The Ursvik recreation area is a corner of the Igelbäcken nature reserve, a pine forest with running tracks, picnic spots, and – of most interest to us – a mini obstacle course for kids. There are tree trunks to balance on, rope nets to climb, hanging bridges and so on.

The course is almost (but not quite) too easy for Ingrid. But luckily a tipspromenad quiz had been added since our last visit, with a question next to each station of the trail. The questions were nicely printed out in big type so Ingrid could read them herself, and mostly at the right level of difficulty for her to answer them, too. Ingrid was racing me from one station to the next and never even thought to complain about tired legs.

The Mulle Meck playground has been one of our favourite weekend spots since we first discovered it, shortly after moving here. It is a playground with an attitude. The equipment and decorations are all inspired by a series of books (which we haven’t read and which frankly seem to educational for my taste) about some inventor or tinkerer, so gadgets and engines are a recurring theme at the playground.

It’s a playground that isn’t afraid to be hard, knobbly and slightly dangerous. Whatever isn’t made of wood is made of metal or concrete. There is a cable ride with a serious bounce at the end, and a “don’t touch the ground” trail out of engine parts and chunks of concrete. The most recent addition is half a ship and a shallow pond – shallow enough that there is no danger of drowning, deep and wide and enticing enough that almost all kids who go near it will end up with their feet wet. As a parent I guess you’ll love it or hate it. It seems that many love the place; often it is really crowded.

Yesterday the Estonian playgroup got started for this season. For Ingrid it clashed with a birthday party, so Adrian and I went on our own. As usual, Adrian loved the new environment and the crowds and the action. But afterwards when we got home he was pretty knackered.

This was also my first long outing with him without a stroller. I’ve been doing shorter trips with him on my back, especially to the supermarket, so by now I am pretty confident that it works well. He used to not like back carries when he was younger but now he has no objections. And he is tall enough to be able to almost look over my shoulder, or around me, which also means that I can reach him to give him the dummy when needed. For all the stuff we need to bring with us, I take our trusty IKEA shopping trolley.

This is a much more mobile setup than a stroller. Yes, I know, a stroller is a contraption on wheels that exists in order to provide mobility – but on steep hills, escalators, and cobblestoned streets, it can be suboptimal. (The photo here shows what our destination looks like – the entrance to the Estonian school is at the far end of the house on the left, almost at the top of the hill.) Without Ingrid and without the stroller, I think it took us 15 minutes to get from the train station to the playgroup, instead of the usual 25.

Admittedly Ingrid’s rough brushwork tends to lead to scary-looking results, even when she chooses a non-threatening design to imitate. This time the design she was guided by was a cute kitten. The outcome… more like a bloody ghost.

Then during the summer she realized that swimming lessons meant swimming without her floaties. That led to some hesitation and then growing anxiety and finally “I don’t want to go to swim school!” She probably imagined being thrown in at the deep end and forced to sink or swim, or something equally horrible.

Today it was time for her first lesson, with Spårvägen Sim in Vällingby swimming pool. I promised her that she could take her floaties if she really wanted, and she reluctantly agreed that we could go have a look at least.

Once we were there, things soon fell into a natural flow and before she knew it the teachers had led her and all the other kids into the water. She also found an almost-friend, a girl she recognized from last year’s dance-and-play group. The teachers were nice and friendly, the activities in the water not too demanding, and by the time she came out she exclaimed, “Swim school was so much fun!”

This is more than enough for me. Even if she doesn’t learn to jump in from the edge or to dip her head under water, as long as she enjoys it and wants to continue, I’m satisfied.

We put up before-and-after photos of the house for the guests to look at. Going through the photos was interesting – already I myself am starting to forget what the house felt like before we started changing it. (I’ll be posting more of them here, too.)

Adrian was feeling quite a bit better today. He was sort of unwell on Friday, and really ill on Saturday, with a fever and a runny nose, and barely sleeping at night. Last night he slept a bit better, and today he actually had enough energy to crawl around and play and look at all the people. He loved the crowd so much that he barely slept at all during the afternoon.

Sunday: drove to Tallinn. Got stuck in a massive traffic jam at Ülemiste due to some bicycle race that we didn’t know about. We could have taken an alternative route but the traffic authorities didn’t have the sense to inform drivers of the road blocks in advance. After half an hour we finally got to a place where we could escape the jam and zig-zag through Lasnamäe to Pirita where my friend V lives. Spent a most relaxing afternoon with V and family – the kids entertained each other, Adrian picked through their toy box, and we adults just lounged on the deck and ate and talked.

Monday: in Tallinn’s Old Town. The town was overrun with large guided tourist groups; they were everywhere. Both kids were in a bad mood, tired, didn’t want to eat at mealtimes and then complained of hunger a short while later, and generally complained about stuff all day long. We hardly enjoyed any of the stuff we saw.

Tallinn Flower Festival: small scale, low-key, pretty and fun.

Finally saw the much-discussed Victory Column with my own eyes.

Lunch at Olde Hansa: menu unchanged over the past 10 years, food still good, portions smaller than they used to be.

Climbed to the top of the tower of the old City Hall: good views but very windy; had to go down almost as soon as we got up because Ingrid wouldn’t keep still and got in everyone’s way, while Adrian squirmed all the time.

NUKU muuseum, the museum of Tallinn’s puppet theatre: far larger and more interesting than I had expected. But it was a total labyrinth, a tangle of rooms with confusing signs.

Kultuurikilomeeter, a kilometer of culture: “a lot of kilometer and not a lot of culture”. Instead of one kilometer the path is 2.2 km long but the culture along it is very, very sparse. From its name I had expected it to be lined with sculptures, installations, outdoor art… all we found was an “eco-island” (a cheap-looking café on some sort of floating island), a stage and some graffiti and another café in the old Patarei prison, a construction site which will at some point become a museum for sea planes, and a couple of historic ships. A lot of urban decay – hip and edgy, I know, I know, and quite nice-looking in places, but depressing in others – but very little of what I would actually term “culture”. We gave up about halfway through since Ingrid and Adrian were both bored as there was nothing at all to hold their attention.

Tuesday: Emajõe beach.

Wednesday: debilitating humid heat again. We fled to my father in the countryside and I spent most of the day sitting and sweating and gasping for air. Celebrated my birthday; everyone except me ate cake. They tell me it was good. I ate a handful biscuits.

Among my presents were two lovely necklaces that are almost complete opposites of one another: one pendant in the shape of a 3D-printed tangled geometrical ball structure, and one necklace that Ingrid had made out of wooden beads. She made it some months ago for the fun of making it, and now decided to give it to me. It is not quite my usual style but it is certainly colourful and happy.

Today: Elistvere loomapark, a small zoo with animals native to Estonia.

Today we went to Ahhaa keskus, Tartu’s newly-opened science museum, together with a friend and her kids. A large section with water-related activities (pumps, spouts, water wheels etc) and a mirror labyrinth were the kids’ favourites. I liked their chicken hatchery but the chickens hatching today were very lazy and barely made any progress during the hours we were there (even though the exhibit intro text said that they can hatch in as little as 15 minutes).

Traditional entertainment

Traditional crafts, modern design

Bungee trampoline: totally modern fun

The kitchen this year has both a proper modern stove and a water kettle and a microwave oven – quite luxurious compared to what I got last year. On the other hand there is exactly one saucepan, about one litre in size, and no serving spoons or ladles of any sort. Tomorrow I’ll see if our host can lend us some more equipment.

We were met in Tartu by a most unpleasant heat wave. 29°C with high humidity, “feels like 35°C” according to the weather report. I had flashbacks to last summer’s trip. Luckily this time I’m not 7 months pregnant and can take the heat slightly better. Adrian on the other hand was really suffering. Tomorrow we’ll be fleeing to the countryside to escape the worst of the heat.

Good luck: After maybe half an hour we found a gas station that stocked the right make. Eric cycled to Vällingby and back, and installed the new battery. That was enough to bring the car back to life.

Bad luck: At the car queue at the ferry terminal, a car ran over my left foot.

Good luck: Barely a bruise resulted, and some slight scratch marks.

Butter on the other hand is now tried and tested and works well. I love butter. Just plain good bread with butter on is delicious.

Today the builders finished their work, packed up their stuff and went home. Just in time for the weekend, and just in time for my vacation! (Today was my last day at work, I’m on vacation for the next four weeks.)

The very last thing they did was sand the floor in the old hall. When they started work in there, back in January, they tore up the laminate flooring, and the glued cork tiles beneath them, and uncovered the original pine planks at the bottom. The cork layer had been glued right on top of the pine and left ugly patches everywhere. For half a year the floor looked atrocious. But now after sanding it is pristine again, and looks lovely.

We now have pine plank floors in all three rooms on the ground floor, as well as that hall. In the old living room the floor is varnished; in the other rooms the new floors are untreated as yet. We have ambitious plans to leave them that way and simply care for them by scrubbing them with linseed oil soap, which both cleans and protects the floor, a bit like oiling it.

You can see this kind of floor in some old Swedish houses, and after a hundred years it both looks and feels wonderful – silvery gray and satiny smooth. This is especially nice if you walk around barefoot at home, like us. I’ve been told that it doesn’t take a hundred years to get there. Should the floors not turn out nice, we can always change our minds later and treat them with oil.

Today I gave the newly-sanded floor its first scrubbing. Now the hall smells of linseed oil soap. To me it smells like a very old but well-cared house, like an old rural schoolhouse that’s been turned into a museum, or an old Estonian farmhouse. A very cosy smell.

If you can read Swedish, you can learn about using soap for floor care from Skansen.

Our wooden deck is pretty much finished now and we’ve had dinner outside for three days in a row. Absolutely lovely. But if we are to eat breakfast here, too, we will definitely need some kind of umbrella thing – I had my breakfast out here this morning at 7.30 and it was already almost too hot.

Our kitchen garden is now producing strawberries at a good pace. I think I picked about 20 large strawberries to share between the three of us after dinner. Today we got the first ripe berries from the later varieties, so we could try all four varieties side by side. Both Eric and I liked Polka best – it has the richest, deepest flavour. Honeoye and Senga Sengana have a fresher, lighter flavour, and to me those two taste pretty similar. Rebecca is a variety that looks like a garden strawberry but tastes like a wild one. More weird than good.

Our plan for today was to move furniture, again, to let the builders occupy our old living room and kitchen, again. But that got done much faster than we had expected, so we sat here at half past eleven, wondering what to do. It was raining outside so we couldn’t just while the day away by pottering around the house and garden and perhaps walking down to the supermarket. Confined to the house both Ingrid and Adrian get very annoyingly bored very quickly.

So Ingrid and I drove to the swimming pool in Husby. That’s another thing I haven’t done for a long time: Adrian hasn’t been fond of bathing so until now it’s been me at home with him while Eric and Ingrid go splashing. Now that he (Adrian, not Eric) can go half a day without access to my boobs, and without crying about it, I can go out and do things with Ingrid again. Which is good for both of us, I think. I suspect she feels she’s been pushed aside somewhat, even though she’s been a good sport about it.

Oh right, the car. We bought a car this week. After years of resisting car ownership I gave up. Mainly I wanted a car for our upcoming Estonia trip. Financially it makes much more sense for us to rent rather than own a car – we might need it every other weekend at most. It’s a bit of a hassle so we actually don’t rent that frequently. But we will definitely need a car in Estonia, and it turns out that no car rental firm will allow their cars to be taken to Estonia, or any other Eastern European country for that matter.

So here we are, owners a Volvo something something (V40? S40?) from ’98. Our requirements were simple: a robust car, spacious boot, tow-ball. Not too expensive. Eric did some research, found a car on Blocket (sort of a Craigslist equivalent) and this Thursday brought it home. In addition to our requirements we got a roof rack, too. I can’t say I’m excited about it but I guess it will come in handy for our trips to IKEA, Plantagen and so on.

It turns out that I still remember how to drive. I didn’t even stall when taking off at traffic lights!

I got to go on two roller coasters this year, Jetline and Kvasten (The Witch’s Broom). Both were great! Kvasten was fun because you’re hanging below the tracks so it feels like your feet are going to hit the house / tree / whatever you’re flying over, but the ride was a bit too short for my taste. Jetline is a serious roller coaster with steep ups and downs, and enough g-forces to give me a stiff neck. I totally agree that it is unsuitable for pregnant women, even though I found that rule most disappointing last year, when the most adventurous ride I could go on was the wave swinger.

Ingrid revisited all her favourites from last year, and also tried three new attractions: the bumper cars (that she was too short for last year), Blå tåget (a ghost train, which she found way too scary) and Rock-Jet, which had her literally squealing with laughter for the entire duration of the ride.

She was surprisingly utilitarian about her choice of rides. Nyckelpigan is her favourite, and Kärlekstunneln (the Love Tunnel) is a close second, but she only went once on each of those and then rejected them because the queues were too long, opting instead for the instant gratification of rides that were almost as good but with a much shorter waiting time.

Adrian had at least as much fun as the rest of us. There was so much to look at he could barely find time to eat. Things going swish and vroom and clang all around him, lots of people, never a dull moment. And he got the best value for money since they have free entry for kids up to the age of 3.

Jetline! Image borrowed from the Gröna Lund web site.

Ingrid liked the fact that we were right next to a royal castle. Princesses and other royalty are hot stuff right now, in fairy tales, pretend play and other settings. She asked if we could go inside. Not today, we said, but I think we’ll try and visit one of the royal castles soon.

I had my hair cut today. I’ve found a hairdresser very close to work whom I really like. While I was on leave with Adrian I went to a salon close to home. They were cheap and quick but the result was not as good. So when I started thinking it was time to get a haircut, with only a few more weeks left of my maternity leave, I decided to wait and then get it done as soon as I was back at work. I hadn’t taken into account all the piled-up tasks waiting for me there so three weeks passed before I got around to it. Now I feel all fresh and tidy again! I like having my hair really short at the back of my neck, otherwise it sort of itches and bothers me, especially now during hot summer days.