Brought home one of Ingrid’s friends for the afternoon. Lots of splashing in puddles on the way home. They painted a bit, and then played with sticky tape, putting bits of sticky tape all over themselves.

As always, when we’ve got other kids here, I make an effort to come up with a meal that they will eat. And as always, I fail. I pick something that Ingrid will bolt down, something that doesn’t have any challenging unusual ingredients, isn’t weird in any other way… Every time I think I’ve finally come up with something foolproof, but every time the guest ends up eating only the boiled potatoes on the side, or equivalent. Today I made “veggies on a stick”, grilled veggie skewers, with bell peppers, carrot, apple and zucchini. Ingrid squealed with delight. I mean, what child doesn’t like apples and peppers? Apparently there are such children.

The temperature was above zero again so the snow and ice are melting, the garden path is slippery as hell, and the streets are mostly clear of snow. Great for pushchair walks, so I took a long one. Ingrid went laughing and running and splashing through every puddle she could find on the way home, and said the slippery path was fun.

Some sort of snow-clearing vehicle has run over part of our hedge: the track of a very large wheel ends at a crushed bush.

Adrian smiles and “talks” a lot more. The most reliable way of getting him to smile is for me to blow raspberries towards him. He did a bit of that himself, but then lost interest.

About 10 days or two weeks ago he became cranky and currently he spends a fair amount of time complaining. In part I suspect he is simply bored. It used to be that I could park him in his bouncy chair and let him watch me hang laundry, or put him on his play mat for a while and let him kick his legs. Now he won’t accept either. He is pretty hard to entertain right now.

He has become quite sociable and likes to have people around him. He is a lot happier on weekends when the whole family is at home, than on weekdays with just him and me, because then he can watch us talk, move, do stuff. He was most happy when I took him with me to visit my colleagues at the office: five people sitting around a table, all talking and smiling.

Another thing he really does like is going for walks in the pushchair. The seat has to be completely upright and the pushchair better be moving all the time so that he can look around. If I try to tilt the seat back, he will start pushing against it with his head or attempting sit-ups. He also falls asleep in the pushchair very easily now. His eyelids sort of just start drooping, and even if something then disturbs him, he continues to slowly slide towards sleep, until he just nods off. Very convenient. Usually he wakes as soon as the pushchair stops moving.

He can sit pretty well in the highchair as long as we stuff a few rolled-up towels at his sides to keep him upright. This way we can have him with us at the breakfast table, with a heap of toys in front of him.

He’s not yet very good with his hands: when I put something in his hand and curl his fingers around it, he can hold it, but he doesn’t really manage to grab stuff on his own yet. With the toys in front of him, he sort of just sweeps them towards himself with an arm. He does try to grab them, and sometimes he manages it, too, but not at all reliably. And even when he holds something, often he cannot get it to his mouth.

The hands themselves, though, make their way to his mouth pretty often. Sometimes he even finds his thumb and sucks on it. But when he’s going to sleep, he wants his dummy.

This baby definitely hasn’t read Gina Ford or Tracy Hogg (The Baby Whisperer). I started out with the usual sleep-eat-play rhythm, plus some extra feeds in the evening before bedtime. But nowadays he usually wants to eat more often than that, usually twice in each awake period. It took me a while to figure that out, but now I know that when he starts fussing about an hour and a half after waking, it’s probably more food he wants and not sleep.

He needs and wants more sleep than Ingrid did at this age. His takes about 3 naps per day, ranging from 40 to 90 minutes, and sleeps 12 to 13 hours per night. As long as we time it right and don’t try to put him to bed too early, he goes to sleep very easily. Also when he wakes at night, he feeds and then goes back to sleep without a problem.

He drools like a maniac, and we’ve invested in a bunch of new bandana bibs.

Half of this month was filled with Christmas holidays, so we haven’t had many normal, ordinary days recently. I think we were all happy when Ingrid went back to preschool: towards the end she was spending several hours per day with either iPad games or movies. Neither Eric nor I could muster the energy to play with her, read to her, or otherwise activate her all the time.

