Compared to last month, the flood of inte! (“not!”) has abated somewhat, although we still hear it quite a lot. Adrian can say Inte äta pannkakor! Jaaa! Pannkakor! in one breath. (“Not eat pancakes! YES! Pancakes!”). It seems like a reflex.

But in general he definitely is more positively disposed towards the word. He has learned to both nod and say Jaa! to agree with things. But he doesn’t always remember that option, so generally I interpret silence as assent, and I am usually right.

He can also say tycka om det (“[I] like this”) and uses it widely, for example tycka om det banan and tycka om det tiss (about bananas and boobs) and about Pippi, favourite books etc.

He constructs more complex sentences now, with more component parts. Jag vill inte äta, and också gå ut. In particular he’s learned to make sentences that describe what he is doing: jag sitter här, jag klättrar här, etc. He also comments on what others do: Ingrid ledsen (“Ingrid sad”) or pappa bakar (“pappa is baking”, when he felt the smell of freshly baked bread in the house) or tädi jookseb.

He asks questions. Probably the most common one is nonu gör?, “man doing?” (mixing Estonian and Swedish) which means “what is that man doing?”. Another frequent one is var är emme?, “where is emme?”. That one has now also developed into a primitive hide-and-seek: he crawls under the kitchen table and suggests that I ask “where is Adrian?”. I do that a few times and then he bursts out, här är Adrian!

He makes jokes. He points at my breast and tells me he will eat it; he points at a glass/my skirt/a fork/a pen and says “sandwich!” and laughs. He likes me to make the same kind of jokes – to call things with the wrong name, to joke about eating obviously non-edible things.

Speaking of eating, he has had some major eating phases this month, putting away 6 potatoes for dinner, or 4 large pancakes – more than what Ingrid eats. As usual, his appetite waxes and wanes, and some days he eats close to nothing. His is still quite conservative when it comes to food and will especially not touch any unknown vegetables, or any food where things are mixed together, such as casseroles or soups (apart from porridge). Although there was one week when he tested a fruit smoothie, and some soup, and a piece of roasted parsnip, and a bit of persimmon. There is hope for him yet, I guess.

Adrian is still very fond of music and often asks me or Eric to sing for him. He himself sings, too, and knows large chunks of many songs by heart – and sings them clearly enough that I can recognize the melody. He has definite favourites and often asks for specific songs – and vice versa, often asks me to skip other songs that I try to sing for him. All the Pippi songs are his absolute favourites: above all the main Pippi theme song but also Mors lilla lathund and Sjörövar-Fabbe. That last one we have on a CD, and that song has been playing for what feels like hours every day recently. Nevertheless the Pippi theme song is best of them all. He asks for it when he is bored, he asks for it when I change his nappy, he asks for it as a lullaby.

Because of Pippi he also likes pirates (because in one movie Pippi goes on a trip to rescue her father from pirates). Anything with a skull he calls a pirate (such as other kids’ socks and rubber boots). Likewise any man with a bushy beard is a pirate, such as the guy on the Turkish yogurt pots (who, by the way, is in fact a Greek).

Another favourite song is “Tingelingelinge tåget far”. This is a song where, at a specific place, you insert the name of a person – usually when singing for a child you use the child’s name. We (meaning I) sing it in endless variations: for each family member, for Adrian’s friends and for Ingrid’s friends, and so on. He also likes “Trollmor”, “Gumman i lådan”, “Jag hamrar och spikar”, “Lille katt” and many others.

He likes “bouncing” songs that involve me bouncing him on my knees – “Sõit, sõit linna” and “Prästens lilla kråka”. Ingrid has also rediscovered the joy of these songs and sometimes I end up bouncing both on my knees at the same time.

As for toys, he plays with the Brio train set quite often. He doesn’t usually build any tracks himself but will happily push his trains along when someone else puts down the tracks. But he can also play with the trains and other pieces on their own, without any tracks.

And sometimes he takes the two large crates of trains, tracks and accessories, happily exclaims jättemycket! (“a lot!”) and pours it all out on the floor. He seems to get some special sort of satisfaction out of that, and has tried the same with my sewing stuff (both my dressmakers’ pins, and my box of spare buttons).

He also plays with toy food, especially while I am preparing dinner, and often offers me food that he has “cooked”. Sometimes he offers me an empty pot, or even an empty hand, and says it’s sweetcorn (or whatever) – he can pretend that nothing is something, which I think is pretty advanced.

He can cut with scissors, with some effort. The kids’ scissors we have are a bit stiff so he needs to use both hands to open them, but can then close them using the proper grip. But I have to hold whatever he is cutting, because he can’t manage both. First he cut some ribbon, then he cut some paper; then he went around and wanted to cut just about everything (his trousers, a door handle, my thimble, and so on). So he only gets to use scissors under very close supervision.

He likes trains, and train rides to town. I don’t know which part he really likes most – the physical train or the fact that we’re taking the train. Or both. In any case he is really happy when we say we’re going on the train, and ecstatically shouts out “TRAIN!” when the train arrives at the platform.

This was the month of will and wanting – and not wanting. The two most commonly occurring words in Adrian’s vocabulary are min (my, mine) and inte (not).

Well, Adrian’s min does not really mean “mine”. In reality I believe it covers a wide range of meanings, from the actual “mine” through “I want to have this thing” to “I like this thing”.

When I pick him up at nursery, he proclaims min mamma! to everyone who ventures close, and holds on to me just in case they intend something sneaky. Also min vagn! (stroller) and min macka! (sandwich).

Other people’s mums are important, too, and he points out all his friends’ mums and dads when we run into them. Hanna, our friends’ daughter who is just two days older than Adrian, is his best friend. He always greets her happily when she comes to nursery in the morning, shows off his Pippi shirt, says Hanna kom! and drags her off to some activity. He almost always points out her house when we pass it.

