Thirteen months.

I am, again, struck by how fast time goes and how quickly everything changes. A few months ago Ingrid was practicing her pincer grip and worked hard to pick up pieces of fruit from the table. Now she’s so good at it that it no longer impresses us at all, even when she is picking up teensy pieces of slippery fruit. We were talking to another parent the other day, and he confirmed what we’ve noticed: you are so aware of the things that are going on right now, but all the previous months (and years) just melt together into a jumble. Your child is doing things today that she wasn’t doing when she was born… but it’s so hard to remember when she learned it. Which is why I’m glad I’m stopping to take stock once a month.

Over here, table skills have been progressing recently, mostly because of Ingrid’s aversion to being spoon-fed (unless the stuff we spoon-feed her is particularly yummy). Everything tastes better when it is she who holds the spoon. But spoons are tricky, and food often slides off before the spoon hits the mouth, so she hasn’t been eating much spoon food. (Forks are easier, as long as I stick the fork in the food.) Instead she has been sharing the most finger-friendly parts of our food, and eating quite a lot of bread, cheese and fruit. She has a surprisingly mature palate: I have offered her quite strongly-flavoured sauces, aniseed-flavoured bread and garlicky things, fully expecting her to spit them out, but she has eaten them and asked for more. Most recent favourite: mandarins. Hard to eat without teeth, but she persists, because they taste so good. Now she’s taken to spitting out the chewed-out pieces. The same goes for raisins: she loves the taste and is happy to stuff lots of them in her mouth, and keep them there for a long time, but she can’t chew them enough to be able to swallow them so after a while they come back out.

The habit of putting all kinds of non-food things in her mouth is getting weaker, but some things still have to be tasted. She seems to be particularly fond of small pebbles.

Right now Ingrid is most interested in things that contain other things. The stacking cups remain popular, and so does the shape sorter, as do drawers and boxes, and our suitcases, and her changing bag. She was most happy when she got the chance to empty the pack of disposable nappies we bought while on holiday, pulling them out one by one, and the pack of nappy sacks is almost as good. Some of these are one-way activities because she has no idea how to get the things back in, but with others she definitely makes an effort to put them back. Chaos is no longer her guiding principle. Mealtimes often end with her picking food carefully from one bowl to another, or from bowl to table and table to bowl. And when she pulls down shampoo bottles from the edge of the bath tub (which she is much less interested in than she used to be) she also tends to put them back. Likewise I think she has just started to discover that blocks can be used to build (placing one on top of the other) and not just to demolish.

She is also just figuring out that objects can have effects other than just loud noises. We don’t have any toys that flash lights or make noises when you push a button, but she is showing great interest in light switches when I use them, and she has noticed that interesting things happen when I squeeze her bath toys so she is working hard at emulating that. The effects are pretty unpredictable since she hasn’t understood that the bubbles and/or squirts of water come out from one particular part of the toy.

She has learned to wave bye-bye and wave hello to people, and to say hello (which sounds like a hybrid of hello and hej). The timing is a bit random, both with the waving and the hellos, but it’s clear that she has understood the general type of situation where that sort of behaviour is expected.

Apart from the hellos Ingrid isn’t saying much. I guess the confusion of three languages may be a bit too much for her to untangle. She has, however, picked up pappa (since Eric has spent quite a bit of time practicing that). When we get up early in the morning, and I later tell her that we can now go in to pappa and wake him, she gets all excited!

And she is making a lot of noises. She tends to pick a combination of sounds and then repeat that for a while, almost identically. Then do something else, and then maybe go back to that sound again several hours later. Most recently she was experimenting with pitch: saying äi with a very distinctive falling tone, again and again.

But I get the impression that she hasn’t figured out the language = communication link yet. She doesn’t use words. She likes making sounds, and knows that certain sounds go with certain situations or things. But she isn’t saying pappa when she wants to go to daddy, or making a certain kind of sound when she wants food. That kind of wish is still just signalled by a generic complaining screech. (On the other hand, she now knows exactly what to do when she wants milk: pull up my t-shirt. Very clear signals there.)

