Somero's Future.....

....is in these tiny hands.

Yesterday our local paper published pictures of all the babies born in Somero during the year 2011. They were published in the order they were born, and Minttu found herself next to her little friend Eelis as their birthdays are less than two weeks apart. The most popular name for boys this year seems to be Konsta...there were three of them on these pages. The names Elmeri and Rasmus both appeared twice for the boys and in terms of girls' names two babies were called Lotta and two called Fanni or Fanny.

According to the article there were 78 new arrivals in Somero last year which was eight more than in 2010. The highest figure ever was in 2003 when 100 babies were born in the town, but the overall population figures are still going down slightly.

The civil register now has 9274 people officially registered as living here, although I have no doubt that this number will increase once the secret is out about what sort of place Somero is to live and to bring up children!

It is such a simple idea to celebrate all the new babies like this - more places should do the same thing - as these pages will be great souvenir in years to come, both for the children themselves and also for their families.  Who knows what future stars are on these pages? Maybe somewhere here is a picture of a Finnish president or Olympic athlete.

Minttu found the other babies hilarious

More important of course is that whatever these babies end up doing in the future, they grow up to be fulfilled and happy, and I hope we are all able to play a part in making that happen. In fact we need to do our best to take care of these little ones because one day we may well be relying on them to look after us!