My little medic

Today Julius wanted to play doctor for the first time in his life. I was to be a patient and he would tend to my wounds accordingly. Clearly the poor boy knew what he is doing. So many wound treatments under the belt. But maybe a future profession?? The care and precision he was showing implies there is a talent... Or maybe that's just proud mama talking.. I missed the first part of cleaning the wound...

Putting medicine lotion

Remembered that at the hospital they use a stick to apply it to wounds.

Cutting some "gauze" as you can see at this point I already had two wounds all wrapped up.

 Finalizing.

At this point M grabbed the iPad and I missed the final shot. It was so sweet though. He is becoming such a big boy. And what attention to detail!!!

Room #1

The previous post was written before the love, but got jammed up in the drafts with all the hassle of the more. 

We are now staying for the fourth night in the new place.

Home sweet HOME.
At the moment I'm enjoying a quiet moment. There's the fan blowing some air, and I can hear some frogs outside. But quiet. Kids and Tonny are fast asleep and I am alone in our living room. I'm sitting on a duvet cover leaning on a pillow, and the only furniture in the room is shoe rack and four dining chairs that we finally got yesterday. No sofa, tv, dining table, curtains - not even a carpet. But I'm happy. At peace. There is something about privacy and independence that empowers me.

I'm taking it one room at a time and because I want them to love our new home, the kids came first. If i knew how to draw i would have pursued a life in interior design. As it is now, i just get to plan with our homes. With the kids i wanted color, color, color. But with a twist. And let me tell you, our fundi had to repeat some libes a couple of times before i was happy with the end result. 

    Entrance, you can see the little table got a different color this time. Not a very bright idea to put white table for kids. :(

We are missing some tinga tinga mini stools I have fallen in love with for the table and big pillows under the bed for comfy reading corner (I'm too old to climb up to the bed). Maybe some paintings on the wall but otherwise they are all set.

The boys are in heaven. All of a sudden I'm not needed 24/7 anymore, rather I need struggle to get them away from their games during meal and nap time.

Next up is kitchen...

Meaning of Home

You hear the saying -you don't know what you got, until it's gone- often in love songs. But what I've come to realize is that it applies to many things in life. Most recently home. I've lived by myself since my early twenties and even before that would like to think that I was quite independent. (I'm sure my siblings will be rolling their eyes right about now..) I couldn't even gather how much effort it would take to live under other people's rules again. Don't get me wrong, I am truly grateful to my in-laws that they graciously took us in. It was not even a discussion, but rather expected. But culture-shock aside, the independent woman inside me started to rebel - fast. Of course it is so easy now to be all understanding and zen about it, but in the heat (literal and figurative) of the moment it is harder to hold my tongue. So I think us moving out will be the best for everyone.

Our new home is tiny, but enough for us. J&M will have their own room, we our bedroom (wow) small living/dining area and a little kitchen. I will have to use all my creativity to make it work for us, but I am up for the challenge. The little designer in me is anxious to hit the paint shop tomorrow. We don't want to stay in the fumes so we try to paint and clean everything before finally moving there.

The thing is that we own precisely three pieces of furniture in this part of the world. Our bed. Kids bed/storage unit and their little table. Aside from that we have ikea kids plates and cups and total of 6 muumi cups. Not to forget forks and knifes. Pole pole sasa. 

Welcome to visit and sit on the floor :). Well I've been reading a lot about minimizing property, getting rid of the unnecessary. You could call this is jump start. Nothing to get rid of (except a pile of clothes that fall off of me) only buying what we truly need. How about that.

 

Struggles and Solutions.

Not just cotton candy. Though times too.

Some mornings are such that if there is something that can go wrong, everything will.

2am. M wakes crying. Or I don't actually know if he is awake. He is crying though. And it does not stop. For 2 hours.

6am. Somebody is screaming. It must be something serious but no. Just the matriarch of the family having a go at the house girl. I can not handle it, but it is not my place to go state my opinion. I try to bury my head in the pillow and ignore it.
 
8:30am. Breakfast table. I am told that I don't love my child because I didn't rush him to the hospital for having a cough and staggering 37 degrees of fewer. Apparently it is not our decision anymore when he needs doctor to check him up.

9am. I'm standing outside waiting for the sales crew. I'm told that I look tired. (Really??). I reply saying yes I am, it is a bit too much to handle other people making my decisions after I have been making them for a long time. With no sleep.  I am told that maybe I should go back to Finland.

9.15am. I am ready to pack my bag and leave. Not the country but this house. Tonny to the rescue.

