He can still squat like a child


This month was one long wait for Adrian’s birthday party. I even made a countdown calendar for him because I got tired of all the times he asked me if it was his birthday yet.

A birthday party sounded great in theory. But in practice he was mostly just interested in the presents and the cake and ice cream. Playing with his friends – not so much. He really struggled with the idea that not only he should have fun (and start building the Lego sets he got as presents) but the others should have fun as well, and he needed to play with them.

To be honest a few of the guests also had trouble understanding that they were not the centre of the party and that maybe Adrian deserved more attention than they. There was a lot of need for conflict resolution… Well, nobody left in tears, so I guess it was a reasonably successful party.

Interestingly he again only invited girls to his party. He plays with boy toys, and he plays with both boys and girls at preschool, but he likes girls better.

Legos continue to occupy his attention almost all the time. He builds and rebuilds his Lego sets. He asks when we can buy more Legos. He watches Lego speed build videos on Youtube. Half the living room is filled with crates of Lego pieces, boxes with Lego sets, trays and bowls with pieces of sets in progress, and finished constructions.

Mostly he prefers to follow instructions, and there seems to be no limit to how large and complicated sets he can build. The thing he most wanted to get for his birthday was a large Lego Chima set, Maula’s Ice Mammoth Stomper, which is aimed at ages 8 to 14 and consists of 600+ pieces. He finished it in two afternoons and a morning. Which is kind of impressive but also means that he runs out of things to build and quickly wants more…

He got Ingrid’s permission to rebuild one of her old Lego Friends sets but didn’t find those very interesting. He gave up on the instructions and instead built little robots from the pink, white and leaf-green Lego Friends pieces.

Generally most things turn into (a) vehicles, especially flying ones, with weapons, or (b) robots with weapons. That fly.

For his birthday we also gave him a little wallet and the promise of a weekly allowance of 20 kr. Just like Ingrid at that age he is attracted to all sorts of cheap plastic doodads, and I feel like I am always saying no to him when we’re out doing grocery shopping etc. Now he gets money that he can spend on junk that is important to him but, well, junk to me.

Adrian remains curious and interested in the world around him, in a way that Ingrid has never been. Where does our garbage go? Which was the first boat to sail on the seas? Who lives in that house?

He is no longer angry or whiny all the time. Or maybe I’ve just gotten used to it. I think consistent, earlier bedtimes helped. I’m pretty sure that most mornings he is in a better mood than he used to be.

He still gets angry as soon as he is asked to do something he doesn’t want, or when we say no when he asks us to do things for him – almost every single time. Especially if it involves the end of something fun, e.g. putting away the iPad in the evening, or going to bed – or if it involves any kind of work. Even the smallest request, such as asking him to put away the toy he’s left on the kitchen table, or throw away his apricot pits, or get his own glass of water, leads to an explosion of yelling and screaming that we are the stupidest in the world, and threats of hitting us. There’s no ramp-up, he goes straight from zero to yelling. Sometimes he still does what he is asked; other times he just stomps away and flat out refuses.

I’m approaching this like I would approach a painful process at work: “If it hurts, do it more often.” He needs more practice in helping out, being asked to help, cleaning up after himself etc. It’ll get worse before it gets better, but it needs to be done before he grows into a lazy, entitled brat.


Earlier bedtime leads to happier boy.

As yet, the sun is up when when we get up.


She pressed the trigger for my September self-portrait but when I wanted to take a photo of her as well, she turned into a wild little monkey.


Adrian and I made kladdkaka for his birthday. It’s a kind of Swedish chocolate mud cake and it’s his favourite kind of cake.


My handbag wore out. I am not quite sure how old it is, but I know I had had it for a while already when we moved from London back to Stockholm. I remember it being a bit worn already in 2009: during our company trip to Budapest that year I noticed a shop that had similar bags and thought I’d go there and get a new one, but I didn’t have time. Somehow I got another 6 years of use out of it, with repairs to the lining here and there.

Now one half of the magnetic clasp fell off and I had nothing to replace it with, so I couldn’t close the bag any more. It had definitely reached its end of life. I needed a new one.

