segukeel

Me: Maria is a super baby!
Maria: Mannu Leenul ei ole suppi. Maie-lyl on suppi!

* Maie-ly has been Maria's babysitter and she always makes soup. Maria also refers to herself in the third person, by her nickname, "Mannu Leenu."

tubs and showers

"I like tubs and showers. Want to know why? Because tubs are big and you can fill them with water and get all warm inside, but in showers you can stand and pee and all the pee goes down the little hole in the floor." -- Anna.

billy jean

Me: "Hey, they're playing Billy Jean on SkyPlus."
Marta: "Who is this?"
Me: "Michael Jackson."
Marta: "He sounds like Bruno Mars."
Me: "Or you could say that Bruno Mars sounds like him."
Marta: "What does Michael Jackson look like?"
Me: "He's dead, honey."
Marta: "I mean, was he white or was he black?"
Me: "It's hard to say."
Marta: "What do you mean?"
Me: "I mean, he was black. But he, well, he changed his 'look' a lot."
Marta: "Oh."

guitar girl

winter or spring

Anna: "Daddy, do you like winter or spring more?" Justin: "Well, winter's nice, but spring is so warm, the snow melts. Soon you even forget that there once was snow. So right now I'd say spring." Anna: "I think I like both of them - winter and spring. Because if I said I liked spring more, then the snow would get sad."

sipsik's return

Anna's doll Sipsik arrived yesterday in a brown paper bag sent from Finland. It had been exactly 17 days since she was last seen in the playroom of the Helsinki airport. After several calls to the Lost & Found and some Facebook announcements, the L&F came through with the doll, and sent it back to us. Now Sipsik's adventures can continue ...

sled girl

Maria Leena is a good sport. She travels by sled all around town. For her, there is nothing unusual about all of this winter.

snow house

Mimi and Anna
 

pärnu spa

Marta really is a bit of an impulsive, alpha type. At the Pärnu spa, she's trying to convince me how she and her four-year-old friend should go on the big rapids-style slide (which is even rough on me). It took a lot of "no" to get her to abandon the idea. Later, I left them for two minutes to use the restroom (with the instructions not to go into the whirlpool) and when I come back, her little friend is at the steps, clinging to the metal railing because she can't get out. "But I told you not to go in there!" I said. "But she wanted to go in," Marta said. Marta is brave, which I admire, but sometimes not cautious enough. We had fun, though. Marta tried to climb the rock wall many, many times (and never got up there) but still kept trying while we were chanting, "Go Marta! Go Marta!" ...

something fishy

I have taken a few baths with Maria recently, and she is now old enough to be intrigued by that thing I have that she doesn't have down there. When she saw it, she gave it a strange look and said, Ooo, kala ("Oh, a fish!").

fusion word

The word "splinter" is pind in Estonian. Anna has created her own fusion word for splinter/pind -- "spinder."

sleeping moodies

See, they get along sometimes.

 

geno 2.0

Well, I finally received my Geno 2.0 results and they did surprise me. I think everyone who does this kind of DNA testing wants to be surprised like, "I'm half Japanese? No way!"

Going into this, I was expecting to be half Northern European, half Southern European or Mediterranean. I've looked into my family tree over many generations, and my grandfathers' families were in Italy for many hundreds of years, and my grandmothers' families came from, with a few exceptions, the British Isles - Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales.

First, the Y (paternal) and mtDNA (maternal) lines. Mypaternal line is a pretty common Western European one, R P-310. This is found in northern Italy, Spain, France, and the British Isles -- the Western edge of Europe. That is because we all descend from the first Europeans, who some are today best represented by the Basque people. In fact, it is thought that the Basque's language is this original ancient European language.

My mtDNA (maternal line) was H2A1. This is found in abundance in Scandinavia and Russia, trending toward the east of Europe, but H2 is actually in highest concentration in Scotland. My grandmother's family traces to Ireland, so ... not so far away. This would mean that our female ancestor probably came from the east via Scandinavia and into Scotland and then later into Ireland. This could have happened thousands of years ago.

My genetic composition was a bit surprising: 46 percent Mediterranean, 31 percent Northern European, 21 percent Southwest Asian. Mediterraneans are defined as you would expect - Spanish, Sardinians, Tunisians, Greeks, Lebanese. Northern European was defined as being found in highest abundance in UK, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia. Southwest Asian was very interesting -- Iran, Tajikistan, northern India. So about a fifth of my ancestry is from that region. Surprise! My reference population was Bulgarian -- apparently, Bulgarians and I are made of approximately the same mix of populations.

So, what I learned was that my Italian ancestry must have had a strong eastern component, and that my British Isles ancestry must have had a strong Mediterranean component -- as Britain and Ireland were populated from Iberia (Spain and Portugal) long ago, this would be plausible.

One issue I have been constantly trying to address with my research has been rumors of Native American ancestry. Geno 2.0 can detect Native ancestry down to 2 percent of your total ancestry, but that means if your Native ancestry dated back to before the mid-18th century, it wouldn't show. However, I have been able to download my raw data file and run it through a variety of admixture calculators available online. Each calculation has shown statistically significant amounts of Native American ancestry, ranging from 1 to 5 percent of the total. That would make sense, because any admixture with Native Americans would have occurred in my grandmother's family in the 17th or early 18th centuries, a time when the native Algonquian and Iroquoian tribes of eastern Virginia and North Carolina were shattered by war and disease, and Native men and women melted into the European and African communities.

In the end, I will have to ask -- is this worth it? I think it is, because I have spent years and many dollars doing family research, and for less than $200, I was able to obtain information I wouldn't have been able to get anywhere else. Actually, I feel like this caps this kind of research for me. With certain questions - like the one about Native ancestry - put to rest, I can focus on other things, as my curiosity has at last been sated.

eighteen, i mean, sixteen months

Happy birthday to Maria Leena, our littlest daughter who has brought peace to our lives with her calm demeanor and by only complaining when she has a soggy diaper or is hungry. Almost everyone that interacts with little Maria thinks that she is a sweet baby with a nice and easy personality. This photo is already a month old, it seems she changes with every day that I see her. Now she is talking a bit, and has been walking since September or so, and has gotten into many adventures, most of which involving climbing up on tables. Anyway, we love you Maria. Maria, Maria, Maria. We love you.