Adrian is now three years old. He is so big and so small at the same time.

It’s been a lively, changeable month. On some days Adrian is happy and active. On other days, mostly tired. On yet others he is angry and frustrated, yells and cries.

The anger and frustration mostly come out when he is tired. The trigger is often Ingrid getting something before him, or something better than him. I buy two new toothbrushes – and he wants the one that Ingrid got. Dinner is ready – and he is so angry that Ingrid got to the potatoes first.

The Estonian playgroup’s autumn season began this month. Adrian and Ingrid both came. It struck me how active he is and how intensely he participates compared to absolutely all the other kids. Most sit passively; some become restless and wander around or start fighting to get away. But only Adrian has always been fully present – and Ingrid was the same when she was there with me. (Now she’s in another group with older kids, without parents, so I don’t really know what she does.) He points out the pictures of the songs he knows; shouts out the name of the animal we’re about to sing about; cheers when we’re about to sing a riding song. Infectious joy!

Often the teachers at the nursery also tells me how much he loves taking part of all the activities. So much so that he gets stressed because he cannot be everywhere and do everything that the others are doing. By the time it’s time to go home, he is often quite tired.

At home he likes playing with the iPad. For several weeks he played Pettson’s Inventions all the time. I thought that the game would be way too hard for him, but he persevered. At first it was only guesswork and he asked for help a lot, but after a while he figured out some of the “rules” and managed to put the inventions together on his own.

He likes board games but doesn’t understand how to play them. When Ingrid and I play, he likes to join us and move the pieces around, or just play with them. Luckily most games have enough pieces that he can play with some of the pieces while we can play the game our way. Otherwise we take one game and he gets another, right next to us. Sometimes he does it on his own as well: takes a board game, spreads out all the parts, and then plays with them.

We’ve also been doing some jigsaw puzzles together, after a long time of no interest in puzzles. But already it looks like he’s lost interest.

Adrian has noticed that Ingrid brings home crafts projects from school and has now started doing the same. He has made two “surprises” out of small pieces of cardboard and colourful tissue paper, glued or taped together. He says Ingrid should “put them on her arm and then put water on them and then count”, as with fake tattoos.

We don’t have much time for art or crafts at home (which I think is really unfortunate but that’s another topic). He might do it if I suggested it, but left to his own devices it’s not something he asks for. But in the few drawings he has done, he’s moved on from susapusa (tangles) to individual roughly circle-shaped things, usually quite large.

He likes listening to music. For quite a while he mostly chose Sõit-sõit-sõit külla, a CD with Estonian folk musicians singing with and for their kids. Now it’s mostly Barnkammarboken CDs. He listens more to the lyrics than he used to, and joins in. He likes listening with Eric’s large headphones.

The songs he loves best are all by Astrid Lindgren. Which is quite fascinating: they are from different CDs and different movies, and I don’t think he knows that they “belong” together, but still there is something in them that speaks to him.

Those are also the songs he asks for when I sing for him at bedtime. Här kommer Pippi Långstrump, Pippis sommarvisa, Idas sommarvisa (aka den andra sommarvisan, “the other summer song”), Mors lilla lathund, Kalle Teodor… The iPad comes in handy: I can look up the lyrics in the dark bedroom. The lyrics for some of those songs are not easy to remember.

We also read a bedtime story every night. His current favourite bedtime books are Disney Princess: Pretty Please and Pippi Kurrunurruvuti saarel.

He’s been going to bed much earlier than he did a few months ago. Usually we brush his teeth and put on pyjamas at 8:15 and after that it’s bedtime, but sometimes he asks to go to bed even earlier.

Most mornings he still half-wakes around 5:15 or 5:30 and then has trouble falling asleep again. Sometimes it takes an hour before he is fully asleep again, rather than tossing and turning and whimpering. I actually think get fewer hours of good sleep now than when we nursed at night. (We now nurse a teeny-tiny bit at bedtime, and that’s it.)

Breakfast normally consists of porridge. Lots of it. On weekends he often asks for French toast instead, or sometimes ordinary toast. Sometimes he eats cereal as well (corn flakes and oat squares).

At lunch and dinner I have started insisting that he try some vegetables. He does not like the idea but almost always takes at least a little bite nevertheless. Very rarely he asks for another piece. I think he has only done that with raw carrots and bell peppers, and once with chickpeas.

He likes topping off his dinner with a piece of dark chocolate.

He uses the word “yesterday” to refer to any time in the past.

He mixes up ljud and ljus, “sound” and “light” in Swedish. In the dark bedroom he asks for more sound; when the iPad is too quiet he says he wants more light.

Favourite movie: Disney’s Funny Little Bunnies (a Silly Symphony from 1934).

At the three-year checkup today he was officially recorded at 15.2 kg and 94 cm. The nurse also evaluated his speech, his ability to understand and follow spoken instructions, and to draw scribbles. Then she mentioned child-proofing and I steered the conversation in another direction, keeping quiet about letting Adrian cut with a sharp knife.

This month’s big news: Adrian speaks Estonian! Half of this past month we spent in Estonia, and it made a huge difference for him.

For the first few days he only spoke to us, in Swedish, and effectively didn’t open his mouth in the company of strangers. Slowly he began to find his words, and then gradually he became more and more comfortable with speaking Estonian. By the end of our two-week stay he had no trouble at all, playing with the other kids in Estonian without me participating at all.

