Finally, finally, after uncounted months of no progress, Adrian is now nappy free. He totally skipped the potty stage, and the accident-prone trying and practising stage, and went from nappies to full toilet use pretty much overnight.

He rarely has any accidents, not even at night. It’s as if a switch had been thrown. I guess there was some psychological threshold or resistance that needed to be conquered.

At home he often manages his toilet visits independently, without any help. He has a little step stool to help him, and a child-sized toilet seat ring. Outside the home the toilets are tall and the seats large, so he needs help getting up and down.

When we’re out and about, he prefers peeing in bushes to going to the toilet. One of the main reasons is his sensitivity to noise, especially rumbling, roaring sounds. He cannot stand the noise of hand dryers, and the Dyson Airblade is by far the worst. He is so distressed by them that he cannot think of anything except escaping the noise. I can sympathise with him. The Airblade is awfully noisy, and while I don’t quite feel the need to flee, I try to keep my distance and won’t normally use them.

To get away from the noise, we use the separate family/disabled toilet instead of the main ones whenever possible. Sometimes I carry a pair of kid-sized ear protectors with me for him. Those are also good for other kinds of noisy situations, such as roadside picnic areas, or the building works going on in our street in Tartu. I don’t know what they’re doing – it sounds like a jackhammer but I’ve never stopped to look; we all hurry past as fast as we can.

When we went shopping for underwear, Adrian picked a bunch with monsters on them, and a set of day-of-week briefs. He’s not too picky about wearing them on the right day; instead he picks a pair, puts them on, and then asks what day he’s wearing.

(Face painting by Ingrid)

Adrian is interested in numbers, sizes, measurements, metres and kilograms. He asks how large things are, or how many meters of potatoes we bought and then guesses “fifty meters! no, six!”

He has become quite aware of his age, too. He knows that he is three, almost four, and that Ingrid is several years older. He knows his birthday is in autumn, which comes after summer, when the leaves turn yellow. He wants to be six so he can go to school like Ingrid, and watch big kid movies.

He likes joining in the games we play, and with some coaching and guidance manages some of them pretty well. We’ve played dominoes, “Försvunna diamanten” and Go fish.

He has his own score in “yellow car”, which by the way has mutated into “orange car” now because there were way too many yellow cars in the streets of Stockholm. Occasionally he notices Ingrid and me discussing our scores and asks what his score is. Then he shouts out “red car” or “black truck” or something and gets a point for that. Meanwhile, Ingrid has realised that I have no chance of catching up with her, but she wants the score to be more even to make the game more exciting for her. I now get two points for each car, and sometimes she points out orange cars for me to claim.

He still has his cow milk protein intolerance. One day when we were all having ice cream and he wasn’t happy with his, he asked to try ours. What the heck, we thought, let’s see what happens, and he got small spoonfuls from each of us. What happened was a night of constant waking because of nightmares, until four in the morning. Won’t be trying that again for some while.

Favourite food: French fries. Raspberries. Porridge. Potatoes. Broccoli and cauliflower.

Favourite story: Three little pigs.

Favourite movie: Despicable Me, 1 and 2.

Favourite YouTube clips: people demonstrating play-dough play sets.

Favourite toy: Lego.

The anger and discontent continues. I am almost (almost) getting immune to it. But it is affecting all of us.

The day begins, literally, with Adrian angry at us for waking him. Then we go downstairs and read a story, which means complaining about the choice of book.

The breakfast is wrong, the bowl is wrong, the fact that porridge was served by Eric and not me is wrong.

Really whatever we do it’s wrong. In the morning he is angry because it’s Eric who will drop him off at daycare and not me. In the afternoon he is angry because it’s me picking him up and not Eric.

If I come by bike he’s angry; if I walk he’s angry; if he has to ride his balance bike he is angry.

If we go to the supermarket he’s angry about having to do that. If I’ve done the shopping beforehand without him, he says he wants to go to the supermarket.

He seems to be extra angry when he’s just with us, and less so when he’s with friends.

And when he isn’t angry, he whines. He seems almost incapable of expressing an opinion without whining our shouting.

My current working hypothesis is that this might perhaps be due to lack of sleep. He refuses to go to bed, and he especially refuses to go to bed with Eric, and he extra super refuses to go to bed earlier than Ingrid. So most evenings he goes to bed later than I think he really needs to. I guess we may have to simply start ignoring his opinions about this and forcefully carry him to his bed when we think it’s time.

When he isn’t angry, his favourite game is “mommy daddy baby”. Usually I am the baby and he is the daddy. My job is easy; I need to lie down and sleep in the play tent. He pretend reads books for me, brings me toys, makes me breakfast etc. “Baby, daddy will be back in just a moment!”

He is interested in who eats what. What do dogs eat? And snails? Ducks? And what about frogs? And thieves?

I wonder what or who he thinks a thief is. He knows I had my bike stolen by a thief, but I wonder what kind of picture he sees in his head when he thinks about that.