At meal times at home there is a lot of min mumin!, meaning “I want my Moomin plate and cup”. He got a set of Moomin tableware for his birthday and now effectively refuses to use anything else. As the bowl gets emptier and the design at the bottom becomes visible, he happily points out the characters.

Pippi is his favourite character, in all shapes and forms. He would wear his Pippi shirt every day if he could, he loves the Pippi books and movies, and he adores the Pippi song. At Ingrid’s birthday party, after we had sung Ja må hon leva for Ingrid, the whole family sang the Pippi song for Adrian. He was overjoyed.

But he’s a fan of various other branded characters as well – not only Moomin but also Bamse and Barbapapa. He has a Bamse t-shirt which is his second best after his Pippi shirt; he asks for Barbapapa clips on Youtube. The only characters I know he doesn’t care about is Teletubbies. He seems bored by them.

Another favourite brand is the jingle for SF, the Swedish movie studio behind the Pippi movies as well as all the other film adaptations of Astrid Lindgren books.

inte comes and goes in waves. Sometimes it seems like all he can say is inte. He can say inte macka! (“not sandwich!”) and at the same time take the sandwich he is offered and bite into it with gusto. He can walk around mumbling inte inte inte to himself.

Nappy changes are almost always inte. He hated them so much that we’ve switched from cloth nappies to disposable ones. Brushing teeth and brushing hair is sometimes OK and sometimes a fight. He often has very strong opinions about clothing, wants this set of pyjamas and not that, this hat and not that. He likes his rubber boots and a soft stripy jersey hat with a fleecy inside (which Ingrid also loved for years, and only gave up because she outgrew it).

Usually he is relatively sensible about his clothes, so I let him choose. Once we’re outside and he realizes that his choice may not have been ideal, he has no trouble admitting that and putting on more clothes. Sometimes he wears less than I would, but he doesn’t seem cold. But he’s not at all as warm-blooded as Ingrid, who could cycle home from nursery in her indoor clothes in +5°C. Adrian always wants at least a fleece when we go outside.

I guess he gets to hear a fair amount of inte at nursery. I sometimes hear him repeat phrases like inte knuffas and inte bitas – “no pushing”, “no biting”.

Other phrases that Adrian has picked up from nursery: illa dig där (“hurt yourself there”), låt det vara (“leave that alone”).

There is also a lot of flytta på dig and akta på dig (“move over”, “get out of the way”) which could come from nursery but he may well have picked those up from Ingrid as well. For him they seem to mean “this thing is in my way” – he can say flytta på dig! to a chair that is blocking his way when he tries to push his step stool to the kitchen counter.

The nursery staff tell me that he is always very busy during the day. He wants to do everything that the others are doing. When three kids around him are doing three different things, he wants to do all of these. There is a lot of rushing around, trying to keep up. And he is so frustrated when he cannot manage to do everything that the slightly older kids do.

Adrian likes and/or notices sounds, and often points them out to me. Låter! he says when an airplane flies past, or we pass some loud machinery, or hear a neighbour’s chainsaw in the distance.

He has started to play with his food. A piece of bread will often become a car that drives around the edge of his plate, or a boat, or a crocodile (when the slice of bread looked like jaws after he’d taken a big bite out of it).

But the playing rarely distracts him from eating – unlike Ingrid, I have to say. She can get so lost in her daydreams or playing that she totally forgets to eat. Adrian has been eating quite a lot, although his diet is not much more varied than it used to be.

Anything that looks unfamiliar gets flat out refused. It’s the looks that matter: I can make courgette fritters which consist of maybe 85% courgette, 10% egg and 5% flour, but they look like pancakes, therefore they are pancakes, and thus edible.

Most veggies he refuses. He eats peas and sweetcorn (and calls both of them corn) and that’s about it. But he eats most fruits and berries. He eats raspberries but refuses bell peppers and tomatoes which can taste much sweeter.

He is almost always hungry when I pick him up at nursery, because they don’t let him eat whatever he wants. For their mid-afternoon snack, for example, the kids get one flatbread each, and after that they can have as much crispbread as they want. Adrian likes soft bread much better than crispbread, so he goes hungry instead. And sometimes he probably doesn’t eat much at lunch, either. I often hand him a sandwich as soon as we’re off, or we go straight to the supermarket to buy bananas.

He is also hungry early in the morning. I stopped feeding him at night about six weeks ago. After several weeks he was generally sleeping well all night, but he kept waking at around 5 or 5:30 every day. He’d cry and just could not go back to sleep for a long time. Some days we had to get up at 5:30, other days he fell asleep again after a long while. Eventually I figured out that he might actually be hungry (duh) and I started nursing him again at that time. Now he wakes, feeds, and goes back to sleep, all within 10 minutes. During the rest of the night I refuse, and he has no trouble accepting that.

I took away his dummy during daytime and that has generally worked pretty well. During the first couple of days he was immensely upset. He screamed all the way from nursery to Ingrid’s school (that used to be a time when he would always suck on the dummy). But after a couple of days he forgot that habit, and now there is no screaming at all on the way home, and not much during other times either. Generally he has been taking it very well. Only sometimes when he is really upset about something, he wants a dummy to console himself. But he has been nursing more in the afternoon, replacing the rubber nipple with the real thing.

He likes numbers and counting. He can “count” to four (in both languages I believe) but I don’t think he really understands anything above two. It’s just like a kind of a verse.

Ingrid discovered that she can calm him by counting: one day on our way home from school he was upset about something, and she just started counting for some reason – “one, two, three…”. At around four he became quiet. When she reached ten and stopped, he was all calm, and didn’t start up again. She tried it again this evening when Adrian wanted to nurse while I wanted to finish my dinner: she counted slowly to ten, which kept him calm so that I could finish eating. A very cool trick, I have to say.

We’ve reached a point where Ingrid sometimes understands him better than I do. It used to be that I had to tell Ingrid how to interact with him, to tell her that he doesn’t seem to like this or that. Now she notices behaviours and reactions that I don’t, and comes up with tricks and ideas that I wouldn’t even think of.

