Theological questions

A year and a half ago Risto was almost 4, Tuomas almost 2 and Jaakko a newborn. It was getting close to Christmas, the house in a semi-mess after our moving in in October and I was, as always, in a hurry somewhere and trying to get all three dressed warmly enough when Risto stops me with an important question:"What does God eat?". It's the sort of question, in my opinion, that cannot be answered with a shrug and "I dunno, let's get moving!". I'm pretty sure God doesn't go to Maccers for lunch, but how to explain that. As far as I know, He doesn't really eat. It took me a while to try to answer his question. I thought that he was satisfied with this when his next question came:"Are Jesus and Father Christmas friends?". Quite an understandable question since Jesus is born at Christmas..... another thing hard to explain. His third question seemed to be just as important question for him, but more easy for me to answer:"What are these pieces of lumber doing here on the floor?" I sighed in relief that the theological questions were over and I could answer him while I was still trying my best to get the boys dressed and out of the house and hurry to where ever it was that we were late from.

The next summer at his cousin's christening at my parents summer place (the service was held outside by the lake) Risto sat in a chair, looked like he was in a bad mood. After the service I asked him what was wrong. He looked surprised and answered:"I was listening to the priest!". He was just obviously concentrating! Later on he has pointed out several times that he was the only one of the children to sit and listen.

At day care they talk about religion, go to church and I guess once a month a pastor from the nearby congregation comes to talk to the kids. Easter time made a big impression on Risto and he was angry that "they killed God" and asked me why. I tried saying something that Jesus taught things that some people didn't agree with. I'm not really good at answering these theological questions, but in my opinion it gives me the opportunity to really think about what I believe in. He still talks about the killing of Jesus, remembers all the details. Whenever I compliment him on his good memory he always answers:"Yeah, Mom. And I still remember when I barfed when I was a little boy!"

Last week I had to answer "where does God live?". I mumbled something about Him being everywhere and nowhere specific. Obviously not a good answer since Risto was annoyed and informed me to "read it from your God-book!".

Last night Risto started again to think about God's housing problem, but this time remembered that I had told him that God is invisible. It was quite funny when Risto showed me how God can come in through your throat and out of your mouth since He's everywhere and invisible like air.

And today Risto strikes again:
"Mom, isn't it so, that God is the most important thing in the world?"
M:"Yes, dear. If you want to think like that. Other people find other things the most important ones, but you have every right to think God is the most important."
R:"And the second most important thing is the Earth."
M:"Yes." I was curious to hear the next important thing... Mom... Dad.... Peace on Earth.... Friends?
R:"And the third one is MONEY! I'm sometimes quite a smart boy!"

None of my guesses made it to the top 5. Fourth was food and fifth bicycling. Should I be worried that my son thinks that money is so important? Is he beyond saving?!?!?

Flowers

I'd love to ask a truly drunken person to say "Rhododendron". I'm wondering if would it be easy to say it....

We have nice Rhododendrons on our yard next to the boys sand box. Zoom-in and zoom-out pictures.

Zoom-in.Zoom-in.Zoom-out. Most of the toys in the box, surprising!

Dandelions look lovely at this stage. Jaakko giggles when I blow them. We have plenty of them in our yard, so much that I poisoned the lawn tonight. I asked the sales person at the store if the dandelion poison kills small boys, too. Her answer was "not immediately".....

I planted more laveders around the apple tree and oregano, sage, peppermint, rosemary, parsley, dill and rucola and I've put a pot with strawberries on the corner of the patio. My gardener complimented me on the way I did the edge of the lawn!

