potatoes!

We were invited to help out at a place near Viljandi picking potatoes over the weekend. We only managed to pick potatoes for about three hours before the shock of doing actual physical labor set in. That and Anna was crying.

Even Marta -- notoriously labor prone -- helped collect baskets of potatoes, and Anna collected quite a few buckets too. Our friends Enn and Kaari worked until 8 pm that night. They have more potatoes than they know what to do with (which is why Estonians eat so many potatoes, Epp says).

After we left the farm, the kids got to bounce on the trampoline at Enn and Kaari's place. Anna usually wants me to hold her hand, but this time she got used to jumping all by herself:

parenting 101

My friend's got four kids and is in the process of opening a cafe. He chides me for going to the discount grocery across the street for buying bread. He usually bakes his own.

"Why do you keep buying that shit?" he says. "If you keep eating that crap you'll be dead in, like, two years."

"My kids demand it," I answer. And they do. They kids want bread and more bread. With butter, peanut butter.

"What do you mean they demand it? They should eat what is served."

"Not my girls. They want what they want."

"If you give into them like that, you'll ruin them."

"It's too late. The damage is done."

"So you should starve 'em awhile! We went for a long hike and the kids didn't eat all day. Then we gave 'em these little sandwiches. I've never seen people eat with such gusto."

package from mimi

I thought I could keep Anna from eating all the chocolate Mimi sent by hiding it on top of the refrigerator. I was wrong.

She also made short work of the organic lollipops. She liked the pink watermelon ones. Now there are no pink ones left. She keeps crying, "But I want pink!" There are plenty of red ones left though. I guess she'll eat those after she finishes the chocolate.

recycling center

There is a recycling center on the edge of town. Whenever we have too many boxes, I load up the car and bring them there so they can be broken down and remade into, I don't know, new copies of Petrone Print books.

The other day I went to pick up Marta from school on the way to the center. She didn't want to come, so I had to bribe her. I promised her lots of chocolate. When she heard that, she happily came along.

I dragged most of the paper to the big warehouse where they keep the cardboard and newspapers. When I turned around, Marta's arms were full of paper too. She was helping me! Marta though the recycling center was really cool. She had a good time, and was later rewarded with two really big bars of chocolate:

kitchen table

This past week we finally got a kitchen table. We found it in a store in Tallinn about a month ago, and they shipped it and the chairs to Tartu. From Tartu, I picked it up and brought it back to Viljandi and then, after three months, we were able to eat dinner in our kitchen for the first time.

The kitchen table has become the center of our home. This evening, Marta sat on one of the seats and began reading by herself. She just decided that, what the heck, I want to read it, so I might as well try. And she made it a good half way through the book -- about Thumbelina -- before she said she was tired. Epp was cheering her all the way.

Meantime, Anna has also found ways to enjoy the kitchen table. Today I gave her some honey and a spoon, and she was happy to finish off the honey jar ...


And share some tasty honey with her little friends ...

german

Marta is always running around with different kids. A few times, she has stopped by with German, her classmate. German (pronounced with a hard 'g' sound, almost like 'Kerman'), is an Estonian Russian.

"This is German," Marta said. "He speaks ... you know."

"What does he speak?" I asked Marta. She is a little uncertain of language names and mixes up "Finnish" and "Russian" all the time.

"You know, he speaks privet."

"Ah, Russian. He speaks Russian."

"I speak Estonian too," German told me, "but also Russian. Do you speak Russian?" He looked up at me with great big hopeful brown eyes.

"No," I told him. "I speak English. I am from America."

German said nothing but looked utterly disappointed.

"They don't teach Russian in school in America," I tried to explain. "I learned Spanish."

He seemed even less impressed.

"Ok, I know a few words," I confessed. "Privet (Hello), dasvidanya (Goodbye), zatknis (Shut up)."

At this he finally smiled. Then the kids turned and stormed off in another direction.

back in the sandbox

Anna loves her sandbox. She especially likes to play with gravel in the sandbox. She makes food for me to eat. Today the gravel was "strawberries." She also made me "milk" -- sand in a cup.

