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It is independence day in Finland and normally at this time of the night, the tradition is to sit around the TV and watch the Presidential Ball, where various celebrities are invited as well as politicians and foreign dignitaries for a party. The tradition is to watch them all arrive and shake hands with the president - and pick on what they are wearing. Due to Covid restrictions, this year it is cancelled.

I think that is why I didn't get an invitation this year. I don't really have an excuse for the other years I didn't get an invite. 


![IMG_20201206_145603.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/yG1y5O1b-IMG_20201206_145603.jpg)

Sans invite, we are "partying" at home cleaning and repairing the floors upstairs in preparation to paint them this week. The picture above is ov my daughter's room and you can see the difference in color of the spot lights and the strip lights. The spots are incorrect, but due to availability of the warmer ones, won't be changed until February. 

This weekend was spent repairing the sloping attic walls and repainting. This has cost us a couple days and what is worse, it is a couple of weekend days. There is no way I can make it up on work days, which makes getting up here before Christmas increasingly unlikely. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter too much, but it would have been a nice family present. 

My wife tells our daughter often that she is the most important thing in the world to her and today Smallsteps shook her head, pointed up and said, "not anymore, the upstairs renovation is." :(

But, I sat down with her today and talked about it a bit and how as soon as the floors are painted, we will have more time to play. She has been playing alone the last couple days and enjoying herself, but she misses us. We were planning on her going to her grandparents, but she has a runny nose and my mother-in-law is having some surgery next week and she can't of she has a flu. 

While it is weird to not spend that much time this weekend with Smallsteps, I also think that it has been good for her to have to be independent and find her own stuff to do and we have listened to her play all kinds of games with her toys. She has a pretty good imagination, which I think is partly due to her not really watching any TV and having to think for herself. 

There is a lot of social pressure for parents to spend time with their kids, but I think at least from observation, a lot of time many spend is actually just in the same room. Yet, back in the past, parents spent less time with children and there was probably more childhood responsibility with household chores and the activity wasn't sitting in from of the TV. 

I think people put too much weighting on "time spent" and not enough on *how the time is spent.* overall, I think my wife and I do a pretty good job at this parenting thing, all things considered, so I am not too hard on us when we have to reduce the time spent together occasionally. 

Due to Smallsteps' runny nose, it looks like I will be staying home to look after her, as she won't be able to go to daycare. She isn't really sick at all, just the nose, but that is enough to put her on the Covid "no fly list". When it is wet and cold, pretty much all kids have runny noses all of the time... 

Well, this was an independence day work interlude and now I will have to get back to it. I am hoping to finish "early" so I can have a shower and then catch up on Hive stuff. It feela weird being absent so often, but like I told Smallsteps, *once the floor is painted...*



Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

Happy Independence day to @acidyo, @eveuncovered, @markkujantunen, @celestal and any other Finns out there. 



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