This month we finished breastfeeding at night. I was gone for three nights, and this seemed like a good time to stop for good. The first night neither he nor Eric got much sleep at all, from what I understand. The next night was better, and the third a bit better still. When I got back home, he woke about as much as he used to (two to three times a night) but fell asleep again without nursing. There was some crying, but not an awful lot. Now, another week later, he goes back to sleep faster and with even less crying.

He sort of lost the habit of nursing during the day, too. Some days he no longer asks to nurse in the afternoon: I think he simply forgets. But when I offer the breast, he happily accepts. Now we usually nurse once in the morning, varying amounts during the afternoon, and then one last time in bed before he goes to sleep.

As he nurses less, I have the feeling that he’s become more fond of his dummy. Or perhaps he is just asking for it more clearly and verbally? In any case, he either asks for the dummy or (if we’re at home) gets it himself from the dummy bowl on top of his dresser, whenever he is upset or tired. He is especially fond of it, even dependent on it, while we’re walking home from nursery. I’m beginning to find all this dummy sucking annoying, especially since he often forgets to take it out when he talks, and I have to remind him. So I will now limit dummy use to sleeping times only.

When Adrian is upset or dissatisfied with something, he now whines. It can start as a cry, but then after a while it is clear that he is now in control of the crying and chooses to continue. He’s sort of just decided that he will continue to let us know that he is still not happy. This is not much fun to listen to, but it is better than last month’s screaming. And to be fair, he doesn’t do it very often.

He is fond of Ingrid and enjoys her company, and wants to do whatever she is doing. But he is noticeably calmer when she is not at home. With Ingrid present he is more likely to be clingy and whiny; without her he can go off to another room on his own and look at some books for example.

He likes going to nursery. He likes the teachers/carers and talks about them – or rather, at them – at home: Titta Marianne!, Kom Niklas!. He seems to dream about the other kids. Several times I’ve heard him talk about them in the middle of the night.

Ingrid was the oldest kid in her group at nursery; Adrian is almost the youngest, so he has many more kids to learn from. It’s funny to hear what different phrases he picks up from them and the teachers. From the kids, he has learned visa en grej (“show you something”), sluta nu (“stop it”), min tur (“my turn”). From the carers he has learned jag hjälper dig (“I’ll help you”), vill du ha (“do you want this one”).

This leads to some interestingly confusing grammar. From the kids he has learned “mine”. From the adults he has learned “I’ll help you”. So with “mine” he refers to himself, whereas with “I’ll help you” he reverses you/me: the “I” refers to the adult and the “you” refers to him.

He is figuring out plural and definite/indefinite forms of nouns: skon vs. skorna, bil vs. bilar. On a few occasions he’s tried some verb conjugations, too (jag springer) but mostly it’s just the infinitive.

He is fascinated by steam and smoke and clouds. One afternoon we walked past what I think is a dry cleaning facility, or perhaps some other light industrial activity, and there was a thick stream of steam coming out of a vent. Since then he points out that house and reminds me that there was steam there once, and he also points out every other source of steam and smoke. He calls clouds “smoke” as well, especially the white wispy ones.

He also mentions any kind of humming, whirring, droning noise – anything engine-like.

He is still in love with Pippi Longstocking. I bought a shirt with a Pippi print and it immediately became his favourite. He showed it off to everybody (Pippi tröja! Min Pippi!). His favourite book is a Pippi book, and his favourite song is the Pippi song. At night he goes to sleep hugging his Pippi doll with his left arm, and Pippi’s monkey with his right arm.

Now he has started calling Pippi by her full name, Pippi Långstrump. Except he cannot quite form the right sounds fast enough, and it becomes Jåmpstump. This almost sounds like rumpstump, “bum stump”, like in the song Jag är en vanlig kanin, so we now jokingly call her Pippi Bum Stump.

When we read picture books, about Pippi or anything else, he focuses on the small details. We look at a picture of Pippi’s house and garden, with Pippi and the horse and Tommy and Annika – and the thing he points out is a small frog. Or the picture might show Bu and Bä in the forest, with trees and berry bushes etc, and he focuses on a snail.

He hates nappy changes. At home we let him run around in knickers most of the time, but since that always ends with a puddle, that is not an option at nursery. I think it may be the cloth nappies he doesn’t like, so we are now trying disposable nappies for a while to see if he likes those better. On a very few occasions he has peed in the potty but mostly not.

He likes balancing on kerb stones, throwing gravel in ponds, and burying his feet in sand.
He likes climbing up into the stroller himself (the tall Stokke one) and then kneeling in it, backwards.
He likes building with Duplo and Lego blocks. Now instead of covering the board, he builds very tall single-block towers (spikes, really).
He likes playing with the marble run. I build it, and he puts the marbles in and watches them run. Just rattling the marbles in their box is fun, too.
He has discovered the wonders of jam.

I am amazed at how fast he is learning to talk. I know, I know, I said the same thing last month as well as the month before, but it still continues to amaze me. His vocabulary is expanding fast; he is constructing more varied phrases with his words; his pronunciation is much clearer.

He uses two- and three-word phrases all the time. His use of language is also more intentional: he understands what he is saying, rather than just repeating a collection of sounds.

He is now also clearly aware of the two languages in our home, and in some cases knows when to use which one. He says a word, then remembers that he is talking to Eric, and translates.

He uses language to order us around. Previously he expressed his desires – macka! or ut! and so on. Now he orders, Titta nu!, Emme kom! Even a phrase like Emme sitta här, “Mummy sit here”, used to sound like a wish and now sounds like an order. To make his will really clear he shouts it at me and yanks at my skirt at the same time. Or when he wants me to look at something, he grabs my head and tries to turn it while shouting Titta!.

