I’d promised Adrian he could stay home from preschool today and build Legos, while I work from home. Ingrid was tired and had a headache this morning so she also ended up staying at home. One kid at home usually manages to manage their boredom. Two: not so well. Instead of coming up with something to do together, they amplify each other’s feelings of boredom. If you believed they played this board game on their own, you were wrong. Let’s just say I didn’t get much work done this day.


All of a sudden it actually feels like autumn outside.


Still in Adrian’s life:
Legos.
Ninjas and pistols and lasers and rocket engines and police and superheroes all the way.
Tired afternoons.

New in Adrian’s life:
He’s drawing now! Even though he drew a human figure at his four-year checkup, he only drew shapeless squiggles otherwise. But now suddenly he is drawing human figures, pirates and rocket ships. Most pictures contain the four of us, with body, two to four limbs and recognizably human faces. Sometimes he draws fingers or hair for some of us as well – or muscles for Eric.

Favourite colours: Green and blue, and “fire colours” (red, orange and yellow).

Favourite clothes: Anything thick, soft and with pockets. Anything superhero-themed: he is very fond of his new Batman and Spiderman fleeces (which are surprisingly stylish actually).

Favourite thing to put in pockets: Chestnuts.

Not favourite clothes: socks.


Favourite foods: Apart from the usual (starches of all kinds, and broccoli) he loves smoothies. He’s kind of picky about fruit he will eat (mostly grapes and apple slices) but if I make a smoothie I can put all sorts of goodies in there and he’ll gobble it up.

Favourite books: Teedu ja Peedu imelikud masinad, a book with funny drawings of funny made-up machines, such as “the puddle digger”, “the morning routine automator” and “the helmet bicycle”.

Favourite words that are just insanely funny: põrnitsema and nämmutama.

Favourite TV show: Sveriges yngsta mästerkock, “Swedish youngest master chef”, which is a cooking game show for kids. First I watched the entire season with both kids, and now I’m re-watching the entire thing with Adrian.

Favourite music: Popular by Eric Saade, a Melodifestivalen song from a few years back. Other Melodifestivalen songs and Hits for Kids type of CDs.

When we listen to radio in the car, he asks for “rockier” music. One day he fell asleep in the car listening to Rammstein on Bandit radio.


Ingrid at her favourite spot during the cold season: the long heating strip along the side of the living room floor. You can see Eric’s reflection in the background, reading a bedtime story for her. The current story is Schlagersabotören, a LasseMaja adventure.


I have a nine-year-old. A pre-teen, I guess. Soon she will be a teenager and before you know it she’ll be eighteen and moving out!

She and two of her friends had a birthday party together, with a sleepover. Pizza, disco, movie, sleepover, ice cream and candy… And a lot of discussions. The girls created the invitation together in Wordpad, and it took them forever at least an hour. Not because they had difficulty with Wordpad but because every detail had to be discussed and every choice made together. Which is very democratic but also very inefficient. The same happened on the morning of their sleepover: they spent so much time discussing what to play, that they ended up having barely any time to actually play together.

Peers and their opinions matter quite a lot to Ingrid. She’s concerned about sticking out too much, especially in ways that would lead to questions. Questions are uncomfortable. I’ve noticed on a few occasions that when she’s upset, she tries to hide it from others. And if a classmate notices and comes by to ask what’s up, Ingrid says nothing and leaves instead.

She compares herself to others. She is very aware that she is the shortest one in her class, and shorter than some kids who are one or even two years below her. She is tougher and less girly than some of the others.

She is aware of interactions between her peers – not just who plays with whom, but who is difficult to get along with. She knows who doesn’t get along with whom, and took that into account when planning the invitations for the birthday party: one of her best friends can be somewhat abrasive and stubborn so Ingrid didn’t invite her, because she didn’t want to have any disagreements and fights during the party.

She is not quite as aware of her own behaviour towards other… She likes/needs/wants to prove Adrian wrong when she catches him echoing something we say, without really knowing what he’s talking about. Ingrid may say that she really hates X, and Adrian says he also hates X. “Do you even know what X is? Well then tell me!”

Ingrid mostly accepts rules and musts now, without more than token grumbling – from iPad time limits to twice-weekly hair washing. But at the same time I notice small secrets and lies: telling me she has washed her hands when she clearly hasn’t, or sneaking her iPad into her room when she’s not supposed to. I’ve been mostly letting these pass because they’ve been rare, as far as I know, and about minor things – small acts of rebellion and independence. Hopefully they’re not the beginning of a bigger issue. When confronted, she either pretends like nothing – “I did wash my hands but if you want I can wash them again” or stomps off in a sulk.

She drowns her sorrows in Minecraft and YouTube, anaesthetises unpleasant feelings and situations by distracting herself with watching YouTube clips. In Minecraft she’s started exploring public servers and their minigames, e.g. Mineplex and Hypixel.

Favourite word: YOLO, still – used in all sorts of suitable and unsuitable contexts, and as a general interjection of joy and happiness, sort of like “yeah!!!” Also she generally likes to experiment with an American teenager voice, all drawl and “yeah man”.

After a long while of declining interest, she quit riding this month. Scouting is now her only after-school activity.


Adrian and I went for a forest walk and some geocaching, him in his brand new snowsuit. He got bored a long while before I wanted to go home. Unsatisfying for both of us.


Another Saturday, another shopping trip. Even though this autumn has been incredibly warm, sooner or later winter will come and Adrian will need a snowsuit. He’s past the age when he could inherit all of Ingrid’s clothes and gladly wear anything that had “glad colours” – now he definitely has his own taste and it does not include a liking for pink or violet.

We took the train to town, bought a snowsuit and then had lunch at McDonalds. This is us waiting for the train that will take us back home. He didn’t like the noisy trains.


A birthday starts with the family singing Ja må hon leva, followed by presents, and then a birthday breakfast.

Normally some/much/all of this would happen with the birthday child still in bed, but since the birthday child is still sleeping in the tent, that was just not going to happen this time.

By the way, Adrian only understood today how birthdays actually work, when I explained it for him. He asked me what time of the year he was born, and when his 6th birthday will be, even though he knows very well that his 5th birthday was in autumn – because he hadn’t connected “birthday” to “birth”.


We had an OK cherry harvest this year but zero apples. Well, maybe there were two or three apples on the tree but nothing worth picking or eating.

Right across the street from the apple tree, the neighbours have a plum tree. This year they had a fabulous harvest. And they were doing nothing with it! They ate some but the rest was just falling on the ground and rotting.

We could not stand by idly and let that happen! We picked some for a large plum cake, and then picked some more to make plum wine, and finally when my mum heard that there were plums to be had we picked half a bucket for her as well. (With the neighbours’ invitation of course.) Now we have lots of plum cake in the freezer and two demijohns of plum wine bubbling like crazy in the laundry room.

Plum wine is a new one for us, but Eric has made apple wine several times. I’m not a wine drinker; in fact I rarely touch any alcohol at all unless it’s in a cake. But our apple wine, especially the 2013 vintage, is awesome: rich, strong and sweet. I hope the plum wine turns out equally well.