Anita -- a girl Marta's age who lives up the street -- stopped by and played with us. Anita also made me sand food. She prepared chopped meat and boiled potatoes and offered me tea to drink.

Anna followed me all over the backyard. She even sat and played quietly while I hung the laundry. She insists that I also sit in the sandbox with her, even though there is a nice swing a few feet away. It occurred to me today while watching Anna in the sandbox that I had been in one before. I used to sit in the sandbox every day when I was a little boy. Here's another photo of our sandbox girl and "dinner" ...

folk music barn

Once a month, Viljandi's Pärimusmuusika Ait -- "Folk Music Barn" -- hosts a special children's hour, where a musician comes and shows them different instruments, they sing songs, play games, and, at the end, eat pancakes.

Since Marta still has a cold, I went with Anna alone this morning to the Barn, which is close to our house. In one of its smaller rooms, we gathered ... mostly mothers and children of ages between 2 and 7 or 8. There was one other dad there. The musician sat on the small stage (you can see it on Anna's right in this picture) and played different instruments, and explained how they are made.

Altogether, the children learned about bagpipes, different kinds of folk music flutes from Africa and Mexico, a jaw harp, and a soprano saxophone. The instruments held Anna's attention, but she was too small to really understand how they worked. Hopefully Marta can come to the next presentation:




Afterwards, the children played games and got to play with the instruments. Anna was relatively shy (believe it or not) but later found herself beating a big drum made from cow hide:



At the end of the hour, the main event: pancakes with jam and peppermint tea. Anna was telling me she was "hungy" the whole time -- the music was nice, but she was more interested in the pancakes. And there is something very special you should know about Anna. This week she finally started making a "g" sound. You may recall that Anna has substituted the letter "t" for both "g" and "k" in the past. She would say "tar" instead of "car." She still says "tar," but she has learned to make the "g" sound, and sings "ga ga ga ga ga ga ga" to the melody of Old MacDonald:



PS: I know these photos aren't the highest quality. I take them with my Nokia E63.

epp and marta

This photo was taken on the island of Hiiumaa in August. People say Marta looks more like Epp than me. That's probably true.

school days

Today I was walking down the street and I saw a group of small children walking from a playground. Then I heard the teacher call out: "Anna Margaret - this way."

I saw Anna's striped, pink jacket. It is actually a mild, sunny, beautiful day, but it was cold in the morning (we do live near a lake). The jacket has a long history -- we bought it all the way back in 2004 when we lived in Port Jefferson. It is still in use.

Anna saw me and ran in my direction. Then she jumped into my arms and made a pig sound. "Oink oink!" she said to me. I put her down and told her that she had to stay with her friends. I only know two of them: one is named Joonas and the other is Mimi. Her name is pronounced in the French way (I think) with the emphasis on the second syllable. miMI. Mimi has a little brother: Benjamin. I first met Mimi at our friends' cafe. I had put a bag of pastries on the ground and gone inside the cafe to talk. When I came out, somebody had found the pastries and was eating one:

Anna talks about her a lot. I guess she has left an impression on our younger daughter. Anna doesn't cry when she goes to preschool in the morning. This morning, she happily followed the teacher into the kitchen where she was making breakfast.

Marta likes school too. I have only been inside with her a few times. The school feels very comfortable. It is nice that I can walk both children to their schools. After school, Marta plays with her friends from class, or sometimes with girls from the neighborhood. Last weekend, she slept over her friend Mia's house. Mia lives outside our town and they have a big trampoline in the yard. Needless to say, Marta did not want to leave when I went to pick her up.

That's Mia to the right of Marta. Maari (age 5), on the far left, is Mia's little sister and Miko (age 2), on the far right, is her little brother. On Sunday, they went hiking in Soomaa National Park and Marta went swimming in a lake (probably the last swim of the year). There is something else that connects Marta, Anna, Mimi, and Mia and her brothers and sister: they are all bilingual. Mimi's father is from Sweden. Mia's father grew up in New Jersey. It's nice to be able to talk to other kids in English. Mia's older brother Mano (age 11) calls me "Mr. Petrone."