And when I do not do as he wants, he gets screaming mad. He screams and then he gets down on the floor and screams and cries. He doesn’t throw himself on the floor, no, he carefully lowers himself on all fours and then maybe hangs his head, or maybe gets down on his tummy and continues to scream. Obviously he’s modelling this on someone else’s behaviour.

The thing that Adrian most often screams for is not boobs, which used to be his favourite thing in the world. No, his new favourite is film! He has all of a sudden become really fond of watching movies. The first thing he says when I pick him up at nursery is no longer “boob” but “movie”. Hemma Pippi-film, “Pippi movie at home” he says. And the same thing when we first get up in the morning: Sen, Pippi-film, “Pippi movie later”.

He mostly likes to watch Pippi Longstocking movies, and the latest Lotte movie we bought in Estonia. He talks about Teletubbies as well but usually finds them boring when he actually tries to watch them. And he always wants company when watching a movie. On weekend evenings he climbs up on Eric’s desk or our TV sofa and watches some movie with Ingrid. On weekday afternoons when he is tired after nursery, he’d ideally want to just sit in my lap, nurse, and watch a movie at the same time. Getting dinner ready with him in that state is pretty tricky. I bring my laptop to the kitchen and alternate between sitting with him and chopping veggies. He is not at all interested in joining me when I cook, nowadays.

Adrian still likes to nurse but it is becoming less important for him. At the same time he is becoming more aware of what he is doing. It is more of a pleasure and less of a need, perhaps? He sometimes wants to play with my boobs (which I don’t like) and sometimes he feeds his toys at my breast. Dolls, stuffed animals, cars, wooden blocks… everybody and everything likes milk. When he’s done, he considerately pulls my clothes back in place. (Tiss peitu!)

He can be quite considerate and thoughtful with Ingrid, too. Not when they both want the same toy or book – but when he sees Ingrid cry because she’s hit her head, he notices, wants to know what’s up, and comes with his Pippi doll and offers it to her. In the same vein, he doesn’t like movies where people seem to get angry, such as Tjorven och Skrållan where Melker Melkersson gets angry whenever he meets with another accident.

On weekdays he is usually too tired after nursery to want to do anything active at home. On weekends he still likes singing a lot, and books as well. I think he’s tired of all the books at home: he shows a lot more interest in books when we are visiting someone. Our local library has been closed during the summer but I will make an effort to take him there next week.

He likes to listen to CDs with children’s songs, and has sorta-kinda figured out the CD player. He knows how to open and close it, and he know that one of the buttons makes it play music. But he doesn’t have the patience to wait those few seconds it takes for the disc to spin up, and then starts pressing more buttons in the hope of making something happen faster, which doesn’t help. He also likes opening the lid and watching the CD go round and round (ringi ringi!) and taking out the CD to put in a different one. We will have lots of scratched CDs in the house soon.

He’s also become interested in Lego blocks, which he stacks side by side in neat, even rows, eventually covering the whole board. And he plays with the simplest puzzles. We have one with four wooden blocks, for example. He can turn all four to show the same animal, but he cannot yet put them in the right place to complete the animal. He does the same with the magnetic animals we have on the fridge: there are three parts to each animal (head, body, legs) and he can pick out the three parts of a giraffe (kael-illak) but not get them to face the right way. Ingrid sometimes prepares them for him, puts all three pieces in a row but a little bit apart, so he can push them together to complete the animal. At nursery they have two-piece jigsaws (front half of car + rear half of car, for example) and those he can actually put together, because there is obviously only one side that has the jigsaw tab-and-hole.

After all his interest in peeing and pooing while we were in Estonia, we’ve now let him run around without a nappy a lot of the time. Naturally he’s been very pleased about that. I brought out Ingrid’s old poofy knickers and they fit him well. (I’m OK with puddles on the floor but did not want to have to clean up poo from carpets.) He especially likes the ones with butterflies and flowers on them. Hearts or stripes, not so much.

I put rubbered sheets on the sofas, too, but those have turned out to be unnecessary – all the puddles happen when he stands or squats on the ground. He always tells us as soon as he has peed (kiss!) which makes it easy to clean it up after him. And since his pee is effectively odorless, the puddles haven’t been much of an imposition at all. More puddles to wipe up, but fewer nappies to change. When he does have a nappy (because we’re away from home, for example) he also often tells us when he pees, and sometimes he expicitly asks me to change his nappy.

But he never notices a need to pee before he actually does it. And when I take him to the potty (because I think he looks like he might want to pee) he never does. He cannot yet decide to pee. So we’re not potty training yet.

He is clearly right-handed, even though he is not always aware of it. When he tries to eat with his left hand, the result is a mess, and I offer him another spoon for his right hand.

He is still a sceptical eater and is much more likely to say no than yes to new food. However he has now learned to appreciate blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and plums.

He wakes at about 7 to 8 in the morning, sleeps once during the day (at home usually 40 minutes, at nursery an hour or more) and then goes to sleep some time between 7 and 8 in the evening. He wakes to nurse once at around 11, and once more about two hours before he wakes for the morning.

Impressive language development continues. Day to day, I take it for given, but when I stop to think, it is an amazing miracle.

A most pleasant addition to Adrian’s vocabulary is jaa! to complement the inte! (“no”) that appeared some months ago.

To nouns and verbs he is now adding other kinds of words, and not just “yes” and “no” and “mine”. He talks about amounts stora (“large”) and mycket (“much”), and directions – pool, “way, direction”, as in inte pool!, “not way!” for “I do not want to go this way!”, mixing Swedish and Estonian. The most abstract concept I’ve heard him use is också, “also”.

It is interesting to hear him try to figure out what a word means. On some occasions I’ve said something about him getting the sun in his eyes, and specifically said it in the car while putting up a shade on his window. “Let me put up the shade so you don’t get the sun in your eyes”. Päike silma, “sun [in the] eye” are the two key words that he hears. He knows “eye” and now tries to figure out “sun”, and the phrase as a whole. At first he just repeated the phrase when I said it. Some time later he guessed that maybe “sun” was the shade I put up – pointed at it and said päike. Then he thought that perhaps “sun” was the window, and tested his hypothesis some time later by pointing at some other window and saying päike. No, this is aken, I said. Aken! he happily repeated. This all happened over several days, maybe even more than a week.