We’ve somehow slid into a pattern where she asks for a movie or the iPad as soon as we get home. Then, when the hour runs out (which I think is an appropriate length of time for her to spend staring at a screen) it’s just about time for me to start preparing dinner, which means that she is bored then. I think we will try to turn that around, so I can do something meaningful together with her when I have time.

Almost always when I nurse Adrian, I read for Ingrid, so we read at least a book or two every day. Always, with every single book and movie, she will stop at some random point and ask me, “Mummy do you know which one I am? I am this one. [Names or points at some figure.] Which one are you?” This can be pretty annoying: here I am, giving her my best reading, and all she thinks about is which animal she is.

We play a bit of games. Her games have passed some magical threshold and now some of them are actually fun for me, not just because I’m spending time with her but intrinsically. We’re on a more equal level. We’ve played several kinds of guessing games. The simplest one is one where I guess which of her hands is holding the coin.

Sometimes we guess words (“I see something that begins with a K, in Swedish”) – on the bus, in a picture spread in a book, in the living room. For added spice I’ve got Ingrid’s ideas of spelling to take into account. “Giraff” begins with an H in her mind, and “kära” with an S. When the guesser gives up, the other player gives hints, or sometimes the guesser asks yes/no questions, 20 questions style. A couple of times we’ve also played something approaching 20 questions, with animals.

A variation on the guessing theme is the hiding game. One of us picks a random object and puts it somewhere in the house, and then gives a hint or two: “It’s something pink and it is inside a large orange thing”, or “something gray is behind something gray”. Again, if it is too hard, we ask for extra hints.

Ingrid still also likes the role reversal game from last month, and the gift-giving game, where I get a random container with some random thing inside. Also the magic game, where she is a fairy and does magic for me – magically makes Adrian stop crying (pretend only), or cleans the sofa table (for real), etc. Also the “prohibition game” (as I think about it) continues: “you must not step on the yellow tiles or you will become a dragon”, etc.

Meal times in particular are filled with games. It can take her 20 minutes (and that’s no exaggeration) to eat a small 100g yoghurt. She twirls her knife on the table and pretends it’s the hands of a clock, pretends her spoon is an ice cream, dips her spoon in yoghurt and then in juice, ladles juice onto her yoghurt, plays with whatever toy I’ve put in front of Adrian, etc.

Basically, she manages to entertain herself pretty well as long as there is (1) someone to keep her company, and (2) something that she ought to be doing but can drag out. Eating is one such activity. Walking is another: she climbs on the mounds of snow along the road, races me, walks backwards or sideways, etc. (On the plus side, she rarely complains about tired legs any more.) More annoyingly, brushing her teeth and getting ready for bed is another such activity.

She is interacting more and more with Adrian. I’m hoping to find time soon for a separate post about that. But basically she now sees him as a fellow human, and takes an interest in him. She pops in the dummy, puts toys in front of him, etc.

She is very very close to being able to read, but not quite. I think the only block is a mental one: she thinks that she cannot read, therefore she cannot. She can more or less write, but since she cannot read what she’s written, she loses track of where she is at. Short words, no more than 3 letters, work best. She wrote us a Christmas card, “GOD JUL MA Å PA FLÅ INGRID”. I’m saving that one.

She still likes numbers and basic addition. Sometimes she now does sums like 4+2 without holding up fingers, but I can see that she is counting fingers mentally.

She has developed an interest for learning some English. Counting in English came last month; now she notices them in movies (“sixteen” in Sleeping Beauty) and asks me to translate other words that she hears in them. We’ve read some Dr. Seuss books a few times: much of Fox in Socks can be understood just with me pointing at the pictures, while The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham need some more translating.

She says she longs for spring to come. She doesn’t like the bulky winter clothing, and misses cycling. And she is already talking about how much she looks forward to her birthday.