Much of that remained after we got home. He speaks more Estonian than he has ever done. Often he reminds me, cheerfully: Räägin sinuga eesti keelt! – “I’m speaking Estonian with you!” In fact he speaks more Estonian than Ingrid does, and more freely. He doesn’t yet worry about not getting it completely right, unlike Ingrid.

Somehow I was expecting him to begin at zero, as if he was a baby learning Estonian from scratch, speaking in simple sentences of a few words. But of course it was nothing like that – his Estonian is at the same level of maturity as his Swedish. It was all in there and he just needed to let it out.

His Estonian vocabulary is a bit more limited than Swedish, and he struggles with some of the idiosyncrasies of Estonian grammar. But he uses words and grammatical forms that I had no idea he knew. He translated “favorit” (Swedish) to “lemmik” (Estonian) without batting an eye; he is familiar with both the -ma and -da infinitive forms, etc.

During our stay in Estonia Adrian also learned something completely different: to love playing in water. He’s been to the beach with us, and to the paddling pool at our local playground, but always been cautious, always at a distance from the water, never really enjoying the splashing much.

Now he was in there, running around, sitting in the water, digging holes in the sand and mud, carrying water in buckets and pouring it around – you name it. And happy about it!

In other news, Adrian has tried eating new things. Vegetables, even! He has eaten bell peppers, when Ingrid offers them to him, and carrots, too (both raw) and once some string beans. Progress.

I have also started to insist that he tastes the cooked food that the rest of us eat, at least one proper bite. To my surprise he has accepted this and not protested much at all. Afterwards he politely says Det var jättegott, “it was really good”, but he almost never asks for a second piece. The string beans were an exception.

Meanwhile I have cut down a lot on breastfeeding. Once just after he wakes, and once before he falls asleep – and once at 5:30 or 6:00 so we can all sleep another hour or two. He doesn’t like this and tells me almost every day that he would really like to nurse more, but usually he is not too upset about it either.

He has rediscovered the iPad, after losing interest in it for a while. He explores new apps, games that Ingrid played years ago, pokes around, investigates. But unlike Ingrid he doesn’t get absorbed for hours, neither in iPad games nor in movies. After a short while he usually wanders off and does something else instead, preferably in the company of other people.

He has lost some of his interest in Pippi and Bamse and doesn’t always go straight for the Pippi shirt when choosing clothes in the morning.

He likes shopping. The best thing each afternoon is our trip to the supermarket and the veggie stand at Spånga torg.

He hates it when somebody gets ahead of him, outruns him, goes up or down the stairs ahead of him. He absolutely needs to be first.

Du får inte prata med mig!, “you mustn’t talk to me!” is still his usual way of telling us that he is angry with us.

Life continues in its usual tracks. Even the bits that I want to change are hard to change. Adrian resists change.

A month ago, in fact already before my thirty-three-month post, I decided to wean him off nursing at night. He was by that time half-waking once at about 5:30 every morning for a quick nurse, after which he would easily fall back asleep. Now he still wakes at about the same time, cries, yells at me, kicks, pulls at my t-shirt, and communicates in all other possible ways that he really does NOT agree with this new policy. It is obvious that he does not wake because he is done sleeping: he is tired and bleary-eyed, and does actually fall asleep again after 10 or 15 minutes or so. And when he next wakes, about an hour and a half later, he is in a completely different mood. But his sleep is restless for about an hour so I actually get less quality sleep than before.

I thought he would get used to this new deal after a while, and maybe he will. Since it’s already been over a month, I’m beginning to suspect that it might not happen until we stop nursing completely. Which he is also very unwilling to do. But I have now had enough (believe it or not) so I am saying no to him more often than I used to.

Sometimes he nurses for comfort, but often plain cuddles and hugs work as well. Sometimes he tells me that he doesn’t want a hug, he just wants to cry, or to be angry.

Many times he asks to nurse just because he can. He has nothing important to do, I am sitting down and – to his eyes – looking like I’m just waiting for him to nurse. So he asks to nurse – sort of like some adults drink coffee I guess. In those situation the solution is to find something for me to do, something that is incompatible with me sitting down. We go and empty the dishwasher, prepare lunch, go grocery shopping etc.

Adrian doesn’t join me in my chores as often as he used to, except when it comes to grocery shopping, which he is always up for. He likes shopping, and he likes outings. One game that he has played several times (while I was watering in the garden I think) is that he pretended to be out driving. He had some random toy that marked the store, and then he drove there. First he drove to Erikshjälpen, which is a large charity shop in Spånga. Then he drove to Bauhaus, he said, which is a DIY/construction materials store.

Another area where I am not making much progress is potty training. I ask him to sit on the potty; he usually refuses, or sits for 20 seconds and then runs off. And then he pees in his nappy two minutes later.

He pretty much only speaks Swedish, although he has no trouble understanding my Estonian. There are some words that he insists in saying in Estonian even when the rest of the sentence is in Swedish. sülle (“[to be] in your lap”) and magustoit (“dessert”) he almost always says in Estonian.

The most memorable ones are the ones that also exist in Swedish but mean something completely different. Torka in Estonian means “to spear”, such as to spear something on your fork. That is how Adrian uses it, except he uses it in a Swedish context and in Swedish torka means “to dry”. Jag ska torka den med gaffeln, “I will dry it with my fork”. Likewise sega in Estonian means “to stir, to mix” whereas in Swedish seg means “rubbery, tough”. Emme kan du sega min gröt – “can you rubbery my porridge”.

