By Mats Halldin [GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons

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.

I let Ingrid paint my face again today, while Adrian and Eric had gone out for a walk. When they came back and Adrian saw me with my painted face, he was shocked into speechlessness. Rather than crawling or leaning towards me to be picked up, like he usually does, he sat quietly in Eric’s arms and just stared at me, without making a sound. Then he picked and poked and pulled at my face for a while. Then we nursed, after which he poked some more. When I washed off the paint after dinner, he was quite happy to see my real face again.

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.

The Queen, out with her yapping dogs, stumbles into a travelling library that’s stopped behind Buckingham Palace. Out of politeness she borrows a book – one whose author she once made a Dame. Despite the author’s fine background the book turns out to be rather dull. Upon returning it, the Queen feels obliged to borrow a new one, and this time she is hooked.

Her staff do not read books (with the exception of Norman the kitchen boy), so they have little understanding for this new pastime. And the Queen is obviously losing any enthusiasm she might previously have had for such tasks as opening some public building or visiting a shoe factory. Her reading habit is seen as somewhat bothersome, and her private secretary, among others, conspires to put an end to it. But the Queen persists, and lives are changed.

This is a perfectly lovely little book. Charming, witty, wonderfully British, each phrase a joy to read. It is light entertainment but at the same time it is also a serious story about how literature can change lives. The Queen comes across as both eminently royal and surprisingly lovable and human. One wishes the real Queen read this book.

Adlibris, Amazon UK, Amazon US.

Ingrid’s swimming lessons brought to mind my own first ones. We had mandatory swimming lessons when I was in 2nd grade, 8 years old. I remember them as scary and not much fun, and I remember how the pool water made my eyes sting and how awful those exercises were where we were supposed to keep our eyes open in the water in order to pick up some ball or thing from the bottom of the pool. I still totally hate opening my eyes underwater, it makes my eyes itch and my tears run.

I didn’t learn to swim in those lessons, because I fell ill with pneumonia after a few of them, and you weren’t given a second chance if you missed the first one. I later picked up swimming on my own, in a lake during the summer.

Tartu’s old swimming pool has been abandoned in favour of the new water centre that was built some years ago. We walked past the old one this summer. For some reason the pool is still there, and so are the poolside seats, although the building around it has been torn down, and a new building is standing where the showers and changing rooms used to be. In the photo below the big pool is in the front – you can see the darkish rectangles at the end of each lane as well as the spots where the lane marker ropes used to be attached. The teaching pool is in the rear, behind the big one.

Continuing to ponder yesterday’s theme of parenting goals, here’s another angle: what things are NOT on my list?

For example, there is nothing on my list about things I want my children to do or to like. There are things I would like them to do, but these things are not important enough to make it onto the list. Their own choices are more important. I would not agree with their choices, I would be puzzled perhaps, but I would not feel like I’ve failed them as a parent.

Enjoying learning new things, or reading, or writing. Being creative. Being successful. Getting a higher education. Good things, all of them, each in their own way, and the Internet has lots of people who want these and similar things for their children.

But if my children consciously choose to not go in that direction, that is OK. If they decide to live a quiet life on a small farm in the middle of the forest, cut off from society, not learning anything new, that’s fine. If they decide to skip higher education and instead focus on some personal project, that’s fine. As long as they do this because they really want to, and have thought through the long-term implications.

Then there are the things that I don’t agree with, that I specifically do NOT want for them.

I don’t want obedience. I don’t want faith.

I don’t want self-sufficiency. Independent thinking and decision-making, yes. Being able to take care of themselves, yes. But I do not want the kind of self-sufficiency that seems prevalent in some parts of Western society, where the ideal is that you shouldn’t really need anybody. I think it is perfectly OK to need other people in your life, to want intimacy, to ask for help.

Some fresh bookmarks from delicious.com:

• XKCD> CIA – Web site security, as seen by computer experts and laymen.
• Why Cleaned Wastewater Stays Dirty In Our Minds – “It is quite difficult to get the cognitive sewage out of the water, even after the real sewage is gone.”
• Cockpit crisis – In five years, over 50 commercial airplanes crashed in loss-of-control accidents. What’s going on?
• The “overlearning the game” problem – “overlearning the game to a point where you exploit the rules to achieve goals that are far removed, or even opposed, to the original intent of the game, is systemic in human society and permeates almost all aspects of our lives”