Another school shooting

It's been a sad day for Finland yet again. There was a school shooting that left at least 11 dead. The last incident was less than a year ago. This is a tiny country of just over 5 million inhabitants and we're not used to that kind of things to happen. It seems unreal.

I've never been afraid of the thought of having my kids go to school here as I've always considered this a peacful country to live in. I guess I didn't think anyone could be worried about the safety of their children at school. Then I read about several people who said one of the reasons why they homeschool is the violence in schools. Even though I probably would still send my children to school if we lived here I think I'm beginning to understand how you feel when you're not convinced about the safety of the schools.

My heart goes our to those who are mourning the loss of a loved one today. I feel for the parents, siblings and other family members whose loved one didn't come home from school today. I also feel for the parents and family members of the shooter; he killed himself. I don't intend to justify what he did but nonetheless he is somebody's son and relative. The people who lost him also have to go on living their lives bearing the loss of a dear person as well as the pressure from the outside for being the shooter's family.

Busy week...

... or at least it felt like we were busy all the time. The main events were a birthday party where the kids were invited (and went to dressed as a princess and a pirate) on Tuesday, a movie and a dinner with my sister on Wednesday, my massive headache on Thursday and the Portuguese-speaking Bible study on Friday.

I felt a bit rough the whole week and I'm actually surprised that I'm feeling just fine right now. As I was coming home on Wednesday night I felt so cold and I had to have extra blankets in my bed so that I could sleep at all. Thursday morning I thought my head was going to explode and I had to ask my mum to take the kids to the nursery and stay at home the whole day. On Friday my whole body was aching as if I had exercised loads and I had a really sore throat. And today I'm feeling just fine. What was that? I don't really care as long as it doesn't come back...

There are plenty of things to do before we leave (only two weeks to go, yay!) and I'm going to sit down tonight and make a few lists of things to do and things to buy. I've pre-packed our suitcases and there's still some space in them although admittedly there are tons of things that didn't make it to the suitcases yet... So I'll be busy with that during the last couple of days.

Tomorrow I'll focus on Sunday School. I'll have the kids just this once before we leave Finland so I'm really looking forward to that!

The building I work in

OK, I have to admit I don't actually work in this environment but part of the building I work in looks like this on the inside.
The building was built in two parts in 1815-1816 and in 1826-1827 by a Russian-born businessman Jegor Uschakoff and it represents the neo-classical style. It served as a shop and as a bookstore until it was bought by a bank.

They hired architect Lars Sonck to renovate the building and it was reopened as a bank in 1904.

The City of Helsinki bought the building in 1961 and renovated it. They maintained the old bank hall (pictures above) and the stairway (pictures below).

Art Noveau or Jugendstil just happens to be my favourite architectural style so I love how the the building looks from the inside!

Church camp

The Spanish speaking group of our church had a weekend camp a week ago and I went there with the kids. We had a great time! It was good just to sit and listen although I did some interpreting as well. The kids were well taken care of during the meetings as there was special program for them so it was truly relaxing also for the mama :)

We slept in cottages with lots of other people and the kids thought that was well exciting! They really wanted to sleep on the upper bed but their mama was boring and didn't allow that...

The kids had fun with the other kids they already knew and especially Luana also made some new friends.

Luana and mama.

And a really tired Lucas in the bus on the way home :)

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.

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.

My stepmum's art

My stepmum is great at quilting (and other arts and crafts too). I took some pictures of just some of her works last weekend.

She printed the kids' photos on fabric and then quilted the photo frames. What a great idea!

This landscape is my all time favourite!

Self portrait.

Kitchen decoration (I love the colours!)

And a tiny thing on the bathroom door.

Last weekend

We spent the weekend at my dad's and it was good fun. I've been meaning to post about it for a while already but I haven't been able to download the photos. Well, they're here now and I'm hoping to have a few more in my Finnish blog soon.

We were supposed to spend a day in the Moominworld but it just so happens that I got the worst sore throat ever and wasn't up for a whole day out with the kids and a picnic lunch. So we opted for something easier and went to a museum called Aboa Vetus Ars Nova (Old Turku New Art). It's a museum of contemporary art combined with medieval ruins that were discovered underneath the building when they were renovating it. It's such a delight! They had a special tour for kids that we took. Lucas was a bit too young for that but I went with him and it was ok.

Wild strawberries at my dad's summerhouse. Almost ready to be eaten!

Lucas mowing the lawn with his grandpa. He was so excited that he was allowed to participate in something that involved pushing a very noisy machine! :D

The kids in the museum. They got to wear "medieval" capes and play with a medieval dollhouse.

After the museum we went to a big park that offers lots of things for free. The kids just loved it. They had to control themselves in the museum and now they could just let go and run, climb and play as much as they liked. This park brings back good memories as we used to play there with my sister when we were small and visited my dad. There are so many things to do outdoors and then there are arts and crafts available indoors as well. We didn't even go inside with the kids that day, there was plenty to do outdoors!

One of my favourite things about the park: there's plenty of water all over the place. There are places where the kids can swim and then other places where they can simply play with the water. That day was absolutely too cold for swimming although I did see some kids running around in their swimming suits eating ice cream...

My sore throat finally got so bad that I had to go to the doctor's as soon as we got back home. And sure enough I had a nasty infection and needed antibiotics, which I'm now taking. Lucas had the same bacteria and same treatment. So far it seems Luana got away with it :)

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.

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.