Another month of mood swings and frustration. Adrian really wants to decide, decide everything, and finds it immensely frustrating that there are all these things that he cannot decide. He wants everybody to do things his way.

“No, don’t hold the fork like that! No you can’t sit here, you have to sit there! I want to have that! No, emme must blow on the porridge!”

I am heartily tired of being yelled at. And when I get angry because of this, he’s all tears – and while he may then grudgingly let me hold the fork my way, he still doesn’t understand that I want to decide over my own doings.

Sometimes he gets so angry that he doesn’t even want to be with us. He goes and hides behind a door and sulks.

Sometimes he just moans vaaarfööör (“whyyyyy”) like a frustrated teenager.

He’s so verbal and can express himself so well in most situations that it’s easy for me to think of him as older than he is. But then he does something that reminds me how little he understands about the world, even the simple physical aspects of it.

Things he does not understand or know yet:
That you cannot roll up a napkin around a fork if the fork is at a right angle to the edge you’re rolling from.
How to make an A from three sticks. (He could make an H, or a very very flat “roof” so the middle bar didn’t reach from side to side, but couldn’t adjust either of those to a real A.)
That the water will fall out if you hold a bottle sideways, or shake it without a lid.

He likes certain things to be done the same way every day. Every day as we leave the nursery, he wants to walk on the same two benches the same way. Then we always go to Konsum for groceries. There he always sits in the trolley and eats a fruit. For a long time that was always a banana, but recently he’s been having an apple instead.

He gets carsick more easily than he used to, I think. He cannot say that he’s carsick but when he starts sounding really miserable and says that he wants to sleep, or wants his dummy, or to go home, then we know that he’s about to get sick.

He likes mirrors, and very easily gets stuck in front of one, so occupied with what he sees that he cannot move on. Eric’s sunglasses are very fascinating that way: he gets very close, with his nose almost touching the sunglasses, and looks at his reflection. When he is upset and then sees himself in the mirror, he gets in a feedback loop of upsetness: the harder he sees himself cry, the worse it gets.

Favourite movie: Despicable me. Adrian loves the minions! Papoy! and Bee doo bee doo…

The movie is called Dumma mig in Swedish, i.e. roughly “Stupid me”. Since this summer, when Ingrid first started speaking about “Stupid me”, Adrian has insisted on calling this movie “Stupid Ingrid”, or possibly “Stupid you” – not as a joke but because he simply and naturally converted Ingrid’s “me” to his “you”. Only very recently did he understand that “Stupid me” is actually the name of the movie, regardless of who is talking.

Favourite books: Alfons Åberg. Also he’s asked me to read several mildly scary books: some with ghosts, and also Underbara familjen Kanin. Halfway through he gets scared and hides his eyes and gets really really close to me, but he still wants to hear the rest.

Favourite clothes: a new dress, green, with pockets. Woollen mittens.

If he could choose, he’d probably wear more purple, more glitter, and more dresses. Unfortunately we don’t have many purple clothes in his size.

Favourite food: porridge. He eats a large portion every morning, with jam or chopped apples, banana, kiwi, etc.