Too much time

What do you do when you have too much time to spend after work when the boys have gone to bed and the house is spotless, the laundry done, freshly baked bread in the kitchen, up-dated your blog, finished all the UFO's and pigs are flying outside? You make syrup out of spruce shoots :-)

It's really easy to make. Well, this is the first time for me and so far it looks easy. You just need to find a spruce in the spring with lovely spring green shoots, pick a liter of them (ask for permission of the land owner if you don't own the tree; luckily we have two in our yard), give them a rinse, layer them with sugar in a glass jar, give it a gentle shake (I shook it quite much, just for the fun of it), and put it on the window sill for a month (north or east facing). Not remembering the recipe I put my jar on a south facing sill, but I guess the end result is just the same. Some recipes talk about boiling, but IMHO it would boil away all the goodies (vitamins etc.). So I won't boil it after sieving it. Lovely before-after pictures IMHO!

Sugar and spruce shoot in the jar May 31.

Honestly, this should be very healthy!!! The jar the next day, June 1.

Looking better on June 12.

Bicycling

I think that most of the summer will be spent bicycling.

Tuomas got to borrow Risto's bike last week when Risto went on an overnight trip with DH. It would've been too cruel to tell Tuomas to ride his old, tiny bike after Risto came back, so we bought Risto a new one with 3 gears. Oh, he's so proud of it! And Tuomas, he's so proud of his new bike. And he loves to bicycle. The day Risto was away with DH, I took the boys to day-care. I had everything ready, Tuomas was bicycling on the yard and when I got out, ready to pack him and Jaakko to the car, Tuomas said he wanted to bicycle to day-care (that's 4 km!!). My first thought was "no", but then thought why the answer has to be always "no". I knew it would take time (we had half an hour to get there for the boys to get their breakfast), but I took the risk. We made it just in time, but Tuomas enjoyed it so much. I helped him up some of the hills, pushing him from his back, but we made it. I was sure he'd have his nap, but no! And when we came home after bicycling the 4 km back, he wanted to continue bicycling. In the evening I had to carry him inside screaming, because he just wanted to bicycle.

Jaakko likes to bicycle, too. At first he screamed when I strapped him to the seat on my bicycle and screamed even more when I put the helmet on. But now he walks to the bicycle himself and pats on the seat "I want to go for a ride".

Tuomas, 3.5 years end of July. Finland's future Lance Armstrong. Or wait a second, maybe not. Wasn't he the one who had testicular cancer and doped himself for better results..... I'd love one of my boys to play some instrument, but I think they'll end up just doing a lot of sports!

Therapy

"Therapy is expensive, bubble wrap is cheap. You choose!" I don't know who said this, but it has a point :-) But this time we chose knitting needles and crochet hooks instead of bubble wrap. (I have to admit that I love popping bubble wrap so much that usually DH ends up telling me to stop.)

Well, beth bynnag ("anyway" in Welsh), I joined a knitting group almost 5 years ago. We meet every 3-4 weeks taking turns to be the hostess. Knit, crochet, any craft will do. Outi joined this spring. We're 6 women who have 16 children! Sometimes when the DH's haven't realised the importance of these meetings and not taking care of the kids we have a lot of helpers and we're not able to do that much crafts, but it has become more easy since the children are getting older (aged 1.5 to 12, 11 boys and 5 girls). But the last Saturday of May we had a therapy day. Just the moms, no kids, no DHs. We started with a Pilates class in our livingroom, then had massages, had chicken-halloumi-strawberry salad for lunch and Outis banana muffins. Knitting and crocheting played a big part in our day. And it was therapy! We stayed at our place until late afternoon, then continued our session at Sari's, knitting, chatting eating chocolte cake. We were all of the opinion that 1 therapy day per year is way too little!
Sari, Anso, Kati (behind the spoon-art dangling from the ceiling), Marjo and Outi. Vilijonkka might recognize a few friendly faces, she used to be a member and as far as I know, visits this page quite regularly *waving*.

Alive!

Yes, I survived the temporary single parenthood, no problem with that. I've been just very busy and the heat wave we had just squeezed the juices out of me. I had hardly any energy left at the end of the day, so I couldn't even think about blogging. Plus I want to have pictures with my posts and they're all locked in the camera which needs its battery loaded and that takes a lot of my energy, i.e. to plan to go downstairs, get the cable, load the camera, open the computer, blah-blah-blah.

So, I'll add pictures later.