A language construct that he likes and often uses mostly correctly is när/då, “when/then”. “When it rains, we get wet.” Sometimes he broadens its meaning to just “things that belong together”, and sometimes he reverses the connection: “when we go to the kitchen, we eat”.

Favourite new activities: He likes balancing on things, and jumping down from them.

Adrian is very much in a deciding mood right now. It is important for him to decide about all kinds of things. Primarily he decides about his own life, of course, the small things that a child can decide. But he also wants to decide what other people should do, and how. Things should be done just so and not any other way!

I used my fingers to hold a potato I was cutting up for him, instead of holding it with a fork, and this was so totally wrong that he was in tears. Du ska göra så, inte så! And the corn flakes need to be poured in his bowl before the oat squares, not after. (Or was it the other way round? I’m not sure any more…) It is also important to him do do things on his own, nej inte du, bara jag! just like last month. So now I usually confirm with him before I do anything that I think might affect him.

This has led to him offering me choices about all sorts of things, too. It’s always either-or choices. “Do you like this stone or this one?” Vill du ha den eller den? Do I want a small piece of bread or a large one? Do I want a skirt or trousers?

Of course there are also the things that don’t really affect him, but that he cares strongly about nevertheless. I want to change out of my office clothes when I get home; Adrian doesn’t think I should. Adrian doesn’t think Ingrid should stand where she is standing. Adrian doesn’t think others should talk funny, only he is allowed to do that. Sometimes I humour him; sometimes I really want to make my own decisions. Lots of drama and tears.

When he wants to get me to do something, and the first attempt does not work, he tries different strategies. Sometimes he does it the Ingrid way and asks with exagerrated politeness: snälla kan du göra det. Sometimes he shouts orders: du SKA göra det! Sometimes he just yells: GÖR DET! Sometimes he simply screeches.

He likes talking funny and making funny noises. Also he likes talking like a baby. Jag är bäbis, he tells us. They play mum and dad and baby at nursery, and I guess he is usually the baby.

He seems to enjoy this kind of pretending, but mostly in company with other kids. Sometimes he is a baby. Other times he is a tiger that roars. Sometimes he is a pirate who says “hah-haa!” like Pippi Longstocking does in the movie. Then he asks me if it was too scary and if I say yes, he does it more quietly and gently the next time.

But these things should be done the right way. Only he talks funny; he doesn’t like us mimicking him. When he serves us toy food, we should pretend to eat it the right way, with the right pretend sounds. Not too realistically! “Only pretend” he admonishes when our mouth goes too near the toy corn cob.

He is interested in sizes. He talks about things being big or small, or medium (litemellan) or just right (lagom).

Adrian is also interested in names. Whenever he decides to talk to some stranger (such as the cashier at the supermarket, or some mom at the playground, or the man sitting next to us on the train) he asks for their name. Quite often they reply and then ask him the same. Usually he answers Adrian, but sometimes he also says he is lillebror, “little brother”.

He also asks me about others’ names: people we pass in the street, people in newspaper photos, in ads, and so on. And he often asks me about who lives in what house. Of course we pass a number of houses where we know the people: his friends, our neighbours, and so on. Some of them he knows perfectly well but he still likes to ask me. But he also asks me about strangers’ houses, and when I say I don’t know, he sometimes informs me that people live there, or a man, or a woman.

When someone asks him how old he is, he says he is two, and holds up two fingers. Now he has also sort of understood three: he knows that the older kids at nursery are now three years old, and he can hold up three fingers. Sometimes he can correctly say when there are three of something, such as potatoes on his plate, but sometimes he also says three when it’s really four.

On two occasions recently he has surprised me by trying new food. Once he ate sugar snap peas. And once he actually ate real cooked food with several ingredients: a tomato soup with macaroni and sweetcorn. Otherwise he still subsists on carbs (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, cereal), meatballs and fish fingers, fruit, and sweetcorn and peas.

Favourite activities:

• Face painting. Ingrid and Adrian have painted each other several times.
• Swinging.
• Blowing dandelions with Ingrid. But he doesn’t like getting any of the seeds on him or his stroller. He is OK with having sand all over himself, but not “stuff”.

Favourite things:

• His Lightning McQueen baseball cap.
• Ingrid’s hair clips with a picture of Tinkerbell.

So much is going on in Adrian’s life. His life is full, and he is full of life. So much energy, so much feeling! He is childhood embodied.

This month brought warm weather and Adrian has really enjoyed spring. We’ve been out on playgrounds, tried cycling, and even the inflatable pool has been in use. On playgrounds Adrian loves swings best and he can swing (or rather, have me push the swing) for half an hour before he tires.

It took a while for him to get used to spring weather and new clothes. He insisted on wearing his rubber boots with warm lining, and the “furry” jacket, and taking his mittens to nursery every day. Gradually he came to accept normal shoes and fleece jackets instead, but he’s still a bit suspicious of his Crocs shoes.

Even now he loves wearing a jersey hat, sometimes even indoors. He doesn’t like wind in his hair, he says, and when it gets windy he always puts on a hat. Also he never goes out without shoes, even though he loves being barefoot indoors.