Favourite vegetable: Broccoli.
Favourite book: Sipsik.
Favourite plaything: Lengths of plastic pipe (left over from when I built bird netting frames for our planter boxes). One large cardboard box. Lego.

There is a lot of anger in Adrian now, and a lot of screaming. He is angry about a lot of things, and he knows it, and he lets it out with a screech. Or he shouts attans! (“darn” or “bother”) at the top of his voice – especially when some Lego construction falls apart. Or he tells me that då ska jag boxa på dig!, “I will box you!” but he is too kind a soul to ever do it.

One thing that is guaranteed to make him angry is if he cannot be first, especially when walking or cycling. It’s not so important for him to be the first one to get dinner or go out through the door – but when we’re cycling and Ingrid passes him he’s screaming with anger.

He cycles a lot on his balance bike and I think we’ve basically left the stroller era behind us. We put the stroller in the basement some weeks ago and haven’t used it since then.

The bike is still half transportation, half game for him. He is no longer going particularly fast. Instead he likes doing tricks on it: pushing off with both feet at the same time (instead of the normal running motion), or freezing his legs mid-stride, or moving his feet in circles as if he was pedalling, or only pushing with one leg. He also likes cycling really really close to the kerb, really challenging fate – but thus far he’s only fallen over the edge once.

The only real challenge is going downhill. The only way to brake on a balance bike is to put your feet on the ground and adjust the pressure so you gradually stop. Too much friction, or more pressure on one foot than the other, and you fall. Adrian has done that a few times (without any real damage) so now we try to avoid the hilly routes.

When there is the least bit of visible damage, like a tiny scab or scrape, he seems convinced that he is badly hurt. He absolutely needs a sticky plaster, and then he won’t use the hand or foot that has the plaster. But if we put a sock on to hide the plaster, the foot becomes usable again.

When he walks, he sometimes likes to step only on the paving stones and not their edges. And then he wants me to do the same and gets angry with me when I break the rules.

He had a rather radical haircut this month. For the umpteenth time this year both he and Ingrid got lice. And the bare mention of shampooing was enough to make him cry with distress: he dislikes it so badly. So we took the easy way out and cut his hair. First he got kind of a normal short haircut, but then he wouldn’t let us comb it for lice so out came the trimmer and Eric trimmed it all off. It is shockingly different from his old look but actually suits him surprisingly well.

He looks particularly sweet when he combines his minimal hair with a dress and his beloved new pink Crocs. He is yet to really discover gender-stereotypical clothing norms and among his favourite clothes are several really girly things that Ingrid has outgrown: a glittery violet Hello Kitty t-shirt, a red dress with white small hearts, and those glittery pink Crocs that he himself picked out at the shoe store. But he also loves his tiger tank top, monster socks and Lightning McQueen t-shirt.

The Crocs he calls Crocsina, with a creative triple plural form: the original English Crocs, plus the Estonian -id to get Crocsid (which is what I call them) and then the Swedish -na on top of it all.

Adrian plays with Lego a lot. Often he builds small, elaborate, spindly vehicles with wheels and sometimes with wings, too. And bridges. And occasionally just abstract things, like a very long blue stick with a window at the end.

He is way better at entertaining himself on his own than Ingrid is. He can just sit with his Lego and build things, talking and singing to himself.

A month ago Adrian gave up his dummy. For the first few weeks he found it a bit hard to go to sleep and said he missed the dummy. By now it’s ancient history, and he never mentions it at all.

Almost always he goes to bed together with Ingrid. And quite often he then falls asleep within minutes the bedtime story is done. He is a bit tired in the mornings and probably needs more sleep, really… but both kids are so much happier if they go to bed together that I don’t even try to get Adrian to sleep earlier.

He’s grumpy in the mornings and doesn’t like to be woken. We are experimenting with ways to distract him and get him away from that habit of grumpiness. Some mornings I read a bit for him before breakfast; other days Ingrid comes in and wakes him; some days we hand him a plate with apple slices before he even gets out of bed because food also seems to help.

Some evenings I help both kids get ready for sleep by talking them through a relaxation exercise. Other days I sing. Adrian is very used to falling asleep to music. When he wants to sleep during a car ride, he asks us to put on some music, and then he goes to sleep to some 1970s pop music from Vinyl 107. But for the past three Thursdays, on our way to Ingrid’s riding lessons, he’s fallen asleep with no music but with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand.

He is interested in what things are made of, and especially which things are breakable. “This bowl is made of glass and if it falls on wood it will break.” (Glass is a broad category that also includes all kinds of ceramics. Also, mugs and cups are glasses.)

He is strong, just like Ingrid. Once his friend Sigrid was here and we had dinner outside. Adrian climbed up over the armrest of the garden sofa without even thinking about it. Sigrid had to make an effort to pull herself up.

