Adrian climbing into bed. You can also see the reverse side of the dinosaur bed curtain, with one corner tucked up so I can read a bedtime story for him.


On our way home from the playground and its paddling pool.



Adrian and I went out geocaching in Järvafältet (between Tensta and Husby). We found two caches, one of them in the middle of a cow pasture. We also found a lot of cowpats.


Midsummer Eve was cold and rainy. We didn’t even attempt to celebrate it outdoors. No picnic, no maypole, no Små grodorna. We had a Midsummer lunch inside, and played board games and watched a movie.


I have been lax about taking notes this month so I don’t really have much to new to say.

Adrian is still in an angry phase. Inflexible, unwilling to compromise, belligerent. Om jag inte vill så måste jag inte. – “if I don’t want to then I don’t have to”.

But angry is not the same as unkind. He is kind as well, he just… really doesn’t want to do things that he doesn’t want to do. Such as washing his hands. Or going to bed at night.

At the same time he is kind and friendly and cuddly. He gives me big hugs and wet kisses every morning, and tells me that I look pretty (more often than anyone else in my life actually). He likes sitting in my lap and cuddling up close to me.

He is curious and observant, more so than Ingrid has ever been. I suppose that Adrian is really just what a normal kid is like at his age, whereas Ingrid is almost actively incurious – zones out and sometimes simply asks me to stop talking when I answer a question of hers in more detail than she wanted.

He looks at the things we pass on our way home. He notices that a birch tree has white bark that he can pull off, and knows that the tree with the yellow flowers is called golden rain. He notices teeny-tiny red mites on the sewer hole cover, and firebugs on the kerbstone, and the way the cracks in the road surface make it look like a computer keyboard.

He likes soft clothes and pyjamas. The fleecy ones are too warm at this time of the year, but thin, soft cotton pyjamas are the best. Especially if they have dinosaurs on them. Or sharks. He also likes Lightning McQueen, minions (from Despicable me) and Star Wars designs but if I have to buy clothes with big loud designs on them then I definitely choose dinosaurs ahead of Star Wars.

His knees are almost permanently covered in scabs and/or plasters. He runs and he climbs all the time.


Ingrid found science experiments on the internet. The one in the front is water (with food colouring) and oil. With some salt it behaved like a lava lamp. (Description here.)

The two glasses at the back were an attempt to make a two-coloured flower. (Split the stem, put one half in one glass and the other in the other.) The experiment description called for a carnation but we didn’t have any. A white Aquilegia was the best I could find in the garden but it did not take up much colour at all.

I realize more and more clearly that Ingrid has more than a dash of hyperactivity in her. Not in a way that really causes problems at school or at home – but enough to occasionally be annoying and above all totally alien to me. I have a really hard time imagining what it might feel like to be her.

Any list of symptoms of hyperactivity reads like a catalogue of Ingrid’s quirks.

Inability to recognize other people’s needs and desires, emotional immaturity, interrupting other people when they’re talking. Talks excessively. Impulsive, does not think before talking, no inhibitory control. Intrudes on other people’s conversations or games. Fidgets and squirms, has difficulty sitting still. Tedium, waiting and doing nothing, even for a short while, is torture. Always on the go, cannot just “be”, cannot play quietly. Cannot handle idle time, needs to be kept busy. Cannot pay attention to a repetitive or boring activity. Starts projects but has difficulty finishing them, let alone cleaning up.

A typical slice of life that summarizes Ingrid is her afternoons after school. I used to meet her, together with Adrian, so we could walk home together. I occasionally suggested that she could walk home on her own, but she didn’t like that idea at all because walking on her own was so incredibly boring. (The walk home is all of 500 metres or just over 5 minutes.)

After a while she agreed to try it. But nowadays quite often what happens instead is that she calls me from school and asks if she can go home with a friend instead. Even after 8 hours of school and after-school care, she still hasn’t had enough, still wants more activity, company and stimulation.

She wants and needs constant activity. Often one activity is not enough. Both the body and the mind need to be occupied. While brushing her teeth she fidgets, or jumps, or fiddles with things, or looks over my shoulder at whatever I’m doing. While reading she often snacks, not because she is hungry but because she needs to chew on something – fruit, chewing gum, rice crackers, anything.

Favourite colour: blue.
Favourite food: sushi, “even better than waffles or pancakes”.
Favourite activities: playing Wii games or board games with me. Going to the movies.
Favourite words: makalös, fantastisk.



I bought some more Wii games for Ingrid – active games just like Just Dance. This is her doing boxing in Wii Sports. She goes all in.


Ingrid asked if I could sew pyjamas for her Yoohoo. No way, was my first thought – how can I sew pyjamas for something that consists of two balls of fur and a tail? But then I became intrigued. She had a very clear design in her mind: footie pyjamas in fleece, with a hood. I thought I’d give it a try.

It was actually easier than I had expected, once I found the right way to think about this kind of sewing project. The right way was to abandon any idea of using a pattern and assembling pre-cut pieces. Instead I approached it more like a fabric sculpture. I cut two pieces of fabric, sewed them together, snipped off excess fabric here and there, attached yet another small piece, and continued piece by odd-shaped piece until the Yoohoo’s body was covered. (It later got two buttons as well.)


Go fish, a.k.a. Quartet, here a.k.a. the Bamse card game.