Ingrid’s old tank tops were instant favourites. Not because they were tank tops but because he loved the pictures: a tiger on one, an elephant on the other. The novelty of no sleeves is so great that he points it out to people he meets – inga armar!

Adrian is usually happy to be around strangers but crowds make him uncomfortable. When we went to the Valborg bonfire, he was really bothered by the masses of people, and asked to go home. Det är jättemycket barn. Och mycket tädi och mycket onu. Jag vill inte vara här. (“There is very much kids. And much woman and much man. I don’t want to be here.”) The bonfire itself was scary, too.

He is also afraid of animals, especially if they are running loose and he thinks that they could come close. He doesn’t want to visit his best friend Hanna because they have cats. He pulls back when he sees a dog, and ideally wants to go to the other side of the street. I’ve been explaining to him how the dog is tied to a leash and cannot come closer. One day we saw a hare, and even though it was in a garden across the street Adrian closed his eyes and wouldn’t look.

Cuddly furry animals are scary, and he would never go pet one. But chickens, for example, are less scary than guinea pigs. And tortoises are not too scary at all, and a crocodile (a small one, and behind glass) was more interesting than scary, as we found out at this year’s Djurexpo.

Language-wise he has obviously decided that Swedish is his language. He understands Estonian perfectly well, and knows the names of many things in both languages. But when he speaks, he always chooses Swedish, and only uses an Estonian word when he cannot remember the Swedish one.

He is learning about similarity and groupings, and I often hear him use words like “same”, “similar”, “together”, “only”. He is also interested in amounts, especially jättemycket! and supermycket!. When we pour a drink for him he often asks for supermycket, which I think means that he wants a full glass, not half like I usually pour for him.

He has entered a “can do” phase. He wants to do things on his own without any help. When he drops a grape on the floor, instead of asking me to pick it up (as he used to) he now says Bara jag ska hämta!, “Only I will get it”, sometimes explicitly instructing me not to touch it. I am also not allowed to help him put on his sandals or hat, or to set the table for him, and sometimes even to open my nursing t-shirt for him.

I have made some attempts at getting him to use the potty but had no success. He knows what it’s for and he is perfectly aware that we all do our thing at the toilet. But he has no interest in trying it out himself. When I get him to sit on the potty he produces nothing, and then he gets up and less than a minute later makes a puddle on the floor.

He is aware of his own peeing and pooping, and often tells us afterwards that he needs a clean nappy, but it still seems to take him by surprise every time and he doesn’t seem to have any “premonition” in advance.

He still needs a nap during the day, almost always, but then often stays awake quite late, falling asleep around 9 together with Ingrid. It isn’t rare for Ingrid to fall asleep before him.

He still nurses about as much as he used to: when we wake, when we get home in the afternoon, frequently during the evening, at bedtime, and once or twice during the small hours.

Odds and ends:

• When he is happy, he often runs with his tongue out. So when he falls, the part that feels most discomfort is his tongue, which is then all covered with sand. He then tries to wipe it off with his hand which is also sandy, and doesn’t understand why it gets no better.
• Even when he is upset, angry or sad, he still says thank you. He can be fighting with Ingrid about a toy, crying with frustration, and when Ingrid gives it to him, he chokes out a “thank you” through his tears.
• He watched Rise of the Guardians with Ingrid and Eric and is now looking forward to Christmas. Idag är det jul! Nu kommer jultomten! – “Today is Christmas! Now Santa Claus will come” he says. My explanations about seasons, and having to wait for winter and snow, don’t really make sense to him. He still doesn’t quite understand “tomorrow” so the wait until winter is an unimaginable eternity.

Running

Fundamentally, Adrian is a happy and sweet child. He is co-operative, considerate and kind: he is usually happy to please others and do as he is asked, and he takes care to be nice to others.

When when we get home and I ask him to put his mittens and boots away, he happily complies. When he comes up with some sort of mischief – such as playing with flour or potato starch while I’m cooking, or throwing all my clothes on the floor, or dipping his hand in the drink in his glass – he asks first. And when I say no, he listens. The fact that I try to say yes as often as possible probably matters, too: he would be less inclined to cooperate if he always got a no.

But this month a new streak of anger and frustration has appeared. When he is denied something that he really wants, or when things don’t go his way, he gets very angry, and he is very aware of his anger.

Sometimes he simply tells us: Jag är jättearg!, “I am very angry!” Or he can tell me, Du får inte prata med mig!, “You mustn’t talk to me!” which really means “I don’t want to hear what you are saying”.

Other times he scolds the thing he blames for his woes. Dumma golvet! (“stupid floor”) when he hits his toe against the floor, dumma lappen! (“stupid cloth”) when he is angry about having his bottom wiped, dumma springa! (“stupid run”) when he runs and falls, and dumma mamma when I won’t let him eat raisins for dinner.

But he can also just shriek to express his anger – with controlled, calculated shrieks, not mindless rage.

One thing that he regularly gets angry about is ownership. He wants to own things, and he likes to tell me how this thing is his, and his only, and not Hanna’s, and how Darin cannot have it. (Hanna and Darin are two of his friends at nursery.) Unfortunately he doesn’t own very many things, and often wants to own things that aren’t really his. He doesn’t want Ingrid to take bread from the same bag as he does, nor to share the water bottle with her. He gets very upset if someone sits on his chair. But he also gets upset if I sit on what in his mind is Eric’s chair.