Likes:

• Poop jokes
• Pretending he’s a baby
• Wearing pyjamas
• Porridge, strawberry jam and Pauluns juices
• Collecting sticks and stones

Adrian now rides a bike. A few weeks ago we brought out Ingrid’s old balance bike for him to try. He loved it from the very first moment, and “got it” almost immediately. At the very beginning he just walked with the bike between his legs. A day or two later he was rolling. Now he’s hooked. He rides it to and from nursery and school; he accompanies me to the supermarket on it; he goes out riding just for fun.

Now he’s so confident on it that he’s experimenting. “Look, I can ride like this!” And “like this” may mean that he keeps pushing with only one foot and holds the other one in the air, or holds both of them up, or goes backwards.

And he’s fast. When he dawdles, looking at stuff we pass, then he gets on about as fast as I walk. When he decides to go fast, I have to run to keep up.

Speaking of riding, Adrian has definitely gotten over much of his fear of animals. When Ingrid’s riding lessons started in January, he was really scared, almost terrified of the horses. I had to hold him almost all the time, and when I didn’t, he cowered in a spot where he could see me but be as far as possible from the horses.

Now, believe it or not, he is OK with riding a pony himself. Earlier this week we spent a few days at a farm, and he rode their Shetland pony (with someone leading it of course). He also sat in a rabbit enclosure and fed them dandelion leaves from his hand.

So while it is kind of inconvenient to have to take him along for Ingrid’s riding lessons each time, it’s been very useful practice for him.

This Thursday he gave up his dummy. For a long time already he had only been using it to fall asleep at night, and I had already been thinking that it’s time to stop. So when we found out his friend Hanna was quitting at Easter, I decided Adrian would do the same.

There is a tradition in Stockholm for kids to give their dummies to the kittens at Skansen, an open air museum. They used to have huge colour co-ordinated garlands of dummies there. Those seemed to be gone now. Instead there is a neat little machine where the kids put in their dummies and press a button and then watch it go through a chute, up a slope on a little wagon, etc., and then in to an enclosure with homeless cats.

Adrian was not bothered at all. When he goes to bed in the evening, he finds it a bit difficult to calm down without the dummy. He tells me it’s “hard to sleep”, and it takes him somewhat longer than usual. But that’s it.

Likes:

• Pretending he’s a baby. He likes to play “mummy daddy baby”. But sometimes he also just likes to talk like a baby, or crawl like a baby, or be spoon fed like a baby.
• Building with Lego. He has very precise stories to tell about seemingly simple constructions. A lump with three longer pieces sticking out is a diving tower with three platforms, one for kids, one for me, one for Eric. Another lump with two long pieces is a flying car. (Not an airplane.)
• Splashing in puddles.
• Playing with water while I’m doing the dishes.
• Reading. When he’s upset or tired, his go-to solution is to ask me to read for him.
• Making art with glitter glue.
• Drawing. He no longer makes tangles – now it’s mostly roughly circular shapes, often coloured in, sometimes joined by lines.
• Sunglasses.

Random fact: He often speaks very loudly for some reason, and both Eric and I keep telling him to please not shout.

Adrian is not angry. Not much. Sometimes he actually lets Eric do something he really wanted me to do (such as serve him porridge). Perhaps we’re in a trough between two anger waves. We’re enjoying the experience.

The one thing he is most often angry about is nursery. In the morning he is angry about having to go to nursery; in the afternoon when I pick him up he is angry about having to leave. He is also quite angry about not getting to play with his best friend Sigrid as often as he wants. Playing at nursery doesn’t count; he wants to play at her home or possibly at ours. But really at hers.

Mornings are worst. Adrian is so not a morning person. He is often tired and usually starving hungry. Somehow the two reinforce each other: the more tired he is, the more keenly he feels the hunger. So on weekday mornings our top priority is to get food into Adrian, but on weekends, when he wakes at his own pace, he can go downstairs with Ingrid and watch a movie on the iPad while Eric and I snooze a while, and he can manage that without going nuts with hunger.

A slow, cuddly start helps. So actually the very first thing we do when we go downstairs is read a book, while Eric makes porridge. Those 5 minutes can make a huge difference for his mood.

Porridge is Adrian’s favourite food. Some months ago I would have said potatoes, or maybe bread; now it is definitely porridge. He eats porridge almost every morning, and sometimes asks for it in the afternoon as well.

And he eats a lot: his normal breakfast is one standard adult serving (1 dl grains, 2 dl water). Sometimes he eats that and then asks for more. I guess he might be going through a growth spurt.

We’ve had some discussions at home about the importance of eating vegetables. Especially after he last was ill (because he’s had a lot of sick days recently) we talked about the vitamins in vegetables and how they help keep you healthy. He was totally up for it in theory, but in practice he still usually takes one bite or two and then says he doesn’t want any more.

One thing he has suddenly learned to eat/drink is fruit smoothies. That was one of those things that he used to just refuse to touch. Now suddenly smoothies are OK.

