Adrian produces a lot of crumbs when he eats, especially with crackers. He nibbles instead of biting, breaks his cracker into pieces that he then fits together again, taps it against the table (because it’s a boat/a mountain/a something) and so on.

Sweden’s parliament will vote tomorrow about a law restricting asylum and immigration. It includes rules that limit the right of families to reunite, replaces permanent residence permits with temporary ones, and sets higher requirements for paying for your own upkeep. All signs point towards the proposal being passed.

I am appalled and ashamed. We live in one of the world’s richest countries, and instead of helping those in desperate need, right on our doorstep, we shut them out and pretend that it’s someone else’s problem. Just like during WW2, Sweden pretends to not see the problem. We make a dirty deal with Turkey and turn a blind eye to Turkey’s human rights problems, so that we won’t be inconvenienced. We’d rather let refugees die than have them come here and disrupt our comfortable lives. Fifty years from now, Sweden will look back at this time as a shameful period in our history.

The refugee situation has made me consider applying for a Swedish citizenship, for the first time ever, just so that I can go and vote against the people who are pushing Sweden in this direction.

I remember my own first few years in Sweden. It wasn’t in any way comparable to the refugee children’s situation, of course. But still, even now, over twenty years later, I remember the stress of having to live with a temporary residence permit, the anxiety that started building up months before our permits would need to be renewed, and how it grew and grew the closer we got to the deadline. Never knowing whether I might be sent back, away from my friends and my school; never daring to make plans for a longer-term future; having to take undocumented summer jobs (because we needed the money) instead of openly looking for a proper legal job. Not being able to sleep at night because I didn’t know if and when we might be kicked out, leaving my life behind.

I had my mother and brother with me at least. I cannot even imagine what it might feel like to go through this alone, knowing that your family is living in a war zone and won’t be allowed to join you for years.

And now Sweden’s politicians intend to put all refugee children through that.

Another Sunday, another outing based on an idea from a book, this time from “Alla dessa cykelpromenader i Stockholmstrakten”. Since we hadn’t made any plans or preparations in advance, we chose a shortish cycle trip from Spånga to Riddersvik.

Riddersvik turned out to be a beautiful old manor house with a lovely café (excellent cakes, and pleasingly small in size as well) and pretty surroundings. There was an allotment garden below the manor itself, with views of lake Mälaren, and a rose garden on the other side of the manor, and a playground for the kids.

This was a nice contrast to what we saw last weekend at Svartsjö. I found the park around that castle rather depressing. This was a major castle, historically important, close to central Stockholm. It had obviously had grand surroundings once upon a time, but since then obviously hardly anyone had cared for it. For lack of better use it had been turned into a prison for a century, and the best that could be said of the park was that it existed, and was still more or less a park rather than wilderness. Overgrown and untended, with no plantings of any kind.

As a coincidence it turned out that Riddersvik was called Flottsvik some centuries ago and was the other endpoint of the ferry connection between Svartsjö and the mainland.

On this very rainy Saturday, we drove to the recycling station to get rid of stuff that has accumulated over recent months. Adrian thinks the recycling station is fun but loud. He likes throwing stuff into the giant containers. (Today we threw out a bagful of old unusable textiles, some broken lightbulbs, various broken or unwanted electronics including two old cable modems and one ten-year-old computer, one frying pan, one radiator, and probably other stuff that I’ve already forgotten.)

The end of Adrian’s preschool years is drawing close. They had their end-of-term celebrations already. And we’ve also already been to a first introductory meeting at school, where Adrian met his teacher and half the kids in his class, and saw the classroom they will be in. He seemed neither particularly excited nor nervous about it. But then he’s been to and from that school so many times with me to pick up Ingrid that it must all be quite familiar to him by now.

This month’s new skill: cycling. He’s been half-heartedly trying to learn it for a while, and managed just fine with the balance and cycling downhill, but as soon as the ground was flat to uphill, it was too hard. He’s no stranger to walking and running, but maybe his cycling muscles are weak, or maybe he just hasn’t really found them yet. Still, one day something clicked, and he even cycled to and from preschool several times.

He started with the smallest bike we have, the one that Ingrid learned to cycle on, but it’s already too small for him. The next one is just right in size but feels tall to him, so he is slightly nervous on it and doesn’t feel comfortable using it very much. We’ve started looking for a “co-pilot” like thing that we can attach to one of our own bikes, which would both allow us to go on longer bike trips, and hopefully get him used to sitting on a taller bike as well.

Meanwhile, he seems to quite like walking. He often joins me when I want to go out geocaching, and while we don’t cover huge amounts of ground, we can easily walk for two hours without him complaining.

Twice now he has also walked with Ingrid to the supermarket in “downtown” Spånga. Ingrid asks for extra chores to earn money; Adrian likes being outside; both enjoy the other’s company: win-win for everybody.

Adrian enjoys the idea of a weekly allowance but is not quite old enough to save up money like Ingrid does. As soon as he has enough for a small Lego set, he buys one. He has now also learned about the concept of internet shopping: he used to think that you could just order things but now understands that “ordering” is just like buying and also requires money. He likes receiving parcels in the post so his latest Lego purchase was an online one.

