Mandarin man

Lucas was busy organising his mandarin today. I took a few pictures from behind and then he asked me to take one with his face too :) He was proud of the way he organised the pieces before he ate them!

P.S. More recent pictures in my Finnish blog!

Birthday party and Sunday School

This Sunday we were busy with things to do. First there was my friend's daughter's birthday. The kids love a good birthday party and were so excited to go. The little princess (now 5 years old) got lovely pressies and the party was really nice too. We gave her a domino game with little dalmatians instead of domino cards.


Luana has just found her little gift bag during the treasure hunt in the garden. The kids thought it was so exciting to look for hidden things.

From the party we went straight to church and had our "Brazilian" Sunday School. I told the kids a little bit about Brazil, gave them some fresh and dried fruits and some guava juice and we also talked about friendship and how God unites us even when we're miles apart.

My Sunday School kids from Brazil had drewn pictures to send to Finland and I put them all up on the wall together with the Brazilian flag. The Finnish kids thought it was interesting to see the pictures and a letter that one of the girls had written in Portuguese. They then drew pictures to send to Brazil. I'll send them to my husband who will take them to my Sunday School class there.

Finally weekend

This week was somehow too much. I guess I hadn't realised how tiring working itself could be and I did all sorts of other things after work. I came home after the kids had gone to bed every day this week and I wasn't happy with that. I guess the lesson has been learned: no activities after work unless absolutely necessary.

I really missed spending time with my babes. Even if we quarrel and argue often I still wanted to be at home to give them a bath, read, eat together, draw, put them to bed etc. Today I finally came home straight from work and spent the evening with the children.

They had had a fab day today with my mum. There was a spring festival of some sort nearby and they had spent five hours (really, FIVE) just walking around, participating in different activities and playing. There was an obstacle course for kids, painting, pony riding, music and dancing and they also got to plant flowers. I was so sorry I had to work and I missed all the fun but I'm also really happy my mum had the energy to go with them (for FIVE hours).

This weekend there's my favourite festival ever taking place in Helsinki. It's a multicultural festival where lots of NGOs display their work, different organisations sell food from all corners of the world, artisans sell their work and Finnish and foreign artists play music - all free of charge. It's just that I'm absolutely too tired to participate! :( It's ok though, I really just wanted to stay at home with the kids and spend some time with them so I won't complain.

Tomorrow we're off to a little girl's birthday party and after that to church to teach Sunday School. Our topic is Brazil and I'm planning to feed the kids all sorts of exotic fruits. I'll also let them do some colouring using the Smilinguido figures.

On a rainy day

One day it was rainy and I had the kids play in the balcony with the sticks and things we brought back from the forest the other day. I thought they would have loved the idea but in fact only Luana had more interest in playing at that moment. Lucas just wanted to get inside...

Picnic by the sea

The kids (and particularly Luana) were quite upset because everyone else from the preschool got to go on a walk in the forest and they didn't. It didn't help that I told them there'll be another walk in the forest next Monday when they'll start preschool. It seemed like such a big deal to them that I decided we'd go on a picnic by ourselves. Tuesday I only started work after lunch so we had the whole morning to ourselves. We set off with backpacks filled with picnic stuff.


We saw some lovely flowers and I even got pretty pictures of them thanks to the macro :) The children liked especially the white one, which in Finnish is called metsätähti, star of the forest.

We also collected plenty of all kinds of sticks for crafting purposes as well as some other things we found on the ground.

Despite the bitter wind we managed to find a nice place between some rocks close to the sea and had our picnic there. The kids just loved it and it was a wonderful and relaxing morning for me too. We're so lucky that my mum lives so close to the sea. Usually it's only the really wealthy people who live by the sea but where my mum lives it just happens that they have plenty of "normal" people's (as in regular income people) houses and flats quite close to the sea.

I'm planning to really enjoy the mornings when I'm on evening shift and do something with the kids. Tomorrow we'll bake something and go to the playground before lunch.

Still here

We don't even do anything that special but these days have been quite tiring with the kids. I think cultural shock is kicking in especially with Lucas. He's really irritated and just whines and fights about e v e r y t h i n g. We don't seem to get anything done without arguing about it and anything I suggest is received with a firm "no" from his part. Sigh. I guess this was to be expected though. The touristy feeling and novelty of things is now wearing off, mummy has started to work and daddy is nowhere to be seen. I know he'll get used to things soon enough, it's just that this phase is particularly tiring for those around him...

