Adrian learned to read this month. Just like that he went from last month’s “AI!” and “PANG” to such words as “asteroider” and “mjölkfri” and “skogräns”. He reads letter by letter, pointing at each one with his finger. Naturally, long words are hard and compound words are harder still, but as you can see from the example words, he’s not letting that stop him.

He likes to read the chapter headings when I read a book for him.

Now he just needs to get his speed up so he can start reading sentences, which would unlock the treasure trove of Bamse magazines that we have and that he so loves looking at.

While we’re on the topic of learning, he likes adding numbers. Even without me prompting or doing anything in particular to encourage him, he tells me that three plus five is eight, etc.

Double-digit numbers are complicated. It doesn’t help that Swedish (just like English) has irregular names for the numbers between ten and twenty. He knows there is something there to be figured out, something he is close to figuring out, so he keeps asking questions like “what do one and six make” when he sees a pair of numbers somewhere. He hasn’t quite understood that the order matters, so his “one and six” might mean sixteen or it might mean sixty-one.

He has learned to do up buttons, and I don’t know where or how because he doesn’t have any clothes with buttons. But one day he told me “I will button your cardigan”, probably because the buttons happened to be right in front of him, and then he proceeded to do that. And then he unbuttoned it again. Just for fun.

Adrian likes watching TV. We’ve blocked YouTube so the endless mindless surfing of play-dough movies is off the table; he’s forced to watch Swedish children’s television on SVT Play instead.

His favourites nowadays tend to be documentaries and shows about people doing things. He watched all episodes of “Fixa rummet”, an interior decorating show for kids where they redecorate kids’ rooms; then “Bacillakuten” which teaches kids about the human body, and most recently “Alex hittar hobbyn” where Alex tries out various hobbies ranging from figure skating and street dance to making sushi.

I don’t think he plays much on the iPad. The one game I saw him play was Field Runners. He has watched Ingrid or me play a few times, and I explained a few concepts, and off he went. Positioning his units, upgrading, saving money for upgrades, etc.

He is often tired in the afternoon after preschool, and often asks to go to bed before our eight o’clock official bedtime. But then other days he shouts that he is “not tired at all!” and refuses.

The bedtime routine now includes some reading, often from a chapter book. Then I sing for him. Currently he has a fixed list of five favourites, after which I can sing whatever I like. The five are Sockerbagaren, Trollmor, Ekorrn satt i granen, Kalle Teodor and Tre gubbar – in that order. For “my songs” I usually pick some Estonian ones. The cardboard songbooks that were so important a few months ago are now not.

He likes talking like baby or otherwise distorting both his voice and the words to the point where I have no idea what he is saying. Then he translates for me.