It feels like a step change has taken place. Ingrid has matured, and realized that being nice to people has advantages, that “thank you” and “please” work. Previously she’d first order us around and, when we pushed back, swung to the opposite extreme and asked us with a honeyed voice and overdone politeness. “Please dear mummy could you be so kind as to help me.” Now she just asks nicely straight away.

Likewise she sometimes remembers to thank me when I do something for her, or buy clothes for her, etc. Occasionally she even remembers to compliment us on the food. Mostly it’s something like “I liked the pasta. The sauce wasn’t so good but the pasta was good” but still, that’s something.

For some reason she’s become picky with food. She used to eat pretty much everything we served, except for a few things that I knew she didn’t like. (Squishy things like courgettes and aubergines, and leaves, which covered everything from spinach to lettuce to chopped parsley.) Now she is almost as bad as Adrian and eats starches (pasta, rice, bread, potato), meatballs, and possibly one or two vegetables (bell peppers, peas, sweetcorn). And fruit, luckily.

I think this may tie in with her general tendency right now to want everything to be just so. If her new toothbrush isn’t perfect, just the way she imagined it, it’s no good. If I serve a favourite dish of hers but it comes out not exactly like last time, it’s no good. Etc.

She is distracted and there seems to be a lot going on in her head. Meals take forever, because she forgets to eat. She starts talking about something (to us, or just to herself), climbs down from the chair because some rope needs to be straightened out just so because her doll needs it as a lifeline, or she is too busy trying to balance a strand of spaghetti just so on her fork. At night when going to bed, the soft toys in her bed have to be lined up and organized just so, and a running commentary is going on throughout.

Interestingly she has no trouble coming up with things to do when she already has something to do (such as eating, or getting dressed). It’s when she is not busy that she has trouble entertaining herself. But she’s become better at that, too. She doesn’t start talking about watching TV as soon as she’s done eating breakfast, and has actually managed some days completely without TV.

Ingrid’s quite preoccupied with bodily hurts. At the end of each day at preschool the first thing she will tell me is which parts of her body she hurt and how many times. When she summarizes her Sunday morning judo session it’s all about counting bruises and falls, rather than remembering what was fun.

She has been more interested than usual in buying things and in the concept of money. She’s had an allowance (10kr every Saturday) since her 5th birthday. Sometimes she’s been more interested and sometimes less. Now she’s used up all her money and actually bought one thing on credit. (A pony ride when we went to the circus: 30kr, a waste for 2 minutes’ ride in my opinion, but not in hers. Since it was a unique opportunity I let her borrow 30kr from me.) She has started talking about saving up some money to buy something bigger (such as one of those large shiny helium-filled balloons) but fiscal discipline is not coming easily to her.

A friend of hers had a miniature backyard sale of old toys. Ingrid wanted to do the same with her old toys and clothes but I vetoed the idea because I want to keep most of them for Adrian. But I suggested that she could earn some extra money by doing chores. Specifically I’d pay her 1kr for setting the table, and 1kr for clearing it after a meal. She earned 5kr in total but now her interest has waned.

She likes to talk funny (imitating some dialect or accent that I can’t place right now) and walk funny (knock-kneed, toes turned in).

She likes tattoos, both the kinds you transfer with water and home-made ones (with face paint), and almost always has one on her arm or hand. Every time she gets one, she wants me to take a photo of it – she is not happy about the impermanence of these things.

She’s started describing herself as “not so good at” all sorts of things – things she can do reasonably well (cutting her food), things she hasn’t practised much (speaking English), and things she’s never tried (karate). This must be something she picked up from preschool. I didn’t say anything initially but now I object and explain what “not so good at” means and what the difference is between not having tried, not having practised much yet, and actually not being good at something.

Self-portrait

Yesterday I exterminated cherry seedlings. 616 before lunch and 134 after, for a total of 750. It’s a most fertile cherry tree we have.

Here’s a photo of last year’s pickings.

One morning, earlier this week, a lady approached me as I was unlocking my bike at Karlberg train station in the morning. She asked if I could fill in a questionnaire about the bike parking situation there. And the situation has been bugging me so badly for so long that I was not only willing to do so, but really happy that someone was actually interested in improving the parking there.

