The first one he had made at preschool. But when he got home he discovered that he had made a mistake – one of the bunny’s feet had one bead wrong. That was not acceptable so he had to make a new one.

Solar eclipse. The whole company (all eight of us who were in the office at the time) went out to St. Eriksbron to watch it.

It was all a bit underwhelming. The sky was overcast so the sun was barely visible. The eclipse was partial and honestly I didn’t think it got that much darker, even. So maybe it was like late afternoon instead of midday… Not at all as dark as in this photo; I had to underexpose this a lot to keep the sun from being a bright blob.

Another reason why I wasn’t too impressed was that I have actually seen a full eclipse, and that actually felt like a proper eclipse. Darkness in the middle of the day, stars visible in a clear sky, birds all falling quiet – the real deal. I remember watching the eclipse through sooted glass.

That was the eclipse of 1990. I lived in Estonia at the time, and the full eclipse was visible in just a tiny corner of Estonia. How lucky for us that this tiny bit of the eclipse touched the mainland! It doesn’t look like I will get another chance during my lifetime, unless we move, or travel somewhere to catch a future eclipse.

Another one of Ingrid’s favourite ponies. Lupin is gentle, friendly and curious.

He is also constantly looking for things to eat. Riding or leading him outdoors is a constant struggle because as soon as he sees anything edible, he will try to eat it. In the forest today he kept yanking the reins out of Ingrid’s hands so he could nibble at some branch of a fir tree, or moss on the ground, or leafless blueberry bushes.

I was trying to photograph Ingrid on horseback while waiting for the lesson to start. Instead I got several photos of Lupin’s face up close, because he kept following me as soon as I took a step away from him. He nibbled at my jacket, thoroughly investigated my hands with his nose, and tried to do the same with my camera.

Adrian in his cardboard box, hiding from the bright morning sun, at about 7am.

Adrian learned to read this month. Just like that he went from last month’s “AI!” and “PANG” to such words as “asteroider” and “mjölkfri” and “skogräns”. He reads letter by letter, pointing at each one with his finger. Naturally, long words are hard and compound words are harder still, but as you can see from the example words, he’s not letting that stop him.

He likes to read the chapter headings when I read a book for him.

Now he just needs to get his speed up so he can start reading sentences, which would unlock the treasure trove of Bamse magazines that we have and that he so loves looking at.

While we’re on the topic of learning, he likes adding numbers. Even without me prompting or doing anything in particular to encourage him, he tells me that three plus five is eight, etc.

Double-digit numbers are complicated. It doesn’t help that Swedish (just like English) has irregular names for the numbers between ten and twenty. He knows there is something there to be figured out, something he is close to figuring out, so he keeps asking questions like “what do one and six make” when he sees a pair of numbers somewhere. He hasn’t quite understood that the order matters, so his “one and six” might mean sixteen or it might mean sixty-one.

He has learned to do up buttons, and I don’t know where or how because he doesn’t have any clothes with buttons. But one day he told me “I will button your cardigan”, probably because the buttons happened to be right in front of him, and then he proceeded to do that. And then he unbuttoned it again. Just for fun.

Adrian likes watching TV. We’ve blocked YouTube so the endless mindless surfing of play-dough movies is off the table; he’s forced to watch Swedish children’s television on SVT Play instead.

His favourites nowadays tend to be documentaries and shows about people doing things. He watched all episodes of “Fixa rummet”, an interior decorating show for kids where they redecorate kids’ rooms; then “Bacillakuten” which teaches kids about the human body, and most recently “Alex hittar hobbyn” where Alex tries out various hobbies ranging from figure skating and street dance to making sushi.

I don’t think he plays much on the iPad. The one game I saw him play was Field Runners. He has watched Ingrid or me play a few times, and I explained a few concepts, and off he went. Positioning his units, upgrading, saving money for upgrades, etc.

He is often tired in the afternoon after preschool, and often asks to go to bed before our eight o’clock official bedtime. But then other days he shouts that he is “not tired at all!” and refuses.

The bedtime routine now includes some reading, often from a chapter book. Then I sing for him. Currently he has a fixed list of five favourites, after which I can sing whatever I like. The five are Sockerbagaren, Trollmor, Ekorrn satt i granen, Kalle Teodor and Tre gubbar – in that order. For “my songs” I usually pick some Estonian ones. The cardboard songbooks that were so important a few months ago are now not.

He likes talking like baby or otherwise distorting both his voice and the words to the point where I have no idea what he is saying. Then he translates for me.

Adrian at bedtime.

