Tidbits from Ingrid’s sixty-ninth month:

Ingrid sometimes talks to us as if she was irritated and impatient with us – not the way we talk at home, but the way she hears other parents talking to their kids, or perhaps some parents in a story book or movie. (Emil’s, perhaps.) “I’ve told you a thousand times! Aah! Don’t you understand anything?!”

I’ve also heard her and her friends treat their toys like that at times, and dole out punishments, also something we never do at home. “And now you must sit here for three years! And you can’t come out until you show some remorse for your pranks!”

I know less and less about what she and her friends actually play and say when they’re together. Most of the time they’re off on their own. They rarely need supervision nowadays, they don’t get into conflicts that they cannot resolve. There are rarely tears or fights.

She plays well not just with friends but with strangers, too. When we go to the playground and none of her friends are there, she often walks up to some other likely-looking kid and makes contact. Sometimes she offers a toy, sometimes she just pulls them into her play, sometimes she introduces herself or asks for their name, etc. Usually she chooses someone a bit younger than her.

That quote above, with the three-year timeout, is also an interesting example of her sense of time. When it comes to days and weeks, easily observable units, she has a good grip of how long they are. She’s known her days of week for a long time, a year or two already I think, and now knows the names of the months as well. But a year, or three years for that matter, is effectively synonymous with “forever and ever”.

Towards the shorter end, she sort of understands hours and knows that an hour is a pretty long time to wait. She can look at a clock and roughly tell the time – “between two and three” for example. She knows that eight o’clock happens twice a day, morning and evening. She kind of understands half hours as well, and knows that half past three (which in Swedish and Estonian is actually called half four) is halfway between three and four.

But quarter hours and minutes confuse her: she cannot remember whether “kvart i” is less than and “kvart över” is more, or the other way around. Whenever she asks what time it is (which happens quite often) and we say it is ten minutes to twelve, for example, she always asks if this means it’s more or less than twelve.

Speaking of time, she’s been staying up later and later in the evenings during the summer. Partly this is probably due to the light summer nights. But she also just does not want to go to bed. Life is too exciting. Often I do interesting stuff during the evening, after putting Adrian to bed, and Ingrid joins me – whether it’s because she is actually interested in the job, or whether she just wants me to let her stay up, I don’t know. She’s helped me dig and water in the garden, and cut branches with loppers. The lopper handles are as long as her arms but she did a great job. I think she actually worked so hard that her muscles were sore – she complained of an achy back the day after.

But unfortunately she keeps this fun going until she is way too tired, and then we get a tantrum when it’s time to get ready for bed. The new deal is that she can stay up as late as she wants, but teeth must get brushed no later than 8:30, and if she wants a bedtime story, she needs to be in bed by 9. This has worked very well: as usual, she accepts a simple, clear rule much better than daily negotiation.

Oh, and speaking of stories: she cannot tell one. She can make up a story, but she cannot tell a coherent story about something that happened to her or to us. When I hear her tell about some event, it is a jumble of details, with no order or reasoning. It is usually almost impossible to figure out from her tale what really happened.

Favourite summer activity: picking wild strawberries. Or maybe bathing and splashing in a pool. We bought some noodle water guns and they have gotten a lot of use.