At the same time he isn’t really very interested in the few things that he does own. The Pippi doll lies forgotten in a corner; the stuffed doll named Johan remains at nursery.

The one exception is clothes. He is fond of many of his clothes, especially the ones with pictures – the Pippi and Bamse t-shirts, the crocodile pyjamas and the one with Winnie the Pooh, the monster socks. But he also loves his jersey hat and his rubber boots.

Pyjamas are his favourite clothes, and he regularly wears pyjamas to nursery. I guess they are soft and comfortably loose. For several days his favourite was a shimmery pink skirt (that I made for Ingrid a long time ago). I called it his disco skirt because he liked to put on while dancing.

He has also tried out Ingrid’s nail polish – blue on the right hand, red on the left – and that was fun. He showed off his nails to everyone we met. But when Ingrid chose glittery black, and he of course had to have the same, he regretted it immediately: black is definitely not his favourite colour.

He thinks that things become his when he has used them for a while. He plays a bit with a ball, then leaves it to do something else, but gets angry if Ingrid then takes the ball. It’s like he’s anxious to own everything.

The same goes for activities. He doesn’t want to miss out on anything. This is especially noticeable when he is with other kids, either with Ingrid at home, or with the other children at nursery. As soon as someone does something that looks interesting, he needs to be there, but at the same time he doesn’t want to let go of what he was doing before. It’s a constant race for him to try and keep up with everything that the others are doing. He is so much more relaxed when it’s just him and me at home, without Ingrid.

Adrian loves being with Ingrid, but he doesn’t really play with the other kids yet. He understands pretending, but it’s a self-conscious thing for him, an act. “Look, I’m a ghost!” or “look, an elephant”, but it doesn’t turn into play. He still prefers adult company to that of other kids, and often seeks out an adult, both at home and at nursery. Mostly he then wants to read or to sing.

He hates having his hair brushed (det gör jätteont!) and having his dirty nappy changed. Brushing teeth is usually more or less OK, and wiping his nose too.

He enjoys chasing and being chased, especially when it is time to brush his teeth or change his nappy.

He plays with the first letters of words. It began with a friend at nursery calling him Adrian-Padrian. First he didn’t like that at all. Jag är inte Adrian-Padrian! But when we made it a game and called Ingrid Ingrid-Pingrid, and Ingrid joined in and said emme-pemme, he was on board. Now it’s Ingrid-Pingrid and Adrian-Padrian and pappa-lappa and emme-pemme and lappen-pappen and all kinds of things.

He has learned to count to two, and understands when things are two. He counts “one, two”, and holds up two fingers: “I have this many meatballs”. But with larger numbers it’s all wild random guesses.

One day, all of a sudden, Adrian fell in love with his soft stuffed doll. Eric made it for him during the schooling-in week last year, and it’s been at nursery since then. They use them occasionally for some sort of group activities I think. And then one day Adrian absolutely wanted to take it home with him, and to hold it all the way home, and to have it with him during dinner, and then in bed.

We gave it a name because I didn’t want to keep calling it “the doll”. I tried a few names and asked if Adrian liked any of them. “The doll” is now called Johan.

Johan was the drop that started a flood. Now Adrian wants to take stuff with him whenever we go out: bags, toy cars, Johan, his favourite jersey hat, an extra pair of mittens, books… At dinner time Johan (or the car) gets to sit on the windowsill. One evening he took three little Chubbies cars with him to bed, and then tried to hold and hug all three while falling asleep.

Taking things with him when going out is OK, but he also wanted to take things home from nursery, and we had a number of tear-filled disagreements about.

Every afternoon, after nursery but before we pick up Ingrid from school, we go grocery shopping. Adrian wants to hold the most important grocieries in his arms both in the supermarket and afterwards on the way home. And just like with the cars, he has difficulty understanding and/or accepting that he only has two hands. He holds a banana, a pair of mittens and a book in his hands, and hugs a large bag of corn snacks, and then asks for the juice bottle as well.

Adrian’s started to pretend and make believe. A piece of fabric becomes a scarf for the hobby horse. An empty bowl in the kitchen sink is cake dough; a pink drinking straw becomes a flamingo. Food, especially, is good fantasy material: the row of apple chunks is a snake; the half-eaten biscuit is a camel, or a dog, or a train.

Watching Daddy finger on YouTube with Daddy

Colours, which he was so interested in last month, have now clicked in place. He still talks a lot about them, but now he actually gets many of them right: red, green, blue, yellow, purple, orange, sometimes white and black.

He often asks, Vad heter den färg?, and he mentions the colours of things he cares about. And he seems to find it fascinated that several things have the same colour. Den vagnen heter röd. Den skorna också röd! Väskan också röd! (“This stroller is called red. This shoes also red! The bag also red!”)

He has started using compound sentences, with a main clause and a subordinate clause. For example using men inte, “but not”, as in “Mommies have boobs but not daddies”.

Miscellaneous items:

• He has learned to jump with both feet.
• Favourite Melodifestivalen song: En riktig jävla schlager.
• Favourite item in the supermarket: Paulun’s raspberry and pomegranate juice. (“Buy raspberries! Green ones!”)

Insisting on the “big bowl”, “big spoon” and “big glass”

Adrian seems to have grown a lot this month – not in size but in age. Language development is part of it. But he also had his first real haircut (if a 2-minute haircut done at home can be called “real”) and suddenly he looks much older.