There were questions about the state of the parking (= ranging from poor to atrocious, with the ground littered with rotting newspapers and a significant number of the slots occupied by abandoned broken bikes), how easy it is to find a space there (= I am lucky to be working part time and leaving work early, before the afternoon rush hour), where I’m going and how often I use this bike parking, etc etc. And finally a question about whether I’d be willing to pay a monthly fee for parking my bike.

I totally would. I would do it if the only thing I got for my money was a guaranteed place, because when I have 3–5 minutes to park my bike and get to the platform, I do not want to have to wander around looking for a place and shifting other bikes around to squeeze mine in. What luxury it would be to also have the place cleaned regularly, and maybe even a roof!

Now let’s hope something concrete comes out of this, and within the near future rather than in 5 years’ time.

This weekend we bought some dahlias, which I repotted and put out on the deck yesterday evening. But I forgot to check the weather report and therefore they were damaged by the night frost – just hours after I put them out. Now I feel like a fool, and sad to see for the beautiful flowers that hang brown and shrivelled. I hope they recover, otherwise I will have to start over.

And the cold I’ve had for a week got worse during the weekend, and today I realized it’s now turned into sinusitis – fever, half my head aches, and my teeth as well.

And Adrian’s reaction to seeing me trying to rest on the sofa is to get all worried and clingy, and want to nurse every 5 minutes, so really there wasn’t any resting for me until he went to bed.

Now I’m in a grumpy mood, feeling sorry for myself and the flowers. I’m treating myself with chocolate – after about 60kr worth of nice pralines from Chokladfabriken I am feeling distinctly better.

Sunny and warm again, so we went to Skansen.

We spent what felt like hours at the fairground (Galejan) even though they have like five rides in total, two of which are swing carousels (small and large). Adrian wanted to try the merry-go-round but started crying and wanted off the horse as soon as the whole thing started moving. Then he wanted to try the small swing carousel (“gunga! gunga! gunga!”) but again started crying as soon as it started.

Ingrid spent 5 kronor of her pocket money on a whac-a-mole game and was disappointed to tears when it ended after just a minute, and she got nothing more than some electronic points on a screen.

On our way to the children’s zoo Ingrid spotted a sign that said you could try your hand at traditional farmstead jobs. At that moment they were doing textile jobs, mangling and ironing, so Ingrid got to iron a towel using an old-fashioned iron (with a fire-heated stone inside). She also tried on old-style clothes, and tested an old bed (with a hay-filled mattress and pillow, and thick plank edges, and heavy curtains), and loved both.

The children’s zoo had been redone and there was little zoo left, mostly just bridges and walkways and fences and hills, more like a playground than a zoo. Which both kids liked but I was sort of disappointed. We usually spend a good chunk of time in the Skansen zoo but this time we never even got there, and treated Skansen like a playground instead. But we did at least get to see rabbits and a squirrel and a peacock and some perch in an aquarium.

Today was the first really warm day for this spring. Jacket off, shoes off, I could actually sit in the afternoon sun in the garden without freezing. Finally, finally something that feels like spring. Even though it probably came about the same time as last year and the year before, it feels like the wet and cold period (non-winter? pre-spring?) has lasted for ever.

Look at what this weather (with repeated late cold snaps and even snowfall) has done to the daffodils. They’re totally stunted – some no taller than scillas.

I spent Monday and Tuesday at Agila Sverige (Agile Sweden). A great conference, again. Now I’m full of enthusiasm and a desire to change things. The challenge is to somehow hold on to that energy and not let it leak out. I try to visualize myself being a drip feeder rather than a sieve.

Words, words and more words – and bubbly happiness when he sees that we understand what he says. He can express his wishes and desires. He understands questions and can answer them: what, where, and yes/no. He understands explanations such as “nappy change first, then shoes”.

A very practical non-verbal word he has learned is a clear shake of the head to mean “no”. This really makes communication easier and is much preferable to screaming in protest. Clothes, for example: sometimes he wants socks and sometimes he doesn’t. Now we can ask him and he can shake his head if he doesn’t want them just then.

Among the odder words he knows are “oil” and “egg” (õli and muna) – not because he eats either of those but because he likes me to use them in cooking. He can reach the bottle of cooking oil and hand it to me, and I let him hand me eggs from the carton when I need those. He even knows the difference between cooking oil and olive oil (for drizzling on a salad or on pasta) and gives me the right one. Likewise he knows “microwave” (ikko) because he likes the way it goes “ding” when it’s done.