One word pair that gets a lot of use is sjunga/laul (“sing/song” in Swedish and Estonian respectively). He loves to hear us sing, and sometimes it feels like all we do is sing. Mera, mera! he keeps saying. Or sometimes mera! inte! which means “more singing but not this song”.

We have two song books that we use a lot, and he knows which pictures go with which song. He leafs through the book and stops at some specific picture and then asks for that song – Pippi! or kanin! and so on.

Because of songs, monkeys are called umpa – “Tänk om jag hade en liten liten apa, umpa umpa fallerallera…”.

Ingrid also loved and loves songs, but Adrian seems to be more musically inclined. He listens more attentively, and his attempts at singing have more melody in them. I also get the impression that he likes Eric’s singing better than mine – which makes a lot of sense since Eric sings much better than I do. Ingrid doesn’t hear a difference, I suspect.

Today we heard him use verb tense for the first time, “Adrian has pooped”. And he had. He talks a lot about peeing and pooing, and nappies and willies. He seems to think a lot about these things, and seems to be much more aware now that he is peeing and pooing. His urinary system seems to have matured, too: he now pees large amounts infrequently rather than small squirts all the time. One moment the nappy is dry, and five minutes later it is soaked.

Adrian has started talking about peeing/pooing before he actually does it. If we were at home I would let him run around with a bare bottom and see if he can go on the potty at least some of the time. But here in Estonia we have no potty, and he feels very insecure on the toilet seat even with me supporting him. For now, all we can do is be attentive and check his nappy as soon as he mentions these things.

He is very interested in penises. He plays with his dangly bits as soon as the nappy comes off. While we were travelling from Stockholm to Tartu, we used disposable nappies, to avoid having to manage dirty nappies en route. It turned out that with disposables he could actually squeeze his hand into his nappy and check that his willy was still there. Which would be sort of OK if the only effect was to embarrass passers-by… but since he also did it at the dinner table, it was a bit gross, and it meant that the nappies then leaked because they sat askew. I had to keep reminding him again and again to take his hand out of his nappy.

He pays attention to other people’s toilet visits, too. He watches Eric and points out the relevant parts. Then he sees me go to the toilet and asks, emme snoppen? – where is mommy’s willy? I tell him I don’t have one, and he says snoppen borta, “willy gone…”

One of the new developments this month is that Adrian has a favourite cuddly toy. We went to a toy shop, and he spent a long time in front of the various Pippi figures, ignoring the rest of the store. So we bought him a large Pippi doll. Stora Pippi, “large Pippi”, he calls it, because there were three sizes in the store and we bought the largest one. He likes to hug it when falling asleep, or sometimes in the car. In the evening he takes Pippi’s clothes off, and I keep wondering whether it’s because that’s what one does when going to bed, or because Pippi’s body is soft fleece and the clothes are cheap not-so-soft cotton. He also likes Pippi books and movies – not really reading or watching them, but just holding and handling them.

He still likes to play with water in all sorts of baths and pools. He has also learned to pour water from a jug into his glass. We have a small jug that is easy for him to hold and lift, and I put just enough water in there, so he can pour all of it. He loves it. Sometimes he reaches for the jug, then realizes that his glass still has water in it, and quickly drinks it all, so that he can pour again.

He likes to climb, and he likes slides. He can now climb up onto the large jungle gym at our local playground, above my head, and can slide down from there as well. When he feels sure about a slide he comes down seated; otherwise he slides flat on his tummy, feet first. He also likes to try and climb back up the slide.

He has understood how the iPad works and asks for it at times. At first it was called “ee-i”, as in “Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-i-ee-i-oh”, because that was the app he used most. Now he has branched out to other apps, mostly SoundTouch and PictureBook (both with lots of pictures of animals and other common objects) but also some others that he just looks and pokes at, without understanding what is going on. He understands how to unlock the iPad but usually doesn’t succeed. On the other hand he manages to swipe from page to page pretty well. What he doesn’t understand yet is that he cannot have the rest of his fingers, or his other hand, on the screen while trying to do something.

We’ve also looked at photos with him, both in my camera and on the computer. All he is interested in is photos of himself. “Adrian!” he says, and asks for more.

He likes drawing, more and more, and he likes me to draw things for him. He prefers felt tip pens to pencils and crayons, and for drawing material he prefers his own hands and arms to paper.

We have cut down on nursing some more; I say no more often than I used to, when I think he just asks to nurse because he is bored. Also I no longer let him nurse during meal times, because that led to too much climbing back and forth between my lap and his chair.

His dairy intolerance is still present. Yesterday he and I ate some pasties from the supermarket, and afterwards he was all hyperactive again, the way he’s been in the past when he gets small amounts of milk.

Word of the month: min!, “mine”, meaning “I want that thing”. This leads to occasional minor fights between Adrian and Ingrid (when that thing is the toy that Ingrid just picked up) and between Adrian and myself (when that thing is a sharp knife or the book I’m reading). But he is usually willing to be redirected towards some acceptable alternative.

Another favourite and frequently-used word is läta (for “läsa”, “read”). Adrian loves to hear someone read to him. He likes animal books, but also simple stories: we’ve read the various Max books, Bu och Bä, as well as Mamma Mu. For a long while the one about Mamma Mu hurting herself was a firm favourite, with the blood and the plaster and all the drama.

He doesn’t have a word for “sing”, although he likes music a lot. Instead he usually asks for a specific song, by singing the first few words of it. Singing fixes almost all problems, from nappy changes to boring stroller rides.

