spelling

This is how Marta spells the following names:

HÄRII BRAIT (Harry Bright)

SOFI (Sophie)

DANA (Donna)

SAM KRMAKL (Sam Carmichael)

They are all characters in the show/film Mamma Mia.

thanks mimi and papa

Anna and Marta in new winter clothes that arrived in a box sent from Mimi and Papa in New York.

missed

I take Marta to school almost every day, and I do spend some time with Anna each day. But I still miss them. I feel like I work all the time, and I am missing part of their childhoods. On the weekends, we spend time together. But is it enough? Working remotely is great because of the liberation but bad because you are often working at home. Recently I started working more in the office. It helps a bit -- there's less chaos and competition with the computer. But wouldn't it be great to eliminate a certain percentage of computer time forever? More cozy, reading with children time? Today is Tuesday and I must write at least one more feature story. Can't wait until I can relax and see my kids again.

love maps

I hadn't shaved for a day or two, and my hair was a little greasy and pulled over to one side. I looked in the mirror, raised an eyebrow, and had an odd thought: "My God, I look just like ... Cary Elwes' character in The Princess Bride."

Of course I was a greasier, swarthier, less film-worthy version of the "Dread Pirate Roberts," but, I looked more like him at that moment that I did like Johnny Depp or Tom Cruise or Samuel L. Jackson. I looked more like him that I did like Richard Gere or Tom Hanks or even Keanu Reeves.

I remembered how Epp told me she had a crush on the farm hand Westley as a teenager. And so I just had to say to her one sentence, "As you wish." It was funny but perhaps there was something else there. I read an article in Salon called Why do women have sex, which mentions a phenomenon called "love maps."

Every woman has her own ideal of what she finds attractive. Some women like short men, some like curly blonds, some like dark bearded types. You often hear a woman say, "He's not my type, but he's your type." Love maps develop very early on when we're children. We develop a template of what we find attractive based on our experiences with people in the past.

And so maybe when Epp had met me, something reminded her of Westley. Maybe my hair was pulled over to one side, and my eyebrow raised. Who knows? Maybe I am more within the boundaries of her "love map"? And maybe she stood within the boundaries of my "love map." (I can tell you, she most definitely was.)

Using these "love maps," women supposedly select their mates. And every gal's got her own map. That means that even if you are old, fat, and have a white beard, there might be a lady out there who will find you desirable, because she's always had a thing for Santa Claus. That's just how it works, at least according to the experts.

aura

Well, a month and a half since the girls were last in water (that wasn't a bathtub) they finally got the chance to swim again. It was on Sunday. We had to go. Marta kept nagging us and nagging us. We came back from Setomaa in the morning and I knew her first words would be, "Let's go to Aura" as soon as we pulled in the driveway.

Aura is a waterpark in downtown Tartu. We were actually thinking of finding a way out of it. I mean who wants to go swimming after a day of driving and working in the countryside? But Marta would not budge. "It looks like we'll have to go," Epp told me. Marta insisted.

It was a good idea. I was responsible for Anna. Epp was responsible for Marta. That meant that Anna and I went to the sauna in the men's changing room. Marta and Epp went in the other. There was a lot of swimming to be had at Aura. Marta and I must have gone on one of those slides 10 times in a row. Anna also loved the water. I think I burned through hundreds of calories just making sure she was ok.

So, we'll be back.

christ in the clouds

"Look up there," Marta said and turned her head towards the mostly blue sky. "Kristus is moving the clouds."

Kristus is how they refer to Jesus in these parts. And I remember that Marta is spending some time in the company of religious people. Her teacher has some theological training. I think she belongs to a liberal church, the equivalent of Unitarians in the US. Marta's school is also near a church, and she sees the nuns on a daily basis. She yells out to them, and they smile and wave.

I'm not really religious myself. When I was younger I might have had a more negative view of conventional religion. Now, I think it's nice. Quaint. And when Marta says hi to the nuns or tells me that she thinks Kristus is moving the clouds, I feel happy.

triinu!

Another fixture in our lives is Triin or "Triinu," our neighbor's youngest daughter. Marta is very independent about sequestering Triinu for some play time. Often, she wants to go next door herself and see if Triinu is at home. Triinu is four. She has blond hair and looks a lot like her father, who happens to be a doctor I've seen a few times. It's a bit odd having your doctor for a neighbor. You feel like he might know more about you than you know yourself. And you know what the doctor was doing when we arrived? That's right. Making apple juice. He's like us. He won't be buying juice from the store for months to come.

Before we went to Triinu's, Marta said she wanted to go to the playground "with somebody." I said that, "You are with somebody, silly, your sister." "With somebody I can play with," she answered. See Anna didn't count. She was like part of the furniture. She's always there. I think Anna likes Triinu too. She likes having big girls around. The only thing is that I can't let Anna go and play next door alone. She's got to stay with us. Still too small.

At the playground, Anna fell asleep and Marta and Triinu collected pretty leaves to be used in some future art project. They told me they found a really good tree on the periphery of the park. I was reading a book about class in America called Class Matters. It brought me back to college a bit -- when there were low-income students and very high income students living on the same floors. And the low-income students really hated the high-income students. They would watch the girls walk back from Georgetown with fat shopping bags every weekend and complain to me.

I was more like middle income, so I could associate with both classes. There were some very rich kids there on campus with, of course, expensive drug habits. That's another thing -- the wealthy get into things like cocaine. The merely middle class or lower-income have to settle for marijuana and booze. And the really low-income? They smoke crack. Which is a cheaper form of cocaine. See, we've come full circle. Why I am discussing this on a blog about my kids, I don't know. I hope they never use drugs, because, the consensus is the truth: drugs really are (mostly) bad for you.

I learned a lot about class on campus. I had a friend from Greenwich, Conn., but even he said he wasn't truly rich. Wealthy people don't vacation on the known Caribbean islands, he told me. They have their own islands. And they get there by private plane. He told me a game in high school in Greenwich was stealing from wealthy homes. Kids would steal all sorts of things from the homes of the hyper rich as a test. If nobody noticed the expensive vase in the living room was missing, then they passed -- they were from the uppermost part of the upper crust. An interesting place, college. You get educated in the classroom and out.

riinu!

I've fallen into the habit of ferrying Marta to and fro school. You should see her school too, it's pretty. Each time I approach it, I get a good feeling. Marta is a very excitable young person. When I come in to pick her up, she darts across the room and mugs my leg and usually yells something. Actually, she yells a few things.

Yesterday, we went to Kassitoome -- which is this giant, bowl-shaped park near the school -- so she could play with Pille's children Roosi and Jakob. Do you know that I first met Pille more than six years ago. I remember it too -- we were on the top floor of Stockmann in Tallinn. Little did I know back then that I would be standing next to her on Kassitoome in the year 2009 watching our offspring roll down a hill.

Today, Marta had another name on her lips: Riinu. She kept talking to Roosi and Jakob about Riinu, how she hadn't seen her at all in ages, and how she has such nice curly hair, and how tonight she was going to spend the night at her place. I didn't believe her. I thought she was just making it up. I thought my excitable daughter had an active imagination. And yet, when I got to our gate, who was waiting there but Riinu (and her mother, Helen, of course).

The two girls were so excited to see each other. They really did jump up and down. And Anna was happy too. She even hugged Riinu. Anna was also sad to see the big girls go off to their slumber party later. She wanted to play. We took her in the backyard to pick some apples instead.