A lot of growing up has been happening here.

About a month ago, Adrian moved out of our bedroom into what used to be Ingrid’s room and is now the kids’ room. We had been talking about a bunk bed for a while, and when we found out that Eric’s father had one just kind of lying around, we made it happen. Both kids were immediately in love with the bed and Adrian wanted to sleep there that very night.

And that was that. Since then he’s slept there every night, and fallen asleep there every night but one. He has not wandered into our bed even once.

From about five in the morning he often sleeps restlessly and noisily. That used to lead to him moving closer to me or Eric in our shared bed, but in his new bed the lack of other warm bodies doesn’t seem to bother him at all. I was a bit worried that he might wake Ingrid but that hasn’t happened. Occasionally the noise he makes has woken me instead, especially early on when we kept the doors open between our bedrooms. I’ve even thought that surely he must have fell out of the bed, and waited for the cries, but nothing… I think he might be hitting the wall with his feet or elbows or head or something.

When the room became the kids’ room instead of just Ingrid’s room, it wasn’t just the sleep habits that changed. Until now Ingrid’s room was really just Ingrid’s bedroom – during the day the kids were always downstairs. Now all of a sudden they’ve started playing there. (This might also have something to do with new, stricter limits on iPad use in the evenings…)

During summer both kids would sleep until about 7, then get up and play with their iPads while we slept on. Now our alarms go off a bit before 7 and there is no iPad time. And then there is the time pressure to get up, get dressed, eat breakfast… Adrian is grumpy almost every single morning now. Getting up earlier helps because then we don’t need to hurry as much, and I can take 15 minutes to cuddle and read for him and Ingrid.

When we read, he’s started looking at the text and asking me where it says that thing that I just read. He’s figured out that words in extra large type or in a different style are the important or loud ones.

We’ve started reading the Mitt första 123 books that Ingrid got around this age and Adrian is very fond of these. The first one, I think, we read every day for a week. We’re taking a new one every week because “you get a Numbert book on Saturdays” was so much easier to explain than any alternative. But this might be a bit too much; we’ll see.

Adrian likes to compares things. This is bigger than that, and this one is even bigger. Pappa is taller than emme.

He has been curious about dying, and wanted me to name lots of ways of dying, and then added some more himself.

And he has wondered what comes after the sky, when you fly higher than the sky. Space is kind of hard to explain.

Our two weeks of intensive Estonian practice made a huge difference. From hardly speaking any Estonian at all, he has now pretty much gone over to speaking Estonian to me all the time. Sometimes when he asks me something and I respond in Swedish (to include Eric as well) he actually asks me to say that again in Estonian. Sometimes I’ve even heard the kids speak Estonian to each other. I’m sure that long days at preschool will put an end to this soon but I’m very pleased in the meantime.