Animals and such are the theme of his first iPad app, Sound Touch. He tends to “touch” the screen with his whole and and half his arm, so the results are unpredictable, but he likes it. (Not because I think he particularly needs digital entertainment, but I wanted to be prepared in case we need in-car entertainment for some longer trip.)

Among animals he has his clear favourites: elephants and pigs and squirrels, ducks and horses and fish. He points those out whenever he sees them. His favourite dummy is one with a picture of a horse: at night when going to bed he always chooses that one over one with a dog. The previous favourite had a duck. He is much less interested in the ones with dogs, and abstract patterns of hearts and such are of no interest. But he also likes to point out apples and balloons and babies.

He also has favourite clothes. His stripy jersey hat is a sort of a comfort blanket for him, but he also has a favourite fleece jacket, a favourite pair of trousers and favourite pyjamas. For other clothes his taste varies from day to day, but he almost always has an opinion. I pick a shirt, he grabs it and throws it away, and picks a better one.

He likes playing with water. Dishes in the sink, waiting to be washed up, are a real temptation, hard to resist. He just has to touch the water, put his hand in it, bang at it with a spoon, pour it with a cup etc. He also likes wiping it up afterwards but is not very effective at it. He gets a lot of practice with words like blöt, vatten, oj, trilla, plärts and papper (“wet”, “water”, “oops”, “fell”, “splash” and “paper”). I sometimes suspect that if he could, he’d play with water all day long.

He has also discovered puddles and the joy of stomping his feet in them.

Sometimes I manage to canalize that desire to play with water towards something more useful. He likes helping me cook, especially when there’s something to be poured or stirred. If water isn’t available then he’ll pour peas or chopped veggies from one bowl to another.

Adrian has also learned to crack an egg, and gets very excited when I bring out the egg carton. But he is always slightly shocked when the egg white gets on his fingers, so I try to be quick to take the cracked egg from him, to make sure he doesn’t just let go of it. (The trick is to put a large plate under the bowl, to catch the inevitable spills, which can then be poured back in the bowl.)

He sometimes works on cutting his own food, but generally prefers to either let us do it, or just eat with his hands. Also he is learning to spread margarine on bread. And everything else – such as grapes:

He likes running and climbing and slides. We think he actually runs (with both feet off the ground) but it’s hard to see. He can and likes to walk up and down stairs as long as they aren’t too steep, or he has something to hold on to. We removed the bar blocking the stairs at home some while ago and there haven’t been any falls at all. He actually doesn’t climb them much: usually there is no reason, and they’re too steep to be fun.

In general he is pretty sensible and not too wild. When we’re out walking in our local, quiet streets, I don’t hold his hand except when a car approaches. In our local supermarket I can let him have a kids’ trolley and let him walk around – supervised, so he doesn’t “buy” everything he sees, but I don’t need to hold on to him.

He talks a lot. Two-word phrases come all the time, and sometimes he does three-word phrases: emme titta hää for “mummy sit here” for example.

He tells us when he has pooped (but with frequent false positives). But when we then go to change the nappy, he often objects. So he wants to be changed but does not like the way we do it?

He is happy at nursery, rarely complains when we leave him, but is also happy to go home in the afternoon. Often he wants to cuddle on the way home, so I take him in my ring sling and use the stroller for the all our bags and stuff instead. The moment we get home he wants to nurse, and we spend then next hour alternating between nursing, snacking, cuddling and reading.

Adrian is continuing as he was last month, focusing on language development. He now does two-word sentences pretty regularly: “Ingrid shirt” (meaning “Ingrid’s shirt”), “Adrian chair” (meaning “Adrian wants to be on that chair”), “mummy shoes” (meaning “help me put on my shoes”).

“Mamma” does not necessarily mean “mummy”: he also uses it when he’s with Eric, and it seems to mean something like “big adult help me” – both broader and more specific than “mummy”.

When he needs help, he asks for it. He is confident in his ability to communicate and expects us to understand him.

In fact he now speaks clearly enough that others outside the family can understand much of what he says, after a very little bit of practice.

We spent much of this weekend with the extended Bergheden family, and Adrian (as well as Ingrid) was perfectly happy to be with them rather than hanging on our trouser legs at all times. This is something I haven’t seen at home because here Eric and I are available at all times. The nursery staff have told us that he is happy with other people, but that’s been hearsay, really. Now I’ve seen it with my own eyes. He’s not a little baby any more, totally dependent on me and Eric. He let others help him with food and drink, with his shoes and clothes, and also just enjoyed their company around the house and the yard.

The first signs of bilingualism are appearing. He knows that shoes are called both “kingad” and “skorna”, and a nose is both “nina” and “näsa”, and several other words as well.

Adrian is proactive. When he can manage something on his own, he does it: he goes gets a fork from the drawer when he wants one, and brings out his fleece when we’re getting ready to go out. He also understands sequences of actions. In the morning he can go to the bathroom, point at the toothbrush and say “teeth” – because he knows that tooth-brushing is a necessary step before we can do anything more exciting (such as going out).

On the other hand he has not yet learned that it is a good idea to get undressed before taking a bath or playing with water: he regularly gets his sleeves wet in the kitchen (and then complains about it: he does not like being wet) and often starts climbing into the bath tub with all his clothes on.

He has learned to manage stairs in both directions. Not entirely reliably yet, but he can do it. He can come down both standing up, if he has something to hold on to, or feet first on all fours.

One day when he was drawing scrawls on a sheet of paper, I drew an apple for him. He was astounded. “Äpple! Äpple!” Then some time later I drew something else (I can’t remember what – maybe a shoe, maybe a car, or something like that) and showed it to him. And he goes “Äpple! Äpple!” again – drawing an apple was such magic that he couldn’t even imagine that I could possibly draw other things as well.

