Adrian’s fingers after drawing.

He draws a lot right now.

It was spring, and then suddenly it wasn’t. Temperatures are freezing outside and it feels nearly freezing inside as well. We’re wrapping ourselves in blankets and turning up the heat again.

Ingrid cooking dinner while dancing to Hamilton.

Hamilton is going round and round on the Sonos when Ingrid is at home, sometimes straight and sometimes shuffled. She knows all the songs by heart by now and mixes them up to get some variety – it’s more about the music than the story.

Ingrid’s theatre club had their final performance today. Unfortunately, while photography was allowed, sharing photos from the performance on social media wasn’t, so here’s one of Ingrid and her grandfather after the show.

(The show was a modern version of Cinderella; Ingrid was one of the stepsisters. Two random thoughts: (a) nearly all kids need to practice their elocution and speak slower and more clearly, and (b) Ingrid looked lovely in the yellow, draped dress, which she would never choose to wear outside the theatre.

We’re going through all the clothes in Adrian’s dresser, sorting out the old, outgrown, unliked, worn-out ones to make more room for the clothes that Adrian actually wears. Some of his softest, most favourite t-shirts were size 4–6 years and clearly way too small to my eyes, but he still wanted to try them on to make sure. Others he discarded without a second thought.

The current favourites are long sleeve t-shirts that I recently found for him at Polarn o Pyret, after much searching. They have flat seams (important!) and are a size or two too large for him (also important!) for that perfect floppy, comfy fit.

Finally a warm and sunny day, when it’s a pleasure to be outside. I spring cleaned the flower beds, removing last year’s dead plants to make room for this year’s growth. Eric swapped tires on the new car.

Streets and bike lanes have been gravel-free for some time already. Now men with blowers are cleaning out the gravel from the bicycle parking at Spånga station.

We bought a “new” car.

The old car is twenty years old and slowly disintegrating. For about a year the engine vibrated like crazy because the rubber mountings had worn through but replacing them would have been ridiculously expensive. That was seriously annoying, but we learned to compensate for the vibrations by accelerating judiciously – and with time the vibrations went away on their own, without spending many thousands on re-mounting the engine. But then wheels started falling off, and next during an unplanned tire change one of the beams of the frame partly collapsed due to rust. The verdict from the most recent inspection was that the other beam was also near death and we’d either have to fix it within a month or have the car declared not roadworthy.

This car is not worth fixing any more so we bought a new car instead.

The new car is only half as old as the old car, and all pieces are strongly attached, and nothing at all is falling off yet! And it’s noticeably quieter, which is a nice bonus. Right now it’s also cleaner than the old car but I’m sure that will change quickly with all the dust and pollen in the air.

We thought very long and hard about buying an electric car or a hybrid. (We’ve been thinking about this question since last summer already.) But we drive so very little – sometimes weeks can pass without us using the car – that it’s simply not worth the upfront cost. So a petrol car it is.

We finished a project and celebrated with ice cream in the sun.

Things to mend, including two pairs of wool socks and four pairs of tights. Small bags to unpack and refill (such as my travel med kit). Books to blog about. Things I’ve wanted to do something about for months and possibly years, but never got around to.

P.S. I got most of the mending done on Saturday.