A day of the not-boring-but-exhausting kind. Friend P’s daughter’s christening in Spånga church. Nice ceremony, probably pretty standard, and then cake and coffee in a venue next door.

We walked and Ingrid cycled all the way there and back. Weren’t home until well past 5. Made it almost all the way home when the tiredness hit Ingrid like a brick in the head, and then an inexorable slide towards a total meltdown. I could see it coming but have never managed to avert one.

The first signs of impending meltdown often appear at just about the same distance from home: when she feels that she is almost there and can let herself go, relax whatever tight grip is holding her upright and collected.

I’d promised her pancakes for dinner; in the end she ate one and probably didn’t have the presence of mind to enjoy it much at all. Fell asleep in minutes.

It felt a bit weird, listening to the christening ceremony. The texts sound so nice and friendly, about welcoming the child into a community, being received with love, a kindly father figure, and so on. Except for the few slightly jarring, weirder parts about “delivering from the powers of darkness” (befria henne från mörkrets makt) and being “cleansed of the guilt of sin” (renade från syndens skuld). But I just cannot look past the rather hard-to-ignore fact that the thought of a father in the sky is nothing short of ridiculous. And don’t get me started on original sin.