Who we are

We are a small family living in Estonia (it is the country under Finland) who decided to raise our first born child a bit differently, so he wouldn't be afraid not the go with the flow when he grows up and would have a better relationship with us, parents, than we do with our own parents.

Our upbringing is kind of a mixture of attachment parenting, montessori and waldorf education, I took mostly what I like from each and try to put it to work (the dad goes with my flow as he is most of the time at work). Even though people often think montessori and waldorf are contradictory, from what I've read I feel like they are more or less the same till the age of 3 - both philosophies believe child should stay at home with mother and be involved in every day life (the means how to do it differ, though). I personally believe that attachment parenting is the most important philosophy/lifestyle for the first year of life, I want our son to know we are always available for him and no matter how cranky he is (and he is a super-cranky baby), he will be always loved no matter what and that we will try to make it better for him. On the other side, I strongly believe children need boundaries, so he is not allowed to do whatever he wants, even though he is allowed to do probably more than a usual child? I don't know...I don't have a problem with him examining a puddle as long as we are close to home, so he won't get too cold on the way home, or he can play with almost anything at home unless it is a nail/screw/anything long and metal (not that these things are lying around) because of the electrical sockets (the only babyproofing we did, we moved things we don't want him to play with more up) or a knife or a cable from the laptop. A friend of mine said that our apartment looks quite dangerous for a baby but it somehow works for us, that he has never injured himself and he is not interested in dangerous stuff (I am still not sure what she meant by the dangerous stuff because I consider our apartment safe for a baby). There is a very strict no to pulling dog's hair/skin/tail/examining his bowls, he seems to accept it, only the pulling is quite a challenge to him, especially because the dog likes to keep himself always close (my boyfriend thinks that our shih-tzu thinks T. is his puppy :)) There are more rules, but this is getting too long, I think.

(here he is practising putting the charger back to the socket)

We try to take a toddler walk every day no matter what the weather is like. We are living north, so if we went out only when the weather is sunny/warm/nice, we would have to stay at home most of the time and that would suck, it is quite boring to spend the whole day in a small city apartment.

Another not very mainstream thing is that he has only 1 battery operated toy, the Fisher Price speaking dog, which I bought for him to hear more Russian as his father's mother tongue is Russian (mine is Czech), but he doesn't hear it very much because his dad is at work a lot and I have only Estonian/English speaking friends here. We do mostly wooden toys and try to be minimalists, which is very difficult because toys are not that expensive and it is very tempting to buy more...we do mostly toys which develop something, I hope we won't do character toys in the future. I try to keep his toys organized and he seems to pick up on this habit because he sometimes puts the toy back when he is done with playing with it.

No screen time, I believe babies/toddler gain nothing from watching tv/youtube. On the other hand, the other day I used youtube songs to keep him distracted from the fact he is being dressed, not very proud of it, but it worked, I am still not sure if to use it again or not - he has a cold now and the weather is super horrible, so we don't do toddler walks now.

I do almost everything with him, he helps me to throw stuff out of the dryer, put laundry in the washing machine (sometimes he throws it out instead), he pushes the start button, closes the powder drawer, puts the washing tablet (supervised!!!) into the dishwasher, helps me vacuum clean by changing the intensity of sucking or holding the tube, helps me to mop the floor by flooding the floor (water is irresistible to babies) - if I don't want to deal with a flood, I put him on my back while cleaning + it makes him sleepy. :)

(this picture was taken when my mum visiting, that's why the mess behind)

I let him play in the sink while cooking, or do whatever he wants because I believe it is important for him to see that things don't just happen.

Since he started walking on his own (1 day before 11 months), he became quite clingy, so I started babywearing again, I dropped babywearing when he started crawling and was fine with sleeping in the stroller, but now I am trying meet his needs, so I wear him till he falls asleep (for some reason he is no longer able to do it on his own + he decided he doesn't need a pacifier any more, which makes falling asleep a bit more difficult, but he wouldn't take it even if offered multiple times) or when he is cranky and he is quite often now because he doesn't get enough of sleep, but who would have time to sleep if there is the whole world to explore, right? He doesn't enjoy the wrap as much as the carrier, so we welcomed Tula Baby carrier in our family.

OK, he woke up from his nap on my back, so it's time to finish this, it became longer than expected and didn't cover everything but things will pop up while writing this blog...