So if he keeps adding around 1 food item to his repertoire every month, he should be eating like a normal human being in a few decades or so…

Favourite game: mummy daddy baby. He is daddy and I get to be the baby. My main job is to lie down (in our play tent, or on the sofa). He then “reads” for me (which mainly means that he looks at the pictures in a book and I do nothing), and puts me to bed (lies next to me for a while), and then fetches another book (pappa kommer snart, “daddy will be back in a moment”) and tells me to close my eyes if it’s too scary. And sometimes feeds me, too. He can keep this up forever.

But he can also join in in more and more of Ingrids games and activities. I used to set up an alternative activity for him, next to Ingrid’s, but now he does his own version of the same thing. Bowling, painting, marbles… And games. He can understand and follow the rules of “go fish”, for example.

Today we played a tabletop game called Brainstorm. It’s sort of related to this one but the process is quite different. In our version there are question cards and a timer. You play five rounds. In the first one each player has to come up with x answers, in round two with x+1, and so on. We usually have x=3 for Ingrid and x=5 for adults, to even out the field. The faster you reach your goal, the more points you get.

Today Adrian joined in with a fixed goal of 4, and (with a fair amount of prompting) managed it quite well. He could come up with 4 fairy tales (well… if Kalle Anka counts as a fairy tale), 4 round things, 4 fruits etc., before the time ran out. The fruit he did in about 2 seconds and didn’t even need any hints or prompts.

He has also started listening to the same books as Ingrid. Our bedtime story for the past week or so has been Guldmysteriet (a LasseMaja book). We also read the various Alfons books a lot.

Adrian likes books and letters and reading and writing. He reads letters. He sees letters in things. (The other day I got him to eat strips of bell pepper by showing him how they looked like the letter J.) He picks out letters from words: olika… oli K a. At nursery they’ve made letter shapes with their bodies on the floor. He draws letters in his porridge, and on his pancakes, and with his fork on his napkin. Mostly he draws A’s.

Favourite movie: Frozen, a.k.a. “the snowman movie”. Olaf is his favourite character.

Favourite item of clothing: dresses. I’ve had to buy more because we were always running out.

Not favourite item of clothing: socks. Given the choice, he almost never wears any.

Last month’s themes continue.

Adrian is often angry and wants to decide everything, not only about his own life but about others as well. Who sits where, who is allowed to eat what breakfast, etc.

He has a firm idea about how life should be, and if the world doesn’t conform, he has a hard time dealing with it. Man får inte göra så, “this is not allowed”, is a frequent comment. He says this about real life situations, and in that case “not allowed” is a synonym for “I don’t want you to do this” – and I suspect he says it this way because that is the way he hears adults express their wishes.

But he is also quick to point out things that are done wrong outside of his own life. If book has a funny drawing of a lemon in a shoe, he tells me man får inte göra så!. But because it’s not for real, he’s a bit more relaxed about this and doesn’t actually get angry, and when I tell him that in books anything is allowed, he’s OK with that.

He contains an endless stream of why’s. Why is there a tree here? Why do we live in Spånga? Why is he standing there? Why are you walking so fast? Why do I need to go to nursery?

With most of these I can understand or at least imagine his interest. But then sometimes his questions come from some part of his brain that I really cannot relate to.

He asks if we can buy blueberries. I say yes, and put a carton of blueberries in our shopping basket. “Why are we buying those?” he asks.

Adrian is still very interested in letters (especially) and numbers (a little bit less). He reads out letters he sees. He picks out the first letters of words, and sometimes the next one, too. He wants to know how words are spelled.

He wants to write but he cannot draw any letters himself because his hands are not steady enough.

He draws more than he used to, but mostly just susapusa, a circular tangle. His hand is not steady enough, and maybe his fingers are not strong enough, to control a finer movement. One day at the Estonian playgroup the kids were all going to draw snow men. I held my hand around his just to steady it but didn’t guide it at all, and he drew a beautiful snow man, but with very faint lines.

I wondered how much of it was my doing and how much he did. But then I realised that when we drew the little round buttons he drew some of them clockwise and some anti-clockwise, which I would never have done if it was my hand doing the drawing, so it must have been mostly him.

Many of his drawings represent slides (of the playground kind), or roller coasters, according to his own descriptions. He often cuts them out. When he cuts, he likes to crop tightly: he is more bothered by excess paper that’s left around his drawing than by the occasional clipped edge.

So he cannot write any letters by hand, but sometimes he types on my computer, with me spelling out the words for him. At this age Ingrid liked to just make lots of letters on the screen. Adrian wants to write words.

When he types numbers, he wants them to be in the right order, and just one of each: if he by accident gets two of the number 4, he makes sure to erase one.

6 and 9 are tricky to tell apart.

He is learning the mapping of number words between Swedish and Estonian. Kas kolm on tre? he asks me. Due to the wonderful world of YouTube, he is actually learning number words in English, too, all the way up to seven. But while he can actually understand the meaning of number words in Swedish, and the first few in Estonian too, in English I think it’s just a pretty sequence of sounds for him.