But returning to language, he seems to talk a lot more, and about more varied things. He talks about us vs. others, and about ownership: not just “mine!” but also about what is ours and what is not. He talks about who is small and who is big. He talks about what he is doing (jag hoppar! or even jag är här!).

He still pretty much ignores grammar: skips the small helper words like prepositions, and often also the less weighty verbs such as “have” and “be” and “do”. He knows about future tense but not about past: he can say jag ska titta på film (“I will watch a movie”) correctly, but jag tittar på film (“I am watching a movie”) can equally well mean “I watched a movie this morning”.

He loves letters and loves to point them out in all sorts of settings. A (Adrian), I (Ingrid), P (Pappa), M (Mamma), O (oo vad det låter bra), Ö (Örjan), N (näsa), E (Eric or elefant), sometimes also D (Darin), H (Hanna), and others that he knows less well.

He talks about colours a lot, too, usually getting them completely wrong: points at something and says “green”. Often green is his first guess regardless of what the actual colour is, but he also suggests blue and yellow and red. He knows the names of a bunch colours but I don’t think he ever uses any of them correctly.

Numbers and counting are also fun. He knows the numbers come in a given order, but not that you need to start at one. Given two meatballs he can count them “one, two” but equally well “seven, eight” or “four, five”. But I think he’s very close to getting it.

He is practising getting dressed and especially undressed. He can get pretty much all of his clothes off, except for the boots & snowsuit, because of the straps on the snowsuit that go under the sole of the boot. Putting them on is harder and often he doesn’t even want to try – Jag kan inte! Emme ska göra. – but he is very cooperative when I do it for him. He doesn’t object to clothes, generally, and is not at all as warm-blooded as Ingrid. He likes wearing a fleece top and sheepskin slippers at home, like us adults but quite unlike Ingrid.

In fact there is a lot of jag kan inte (“I cannot”) and also jag orkar inte (roughly “I’m not strong enough”) about all sorts of things.

He is curious about our doings and wants to watch as soon as we do something new. Vad du, pappa? But when Ingrid is around, he generally prefers to play with her. Right now the favourite game is playing doctor, when he gets to “coperate” Ingrid. (In Swedish koperera, and it is just as funnily almost-correct as in English.) Whatever Ingrid does, Adrian will do as well, no matter how little he understands of what’s going on – “just happy to be on the show.” He browses Bamse magazines because she does, and stays up until 8:30 because she does. He is much calmer and quieter when she is not at home – trying to keep up with her winds him up but also takes a lot of energy.

When he has a goal, he always runs and never walks. He only walks when he doesn’t quite know what to do next. Jag ska hämta bok! Jag springer!

He is quite sensitive to certain kinds of sensory input, such as loud rumbling noises (tractors, motorbikes) but also the sensation of wind on his face, or snow or raindrops. He doesn’t even like to bathe with me any more, because of the risk of me splashing.

He is scared of all sorts of animals, almost to the point of panic. When a cat enters the room, he not only climbs onto my knees but tries to get even higher up, onto my shoulders, and closes his eyes and hides his face. The other day we saw a hare in a garden we passed, and he didn’t dare to look out until two blocks later.

Likes:

• Music. This is nothing new but it is something that I am reminded of almost daily.
• Toothpaste.
• Breaking eggs (for pancakes etc). He used to do it with great gusto; now he often needs a bit of encouragement because jag kan inte!.
• Cutting with a sharp knife. Bananas and apple chunks are great for practising knife skills.
• Eating with his fingers, and especially cramming food into his mouth with his palm.
• The intro song from this year’s first Melodifestivalen show, a cover of Euphoria by Gina Dirawi. Except that he calls it Copacabanana, which is the (very different) MF song that first caught his attention.
• Gummibjörn
• Toting a little bag with him when we go out.
• Sitting inside the shopping trolley when we’re at a supermarket.
• The TV sections in Teletubbies, when they show actual kids doing stuff, but not the other parts with Teletubbies themselves. With Ingrid it was totally the opposite.

A happy month. The shouts of inte! are a thing of the past, and Adrian has generally been full of joy and positive energy. I’ve heard fewer min mamma! and he hasn’t been as clingy.

But he “compensated” for that by suddenly wanting to breastfeed all the time (it felt like). Especially when he is feeling insecure, he finds security in breastfeeding. But for several weeks he also used breastfeeding as a solution for pretty much every problem. Feel like cuddling? Have some boob. Hurt his knee? Ask for some boob. Upset because of some disagreement with Ingrid? Fix it with a boob. Disappointed? Bored? Tired? Boob!

He could literally ask to breastfeed at 15-minute intervals at times. And he had great difficulty accepting “no” or “later” as an answer, which hasn’t been a problem for us in the past. If I happened to be in the shower, or in the middle of some demanding step of dinner preparation, and asked him to wait, he screamed and tore at my clothes and tried to pull me down to the floor.

Just as this was getting to a point where it really couldn’t take it anymore, we turned a corner of some sort, and he calmed down again. Now we’re back to a normal state of affairs. I can tell him that I will just finish peeling those potatoes, or change out of my work clothes into something more comfortable, and he waits. Sen tissi, he tells me, in his Swedish-Estonian pidgin language.