This month’s big event was of course our ski trip. It was a real gamble – Ingrid had never tried skiing before. She does like sports and snow and winter, and lots of activity in general, but three days of skiing could well have turned out to be too hard, too tiring, too boring, etc. But in the end we both enjoyed it. She did need a bit of pushing to get onto the bigger, slightly scary lifts, but once she was up, she was in her element, and flew down faster than I did.

It was a nice chance for me to spend time with Ingrid without having to share my attention between her and Adrian, which is normally the case when we are at home. Both of us appreciated that. And the same applies to this weekend’s walk around Judarn. Ingrid repeatedly noted that we couldn’t have done these things with Adrian: he would have tired and started complaining and wanted to be carried. So it’s also a chance for her to really feel like a big girl, doing big girl things.

Another big girl thing is that she now walks home on her own from school two or three days a week, on days when she doesn’t have any activities after school. It’s no challenge really, but she find does find it very boring. As usual, she wants company – having to do anything on her own is “almost as boring as just waiting” she said.

She says she likes to talk about her day on our way home, and misses that when I’m not there. By the time she gets home I’m already doing other things and then so does she, and somehow the right time for talking never happens. Our chat and cuddle time at night when she is going to bed is very important to her.

At school they currently study geometry in maths (basic shapes, measuring circumference) and the human body in science. Ingrid particularly likes the metaphor of having the body of a stone age human, with its cravings for sugar and fat.

Marbles season has begun at school. From one day to the next, suddenly every kid was bringing marbles to school. Ingrid is possessive and loss-averse about the marbles she has, and is most satisfied when she has won many and lost none. Then she proudly shows off all the marbles she has won.

She is discovering pop music. Melodifestivalen has been a fixture for the past six Saturday evenings. Favourites: Hello hi by Dolly Style, which is a sugary lolita-style tune; Groupie, which is not about what it sounds like but about taking a groupie instead of a selfie; and Make me la la la, performed by woman who is my age but dressed and styled to look more like a teenager.

Outside of Mello she likes Katy Perry (Roar, Dark Horse, Firework, Hot N Cold) and Ariana Grande (Break free).

I notice her taste in clothing moving towards mainstream tween fashion: tops and skirts more than dresses; plain colours (turquoise, violet, pink) instead of crazy patterns.

Favourite books: comics, Kalle Anka Pocket and Bamse. Wimpy Kid. I am coming to realize that even though she reads with great ease, she is not actually into books. This is totally alien to me and I have a hard time relating. If she wasn’t reading as fluently as she is, I’d have to make her read; now there is luckily no need. She enjoys listening to me or Eric read; I imagine she’ll be consuming audiobooks in her iPhone when she grows up.

Trending expressions: “ace!” (in English), possibly extended to “ace, man!”. Also, detta kan inte vara sant!, “this can’t be true”, for expressing mild disappointment, and vem bryr sig, “who cares”, by which she means “that’s OK, not a problem”.

She recently lost her eighth (I believe) baby tooth that had been loose for what felt like forever: several months I think. The new one doesn’t quite have enough space so it’s growing in a little crooked; I foresee braces in her future.

Our piles of Bamse magazines is growing larger and messier every week. We have boxes for them, but getting the kids to use the boxes is not so easy. Now I ordered ten binders for the magazines, so we won’t have to deal with loose issues any more.

Here Adrian is unwrapping all the binders.

Spring. Have I mentioned yet that it is spring here? And that I love it – the sun and the warmth and the blue skies and the way everything is growing?

I ate a spring breakfast this morning for the first time. In winter I eat hearty breakfasts: porridge, or maybe French toast, boiled eggs or bread: something solid and filling and preferably hot or at least warm.

In summer I still like all of those things, but I also love HavreFras with yoghurt and berries. I don’t like store-bought flavoured yoghurts because they all have too much sugar and too little fruit. Instead I buy unflavoured yoghurt and add loads of berries. In summer I use fresh berries but now frozen ones will have to do.

Eric and Adrian were away so it was just Ingrid and me today. We had a lovely sunny spring day so I wanted to get outdoors. We went to Judarskogen, a small nature reserve not far from here. Importantly, it’s reachable by public transport (Eric and Adrian took the car).

There is a lake, much of which was still under ice. In shadier parts that the sun doesn’t reach yet, the ice was more than thick enough to walk on.

Other parts could be broken if attacked sufficiently vigorously.

When we tired of the ice, there were rocks to climb.

We had a picnic lunch at the top of the largest rock we could find.

While we were sitting there, high above the path and the passers-by, we counted people. The ratio of men to women was about two to one.