daily stuff

Olivia is just terrified of the vacuum cleaner. Here she's facing the fear with the (not-running) beast.


We were having a peaceful photo session until Sarita came back home. This is Olivia's first reaction as momma showed up at the door. (for you to read it from the eyes... she loves being photo'd... or...)

Here are the proud brothers teaching the little sister important issues of life, like about the world of terror and war... and how to park a car. (That soldier stuff captured both of them so much that they didn't even notice the flash when Sarita shot them.)

on yesterday's election & the short history of pentecostals in power

Yesterday was the election for the parliament. The results in short were Centre party got 51 seats and remained the biggest although lost 4, the National Coalition wan a big time gaining 10 seats up to 50, and dropping Social democrats to 45 seats. They lost 8 seats.

The result shifts the parliament slightly towards right, but just slightly because National coalition in Finland stands in quite moderate right. They beat the moderate left social democrats by a positive spirited campaign. Social democrats took the beat with very confrontational campaign, which was aimed to defame national coalition - accorded by SAK's (the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions') TV commercial, which was pulled back before it was broadcast once. One conclusion of the entire farce is that in current state of affairs, the fins aren't tickled by negative confrontation, but rather want someone to take a positive lead towards mastering economics in global challenge and providing the national welfare - of which right wing parties seem to have best credibility.

National coalition attempted to be moderate in promising funds to different needs in the campaign, but emphatically promised the trickiest: fair spirited (responsible) market economy. That's a big of promise in the greedy world, but they got their change to show how to reach it. Now we just wait and see.

Other elected parties are Left Alliance (17seats) Green League (15seats) Christian Democrats (7seats) Swedish People Party (9) and True Fins (5seats). True Fins, as bombastic as it sounds, is more of a protest party that wants to leave EU etc. Swedish People Party is the most right wing group mainly supported by finnish swedish speaking folks. The people of Sweden are not allowed to vote in Finland. =)

Christian Democrats is a small, moderate right party that mainly speaks out in issues that touch Christian ethics. They remained the same in size this time. They are not a pentecostal party but do provide the most comfortable way into politics to many pentecostals - so much so, that it's hard to find a pentecostal candidate in any other party. On one side it's a natural result of the party raising up issues that connect well the Pent church folks, one the other hand it also might have roots in the Finnish Pentecostal story.

The revival history of the Pentecostal church shows that contrary to the other the evangelical churches pentecostal movement, at the peak of it's growth, it grew the fastest among working-class population. A lot of them, following the conversion, let go of their left party/communist party membership. The biggest reason for this was the strong atheistic tone that dominated the left wing politics back then. However, the people's mindset of the optimal societal system did not change, of course, and they remained left for that matter. This dilemma was handled by encouragement to dismiss politics as whole. As obscure as it sounds, some leaders of the pentecostal movement admitted back then that they can't encourage people to vote, because they'd vote wrong... In sum, the mainline teaching in Pentecostal churches for decades was to keep out from politics.

That was back then, now in many places politics are seen as important part of being involved in the community. However, as result of this history Pentecostals are still fighting to find their place in political stands. This leads them to mainly concentrate the issues that are the closest to their hearts, application of Christian ethics in the society.

This is not to underestimate the political credibility of any Christian democrat candidate, or the people who vote for them. However, I personally would like to see people with solid Christian values (and profoundly skilled in his/her area) in every aspect of power, and to those seats Christian Democrats as a small (sometimes protest) party are not offering ladders to climb. Neither are they currently offering any credible candidates to i.e. government seats, anyway.

So, I keep on hoping that a new generation will produce skilled Pentecostal politicians that will find their way to have impact in every area of the society. I also hope that the new generation will provide an atmosphere of freedom to choose what's really one's most comfortable and the most effective path into the political scenes.

Until that, I wait to see what the responsible market economy might mean.

Concratz to all who's candidates made their way through.

olivia 8months

Olivia turns 8months today. The latest achievements besides the glorious fullnightsleep, are two more teeth up - scoring it 6 in total.

SP1 - fixed a major bug in stand-by mode

Last night Olivia slept from 7 pm to 6.30am all the way through. We did not hear her once squeak. At 5am Sarita had to go and check she's still breathing... She was breathing and kept in sound sleep for a good hour more.

That's quite a change from the last week (and all the way since christmas time) when she had kept waking up every hour, which makes it 8-10 times - in a good night. In bad nights she stayed awake for a couple of hours in between. That make her really tired during the day... and Sarita nearly insane. (well, she resisted madness very well, but it's been tough for her.) =)

We finally made up our minds to try find a solution and got good and concrete advices from a nurse. The deal was to put her to own room (i.e. my office for now), and teach her to fall asleep without help. The concrete part was the work-out plan, that whenever she's crying one of us shows up at her and stroke her for comfort - but only in every three minutes. That, besides having the poor little princess sleeping alone in the office, felt like heartbreaking... but we made it. (She was apparently quite fine with it from the the start, and cried a lot less than what we expected.) Three minutes in long enough for her to get the point, but short enough to prevent her feeling abandoned.

The result: four nights later she is sleeping 12hours through. Good girl.

the princess

olivia learned to stand up. Here she's looking after Joonatan who was hit by a flu. She also surprised us all by talking in the phone... not quite in Finnish though.


But she's figured that words are only 10%of communication, and there are more effective ways of getting the point across. Here some faces...