One day he even made up a little song about breastfeeding. Tissi, tissi, tisse-tisse tissi, … Melody: “Midnatt råder” / “Haldjate jõuluöö”.

During the Christmas break Adrian took a big step forward in language development. The nursery staff all commented on how much he’d learned during just two weeks. Suddenly he went from mostly reusing phrases he’d learned from others, to freely constructing his own sentences as needed. He also simply speaks a lot more now. It makes a big difference to how I perceive him: it’s as if he’d aged several months in just a few weeks.

He talks the most when we’re on our way home from nursery, and every day the main topic is pretty much the same. He talks about who has been where, and who is going where. Nu köpa banan. Sen gå hem. Adrian gå hem. Ingrid gå hem. Alla gå hem. Lapsed gå hem. Adrian dagis. Ingrid på skolan. Pappa på jobbet. Emme på jobbet.

He often points out large vehicles (trucks, buses, tractors) but now he’s also started commenting on loud ones and saying that he doesn’t like them. Even just a snow plough can be too loud for comfort.

Once we’re home (and in fact as soon as we’ve picked up Ingrid from school) there are more important things to do than talk. Before dinner, he mostly plays with Ingrid. That doesn’t involve much talking beyond “me too!” and “let me” – it’s mostly squealing and giggling. I am amazed at how high my tolerance for loud, high squealing and screeching has become, as long as it’s happy squealing.

Sometimes their play is at a level that I as an adult cannot understand. They can, for example, have fun “falling” off the sledge on the way home, again and again. Or they just sort of tumble around and giggle and make silly noises. Other times Ingrid comes up with something and Adrian enthusiastically joins in: climbing into an empty laundry hamper; using a bath towel as a sleigh (Adrian sitting on it and Ingrid pulling it around); pulling blankets over their heads and pretending that they’re ghosts (and trying to scare me).

Their play is generally very simple, immediate and physical. Usually little or no equipment is involved, and it’s always simple things such as blankets or boxes, rather than toys. Toy food is the only exception, and when they play with that they always involve me: the kids both prepare food that they serve to me.

Ingrid has been trying to teach him hide-and-seek. He loves the seeking, and especially the finding – där var Ingrid!!!. – but needs a bit encouragement and prompting. Without that, he looks in the two closest places and then gives up. But he can keep going for a good while if I help him by suggesting places to look.

Ingrid hides in simple places such as under a table or behind a door, but even so, Adrian often needs help spotting her. He can stand right next to her but because Ingrid has never before hid in that place, he doesn’t understand that she can be there. Once he literally almost stumbled over her: not her feet but her entire body, curled up in a ball between two boxes on the floor. But he was instead looking in the distance (behind the drawer unit under my desk, where Ingrid had hid before) and did not notice her. Ingen Ingrid! he said, and turned to leave – and I had to point out to him that she was right in front of him.

The counting is also kind of fun but not for long, so I need to help him stay in one place long enough for Ingrid to hide. But he totally sucks at hiding. He does not understand the point, and as soon as Ingrid shouts “I’m coming!” he also comes out and starts looking for Ingrid, so the game is over very quickly.

Adrian adores Ingrid. Sometimes there is disagreement or competition, but he so loves being with her, doing what she does.

Left to his own devices, Adrian likes exploring the various board games we have (which mostly means spreading everything out on the floor). He also has a knob puzzle with a Pippi picture that he likes.

After dinner they’re both usually too tired to play more, so then it’s TV or iPad for both of them.

On the iPad he seems to have outgrown toddler apps like picture books. He now likes simple shape puzzles, knob-puzzle style. Lekplats is a favourite one, and Shape Builder. He also likes Beck and Bo, and Villa Villekulla of course.

Favourite songs: the Pippi theme song was first replaced by “Sjörövar-Fabbe”, and now I think “Mors lilla lathund” has taken over, with “Sommaren är min” as a close second. These three all originate from Pippi movies, too.

One day we were singing “Fader Abraham”, and he suddenly understood about left and right, which he found very exciting. Since then, putting on his clothes or boots instantly becomes much more fun if we guide him: “left foot… right foot…”.

On YouTube his favourites have been “Daddy finger” and the Örjan song from Fem myror och fyra elefanter. Both Ingrid and Adrian love that whole show and have been watching it a lot. Adrian calls it nonu tädi, meaning “man and woman”, or sometimes Magnus och Brasse.

Adrian is learning:

• Grammar. He has been trying out different plural forms (bamsor, elefantor, bokor) and has just in the last few days understood vi/meie (“we”).
• Letters. Last month he learned A; now he has added I for Ingrid, P for pappa and M for mamma/emme. The number four (4) is also an A for him. He likes typing them on my computer and pointing them out in all sorts of settings: magazines, signs, iPad apps etc.

We are cautiously experimenting with milk. It seems that I can add a bit of sour cream to my food occasionally, without any obvious ill effects. But it’s difficult to know. He has been quite gassy recently, which could be due to the sour cream, or maybe not. Who knows.

By far the most frequently used word in Adrian’s vocabulary right now is min, “mine”. Everything is “mine!” and there is a constant stream of min emme!, min tallrik!, min skor!, min vagn!. Sometimes we make a game of it – he goes min emme! and Ingrid says min emme! and he says min emme! once more and then I go min Adrian! and Ingrid says min pappa! and so on. Or maybe it turns into min fot! and min lampa! and mitt träd! until anything and everything is ours.

