Garden party

We went to a lovely garden party last Saturday. I had three days off and it was such a nice break. It seems I only ever go to work and come home tired when it's almost time for the kids to go to bed. I still enjoy my work a lot but being a full time working mama just isn't my thing :)

My father and my stepmum had both turned 70 earlier this year and now it was time to celebrate that in the garden.

Next to their summer cottage there's an old inn (by old I mean some 200 years old) and we were allowed to use their old stables and the garden, too. Birches decorate the entrance to the stable.

This is the stable door. You really have to watch your head!

One of the stable windows from the outside.

During this week we've finally seen some sun and felt the warmth. The kids have gone swimming after the pre school with my mum and I've worked... Yesterday Luana learned to ride her bike without the two small extra wheels (whatever you call them...). She was so proud of herself! She is also learning how to dive and swim and she's really excited about that too. Lucas recently learned to pronounce the letter r the way it's pronounced in Finnish (by rolling it) and he's now happy to repeat anything with an r after me... porkkana, parkki, riisi, Pirre...

P.S. You can see a few more pictures from the garden party in my other blog.

Little cousin

I received the saddest news from Brazil already some time ago. My husband's cousin's little son was diagnosed with Werdning-Hoffman desease, one type of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). It's genetic and incurable and the life expectancy for children his age (now 7 months) is usually less than two years. He was diagnosed with the type I SMA and this means he will probably never even sit by himself. There is more information on the condition here.

A local newspaper published an article with the cutest picture of the little one. You can see that here. My husband told me the whole town is contributing in one way or another. Currently family and friends are building a new room for the family's very simple and small wooden house. This is to be the little boy's room whenever he gets home from the hospital. He will need an intensive care unit at home complete with breathing aid and everything.

The parents are both teachers and have a regular middle-class income. Needless to say their income doesn't get even close to covering the cost of the baby's treatment in a São Paulo hospital let alone the ambulance flight that will be needed in order to get him home whenever he's released from the hospital. I don't even imagine how his care will be arranged once they're back at home in our small and fairly remote little town.

Yesterday I shared the story at church and said I wasn't asking for money but for prayers. I said, however, that if someone felt in his heart to give something I'd send it over to them. After the service a man came up to me and simply handed be some money. I thanked him and just put the money in my purse. Only later I counted it and saw that he had given € 65 to a baby boy he had only just heard about for the first time.

If anyone reading this wants to pray for the family please do - they're born-again Christians and will surely appreciate your prayers!

Drawing in the park

We're still here! Life gets somehow busy when you work full time and the kids are in the nursery. If I work in the morning shift I get to spend several hours with the kids in the evening after work but if I'm in the evening shift I only see them in the morning when I take them to the nursery. When I come home in the evening they're already asleep. So far this summer has been such a good experience for all of us but it has also shown me a different side of things. If I can choose I want to spend more time with the kids than what I do now. The way we've had it back in Brazil has worked really well in my opinion and I hope we can get back to that after we return. The kids go to preschool/nursery in the morning and come home for lunch. I have the morning to myself (read: household chores, grocery shopping etc.) and get to spend the entire afternoon and evening with them. We've got plenty of time for homeschool activities, for visiting grandparents etc. I do understand that I might have to work but I'm hoping I can get by with some private arts and crafts classes at home in the afternoons :) I've got lots of nice ideas in my head for next year and I'm hoping that Casa Criativa (Creative House) will be able to start working sometime in the end of February offering arts and crafts experiences to the kids in our little town.

In the meantime whenever we have some time together we usually head for one of the parks nearby. I'm not sure if I commented this in here already but when we first arrived here the kids we so impressed by all the great parks that they called them "amusement parks". That's how much they'd missed playing in a nice park and that's why we're planning some nice things in our backyard in Brazil.

This park is their favourite because of this toy. It spins around depending on how fast you walk on it. It's so simple but they laugh, jump on and off and have so much fun with it!

This time I also invited them to sit down and draw something. Luana came up with a picture of the park itself with the swings, the slide etc. Her Brazilian school activity book deals with the notion of space and awareness of one's whereabouts and I'm trying to work on those with her as well. I thought the drawing of the park was a good start. The next thing we'll do is draw a map of the area we live in featuring the places we usually go to.

Lucas didn't want to sit down and draw initially but after a while he too asked for a pen and a paper. He drew balloons and the round toy they like so much.