Horses. This month’s big thing is definitely horses. In Ingrid’s own words, she has become “hästtokig”, horse obsessed.
She tried horseback riding once last summer and loved it. She’s been talking about riding since then, and now this spring term she finally got a chance to do it again, with riding lessons every Thursday.
I sort of thought it might have been just a one-off, a passing fancy. But she absolutely loves it. Even on the one occasion when the riding lesson turned out to be a theory lesson (the basics of saddling and bridling and grooming) with no actual riding, she came away happy.
Ingrid has had 4 actual riding lessons now I think. For the first few lessons the kids all had someone holding a lead rope but now they’re mostly managing things themselves, at least most of the time. They’re working on the basics: halting and steering, and some trotting.
Ingrid has also discovered that the horse won’t always listen to her or do what she wants.
She feels reasonably confident when she’s sitting in the saddle, but on the ground she’s not yet very comfortable near horses. Well, they’re ponies, really, but still quite a lot larger than her. She’s afraid that she’ll be stepped on, or crushed against the wall when the pony steps sideways. Or bitten; there’s one pony there at the stables who seems to enjoy nipping people’s arms, or at least threatening to.
And she’s not very fond of the messy side of it. When a horse nuzzles her chest her first instinct is to go and clean it off. Horse manure on the ground is “eugh!”, and rinsing horse saliva from the bit is yucky.
It’s not just the riding. She borrows horse-themed books at the school library. She buys horse-themed magazines instead of Bamse. She took down all her Bamse posters from the wall above her bed and put up three horse posters instead. She’s been looking at stuffed plush horses on the internet and is thinking of saving up to buy a big one. And she’s told me she’d like to decorate her whole room with a horse theme, curtains and rug and bed sheets and everything.
Apart from horses, the main theme in Ingrid’s life is independence. When she is bored at home, she now sometimes goes for a walk on her own, or maybe goes to the supermarket.
Twice she went skating on her own. The sports field is about 2 km from here, so she took the bus. (We practiced this together a few times first.) When she got there she got some random parent to help her put on her skates. She’s pretty good at asking for help from adults, doesn’t really feel shy about it or anything. And she found other kids to play and skate around with.
Once she got a lift home with some kid who lived roughly in this direction. (I guess the parent didn’t feel comfortable about Ingrid alone on the bus.) The other time she took the bus home afterwards, and that was really the only part of the whole experience that went less well. She just barely missed one bus, waited 10 minutes, and then the next bus went right past and didn’t stop for her. But she got home on the next bus.
For those trips she borrowed my bus card and my mobile phone (and phoned home several times, for help or advice or just to check in). But now we’ve bought her both a bus card of her own and a mobile phone as well. They might not get much use yet but there’ll be more and more of this kind of thing.
Favourite movie: Bamse och tjuvstaden. Also, Lou!. And Melodifestivalen, the song contest.
Favourite books: Daisy Meadows’ fairy books, still. She’s outgrowing Bamse and mostly reading Kalle Anka now.
Favourite things: YooHoo plush toys, which Ingrid has started collecting. She has five. I’m glad she has her pocket money for this kind of stuff.
New skill she’s learning: writing in cursive.
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