This is part two of a two-part post. You can read the first part here.

Yesterday’s post was all about Ingrid’s emotional rollercoaster life. Today’s is about more practical things.

Last month’s big news was the nursery start. This month it’s become routine, and Ingrid now really enjoys going to nursery. Most days I leave for work first, and later Eric drops her off at nursery. On the few mornings that I’ve done it, she’s gone straight to one of the nursery teachers, smiling all the way, and then carelessly waved good-bye to me. In the afternoon she’s always happy to see me and ready to go home, but already she’s sometimes telling me that she’d like to play some more, and that she wants to go to nursery the next day again.

While I don’t know exactly how she behaves there during the day, I get the impression that she’s as social there as she is at home. When I get there she’s almost always engaged in some activity together with a teacher. She knows the names of her own three teachers, and a few others that she sees when all the different groups are playing outside in the yard. She knows the other kids’ parents and tells me who’s whose mum.

Playing on her own is not her thing. In fact playing is not really her thing. At home her toys mostly languish in the box. If I join her, she doesn’t mind building with her Duplo blocks for a while, but not for long. She’d rather we read books together. I remember when she was smaller, she used to sit with her books all on her own. But that was before she learned that there are stories in the books, and I can get the stories out of the books, while she cannot. I’m very glad we got all those books when we went to Estonia in the summer: they’re very popular, and it’s great to be able to read in Estonian rather than translate Swedish books on the fly.

She’s also very fond of singing. They must do a lot of singing at nursery, because I often catch her singing snatches of songs that I don’t recognise. (Those songs are often followed by a “bravo!” which must also be something she’s picked up at nursery.) In Estonian we sing Põdra maja with all the movements, and Süda tuksub (which I remember my grandmother singing to me) and the one that goes mis need käivad kiiga-kääga. All sorts of “hopping” songs are great fun, too – Sõit, sõit, linna etc. I thought at first that I’d somehow only stick to Estonian songs, but I’ve realised that that plan was unworkable and abandoned it. Imse vimse spindel is too important, as are Bockarna Bruse and others.

I was a bit concerned that speaking Swedish all day at nursery would make her prefer Swedish, or that she’d be slower learning Estonian. No problems yet: most of the time she’s quite comfortable switching between languages. It gets a bit confusing for her when I’m also speaking Swedish (to the nursery staff, for example). But generally, when she says something that she only knows in Swedish, I reply in Estonian. She usually picks that up after a few repetitions and uses the Estonian word from then on. But there are some phrases that she has heard a lot in Swedish, and hardly ever in Estonian. She tends to stick to Swedish with these. (“Mummy will come in the afternoon” is one example that she probably heard many times during her early weeks at nursery.)

As a preventative measure we’re going to an Estonian playgroup every other Sunday. There’s a lot of singing there, which she likes, followed by some sort of creative activity. She’s tried painting with a brush there, and liked it a lot better than the crayons we’ve at home for a while. I think she was getting bored with them because there were too few colours, and she had to press quite hard to make a mark with them. The brushes made big marks quickly. Now I’ve bought a set of colourful felt-tip pens, and those are a lot more popular. She can draw things with these that she couldn’t make with crayons: small dots and big sweeping curves.

But I can’t spend all my evening drawing or reading, and it’s only fun for a short while if she’s on her own. She’d rather “help” me wash the dishes or load the washing machine. And in fact sometimes she does help rather than “help”. She can take the cutlery basket from the dishwasher and put away all the cutlery in the right compartments in the drawer (as long as I take care of all the irregular items there). She can put on her shoes and sometimes manages trousers or socks, too. Jackets and tops are harder: she can get them off but not on.

She wants to do like I do, and be like I am. When we eat dinner, and I lay out a fork and knife for myself, but only a fork for her, she wants a knife, too. When I hurt my finger, she wants a plaster, too. She points out all the things we have in common: that I put on a shirt, and that she is also putting on a shirt; that I go to work, and she goes to nursery.

Ingrid also points out all sorts of other things. We talk a lot when we’re out and about: both of us, not just me. She’s become quite verbal quite fast. We speak about how leaves fall off the trees, and how some trees are all bare now, and the leaves are on the ground. How the ground is wet after rain, and how it gets dark in the evening. We speak about things we pass: trees and cats and lawnmowers and garbage trucks. Quite often, she also mentions things that have happened before. This is where we saw the cat go into the bushes. This is where the garbage truck was standing yesterday. Here is where Ingrid fell from the swing and hit her head. And that was back in August I think: she’s got a long memory.