed are still in stock, and I am praying and hoping that this sermon collection would find its way to many present piles under Christmas trees in December. Just the thought that it has and will reach people whom I would personally never reach makes my heart so very glad.

I also have some wonderful news - the publishing committee here in Sweden has read (the AI translation of) my book and decided that it is worth translating and publishing here, too. I am impatiently waiting for this process to set into motion now. If all goes well, I will hold a hard copy of the Swedish translation in my hand sometime next year. I can't wait!

The next (logical) big step would be finding someone who wanted to publish it in English. But here I am totally out of my depths, and I don't know exactly where to go or which doors to knock on. If you have any recommendations, I am open to them!   

3/7

I have always been a book person. I'd never felt much need to get into podcasts or movies or other forms of entertainment. But having a child changes the way one can use time, and when you are out walking for hours and hours with a sleeping baby, you simply don't read books. But this is exactly where podcasts come handy - eyes and hands are kept on the pram but ears can do a thing of their own. 

I know there are podcasts out there on every imaginable topic but I only listen to history podcasts. I don't know why. I didn't particularly love history classes in school - literature classes were always much more interesting for me. But I've grown to love history pods - the research, the stories, the depth, the generalisations, the details, the aha-moments, the drama... 

Interesting as they are, I still thought I'd be able to keep my cool and listen to them with a degree of emotional detachment. What I was not ready for was getting completely hooked on a podcast, always counting days in my head until the next episode. But this is what happened. It is not only that I like The Rest Is History but I am displaying traits of a teenage fan girl I didn't know I still had in me. I am listening to and reading every interview made with or about Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, I stalk them on Twitter, and I am always secretly glad when it is Monday or Thursday when I can unwrap the new episode like a chocolate candy. These two historians have no idea how much I, a book-deprived young mother, have enjoyed their podcast over the past year. Their show has been an intellectual lifeline for me. 

There is other good stuff around, of course. I like to listen to Empire, or Legacy, or Instant Classics, or Journey Through Time. Solid historians, well-researched topics, brilliant guest historians, good dynamics between the hosts. But nothing will ever beat The Rest Is History. It is simultaneously very serious and absolutely hilarious, heavy and light, scholarly and entertaining. The hosts are real characters, and they complement each other like in no other podcast. 

Now I'm secretly hoping that a certain Santa (wink-wink) would get me a gift for Christmas I really want to have - The Rest Is History club membership.     

I still read books. With much slower pace than before and with a lot more interruptions, but I read them. My love for reading hasn't diminished. But I will also always remember - with nostalgia and joy - the endless hours of pram pushing, with The Rest Is History blasting in my ears.

If you aren't a friend of that show yet, do give it a try. You won't regret it. 

2/7

We were in Stockholm this Saturday evening - Samuel and me, that is. Maestro H. B. had invited us to listen to his concert so we spent a wonderful hour at Konserthuset, listening to Bruckner's 9th symphony, then said hi to H. B., walked around the city, marveled at the Christmas display on the windows of the fancy NK department store, and had a lovely dinner date. The clock, of course, was ticking the whole time. 

It ended up being the longest time I have ever been away from Lucas - 6,5 hours.

I've been thinking about this quite a lot. There are so many different realities and circumstances, possibilities and needs in different families, and without a slightest criticism toward other young moms I can say that I've never felt a need to be away from my child, to have a break, to do "my" things, to breathe "my" air. A lot of it comes down to the generous maternity leave system here in Scandinavia - I can literally drag out the time and stay home with my child for a good couple of years. Breastfeeding also plays a role - it puts very concrete boundaries to the ability of being away (unless one wants to mess with pumping - which I don't). The closeness - or absence - of grandparents or other possible babysitters affects the young parents, too. But all in all, other than reading in a cafe for an hour, I have never wanted to be away. Throughout L's first year of life, my "record" of being separated from him was four hours. It happened twice - once I attended a baby shower, once I sat in the emergency unit of a local hospital with a horrible breast inflammation. 

I know other moms who have different style of life. In one family (where the mother was not able to breastfeed) the baby has been dropped at grandparents' place for a night every Saturday evening ever since the baby was a month old. There was a serious case of postnatal depression in this family so that one free evening / night has been a lifeline for them. And I am glad it has work out so well for everyone, including the toting grandparents who love messing with bottles and nappies.

If I'm away from L. for more than two hours, I start getting separation anxiety. He, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care at all haha! He has just so much fun with farfar and farmor.

We will see what the next year brings. I am happy to continue my routine - with an occasional hour here and there, writing articles in the church office or reading a book in Cafe Chocolate. 

But our historic date night in Stockholm needed to be documented:

Waiting for the concert to start

NK's Christmas display is dedicated to Pippi

A date night - what a luxury!

1/7

I have this childhood friend M. with whom we played violin together and who is my greatest role model in the world of blogging. She has a brilliant blog, and it was her who encouraged me to start mine some 15 years ago. Every now and then M. does blogging marathons, writing every day for two weeks or a month. I'm always glad when she does that but I have never dared to do the same. What if I run out of things to say by, say, day four?

I have just written and recorded the morning devotionals for the Estonian National Radio. It means seven 5-minute reflections which are Christian in their content but still aimed at the regular listener (non-believer). They ask me to do this once a year and I always say yes and start with great enthusiasm. But usually by the fifth devotional, I am staring desperately at an empty Word document and scrolling through social media to gather ideas. It is a terrible thing to run out of things to say. 

But as this blog seems to be dying quietly, I will try to pump some life into it. So, I will write something every day for the next week. Let's see how this experiment turns out. 

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When I think about what has happened lately over here, the main - earth shattering haha - news is that Lucas has turned one. What a year it has been! I don't think I've ever learned so much about life and myself in such a short period of time before. Having a child widens horizons, pushes you to emotional and physical limits, brings out the best and worst in you, and makes you look at your partner - the other parent - with new eyes. I've learnt a lot about newborns and their development, but equally much about myself. Whom I turn into when I haven't gotten more than 4 hours of sleep. How I react when an emergency happens (hint - not well). How I desperately want to hold on to the baby bubble and not come out. How much I appreciate Samuel and his calmness in the midst of a storm. How I love our daily routines. How I still wake up in the middle of a night to check if everything is well with L. and if he has a blanket on.

Five days before his birthday, L. started walking. S. had been jokingly telling him that he needed to get on his own feet before turning one, and he listened! I thought he'd need more time and get better at balancing so I wasn't expecting it to happen so soon. But one day he took a couple of shaky steps - which I dismissed as a coincidence - then slept the whole night, woke up the next morning, and was up on his feet. Now, after perfecting his skill for three weeks, he is everywhere. Everywhere. He also thinks he needs a new, more difficult challenge and has set his mind on climbing. *sigh* His new favourite thing is the little two-step IKEA kitchen stool which I've had to take away from the kitchen so that he could climb onto our guest bed. A little safer option. But he still has a nice big bruise on his forehead from this morning's climbing session. *double sigh*