The other big baby milestone, walking, also remains just out of reach. Or rather, I think it is within her reach but she just doesn’t know it. Given how fast she is toddling around with her Wheely Bug, and how unstable that thing is, I am pretty sure that she could pick up walking within a few days if she tried, but she is too cautious to try walking without support. Sometimes she lets go with both hands because she needs them for other, more urgent things, but then as soon as she realises what’s happened – oh no, no hands! – she quickly grabs hold of something, or sits down, just in case.

We are leaving for a one-week vacation in Gran Canaria today. We have travelled with Ingrid before (she has flown abroad 5 times already) but this will be our first “real” vacation with her – the first time we go somewhere different to do something different.

It is most unlikely that I will have Internet access while we’re away.

This week’s favourite toy by far: a little limp rag of a balloon. Much better than a big round balloon, in fact.

When Eeyore saw the pot, he became quite excited.

“Why!” he said. “I believe my Balloon will just go into that Pot!”

“Oh, no, Eeyore,” said Pooh. “Balloons are much too big to go into Pots. What you do with a balloon is, you hold the balloon.“

“Not mine,” said Eeyore proudly. “Look, Piglet!” And as Piglet looked sorrowfully round, Eeyore picked the balloon up with his teeth, and placed it carefully in the pot; picked it out and put it on the ground; and then picked it up again and put it carefully back.

“So it does!” said Pooh. “It goes in!”

“So it does!” said Piglet. “And it comes out!”

“Doesn’t it?” said Eeyore. “It goes in and out like anything.”

There used to be a time when Ingrid had needs. When her needs were not satisfied, she reacted, mostly by crying. There was little or no conscious involvement or decision in the crying, and (I imagine) little understanding that she was crying because of something. Crying just happened, like a force of nature.

Now she has developed wants. And when her wants are not satisfied, she reacts. Sometimes by shrieking, sometimes by arching her back violently to get away, sometimes by crying big big tears.

The smallest things can upset her. Occasionally the sight of a spoon and a bowl is enough to set her off crying, sounding like she was being tortured. I don’t really understand why she cries – I am pretty sure that she is hungry, I am not forcing food down her throat (in fact I haven’t even lifted the spoon yet) and it is food she likes. Generally she stops after a short while and is then happy to eat, although sometimes she refuses the spoon and will only eat with her fingers.

In any case, she is now crying because she wants to tell me something, and she knows it. She just doesn’t have any other way of expressing her wishes. And when she really wants it badly, she cries hard. I can already see the emerging roots of proper tantrums in this – you know, the kind of tantrums that involve lying on the floor, kicking and squirming and screaming. Preferably in a public place.

I hate hearing and seeing her cry. Some months ago I heard a parent say “It’s surprising how quickly you get immune to your own child wailing.” No, I don’t actually. Her cries still pain me. If it is something I can fix, I do. If she is crying because she sees me hold a spoon, well, I put down the spoon and walk away so she can calm down. If she is crying because I won’t let her play with my camera, I hide the camera and distract her. Sometimes, of course, I have to harden my heart and ignore her crying, no matter how much it hurts – for example when she wails because she does not want to lie down for a nappy change.

Other times I can’t do anything because I just don’t know what she wants. I am really looking forward to when she learns to talk so she can tell me.

Back when during my university years I got to know the facilities manager of our school. Everyone knew him, really, and he knew everybody, especially the students active in the student association. Need to book a room for an evening event? Talk to Azad. Access pass not working? Talk to Azad. Want to borrow a trolley to move a large pile of paper? Talk to Azad.

I was told that he had started out as a lowly janitor and worked his way up. He had energy, people skills, and a can-do attitude, and he took his job seriously.

Some cleaners, on the other hand, will never become anything much better than cleaners. At work I see our cleaning staff shuffle around slowly with bored faces. When they empty a rubbish bin, they take away the bag by dragging it behind them, even though the bag weighs next to nothing. They never move fast and never show any real engagement in their work.

A lady comes by to clean our home once every two weeks. She’s been doing it since we first moved to this apartment four years ago. Whenever she has cleaned, the first thing we do when we get home is redo the bin bag in the kitchen. When she changes it, she puts the new bag over the handle of the inner bin, so you cannot lift it out by the handle. In the four years she’s been coming here, she has either not noticed that the bin has a handle which can be used for lifting, or not cared.