A crispbread sandwich with tomato soup

He is just about understood the concept of days of week. We’ve talked about how it is Monday in the morning and Monday at lunchtime and Monday in the afternoon and Monday at night too. And it’s Monday at school and Monday at nursery. And then comes Tuesday. And then other days, and then Monday again. And I think he knows that certain activities always come on certain days of the week.

This is mostly due to Ingrid’s influence. If it wasn’t for Ingrid, most of our weekdays would look very similar. But now we have to pick up Ingrid at the other school on Tuesdays because of her Estonian lesson; riding lessons on Thursdays; swimming on Fridays; scout meetings on Sundays.

Adrian comes along to both Ingrid’s riding and swimming lessons. Sometimes I feel sorry for him: he has to trail Ingrid and gets no activity that is really his own. But he doesn’t mind. Especially with the swimming, when given a choice he always wants to come along rather than stay at home with the other parent.

He hasn’t been that happy about the riding lessons, because he’s been afraid of animals for a long time. The first couple of times he hung on hard to me and I could hardly put him down in the stable. But he’s now getting used to it. He no longer holds on to my leg all the time. (There’s also a pillar in the middle of the stable that was a sort of a safe place where he was at a safe distance from all the horses and not at risk of being stepped on.) He doesn’t quite wander off (which is good) but last time I actually had to look for him because he’d gone around a corner to look at some thing, which was definitely a first. And he’s started talking about riding a pony himself. The smallest one, about as tall as he is, and only if it doesn’t walk, just stands still.

Inspired by Ingrid, Adrian also wants pocket money. He’s not getting any, though.

Random facts:

• Adrian can turn his tongue to the side.
• He had a haircut. Not his first, I think, but the first in a very long time. There are recurring problems with lice at the nursery, and his hair was hard to comb through, so we chopped much of it off. He looks more boyish way, so when he wears a dress (which he does quite regularly) the contrast is now even stronger.
• Favourite books: Liten skär, especially the one about letters. Ahmed Anka och Ödlan Örjan.
• Favourite foods: few, as ever. Fruit, porridge, cereal, bread, potatoes, pasta, meatballs, fish fingers, a few select vegetables. But now he also eats tomato soup, and the last one I made had lentils in it and he ate it without blinking. And the other day he drank some of my fruit smoothie, on his own initiative. But then at dinner he refused to eat a piece of potato that had some infinitesimal orange spots on it because it had been in contact with a piece of sweet potato.

Adrian is angry, just like last month. “Nu är jag arg på dig!” (“Now I am angry with you!”) and “Jag är inte söt, bara arg!” (“I am not sweet, I am angry!”)

But regardless of his protestations, he is sweet more than he is angry. And when he is angry, he manages it pretty well. He stalks away from us, maybe growls or roars at us. But he never hits or throws things, and he never bears a grudge.

The closest he gets to being violent is pointing a stick at something, one of all those sticks he picks up. “Nu pjåmmar jag dig!” he says, and looks fierce. I think “pjåmma” is supposed to be onomatopoeic, sort of like “to boom” maybe?

He notices immediately when I get angry, even when I haven’t said anything yet, and asks me why.

The stream of why’s is even more intense than last month. “Why did you make pancakes for dinner? Why did we buy milk? Why are you sitting here? Why is it Tuesday?”

He pays attention to the world around him and comments on interesting things. Things that move on their own: weighted doors that close themselves, or flapping louvres on a ventilation opening. New things in old places: Christmas decorations in Spånga. Familiar things in new places: Barbapapa and Bamse branded children’s products at the pharmacy.

He is very, very interested in letters and numbers now.

He points out house numbers and asks me what number it is when one and eight are next to each other, for example. He knows that our own house has two and two. (Flashback)

Just like Ingrid at this age, he cannot translate number words between Estonian and Swedish.

We had several advent calendars in December. Both he and Ingrid loved them a lot. So Ingrid made a calendar of her own, with tear-off flaps, to take us from Christmas to New Year’s Eve. And then, just because, another calendar for Adrian from one random day to another, with a different-coloured flower under each flap. And then a calendar for me, too, because she was bored and had nothing better to do. (I asked mine to end on January 31st, which is the day when the sun will finally be up by the time the kids leave for school and nursery.) So Adrian gets lots of practice with the idea of matching (one flap for every day) and numbers (because each flap has the day’s date on it).

He also likes reading out letters from all sorts of signs we pass. He knows to read them left to right, starting at the beginning and not skipping any. He knows them all but mixes up B and D sometimes.

He can pick out the first letter of a word. He likes the alphabet song, and he has really enjoyed our alphabet puzzle, with a picture for every letter.

Adrian talks a lot about his friends that he wants to play with. But our weekends and afternoons are already so busy that I don’t know how to fit in any play dates for him… When he found Eric’s labelmaker one day, the words he wanted to type were his friends’ names.

