Thinking most about: summer break! Ingrid has been counting days since mid-May. She’s tired of schoolwork. Now summer is here, she has noticed that it also means that she will need to fill her days herself.

Her current plan is to mostly fill them with sewing and similar crafts projects. She’s like me, though, and doesn’t like making things that are of no use: many crafts projects for kids are about making doodads and pretty things that become clutter very soon after they are done. Now she’s made a jar for memories, hung colourfully painted clothes pins on a piece of string for hanging up notes, made a fake cactus of stones, and some more.

I believe she also thinks quite a lot about growing, or rather, not growing. She’s shortest in her class and while it doesn’t exactly bother her, it’s something she cannot help noticing.

Another thing that occupies her mind is earning money. She has her sights set on a robot dog (a Zuppie) and now wants to save up enough money to buy one before we go on vacation. We haven’t been able to come up with many chores that are large enough to be worth paying for, that she can do on her own. She can’t exactly mow the lawn yet… There’s emptying the dishwasher (10 kr), emptying the washing machine and hanging up laundry (20 kr), grocery shopping (15 kr) or picking killer slugs (1 kr/minute).

Favourite app: Either This or That or What if or some competitor to those. Or maybe several of these. The app asks weird questions like “would you rather have chocolate that tastes like snot or snot that tastes like chocolate” or “what if you had a magic carpet but could never get off it”.

The app isn’t exactly meant for kids, so a few sex-themed questions have popped up. Ingrid has asked about the meaning of those, and appeared to conclude that sex seems rather icky. She asked if we do it, and her reaction was “ewww”. She was also rather disgusted when she saw a crude penis that some neighbourhood kid had chalked in the street. Still so much an innocent child.

Ingrid is also rather innocent compared to some of her classmates when it comes to swearing. Some of them have “swear bans” at home and some sort of punishments for swearing. In our house it’s never an issue. Eric and I never swear, and Ingrid doesn’t, either. She doesn’t like to hear swearing, and even mildly dirty words bother her.

It’s important to her that people should not say mean things to each other. I happened to mention a newspaper article where Zlatan was criticized, and Ingrid’s opinion was that newspapers shouldn’t be allowed to print criticism of someone unless that person allows it. I tried to briefly explain the concept of freedom of speech, the relativity of opinions about what’s right and wrong, but she didn’t really buy it.

Saying mean things is not OK but at the same time Ingrid has no compunctions about using a mean, condescending tone of voice, or phrasing that not-so-subtly indicates criticism, especially towards Adrian.

Favourite song: Galantis – No Money.

Favourite late night snack: Kellogg’s Special K with red berries, with milk. Also, egg in a hole, which she makes herself.