I just don’t understand that sort of mindset. How can you care so little for what you do?

There is a Swedish children’s song about a spider. It goes like this:

Imse vimse spindel klättrar upp för trå’n.
Ned faller regnet, spolar spindeln bort.
Upp stiger solen, torkar bort allt regn,
Imse vimse spindel klättrar upp igen.

It never made sense to me as a song. It doesn’t rhyme, for starters. It seems to describe a rather random sequence of events. Why would the rain wash the spider away from its thread? And what the heck is “imse vimse”, anyway? I wondered for years why anyone who sets out to write a children’s song would come up with such a weak effort.

Then one day I heard it in English. Suddenly it all said click.

The eensy weensy spider crawled up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,
And the eensy weensy spider climbed up the spout again.

The lyrics rhyme! And they make sense! Instead of climbing up a thread, the spider really crawls up a water spout – and of course when it rains there’s lots of water in a water spout, which would flush the spider out. Instead of the meaningless “imse vimse” the spider is a perfectly sensible “eensy weensy” spider (or “itsy bitsy” if it’s an American spider). And the “Swedish” song is really a bad translation of an English one.

Interestingly, though, even the English version seems to be degrading and slowly slipping towards meaninglessness. I’ve heard the first words being pronounced more like “incy wincy”, and indeed Google finds 49,800 hits for “incy wincy spider” but only 47,600 hits for “eensy weensy spider”. (The American version “itsy bitsy spider” gets 465,000 hits.)

Yesterday we went to see the Lee Miller exhibition at the V&A. We were really aiming for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the neighbouring Museum of Natural History, but that was sold out, so it was Lee Miller instead.

She was both a model and a photographer, doing a bit of everything: fashion photography, portraits, photojournalism etc.

The exhibition notes described her as an extraordinary photographer, an icon of photography, or something in that vein. There were some nice photos but on the whole I found her work rather unremarkable. I got the impression that she was famous by association (she was the lover of Man Ray, and friends with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau), rather than because of any remarkable talent. Yes, she had guts – photographing the Blitz as well as Nazi concentration camps – but the importance of those photos seemed more documentary than artistic to me.

It didn’t help that all introductory and explanatory texts seemed written by a gushing friend rather than anyone with any real knowledge. This, for example, is all they had to say about why she is important or interesting:

Lee Miller (1907 – 1977) is one of the most remarkable female icons of the 20th century – an individual admired as much for her free-spirit, creativity and intelligence as for her classical beauty. Charting her transformation from muse to ground-breaking artist, this centenary exhibition provides a unique exploration of her life and unprecedented career as a photographer.

Lots of superlatives and big words, little information, and very little to put any of it in any context.

Temperature is relative. Degrees stretch with seasons, don’t they? The thermometer claims it is 17 degrees outside (well, not at this hour, but it did say so earlier today). Somehow today’s 17 degrees felt a lot chillier than they did two months ago.

Estonia on the other hand has had the season’s first snow.

Pulling things out has been one of Ingrid’s favourite activities for a while. Now she’s spending more and more time doing the opposite. She picks things out of the drawer, and then actually puts some of them back.

She’s also playing more with the shape sorter she got for her birthday. Initially she seemed mostly frustrated with it. (Her attention span is about 3 seconds – if at first you don’t succeed, don’t try again.) After a little while she discovered the lid on the rear of the box and found that it was a lot easier to get things into the box that way. But she does sometimes try getting the blocks in through the little holes on the front, and occasionally succeeds.

As with other new skills, she tries it with various things around the house, not just with her blocks and boxes. In the bath she puts her toys and sponge in a bowl, again and again. Other things travel longer distances and end up in stranger places: I have found freshly laundered baby clothes (that she picks from the drying rack in the kitchen) in my sock drawer, a bicycle inner tube on a shelf in my wardrobe, and Eric’s shaver in an (empty) wastepaper basket. And she is showing far too much interest in the big rubbish bin in the kitchen… I hope I won’t need to go looking for our shoes or her toys in there!