After who knows how many years with a backpack handbag, I cannot imagine using anything else. It is so nice to have both hands free and not have to worry about the bag slipping off my shoulder. I can cycle; I can run with the kids when needed.

I googled. I ordered 4 backpack handbags from Zalando and sent them all back. I scoured Etsy. And I found nothing that worked! The main problem was all the bags I found were too large. Mine is not exactly tiny but it’s definitely a handbag, not just a leather backpack.

Finally I had the ingenious idea to google in Italian. After some trial and error I found handbags that seemed to match mine almost exactly. Awesome! I guess that company hired a designer at some point, got them to design ten or fifteen bags, and they’ve been making the same bags ever since.

Less awesome was the fact that the Italians were on vacation all of August, but didn’t say anything about that when I ordered, so I had to wait 6 weeks for my bag to arrive. But now it is finally here so we’re back to awesome again!


The new school year has begun in earnest. Ingrid has two new subjects this year: arts and woodworking. The latter is a split-class subject: half the class does woodworking and the other half does textile crafts, and they will swap after half term. Their first project is to make a mascot (in wood). Ingrid told me she is making a sun.

Otherwise school continues as before. Same school, same room, same kids, same teacher (except for specialist subjects like sports, music, arts and woodworking). One big difference compared to last year is that Ingrid goes there on her own and comes home on her own every day, so I really don’t have much insight into what goes on at school.

This year her Estonian lessons are at her own school, whereas until this spring she had to go to the neighbouring school. (There’s one kid taking Estonian in each school so they get shared lessons.) It was quite a bit for her to walk and she is not yet allowed to cycle in the street on her own, so I used to go with her. We often talked about her school day on our way. Now even that is gone.

One thing I’ve noticed recently is that they are doing lots of sports. There’s sports class on Monday morning, but in addition they have been training extra on Thursday afternoons for a relay race. The race is called Lidingöloppet (Skolstafetten) so I guess it takes place in Lidingö. I have no idea why kids from Spånga would run a race in Lidingö but whatever.

This week they also had a sports day on Tuesday when the kids could try out all sorts of different sports (from table tennis to boxing), plus a charity run on Wednesday. I’ve barely seen Ingrid out of sports clothes this week.

The Thursday running training means that Ingrid is too tired for riding lessons, so we haven’t been to riding school more than once during this past month.

Currently of course the big thing occupying Ingrid’s mind is her upcoming birthday. This year she and two friends of hers are planning to have a sleepover party together, with pizza and a movie at night, and then cake in the morning.

Meanwhile she has her usual interests: watches Minecraft videos, plays Minecraft, reads Kalle Anka, occasionally practices magic tricks.

After much talk about how she would love to have a pet, we borrowed a hamster from her cousin for a couple of weeks. She was diligent in taking care of it, but it turned out to be less sociable and less fun than she had imagined. It would probably have become more sociable if she had taken the time and effort to make friends with it, but she didn’t. There were no tears when we returned it and I haven’t heard a word about getting a pet since then.

Ingrid still sleeps in the tent in our back yard each night. She cannot quite articulate what she likes about it, but she sleeps well there and most definitely does not want to move back into her bedroom.

Ingrid likes making potato gratin. It’s about the only dish she can make. And potato gratin is one of Adrian’s absolute favourite foods, so it’s a win-win situation! This time she decorated Adrian’s gratin (which differs from ours because it does not have grated cheese on top) with A-shaped potato pieces.




Ingrid and I made paper cube animals some while ago. I made a tiger, because tigers are orange (well sort of at least), look cool, and are easy to draw in a recognizable way.

Then Adrian wanted a dinosaur. It had to be a T-rex of course, and a red one, just like for his bed curtain. I couldn’t think of a way to make a cube look like a dinosaur so I had to deviate from the plan a bit.

Today I went to a parents’ meeting for Ingrid’s class, where – among other things – we got a chance to see the materials the kids are working with. The theme they are currently working with in various subjects is “Prehistoric time”. (This spring term it was “Space”.) For each major project like this, they make their own books where they paste in all sorts of drawings, worksheets etc. I had to laugh when I saw what Ingrid had drawn on the front cover of her book: