Ingrid’s still firmly stuck in the age of NO. Her spontaneous first answer to most yes/no questions is a firm NO, which she sometimes immediately retracts, when she realizes what she’s said no to. Sometimes it helps to phrase questions differently, more openly, so it’s not a clear yes/no situation, but sometimes even that fails, and the answer is “nothing!”. And it’s still very important for her to try and get her will. I wonder how long it takes for this age to pass. It’s not much fun for the rest of us.

The cycling season also continues. Ingrid has, I think, cycled to nursery every day, and happily cycles to other nearby places, too. All this cycling has been good in itself, but I think it’s also made her generally more active. And it has forced her to walk some, too: when she tires of the bike on the way home, there’s no other option except walk. It’s good practice: we’ve started to talk about how she won’t be able to ride in her stroller at all when the baby arrives. (We will get a buggy board for Ingrid, though.)

Speaking of which, there’s been some talk about the coming of the new baby, but not much. Ingrid doesn’t seem to think it’s a big deal. When it comes up, it’s mostly in practical, caring terms. When we spoke about the baby being much smaller than her, she exclaimed, “You will have to buy small baby clothes for her!” She’s mentioned that she will have to cut her fingernails so as not to hurt the baby. (Not too fond of having her fingernails cut, she really only lets us do it when they hurt me and I start complaining.)

She’s so comfortable on the bike that she’s becoming overconfident. This has led to some falls, including one that gave her a big bleeding gash in the forehead. That required a nurse’s attention, but healed nicely with a clean straight scar. I’m now packing a first-aid kit for longer outings. Luckily Ingrid quite likes plasters, most of the time, and happily sticks them on various barely-visible red spots she finds on herself. She doesn’t like the children’s versions (they’re glossy but often too stiff to be comfortable) and takes the real stuff instead. I don’t want to declare the first-aid box off-limits (she’s got more than enough sense to not drink any medicine) but sometimes she uses up so many plasters that I’m thinking of buying and hiding a separate backup box somewhere, to make sure that we don’t one day find ourselves out of plasters when we actually need one.

The cycling may be easy but the traffic rules are harder to imprint. She’s accepted the helmet rule (must have helmet when cycling, except within the nursery grounds or other playground) and the edge rule (must keep to the side of the road, rather than the middle). When she sees others cycle without a helmet, she often comments on it.

I’m still struggling to get her to understand the importance of stopping in good time when we come to a crossroads. The streets around here are mostly small and quiet, so she can’t quite see the point of stopping to watch out for cars, and sometimes rides right across. That may work out OK 95% of the time but the other 5% can be very dangerous. So I keep on harping about it.

It’s interesting – she’s so fond of some gross motor activities (climbing, swimming, balancing on stuff, etc) but so not at all fond of walking, and not really running either. Is it the balancing she likes, perhaps? She’s always been very fond of swings as well, which would fit that theory.

Eric put up a swing in the garden just before our trip, and Ingrid loves it. She hasn’t quite learned to pump the swing the way it’s normally done, but she can make it swing side-to-side, and even make it go in circles when she’s standing on it (and gets more leverage), so it’s just a matter of getting the knack of it when sitting down. In the meantime, she pushes off with her legs, and then goes on to clamber around and hang off the swing in various weird ways.

Another favourite outdoor activity is picking flowers. Earlier this month she picked scillas, now it’s mostly dandelions and cowslips.

She is as social as ever, always wanting to play with her friends. While we were in Beijing she kept talking about how she missed them and wanted to play with them when she gets home. She made pretend phone calls to them, saying hi, asking if they were at home and if she could come over. (Interesting: she only spoke her part, but in that way they sometimes use in movies, where hearing one half of the conversation is enough. “Are you at home? You are? That’s great.”)

A car, with a headlight (left), a button to make it go (right), and two
passengers (the red shapes floating on top), plus other stuff.

Ingrid has suddenly become fond of drawing, and has started drawing actual recognizable figures. Previously she’d draw a large blob/circle and a small one inside it, and tell me that the small one is a whale and the large one is its house. Now during our Beijing trip she’s produced clearly human figures (mostly of the tadpole kind, with legs and arms attached directly to the head), even with different facial expressions, as well as cars, houses, flowers etc. This happened overnight; one day she just started drawing.

She is also still interested in writing. Now it’s not just drawing individual letters and numbers (although she still likes that, too) but also writing words. “How do you write NO?” “How do you write ELIN?” (a friend’s name) “How do you write HELEN?” she asks, and writes the letters one by one. The results are interesting to look at. The letters are all of different sizes, arranged on the sheet with no apparent internal order, and with different orientation. She thinks an angle is an angle, so a 7 may well have an obtuse angle.

She likes fairy tales and similar stories, ideally with princesses, dragons, knights, witches and magicians. Snow White, Cinderella, Puss in Boots – but also the #4 book in the My 1-2-3 series (which has a knight rescue a princess, plus a dragon and an evil magician). The stories she makes up and tells are also dramatic, with crocodiles and dragons, storms and fire and lightning:

“Det är krokodiler och hajar på mattan för där är det hav, men inte just där, där kan du gå. Och dom bits och sprutar eld, men då kommer någon och släcker så att det inte brinner längre. Och en dag kom det en minikrokodil, en bebiskrokodil, och den bet dig, fast bara på låtsas, så det gjorde inte ont, och den sög på din tumme istället.”

“There are crocodiles and sharks on the rug because it is a sea, but not right there, there it’s OK for you to walk. And they bite and breathe fire, but then someone will come and put the fire out so it won’t burn any more. And one day a mini-crocodile came, a baby crocodile, and it bit you, but not for real, so it didn’t hurt, and it sucked on your thumb instead.”