It is partly a game, partly a habit, but partly also a manifestation of his intense possessive jealousy right now. When he says min stol! he means it, and will not let Ingrid touch his chair. He tries to push away Ingrid’s hand when she holds on to the stroller while we walk home from school; he won’t let Ingrid use the same glass as he.

He is mostly jealous towards Ingrid, and probably all the kids at nursery. Not towards me, but I suspect that is because I fall in the category of “possessions” rather than “competitors”. He sometimes doesn’t want to allow Ingrid to sit next to me, because I am min mamma!

There also seems to be a streak of actual anxiety about separation and strangers. The proclamations of min mamma are most frequent when we are with people he doesn’t know well. When we go to pick up Ingrid at school, he doesn’t really want to walk in through the door, and when he does, he hugs my leg, hides his face, and says min mamma! to anybody who comes close or even looks in his direction. He does the same when some friendly stranger on the train starts talking to him, or a neighbour says hi to me. A few months ago he would have gladly said hi to them all and then shown off some bag or toy or something.

It’s not just me he wants to keep close. He gets anxious when the family is out walking together and one of us falls behind or gets too far ahead. When we’re all home and suddenly he cannot see Eric, Adrian asks where he is. The one day when I took him to nursery in the morning and we did NOT have Ingrid with us, he checked several times, var är Ingrid? and I kept telling him that Ingrid is at home. He is in a herd phase and, like a good sheep dog, he wants to keep the herd together. (I remember Ingrid doing the same at about the same age I believe, but with more tears. Maybe those are yet to come.)

Adrian likes:

• Helmets. A few weeks ago, just before the onset of real winter weather, we bought a new bike helmet for Ingrid, because she outgrew the old one. At first he wouldn’t let her have it but when we gave him her old helmet he wore it every day. Not while riding a bike, because he doesn’t have one, but while sitting in the stroller on the way to nursery. Luckily winter came and he no longer saw Ingrid wear her helmet and we could hide the helmets so he forgot about them.
• Routine. Things should be done the same way they always are. He likes taking the same route to nursery every day, and in the afternoon going to the supermarket and then to Ingrid’s school.
• Music and singing. It is often he and not Ingrid walking up to the CD player and asking for some music. He sings for himself when he sits in the stroller, or when he is playing with some toy. He always sings a recognizable melody and sometimes does several verses. Currently it’s mostly Christmas songs. And we actually don’t sing the Pippi song constantly any more.
• Everything Christmas-themed. He points out all the Santas and elves and Christmas trees and Christmas lights and advent displays and St. Lucy figures he sees.
• Monsters and growling. His favourite clothes is his tiger suit, and his favourite socks are the ones with small monsters on. He likes to pretend he’s a tiger and roar and growl and show us his claws. And then the tiger becomes a lion, här kommer lejonet, roar!, and then a giraffe, roar!, and then a zebra, roar! and then här kommer Sankta Lucia, roar!. Everything roars.
• Playing with toy food and our toy stove. Sometimes he cooks on his own, but he also likes cooking for me. He often serves me food that he himself wouldn’t eat for real, such as broccoli, soup, and cheese sandwiches.
• Playing with dress-up toys, where he can choose clothes and accessories for a magnetic doll figure for example. He often ends up creating wild combinations with two pairs of trousers on the doll, shoes on her hands and a flower pot on her head.
• Doing everything that Ingrid does. That ranges from “shallalooba” to drinking with a straw and reading Bamse.
• Feeding the birds and especially the squirrels. A few weeks ago we saw a squirrel visit our bird feeder and he was very excited by that. Since then when I go out to fill up the feeder, he comes with me to “feed the squirrel”.
• Gingerbread cookies and raisins, but not saffron buns. Those he just tears into small pieces, looking for any hidden raisins.

Adrian has learned:

• The letter A for Adrian.
• How to say that we do one thing after another. He simplifies “first X, then Y” to “then X, then Y” but has definitely grasped the concept.

He is learning:

• How the telephone works. He knows that Eric’s voice can come out of the phone and understands that it is indeed Eric speaking, and finds it quite fascinating.
• Dressing and undressing himself. He could pull zippers up and down last month already (except for the end bit) but now he also practises taking off his socks, top and trousers, and sometimes tries putting them on as well. With trousers he actually has some occasional halfway successes. He can put his hat on (but usually ends up with an ear flap in his face) and his boots as well.

Other small stuff:

• He calls small dogs “dog” and large dogs “wolf”. Large in this case is any dog whose back reaches to my knee or thereabouts.
• I notice him talking about things that have happened a lot more than he used to. He mentions things that have happened earlier and seems to be thinking more about such things, remembering more.
• He actually says thank you when given things.
• He is totally not a vegetarian. Several mornings he has chosen to eat fish fingers for breakfast. When he gets to choose lunch, he chooses meatballs or fish fingers.
• Often he eats more than Ingrid. Ingrid is distracted at mealtimes; he shovels in the food with both hands and barely pauses to breathe. For breakfast he can eat a whole portion of porridge made from half a cup of oatmeal.
• When there is an L or R sound before another consonant, he swaps them around. “Korv” becomes “kovr”, he drops things “på govlet”, the food is “küml”, the time is “tovl”, and the Skalman figure on his toothpaste tube is “Kamlan”.