We went to visit the preschool today. It's a lovely small place surrounded by plenty of nature. The kids will be able to stay in the same group and they seem to have felt "at home" in there. So much so that I had to deal with two tantrums when we had to leave. They wanted to stay! I guess we'll have no problems during the first days of preschool as they start next week :)

Homeschooling together with Green Hour Challenge have been on hold for a while. We have a different kind of "homeschool" going on with Luana as we have to keep up with her classmates back in Brazil. She'll return to her class in October and will still have two more months of preschool left until the end of the year. Their book is really thick and filled with lots of fun activities including the numbers 0-10 and the letters a, e, i, o and u (I've posted some pictures of the book in my Finnish blog some time ago). The teacher told me they'll probably be finishing the book by the time we get back so I might just as well go through the whole book with Luana. So I made a weekly plan and we do some exercises whenever she asks for them or feels like doing them. Lucas gets to draw at the same time if he wants to.

Tourism in Helsinki part II

We continued the day by going to the Museum of Cultures, which offered several things specially for kids.


This was a dollhouse made after an old Carelian house where the animals lived in the ground fllor and the people upstairs. Kids were invited to play with the house and the animals and they really liked it.

It was all made of wood and very sturdy. I loved it!

The whole days wasn't all idyllic as the kids really aren't used to museums. They're also starting to get by without napping during the day and get tired and irritable quite often... I got a pram for Lucas in all museums and it helped a lot; he didn't get to run around and touch stuff you're not supposed to touch and he also didn't get so tired from walking around. It seemed though that only stuff particularly for kids caught their attention. Anything else just didn't seem to do the trick.

I am however really pleased with how the two days went and I'm hoping the kids also got some good memories :)

Tourism in Helsinki part I

I spent two days in the museums of Helsinki and it was good fun. Yesterday I visited Ateneum and Design Museum. I particularly liked the black and white photos of Matti Saanio. They were his early photos (mainly from the 60s) that depict the life of people in the North of Finland. I then took a sightseeing tour around Helsinki. It was funny to see your own city from a tourist bus :) I thought, however, that the sightseeing was really good; it probably gives a good idea of the city to anyone visiting for the first time.

In the afternoon I took the kids to the National Museum and after that to the tower at the olympic stadium. The tower is 72 metres high and offers a spectacular view of the city. I had never been up there so it was a great experience. Lucas didn't seem to appreciate it that much as he explicitlty told me he didn't want to go back :)

Today I took the kids to Kiasma, the museum of modern art. It wasn't that good with such small kids (who aren't used to visiting museums) but they enjoyed some of the art. There wasn't enything particulary prepared for kids and the kids were a bit dissapointed (the National Museum offers a great hans-on children's exhibition so I guess the kids were expecting something like that again).
Luana and Lucas experiencing modern art :)

The most captivating thing in the Museum of Modern Art was the building site we could see from the window... Several tractors and other machines working away :)

Work and some crafting

Today was my first day at work and I loved it. It was a little hectic of course and there are tons of things I'll have to learn but all in all it was great. It's great to get up in the morning, catch the bus and go to work. I'm not sure I'll be this enthusiastic about it come September (or July...) but I'm planning to enjoy this feeling for as long as it lasts.

Tomorrow and on Thursday I'll get to know my own city visiting some of the most important museums and taking a guided bus tour around the main sights. This is one way of getting acquainted with the things I'll have to learn and know during the summer. I'll even be able to take the kids along for some of the museums and I think that'll be great. So stay tuned for some Helsinki tourist info and pics during the next few days!
After dinner we did some crafting. This was long overdue and especially Luana had been asking to do some crafting (ANY crafting) for a while already.

So we made cards with bees and flowers and we're planning to send them to Brazil, probably to grandma and daddy :)

Old things

It's been wonderful to see old things again. Some of the things are just a few years old and I find them in the random boxes we left here when we moved. Some of the things are from my childhood and some of the things are from my mother's childhood. There's a real sense of continuity when I see my kids playing with old toys.

Wooden blocks from my mother's childhood (almost 70 years old).

A box of crayons from my childhood. I instantly recognised the box and knew what the crayons smelled like.

My dearest night gown from when I was roughly the age of my daughter now. My cousin had bought it for me from the US and I treasured it so.