He talks most about Sigrid. Sigrid was here for his birthday and they have had two play dates. Now he is already telling me about how he will go to Sigrid’s party (“but an adult must come with me”) and wrapping presents for her. Too bad the birthday party isn’t until May.

Miscellaneous items:

He can play dominoes.

He is still hovering on the edge of needing/not needing naps. He really wants to nap, but then has difficulty falling asleep in the evening.

He is still totally and absolutely refusing to go on the potty.

Favourite clothes: dresses. Ingrid got new dresses, so Adrian wanted some, too. We sat down together and looked at what was available on Tradera, and he chose the ones he liked best. All three were pink, and two had Peppa Pig on them. I’m pleased to say that nobody at the nursery has batted an eyelid.

Also, clothes with monsters on them. He got some monster-themed t-shirts and socks for Christmas, and is really frustrated that there are no monster trousers to be had anywhere.

One day they did face painting at nursery. He came home in his Peppa Pig dress, with a skull and crossbones drawn on his cheek. A pink little pirate.

Favourite snacks: toasted pine nuts. Chocolate coated orange peel. He also quite likes carrots now.

Favourite YouTube clips: that Australian guy opening Kinder eggs, still. Those Scurvy Rascals. Peppa Pig.

Favourite books: any. Every time he wants us to read, he picks a different book.

Lots of stuff going on in Adrian’s head, as usual.

He’s in a phase of potty talk right now. Lots of talking and joking about pee and poo and farting. Du är en bajskorv! “You’re a poop turd!” Bajspappa! Bajsgröt! Kiss-soppa! Bara de som är bajskorvar får komma på mitt kalas! – “Only those who are poop turds can come to my party!” All that with lots of giggling and squealing with laughter.

He’s already thinking of his next birthday party and whom he will invite. This year’s party must have made a deep impression. Since the birthday party he’s also been talking about going home to a friend to play with them, or inviting them here. We’ve had two play dates already and he’s often asking for more. Hopefully we’ll have time for some play dates during the holidays.

Speaking of poop humour, he is also quite interested in who has a willy and who doesn’t. At first he was surprised that I didn’t have one, but now he understands that boys and daddies have willies while girls and mums don’t. But mums have boobs, and girls grow up to be mums and then they get boobs.

It’s interesting to hear him talk about categories of people: boys/girls, moms/dads, children/adults. Babies, for example, are separate from children. At preschool he and his friends play “mommy daddy child and baby”. “Adults”, vuxnar, doesn’t include me: “adults” means “grown-ups except mommy and daddy and grandma”, i.e. “other people”. Also he doesn’t (didn’t?) see himself as a child, because “he is Adrian”. And Ingrid is not a child, Ingrid is a sister.

He’s been asking a lot of “why” recently. Sometimes it’s just a generic expression of frustration, sometimes simply a habit, but other times he seems to really want to know. “What do you think” is often a good response in the first two cases. But some questions are harder. “Why is it Christmas? Why is there a tree here? Why is it raining? Why am I called Adrian?”

He makes up stories about random stuff and then tells them to us as if they were the truth. He can tell a story about the day when we were in the forest picking strawberries and blueberries and raspberries, and there was also a horse, and also grandma was there, and then we went swimming. None of which has happened. But he tells it with such fervour, such engagement, that it becomes the truth for him.

Several times he’s told me that he will get a dog soon. “A little dog, a cute dog.” I think he imagines something roughly the size of a big rat, that would fit in his lap.

He knows most letters now and only occasionally asks about some rarer ones. For most of them he can come up with words as well. He especially likes to link letters to people: A is for Adrian of course, E is for Eric and Ebbe and Elin, I is for Ingrid, etc.

He has also learned some numbers. It’s confusing when numbers look so similar to letters! We only started talking about numbers when he pointed at a 4 and said it was an A, and a 1 was an I. I explained that those were numbers, and he seems to have grasped that. With all the Advent calendars the topic comes up quite regularly. Counting is hit and miss. Up to three or maybe four is no problem; then he gets impatient. “One, two, three, four, sixseveneightnine!”

He is often surprisingly reasonable and can be persuaded to do things that he initially doesn’t want to. Such as picking up after himself (together with me or Ingrid), or eating cooked food. With food and especially vegetables, his first reaction is always to refuse categorically, to push the bowl away, to shout NO. Coaxing and cajoling does not work, but simple quiet insistence often does. And when I make dessert contingent on at least taking one bite of the food I cooked, he does it, and actually seems to sort of like it (or at least not mind).

He is learning to butter his own sandwiches. When he eats a piece of bread he often wants to leave the crust and only eat the soft bits.