Nina (“nose”) must be said while simultaneously pinching his nose shut, so it sounds funny.

Istu (“sit down”) means nursing, because when I see that he wants to nurse I often tell him “let me sit down first”.

Almost all birds are anka (“duck”) – everything from flamingoes to eagles. The only bird that isn’t a duck is a rooster (which also includes hens).

He is also learning the names of his friends at nursery – and his own name, Aad-an.

I believe he may be beginning to realize that Eric and I have different words for the same thing. The only word I have heard him use in both languages is auto/bil for “car”.

He is much more willing to accept Eric than Ingrid was at this age. He now goes to sleep with Eric (because with me we often ended up in a struggle as he wanted to nurse forever instead of going to sleep) and does so without the least complaint. When I lift him down from my lap, he goes to Eric, whereas Ingrid would just stand and cry next to me.

Things he likes:

• Books.
• Songs and singing. Hearing us sing. He himself is also beginning to sing/hum a little.
• Looking out through the window, especially when people pass by, ideally walking their dogs.
• Waving good-bye or hello through the window when someone leaves home or comes back.
• Going out.
• Marbles and marble runs.
• Phones, real and fake. He can take things that look nothing like a phone (such as a book, or a spoon) and pretend they’re phones – hold them to his ear and say halloo. I think it is pretty cool that he understands the concept of pretending and joking like this.
• Putting on his shoes by himself, more or less – standing up and putting his foot in a shoe, with me holding the shoe open.
• Hats and gloves. Putting on and taking off his jersey hat.
• Flowers.
• Sitting on Eric’s desk together with Ingrid while she watches a movie and he pokes at stuff.
• Climbing or crawling into large boxes.

Things he does not like:

• Leaving nursery. Quite often he runs to meet me, nurses, and then goes off to play again, and gets really angry when I try to make him go home. Sometimes it ends with me carrying a wriggling screaming baby towards the gate.
• New food. He rejects pretty much anything and looks at us as if we were trying to poison him.

This has been another ordinary month with few noteworthy news to mention. Life with Ingrid has been routine and gone smoothly. There are no dramas and no mood swings.

Movies and iPad are still her number one hobby, but we still limit them to afternoons only. The fallback option is still Bamse, and at times it feels like there are Bamse issues lying all over the house (even though we gather them up every evening).

She also has a new book that she loves, about animals from various habitats around the world. About 10 animals per habitat (forest, desert, polar regions etc) and a two-page spread per animal – one large photo, and one page with some text plus a quiz of some sort. (Multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blanks…) The quizzes is what she really likes about this book. When we read it together we absolutely have to do the quiz first, together, and then we can read the facts and check whether we got it right or not.

She is distractible. She fidgets and climbs around and plays with her food and gets sidetracked during mealtimes, and forgets to apply the table manners that she used to have a good grip on. We have now initiated “Sunday dinners” as a way to train those table manners back into her: with a tablecloth, candles, flowers, and a focus on manners.

At some point during the last month or two she has started spending entire nights in her own bedroom, and no longer wanders into our bedroom at night. But she still goes to sleep with one of us sitting next to her.

She plays well with Adrian, especially at nursery/preschool. Almost every day when I get to nursery to pick them up, and they’re outdoors because of the nice weather, I see them playing together. Peekaboo in the playhouse, or she’s pushing him around on a tricycle (on which he can sit but his feet cannot reach the pedals or the gorund), or encouraging him to go down the slide.

At home there is more competition about resources (especially when Adrian tries to grab whatever she has) but she can be surprisingly flexible around this. She lets go the things that are obviously more important to Adrian than to her; distracts him with an alternative when she really wants to have her things in peace; helps him when he needs help; laughs at his antics.

Helping Adrian build a tower

Easter cards. Chickens (with long hair and eyelashes),
and eggs in various states of development:
with a tiny seed, a little wiggly worm,
and finally a tiny chick. And a ghost.

This is cool: NY Times: Copy of Mona Lisa done in tandem with Leonardo. To me the copy feels more like a Leonardo than the Mona Lisa itself, because of the dark varnish on the original.