Adrian pooped twice during the night and was awake for an hour afterwards both times. This becoming a bad habit – he’s had dirty nappies three nights in a row now, and each time it takes an hour for him to fall asleep again.

I had the alarm set for 8 to make sure we can get to the bi-weekly Estonian playgroup by 10. Ingrid was most cooperative all morning so we made it to the train station with time to spare. Playgroup went well; Ingrid is fond of the mums who lead the various activities and happily climbs into their lap when I’m busy nursing Adrian etc. Spare mums, so to say.

The streets in Gamla Stan (Old Town) were perilously slippery. The street leading up to the Estonian School, which is where the playgroup takes place, was the worst one: 10 metres of very steep slope, all covered with ice, and now with melt water running all over it. When I’d gotten most of the way down with the pushchair, at one point I felt that I’d either have to stay there, or slide down on my bottom. No matter where I tried to put my foot for the next step, I couldn’t get a grip. Luckily a couple of tourists were passing at the bottom of the slope, so I could lean forward and hand over the puschair to them. Then toddle up the hill again and help Ingrid get down. (Much easier without a pushchair.) Ingrid fell at least 4 times on the way to the tube station and was all wet by the time we got home.

The process of cooking dinner is becoming farcical. Peel two sweet potatoes. Pick up the toys that Adrian has swept to the floor from the table in front of him. Peel another sweet potato. Nurse, while reading a book for Ingrid. Chop the potatoes. Change nappy. And so on. I used to count with about 45 minutes for a normal dinner, from beginning to end. Now it’s about an hour and a half.

In the evening, Ingrid painted my face. They do face painting at preschool occasionally, and she loves it, so I bought a kit for us to use at home. She likes both to be the painter and to be painted. Today she made me a pumpkin, based on one of the ideas in the brochure that came with the kit. Her version looked way scarier.

Yesterday, after the daily post, I discovered that my ExpressCard card reader has stopped working, probably as a result of upgrading to OSX Snow Leopard. Annoying: I had to use my old SD card reader, which glacially slow, to download photos from the camera. Sent a support request to Belkin; hopefully there is a fix.

Adrian spent a lot of time fussing and whining again. Going out for a walk with the pushchair seems to be the best cure.

We took down the last Christmas decorations. I baked a pie for dinner, with Ingrid helping me make the dough.

Ingrid then went on to make “soup” out of water and flour. And she seemed to like the taste of it, for real. Then she asked me what else she could add. Salt and ketchup were added, and then she thought some physalis would fit nicely.

The usual stuff. Preschool, naps, feeds, supermarket. Plus fredagsmys in the afternoon. Today we had roasted cashews and peanuts, Japanese crackers, and fruit, and Disney animated shorts.

Ingrid did pushups with me, sort of. I don’t think she got the point of them.

Link of the day: Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising.

It is nice to have a week of peace and quiet, with no builders around.

But it will be nice to have them back, too. Then they can look at our water heater, which is not doing its job well any more. We used to think that perhaps it was too small: there wasn’t enough hot water for two showers back to back. Now it’s almost worthless. Something seems to have happened when our pipes froze, or perhaps it has just broken independently of the cold. In any case, I can now get barely one shower out of it – and that’s assuming I turn off the water while I’m shampooing and soaping, and don’t turn on the full flow. Even then the tail end of the shower is less than hot. Today I wanted to give Adrian a bath and ran out of hot water after filling the tub a quarter of the way up.

I actually managed to combine dinner and Adrian’s bedtime. Bean stew. I kept Adrian awake while I did all the steps that required actual human intervention at the stove, then left it on low heat while I put him to bed, counting on him falling asleep in less than half an hour. The stew was pretty much done when I came down. Perfect!

Optimistically offered my help to the developer behind One Hundred Pushups, because I think the site lacks some essential features. It remains to be seen whether I will actually find the time for it.

We made two important decisions early on in this project. 1: We will get an architect to help us. 2: We will get builders to do all the work, and a general contractor to co-ordinate it all.

