Adrian seems to have grown a lot this month – not in size but in age. Language development is part of it. But he also had his first real haircut (if a 2-minute haircut done at home can be called “real”) and suddenly he looks much older.

But returning to language, he seems to talk a lot more, and about more varied things. He talks about us vs. others, and about ownership: not just “mine!” but also about what is ours and what is not. He talks about who is small and who is big. He talks about what he is doing (jag hoppar! or even jag är här!).

He still pretty much ignores grammar: skips the small helper words like prepositions, and often also the less weighty verbs such as “have” and “be” and “do”. He knows about future tense but not about past: he can say jag ska titta på film (“I will watch a movie”) correctly, but jag tittar på film (“I am watching a movie”) can equally well mean “I watched a movie this morning”.

He loves letters and loves to point them out in all sorts of settings. A (Adrian), I (Ingrid), P (Pappa), M (Mamma), O (oo vad det låter bra), Ö (Örjan), N (näsa), E (Eric or elefant), sometimes also D (Darin), H (Hanna), and others that he knows less well.

He talks about colours a lot, too, usually getting them completely wrong: points at something and says “green”. Often green is his first guess regardless of what the actual colour is, but he also suggests blue and yellow and red. He knows the names of a bunch colours but I don’t think he ever uses any of them correctly.

Numbers and counting are also fun. He knows the numbers come in a given order, but not that you need to start at one. Given two meatballs he can count them “one, two” but equally well “seven, eight” or “four, five”. But I think he’s very close to getting it.

He is practising getting dressed and especially undressed. He can get pretty much all of his clothes off, except for the boots & snowsuit, because of the straps on the snowsuit that go under the sole of the boot. Putting them on is harder and often he doesn’t even want to try – Jag kan inte! Emme ska göra. – but he is very cooperative when I do it for him. He doesn’t object to clothes, generally, and is not at all as warm-blooded as Ingrid. He likes wearing a fleece top and sheepskin slippers at home, like us adults but quite unlike Ingrid.

In fact there is a lot of jag kan inte (“I cannot”) and also jag orkar inte (roughly “I’m not strong enough”) about all sorts of things.

He is curious about our doings and wants to watch as soon as we do something new. Vad du, pappa? But when Ingrid is around, he generally prefers to play with her. Right now the favourite game is playing doctor, when he gets to “coperate” Ingrid. (In Swedish koperera, and it is just as funnily almost-correct as in English.) Whatever Ingrid does, Adrian will do as well, no matter how little he understands of what’s going on – “just happy to be on the show.” He browses Bamse magazines because she does, and stays up until 8:30 because she does. He is much calmer and quieter when she is not at home – trying to keep up with her winds him up but also takes a lot of energy.

When he has a goal, he always runs and never walks. He only walks when he doesn’t quite know what to do next. Jag ska hämta bok! Jag springer!

He is quite sensitive to certain kinds of sensory input, such as loud rumbling noises (tractors, motorbikes) but also the sensation of wind on his face, or snow or raindrops. He doesn’t even like to bathe with me any more, because of the risk of me splashing.

He is scared of all sorts of animals, almost to the point of panic. When a cat enters the room, he not only climbs onto my knees but tries to get even higher up, onto my shoulders, and closes his eyes and hides his face. The other day we saw a hare in a garden we passed, and he didn’t dare to look out until two blocks later.

Likes:

• Music. This is nothing new but it is something that I am reminded of almost daily.
• Toothpaste.
• Breaking eggs (for pancakes etc). He used to do it with great gusto; now he often needs a bit of encouragement because jag kan inte!.
• Cutting with a sharp knife. Bananas and apple chunks are great for practising knife skills.
• Eating with his fingers, and especially cramming food into his mouth with his palm.
• The intro song from this year’s first Melodifestivalen show, a cover of Euphoria by Gina Dirawi. Except that he calls it Copacabanana, which is the (very different) MF song that first caught his attention.
• Gummibjörn
• Toting a little bag with him when we go out.
• Sitting inside the shopping trolley when we’re at a supermarket.
• The TV sections in Teletubbies, when they show actual kids doing stuff, but not the other parts with Teletubbies themselves. With Ingrid it was totally the opposite.