Online shopping is great maths and reading practice, by the way. With a bit of concentration, he can spell out most words of up to around 6 or 8 letters, and of course recognizing the Lego logo is no effort. Prices are clearly listed and he can compare them to the amount of money he has. I do rather wish that Toys’R’Us online shop didn’t use the misleading 90-cent pricing model: a Lego kit costing 120 kr is listed as 119:90 even though it’s been almost 25 years since the 10-öre coins were phased out.

Legos are the best toys still – not only because of all the endless building opportunities, but also because of the clear good guys vs bad guys setup. Almost all movies that Adrian likes to watch also have that good vs evil conflict: Lego Ninjago, Transformers, Star Wars…

He talks all the time. There is so much going on in his head and it all has to be shared with someone. Quite often he starts talking to me before he has quite figured out what he wants to tell me, and sentences start over and transmogrify into something else, and a minute later I am very lost and have no idea wha the is talking about, and have to ask him to start over. The next attempt usually makes much more sense.

He also eats a lot: always more than Ingrid, and some days more than Eric or I. He also eats a much more varied diet than he used to. He no longer routinely says no to new foods and tries almost everything I serve, without any need for prompting even. And then he is surprised that things he previously believed to be gross turn out to taste just fine. He has even eaten mashed potatoes! He hasn’t learned to like any sandwich toppings yet – his sandwiches still consist of bread and butter only.

Thinking most about: summer break! Ingrid has been counting days since mid-May. She’s tired of schoolwork. Now summer is here, she has noticed that it also means that she will need to fill her days herself.

Her current plan is to mostly fill them with sewing and similar crafts projects. She’s like me, though, and doesn’t like making things that are of no use: many crafts projects for kids are about making doodads and pretty things that become clutter very soon after they are done. Now she’s made a jar for memories, hung colourfully painted clothes pins on a piece of string for hanging up notes, made a fake cactus of stones, and some more.

I believe she also thinks quite a lot about growing, or rather, not growing. She’s shortest in her class and while it doesn’t exactly bother her, it’s something she cannot help noticing.

Another thing that occupies her mind is earning money. She has her sights set on a robot dog (a Zuppie) and now wants to save up enough money to buy one before we go on vacation. We haven’t been able to come up with many chores that are large enough to be worth paying for, that she can do on her own. She can’t exactly mow the lawn yet… There’s emptying the dishwasher (10 kr), emptying the washing machine and hanging up laundry (20 kr), grocery shopping (15 kr) or picking killer slugs (1 kr/minute).

Favourite app: Either This or That or What if or some competitor to those. Or maybe several of these. The app asks weird questions like “would you rather have chocolate that tastes like snot or snot that tastes like chocolate” or “what if you had a magic carpet but could never get off it”.

The app isn’t exactly meant for kids, so a few sex-themed questions have popped up. Ingrid has asked about the meaning of those, and appeared to conclude that sex seems rather icky. She asked if we do it, and her reaction was “ewww”. She was also rather disgusted when she saw a crude penis that some neighbourhood kid had chalked in the street. Still so much an innocent child.

Ingrid is also rather innocent compared to some of her classmates when it comes to swearing. Some of them have “swear bans” at home and some sort of punishments for swearing. In our house it’s never an issue. Eric and I never swear, and Ingrid doesn’t, either. She doesn’t like to hear swearing, and even mildly dirty words bother her.

It’s important to her that people should not say mean things to each other. I happened to mention a newspaper article where Zlatan was criticized, and Ingrid’s opinion was that newspapers shouldn’t be allowed to print criticism of someone unless that person allows it. I tried to briefly explain the concept of freedom of speech, the relativity of opinions about what’s right and wrong, but she didn’t really buy it.

Saying mean things is not OK but at the same time Ingrid has no compunctions about using a mean, condescending tone of voice, or phrasing that not-so-subtly indicates criticism, especially towards Adrian.

Favourite song: Galantis – No Money.

Favourite late night snack: Kellogg’s Special K with red berries, with milk. Also, egg in a hole, which she makes herself.

Preschool pickup on a rainy, muddy day.

The nursery/preschool has two buildings and two yards. The larger building houses all the younger age groups. It has a large yard, with grass, trees and bushes, hills and such. The smaller building is for the oldest kids only. Its yard is basically a flat field of gravel enclosed in chainlink fence, with some play structures here and there. It’s dusty in warm weather and muddy when wet. There is barely any shade. It used to have a few trees but for some reason even those few were removed recently. Luckily sometimes the older kids get to play in the large yard.

I have generally been really happy with this preschool for Ingrid and Adrian but the yard is a disgrace. The staff tell me that the kids don’t mind. And I’m sure the kids are OK with it – just like inner city kids are “fine” with only playing in narrow asphalted courtyards, because that is what they’ve always had. But that does not mean it is good for them.

I happened to have a camera in my hand and turned it around. That kind of setup rarely leads to any good photos, but when I looked at this one, the uncomfortable crop of this hurried shot had an awkward kind of appeal.

I am feeling uncomfortable in my life. The everyday keeps threatening to overwhelm. In the last week or so I have literally had nightmares about server crashes, code that does not work, train stops that I miss (with two kids in tow and many pieces of luggage) etc.

It’s not so much about all the things I have to do. Rather, it’s about all the things I have to think about. After ten years of being a mother and eight years of being a manager, I am simply tired of always having to be responsible for other people.