9.16am searching internet for apartments and dalalis (real estate agents, kind of..)

This was a week ago, and while the steam settled and there is peace at plot no. 125, the resolution of finding a house of our own has stuck. Many apartment checks later, I think we have found the right one that meets the criteria of price, safety, traffic jams, proximity etc. Now, I'm crossing all the parts of my body and waiting to see if we actually get it.

Peace and love, sunshine and all the good stuff.

A little Break From the Community Living

When February turned to end my mom and Jouni came to visit. Bread, candy, octocompass, and octonauts dvds and of course some mummu-time for the little boys. A slice of home.
It also gave us a good excuse to take a boat to Zansibar. A chance for us also to be just us not a full fledged african community. It was nice to go and relax, look at the amazing ocean, meet old friends etc. A nice little getaway/long weekend. If someone does not want to travel to Tanzania ever, you should maybe skip the post and the pics, it is heavenly <3 span="">


A little flashback. In  2007 T and I traveled to TZ for the first time. No plans made were made a head of time and while we though that we will have sooo much time (spending 5 weeks in the country) we soon realized that the time is running out quickly and we were supposed to go to zanzibar. Googling hotels while using the world's slowest internet connection and we found very little vacancies - well if you are not willing to pay 250$/night. We stumbled upon a place called Mnarani *lighthouse. Not knowing anything about the island we booked a room. I could have been a disaster, but we were lucky enough to find our little peace of heaven. We had a wonderful time and even struck a small friendship with the owner. Over the years he visited us in Finland, we visited his hotel, the whole family was there after our finnish wedding. For some reason though we haven't been in touch for a while but decided to go visit him. It was a strange feeling to drive up to the hotel, now almost seven years later with our little boys. The place is as beautiful as ever - anyone needing a break I highly recommend it.

The kids loved swimming in the ocean and in the pool. They were eagerly experimenting different sea food. Even octopus (for the record, I think J ate it just because it is called octo-something, Octonauts are still the worlds best thing in his mind)! Our little M is trouble though. The guy does not even know what fear is. Can and just jump into the pool and sink, us rushing over and quickly grabbing him up - while we panic the guy just laughs... I hope he learns to swim very soon. J on the other hand is true to his nature and very very very careful. He learned to swim a little.

 

I'm sure some people think this is our life 24/7. It is not. Our life here is not much different from our life in finland. We still have to routines and eat healthy food, keep bedtimes etc. But its nice to be able to sit on a boat for 1,5 hours and be in paradise.

/g

Life with a/c

So it had to happen. Julius got a bad rash which evolved into a full-blown skin infection.

The heat just made him itch and scratch more, and when I say more I don't mean just a little scratch with some blood, but 50-60% of his body missing some degree of skin. A visit to our trusted physician was in order. Antibiotics. I hate how they are over used but his time they were truly in order. Most of his skin is as good as new, one arm is still giving us issues. We anyways had a follow up for tomorrow so we can see if we need stronger meds. He's been amazing though. If someone ever thinks he is weak, be warned. This little three year old can handle pain better than most grownups. He wants to scream and cry but all I see is his mouth open in agony. Consequently there has been lots of "j gets to choose the cartoon to watch, and what we are eating etc etc.". Once the wounds have been cleaned and covered, he can be smiling and laughing with his cousins in a matter of minutes, never mind that the arm hurts or that he is all bandaged up. He amazes me with his strength.

Because of this we had to put a/c to our room. Anyone who has ever scratched themselves in a hot bath or sauna knows that you easily scratch too deep. Well this heat was itching him and making the skin a bit too vulnerable for his nightly scratching (his so good about not starching when he's awake, but in his sleep he can get out of control and only wake up when it's too late). So now we keep the room at comfy 25, imagine we were all grabbing heavy blankets the first night because it was so cold. I guess we have adjusted a bit already.

Otherwise life is settling to its rhythm. Miracously I've even had my first girls night out since probably at least a year ago, and made some new friend-like people... At this age I didn't know it's still possible. I'm teaching Suomi-koulu two times a week and I can feel that even that is becoming smooth sailing. Yes I need to plan and prepare, but the kids know and trust me now. 

I just received a message of someone looking for a gymnastics coach... Oh my, seriously, already??? <3

Art from the patient:

1) Julius and Max 

2) Jero, day care friend from Finland

3) another pic of little brother: very accurate: he is upside down most of the time

4) baba - he thought it was so funny to put him blond hair :)