I can’t think of anything specific for this month, so I’ll describe our evening routine.

Eric and I put the kids to bed on alternate evenings – I do it for Adrian when he does it for Ingrid, and vice versa.

Evening starts at about 7 o’clock. An alarm goes off just after 7 to remind Adrian that it’s time to start finishing off whatever he is doing and getting ready to go to bed. Sometimes we’re still finishing off dinner when this happens.

We go to the upstairs bathroom and I brush his teeth. I do the “aah” sides (the inside and the biting surfaces) and he does the “iih” sides (the outside) although I sometimes do a bit extra on the outside as well. Meanwhile he is bored and tries to look around, or to poke my hair, or something equally incompatible with teeth-brushing.

Then he pees while I go to the bedroom and draw the curtains. He has his own bed but it’s in our bedroom. This works well for everybody.

He comes in and puts on his pyjamas. Now that it’s spring and warm outside, he likes to wear pyjama shorts only. Until recently I then applied a fat salve on the dry scaly skin on the backs of his hands, and a slightly lighter salve on slightly less dry parts, but I think we can cut down on this now.

Sometimes he takes a plush animal to cuddle with, but mostly those don’t seem to be particularly important to him.

Next, I sit in a little armchair next to his bed and read for him. We take turns picking books. When it’s my turn, I pick something in Estonian. When it’s his turn, he often picks some old favourite. Currently we are re-reading Sharks by Sarah Sheppard. Apparently bloody stories about scary predators are just right for bedtime.

When I think it’s getting late, I stop reading. Then I sing for him. The songs I sing have varied a lot over time – sometimes he wants the same songs every night, sometimes he prefers variety. Currently it’s the former. I sing Trollkarlen från Indialand, Kalle Teodor and Kes elab metsa sees, in this order, every night. The last one is accompanied by a gentle back rub, because of kolm hästi pikka paid.

Ideally he wants to fall asleep in my bed but we’ve had a bit of trouble with bed-wetting, so that’s not happening. Instead he gets to lie in my bed during the songs. Then he goes back to his own bed, gives me exactly three kisses (left cheek, right cheek, forehead) and we say good-night.

I then sit at the top of the stairs outside the bedroom door, reading, with the door slightly ajar. He talks to himself, occasionally checks that I’m still there, and reminds me to not go down until he’s asleep. After a while I realize he hasn’t said anything for a while and I go down.

At 22:30, no later, either Eric or I go up and carry him to the toilet again. We’ve carefully calibrated the timing: 5 minutes later is probably OK, but 15 minutes would really be taking a chance. Adrian is only very barely awake – enough to co-operate as much as needed, but not enough to remember anything in the morning.