We’ve seen with our own eyes how bad the results can be when you don’t engage an architect. All we need to do is look at the newer half of our house, the one we’re now redoing so extensively. If you’re going to spend a lot of resources on a project (building or otherwise) it makes no sense at all to skimp on the planning.

And we’re busy people, Eric and I. Neither of us has any particular expert skills or experience in the construction industry. We don’t want to spend endless weekends and evenings doing a bit of painting here, a bit of sanding there, all the while living in an unfinished house – or coordinating between the various specialists we’d inevitably need anyway for electricity, plumbing etc. We’d rather pay an expert to take care of it all.

I’m very happy with both these decisions. The architect came up with ideas we’d never have thought of. On our own I suspect we’d have tweaked the house a bit here and a bit there, but he could take a step further back, view the whole thing with fresh eyes, and propose more radical changes. And he can easily throw out lots of quick alternative solutions to any area we discuss, whereas I myself would probably have locked onto one path early on and found it difficult to step far away from it. At the same time he is good at listening to our needs and opinions. If we say we don’t like x, or don’t think that y would be useful, he has no difficulty accepting that.

The builders are equally good at what they do. We’ve had no hassle at all. The right people are in the right place at the right time, with the right materials and tools. The right things get done the right way: no skimping, no shortcuts. And, last but definitely not least, they clean up after themselves! They protect the floors and the furniture as needed, they vacuum after themselves, and have even mopped the kitchen floor after doing something particularly messy.

We found both the architect and the builders via friends and family. It seems that this is the only viable way of finding good builders: we’ve heard several nightmare stories from people who have found theirs some other way. The architect was recommended by friends of ours who live just three houses down the road, and they had nothing but praise for his work. The builder has worked for various relatives of Eric’s.

The architect is Hans Dahlgren. I’d link to his web site but it is not at all confidence-inspiring; I’d never have contacted him if that was the only information I had. He is much better as architect than as web designer.

The builder is Bygg-Anton. That’s him in the photo, hard at work laying floor tiles in the new bathroom.

Morning: took the bus to Vällingby to go to H&M and Lindex, and swap some of the clothes that Adrian got for Christmas to larger sizes. We’re pretty well stocked with the sizes he has now. We liked the gift outfit but thought it would work better for a crawling baby, so I swapped size 68 for size 80 instead, which should work for an almost one-year-old.

Lots of fresh wet heavy snow, almost sleet, coming down all day. Getting around with the pram was HARD. But currently Adrian much prefers the pram to the sling when he is awake, so pram it is, even though it feels like it’s ploughing through the snow.

Two disappointments in Vällingby: Hemköp had no butternut squash (and it is the only supermarket within easy reach for me that normally does have it), and the nursing room is looking dingier and dingier every time. I’ve emailed them, asking them to at least clean up the sofa; we’ll see if anything happens.

When we got home I parked Adrian in the buggy in front of the garden stairs, and spent 10 minutes shovelling snow. Not that it made much difference, since there was a lot more coming down, but I knew I wasn’t going to get another chance until possibly late at night. He seemed to find it at least moderately entertaining since he did not complain even once.

Took the sled with me when fetching Ingrid home; she was happy for a chance to ride instead of walking.

Full chaos in the evening: dinner collided with Adrian’s bedtime again, and at the same time I also had to pick up Ingrid who was playing at a friend’s place. Apparently when I put him to bed for the night, Adrian thought it was just for a nap, so after 20 minutes or so he woke and had trouble getting back to sleep again. I was running up and down the stairs, shushing him and popping in the dummy, while trying to make some sort of meal for myself, and then ran (literally) to pick up Ingrid, and we ran home again, so Adrian wouldn’t have to lie there screaming his head off. In the end I had instant noodles with spinach and an egg for dinner, microwaved since it got cold before I got a chance to eat.

Link of the day: Defective Yeti tries to read Moby Dick. His experience seems to mirror mine, but his comments are much funnier.