Favourite song: “Tuleb, tuleb kitseke” (a song from the Estonian playgroup). Adrian likes singing as much as ever. Often he has definite opinions about what song he wants to hear, or what he doesn’t want to hear. Sometimes he starts singing the song he wants; sometimes he says “inte” to a song I begin, and I try another one and then another, until I hit one that works. He listens especially carefully when the song is a new one, except sometimes when he wants and old favourite and is not at all in the mood for anything new.

Favourite thing: his stripy jersey hat. I think it’s becoming sort of a comfort blanket for him. He also likes wearing mittens and shoes when going out. He does not like to go outside with his bare feet, and I think the mitten thing is the same: his soft little hands and feet are uncomfortable with meeting the outside world. He’s been wearing socks since he first started walking, after all, because the floors here have been cold.

Words, words and more words – and bubbly happiness when he sees that we understand what he says. He can express his wishes and desires. He understands questions and can answer them: what, where, and yes/no. He understands explanations such as “nappy change first, then shoes”.

A very practical non-verbal word he has learned is a clear shake of the head to mean “no”. This really makes communication easier and is much preferable to screaming in protest. Clothes, for example: sometimes he wants socks and sometimes he doesn’t. Now we can ask him and he can shake his head if he doesn’t want them just then.

Among the odder words he knows are “oil” and “egg” (õli and muna) – not because he eats either of those but because he likes me to use them in cooking. He can reach the bottle of cooking oil and hand it to me, and I let him hand me eggs from the carton when I need those. He even knows the difference between cooking oil and olive oil (for drizzling on a salad or on pasta) and gives me the right one. Likewise he knows “microwave” (ikko) because he likes the way it goes “ding” when it’s done.

Nina (“nose”) must be said while simultaneously pinching his nose shut, so it sounds funny.

Istu (“sit down”) means nursing, because when I see that he wants to nurse I often tell him “let me sit down first”.

Almost all birds are anka (“duck”) – everything from flamingoes to eagles. The only bird that isn’t a duck is a rooster (which also includes hens).

He is also learning the names of his friends at nursery – and his own name, Aad-an.

I believe he may be beginning to realize that Eric and I have different words for the same thing. The only word I have heard him use in both languages is auto/bil for “car”.

He is much more willing to accept Eric than Ingrid was at this age. He now goes to sleep with Eric (because with me we often ended up in a struggle as he wanted to nurse forever instead of going to sleep) and does so without the least complaint. When I lift him down from my lap, he goes to Eric, whereas Ingrid would just stand and cry next to me.

Things he likes:

• Books.
• Songs and singing. Hearing us sing. He himself is also beginning to sing/hum a little.
• Looking out through the window, especially when people pass by, ideally walking their dogs.
• Waving good-bye or hello through the window when someone leaves home or comes back.
• Going out.
• Marbles and marble runs.
• Phones, real and fake. He can take things that look nothing like a phone (such as a book, or a spoon) and pretend they’re phones – hold them to his ear and say halloo. I think it is pretty cool that he understands the concept of pretending and joking like this.
• Putting on his shoes by himself, more or less – standing up and putting his foot in a shoe, with me holding the shoe open.
• Hats and gloves. Putting on and taking off his jersey hat.
• Flowers.
• Sitting on Eric’s desk together with Ingrid while she watches a movie and he pokes at stuff.
• Climbing or crawling into large boxes.

Things he does not like:

• Leaving nursery. Quite often he runs to meet me, nurses, and then goes off to play again, and gets really angry when I try to make him go home. Sometimes it ends with me carrying a wriggling screaming baby towards the gate.
• New food. He rejects pretty much anything and looks at us as if we were trying to poison him.

My memories of the latter half of this month have, unfortunately, been dominated by crappy sleeping. First Adrian was ill for almost a week, with what I post facto diagnosed to be three-day fever (although his fever lasted four days instead of three). After that he was generally extremely tired for a few days, and since then he has been sleeping like crap.

He wakes not twice a night but every two hours, if not even more often. Normally he used to barely wake, nurse and then immediately fall back asleep. Now he nurses for a while, then sort of nods off but whimpers and wakes again, off and on for half an hour. Often he refuses to let go of the breast when he’s done nursing, so both of us half-slumber instead of sleeping. When I nevertheless take him off the breast, he gets raging mad with me. He screams and kicks and fights and generally goes totally nuts, and will not stop no matter what I do. In fact the more he is reminded of my presence, the angrier he gets. I’ve ended up fetching or waking Eric to put him back to sleep while I leave the room.

This kicking, screaming, hysterical anger seems to be his response when he really, REALLY wants something, but cannot have it. He’s done it for other reasons on a few occasions, and then gotten so mad that he’s been unable to calm himself down. He got more and more upset, wouldn’t accept his dummy, wouldn’t accept any consolation, just kicked and screamed. The only thing that put and end to it was nursing (although sometimes it was even a struggle for him to pause enough between his screams to latch on).

But those occasions have been few. Usually he is very co-operative, obedient even, and will take no for an answer. When I tell him he cannot have something, and say no like I mean it, he is OK with that. A clear, unmistakable no works best. If we instead try putting the forbidden thing out of reach, or hiding it, or distracting him, he is more likely to keep on trying to get it.

Apart from the disrupted nights, the other dominant theme is language, just like last month. He is often very clearly trying to imitate our words. We say something, he repeats, we repeat, he repeats… What he says is more and more starting to sound like actual words: he seems to be in much better control of his tongue and mouth.

His clearest word is (and I’m not kidding you) auto. He points out almost every single car we pass, especially our own car parked outside the house when we go out, and any cars that we walk past at close range. If he is walking (which he rarely does) he likes to pat the cars, and touch some small child-scaled detail such as some knob, or a blinker. And he makes prrr… noises when he sees a car or someone mentions one.

The other thing he is fond of is babies. He likes looking at babies we meet, and pictures of babies in books and elsewhere. Reading Max bil with him is an interesting experience. He is intensely focused, very interested in the car, is uncomfortable with the pages showing the quarrelling, crying toddlers, then goes “emme!” when the mother comes in.