Things Adrian likes:

• Trains. Both real ones and toy ones. Playing that we are a train, me walking behind him, holding on to his shoulders, and we both go “choo choo choo” and then he goes “tooot!”
• Flashlights.
• Small things. His favourite things from the Advent calendar have been small doodads, about the size of half his fist: a little dinosaur, a smurf, a Littlest Pet Shop figure (“a petshops”). He likes to just hold them, carries them around with him, takes them to bed with him, pretends they’re other things. The other day the dinosaur was a camera.
• Joining in when we play board games. He doesn’t understand the game, and spends more half the time climbing around and doing other stuff. But he very much wants to be part of the game, to take his turn, to throw the dice and move his game piece. “Is it my turn now?”
• Tree branches and sticks. (Flashback…) These are especially fun while we’re out and about, in the buggy or on the bike. He waves them around and pokes at things with them and hits traffic sign posts so they go ding! and drags them in the dust. He refuses to throw them away and leaves them on the porch but then forgets about them and doesn’t notice or miss them when they disappear.
• Favourite movies: Despicable Me 2, the Disney Silly Symphony titled Funny little bunnies. Various renditions of The wheels on the bus on YouTube, and YouTube clips where some random Aussie guy opens Kinder Surprise eggs.

Things Adrian does not like:

• Rain. It hits his face and he hates the feeling. Wind and snow are almost as bad.
• Waking up in the morning. He has difficulty falling asleep in the evening and then he’s tired in the morning. I think we will try to do away with the daily naps soon.

Another month of mood swings and frustration. Adrian really wants to decide, decide everything, and finds it immensely frustrating that there are all these things that he cannot decide. He wants everybody to do things his way.

“No, don’t hold the fork like that! No you can’t sit here, you have to sit there! I want to have that! No, emme must blow on the porridge!”

I am heartily tired of being yelled at. And when I get angry because of this, he’s all tears – and while he may then grudgingly let me hold the fork my way, he still doesn’t understand that I want to decide over my own doings.

Sometimes he gets so angry that he doesn’t even want to be with us. He goes and hides behind a door and sulks.

Sometimes he just moans vaaarfööör (“whyyyyy”) like a frustrated teenager.

He’s so verbal and can express himself so well in most situations that it’s easy for me to think of him as older than he is. But then he does something that reminds me how little he understands about the world, even the simple physical aspects of it.

Things he does not understand or know yet:
That you cannot roll up a napkin around a fork if the fork is at a right angle to the edge you’re rolling from.
How to make an A from three sticks. (He could make an H, or a very very flat “roof” so the middle bar didn’t reach from side to side, but couldn’t adjust either of those to a real A.)
That the water will fall out if you hold a bottle sideways, or shake it without a lid.

He likes certain things to be done the same way every day. Every day as we leave the nursery, he wants to walk on the same two benches the same way. Then we always go to Konsum for groceries. There he always sits in the trolley and eats a fruit. For a long time that was always a banana, but recently he’s been having an apple instead.

He gets carsick more easily than he used to, I think. He cannot say that he’s carsick but when he starts sounding really miserable and says that he wants to sleep, or wants his dummy, or to go home, then we know that he’s about to get sick.

He likes mirrors, and very easily gets stuck in front of one, so occupied with what he sees that he cannot move on. Eric’s sunglasses are very fascinating that way: he gets very close, with his nose almost touching the sunglasses, and looks at his reflection. When he is upset and then sees himself in the mirror, he gets in a feedback loop of upsetness: the harder he sees himself cry, the worse it gets.

Favourite movie: Despicable me. Adrian loves the minions! Papoy! and Bee doo bee doo…

The movie is called Dumma mig in Swedish, i.e. roughly “Stupid me”. Since this summer, when Ingrid first started speaking about “Stupid me”, Adrian has insisted on calling this movie “Stupid Ingrid”, or possibly “Stupid you” – not as a joke but because he simply and naturally converted Ingrid’s “me” to his “you”. Only very recently did he understand that “Stupid me” is actually the name of the movie, regardless of who is talking.

Favourite books: Alfons Åberg. Also he’s asked me to read several mildly scary books: some with ghosts, and also Underbara familjen Kanin. Halfway through he gets scared and hides his eyes and gets really really close to me, but he still wants to hear the rest.

Favourite clothes: a new dress, green, with pockets. Woollen mittens.

If he could choose, he’d probably wear more purple, more glitter, and more dresses. Unfortunately we don’t have many purple clothes in his size.

Favourite food: porridge. He eats a large portion every morning, with jam or chopped apples, banana, kiwi, etc.

A turbulent month full of stormy feelings. Adrian is angry, upset, distressed, frustrated… Not all the time, not at all, but frequently enough for these feelings to dominate my impressions of this past month.

Life just doesn’t seem to be the way he wants it to be. The world does not cooperate. Nobody does things the way he wants them to be, because nobody can read his mind.

I set the table for breakfast and bring a saucepan with porridge to him. “No! Not here! On the stove! I want to get it myself!” he cries. He doesn’t even try talking to me – he goes straight to yelling or angry crying. As if this was the umpteenth frustrating experience that makes his cup run over – and the poor boy only awoke half an hour ago. He is so frustrated and he doesn’t really know how to cope with it.

And there is an awful lot of things that can go wrong in just a day, an awful lot of setbacks to cope with. Sometimes he is upset that I offer to help him; other times he is upset that I don’t. Sometimes he is angry that I talk to him. Sometimes he cries because we only have the wrong mittens at nursery and the right ones are at home. Sometimes he cries because we have mittens at all. At times I feel like I’m walking in a minefield: whatever I choose, whatever I do or say (or don’t do, or don’t say) might set off an explosion. There is no safe path.

Not being first is generally a very frustrating experience. Other people going out through the door before him is bad. Other people going up the stairs before him is bad. Other people serving food before him, opening the fridge before him, getting an apple before him – bad.

Sharing is difficult. Not just sharing toys but in general accepting other people’s right to do things, decide, hold and use objects. Sharing the world with other people. Not being allowed to grab the Bamse that Ingrid just took. The fact that I want to sit on the chair next to his.

At nursery when his will collides with the other kids’, he doesn’t really understand what’s happening. Say some kid makes a sand cake, and Adrian stomps on it – because he likes stomping on sand cakes, not because he wants to destroy it. The other kid gets upset, and the teacher tells him so. Adrian understands that people are not happy with him but does not quite understand why, or what to do about it, so he cries. He wants to get along, and he really does his best, but especially with other kids it’s not so easy.

Well, luckily there are also happier moments.

When Adrian is in a happy mood, he is sweet and talkative and funny. He speaks very well now, with long sentences. He is working on figuring out irregular verbs: this evening he tried to say “I haven’t drunk anything” and tried Jag har inte drack… Jag har inte drickit… and then gave up and just said Jag ska dricka.

He makes jokes. He pretends to be things (a rabbit, or a horse, or a tiger). He pretends his food is things (boats, shoes, trains). He pretends that he is a baby and walks around saying “dadda gaggu gaggu” etc.

He talks about days of the week quite a lot, and asks me almost every day what day it is. Also he is still working on the concepts of “yesterday” and “today” and “tomorrow”.

He is interested in letters – or perhaps names? He points out the other kids’ boxes in the hallway at nursery, and is especially interested in the ones that begin with the same letter. Duru’s name begins with Darin’s letter. Elin, Erik och Elias all have E. Not all words that begin with A say “Adrian”. Etc.

He can count up to 5 things, I think. He doesn’t do it very often.

He likes playing with whatever Ingrid plays with, or the other kids at nursery. He likes our train track, and Lego. He has adopted Ingrid’s soft Sipsik doll, tells me that Sipsik is his baby, and likes to carry Sipsik with him from room to room.

He likes sticks. Preferably about as long as his leg, and the thickness of a finger.

We stopped (or rather, I stopped) nursing completely. It took him a long while to accept this, and sometimes he still tells me he would like to nurse. But I felt done.

This didn’t lead to him sleeping any better. He kept waking at around 5, pretty much every night, and then tossing and turning and half-sleeping for an hour or so before sinking back into deeper sleep. And while he was “seeking” that sleep, he kept kicking me, pushing me with his feet or legs, head-butting me, lying on top of me…

So I moved out of our bedroom. Adrian and Eric now have the big 3-bed combo to themselves, and I sleep on a mattress in Ingrid’s room. For the first few nights it looked like this made no difference, but after a while he actually started sleeping through the night, more or less. Maybe waking a bit in the early hours of the morning, cuddling up closer to Eric, and then just going straight back to sleep.

He has been quite tired recently and going to bed early, some evenings as early as 19:00. Usually he’s pretty good at realising that he is tired and saying so.

He has also been hungry. He eats a large portion of porridge at breakfast. I don’t know what he does at nursery, but the first thing we do after nursery is go to the supermarket, where he gets a banana. (He likes eating it while he’s sitting inside the trolley, with all the food piled up around him.) Then we get home and he wants to eat straight away, lots. I’ve now started cutting his snack short and making dinner earlier again (aiming at 18:00), otherwise he can snack on bananas and bread and yogurt for an hour, and then have no appetite for dinner.

Favourite food: fish fingers. And dark chocolate. But he now tries the veggies I serve to him, almost without argument, and sometimes actually eats some (broccoli, sugar snap peas, raw carrots, raw bell peppers).

Favourite clothes: pyjamas. Sometimes he spends all day in pyjamas, and occasionally I think he’s gone to nursery in pyjamas. We bought three new one-piece pyjamas for him because he keeps sticking his hands inside his nappy at night, which leads to leakage. The pyjamas block that very effectively. But it was hard to find any one-piece pyjamas in his size – only one shop had anything larger than size 92.

He does not like wearing socks, and his favourite footwear is a pair of rubber boots lined with wool. He says his shoes are “hard”. He likes woollen mittens, too.

Favourite song: Kalle Theodor.