His second clearest word is alla which means “down” in Estonian. He uses it specifically when he wants us to go down from the bedroom upstairs.

Otherwise it is mostly the same words as last month, focusing a lot on food, so he can ask for the bread, banana or water he wants. His new favourite food is margarine, eaten by the spoonful, supplanting bananas from the top spot.

He’s also learned some words for clothes: socks, mittens, shoes. Not coincidentally, those are the items of clothing he likes and asks for. Often he is running around indoors in just his nappy and socks: he is not fond of tops or trousers. But he likes his socks and brings them to us when he wants them on. (We have cold floors.)

Shoes are synonymous with going out, so he brings them when he wants to go out, and fights them when he is not in the mood for going out. Now that the temperature is above zero he is also beginning to take after Ingrid and refuse fleeces and coats when we’re outdoors. I do insist on shoes but otherwise let him make his own choices there.

Then there are such socially useful words as aitäh and tack-tack (thank you in Estonian and Swedish respectively), ei (no) and oot-oot (wait a moment). I find myself using the latter a great deal, because patience is not one of Adrian’s strong skills.

He now also has words for all of us: pappa, emme and immi. Except that he doesn’t quite seem to keep our names apart. He can point at Eric in a photo and say emme, or vice versa point to me and say pappa. And he uses emme (mummy) and immi (Ingrid) almost interchangeably.

He likes us to sing for him. This is the one “bribe” that can get an unwilling Adrian to accept a nappy change. Songs with movements are the best. The current favourite is Nyss så träffa’ jag en krokodil. We have a crocodile magnet on the fridge and he has discovered that he can use it (“KLKLKLK OOO TLTLT!”) to ask for the crocodile song.

He likes playing with water, and with things that fit in other things, cups and bowls of various sizes. He likes pouring water, putting things in water and then fishing them out again. He is getting more competent with a spoon.

Things go well at nursery. Again, the word “obedient” comes to mind: he knows he is expected to stay there, and while it is not what he would choose (and his lower lip does this little trembly thing when I hand him over to the staff) he doesn’t fight it. By the time I am out of the door, I can already see him playing happily. (Most days Eric drops him off but occasionally I do it as well.) Adrian is content throughout the whole day, all the way through the afternoon even, but very happy to see me when I come to pick him up. He drops whatever he is doing and heads straight for me.

I used to pick him up first and then we’d go together to get Ingrid. But he likes the big kids’ rooms so much that it was a struggle to get him to leave, every single day. Now we do it the other way round: first Ingrid, then Adrian. This way both are happy, and things go a lot more smoothly.

On the way home he wants me to carry him and doesn’t like sitting in the stroller. I guess he wants to get as close to me as he can after being away from me all day, even though I take the time to nurse him before we head home. Sometimes I manage to carry him part of the way, sometimes all, sometimes none, but in any case it means I try to get us all home as quickly as possible, to minimize the crying.

He is, I think, weaning himself off the dummy. At night he usually sleeps without, and he will rarely accept it as consolation.

This month’s big new thing is nursery, of course. Adrian is at nursery 5 days a week. Eric drops him of about a quarter past 8, and I pick him up shortly before 3. He has acclimatized well by now – I wouldn’t say he loves it but he is not unhappy. He has his favourite teacher but now accepts the others as well if she isn’t available. Often he “attaches” for the day to whoever receives him in the morning. And while he goes off and plays on his own, he likes to return frequently to the teacher during the day to confirm that she, his trusted, safe person, is still there.

He takes nice long naps at nursery, often an hour and a half, which is about the same as he does at home. And he now actually eats as well. Most of the time he keeps the same limited diet that he has done for the past two months or so, both at home and at nursery: bread, plus breadlike substances such as pasta or rice or pancakes; bananas, and occasionally other fruit; meatballs.

Oh, and breast milk of course. Most afternoons he starts pulling at my coat buttons as soon as I meet him at nursery, and we nurse a bit before we even go home. Then more nursing throughout the afternoon and evening, once or twice during the night, and then more in the early morning hours when he starts to become really hungry again.

I think of it as his B diet: Bread and Butter, Bananas, meatBalls and Breast milk. I think he’d be perfectly happy as long as he just got those four. Bananas in particular he’s almost obsessed with. We can’t even walk past the bananas at our local supermarket without him shouting to get one – sometimes even when he isn’t hungry. (The supermarket is kind enough to offer a free fruit to each kid, and he knows that drill very well.)

In the last few day’s he’s let himself be inspired by the other kids at nursery and actually tried some of the cooked food they serve. It remains to be seen whether this actually leads to him eating other food. When I put food in front of him or offer him something on a spoon, he either ignores it, or looks at it askance as if he suspected us of trying to poison him. The only time he is interested in tasting new food is when he grabs some ingredient while we’re cooking. And unfortunately neither raw potatoes nor raw garlic is particularly tasty.

Somewhere Adrian has also picked up the idea of dipping. (This may well come from Ingrid, who likes to do the same.) He dips or drops a piece of food in his glass of water and then tries to fish it out again. When the food is a piece of biscuit the result is pretty soggy.

His main area of development right now is language. It is not going fast; I think he is pretty baffled by the whole bilingual issue. He has a handful of sound combinations that are recognizable words, but just in general he is more and more able to vocalize when he wants to communicate something, and better able to understand us when we talk to him.

The range of sounds he uses is rather limited. Of consonants the only really productive ones are B and P. He makes other sounds as well, of course, but he uses those in most words. He also has a funny screechy sound that combines K and L – try saying “clock” but skipping the O in the middle, and then make it really explosive and forceful. He likes the sound it makes, but he’s also used it to actually say kl’a, meaning clock.

Vocabulary (as far as I can remember):
babaa for banana, böö for bread (“bröd” in Swedish), appa/bappa for daddy, aba for navel (“naba”), appe for paper (“papper”) for when he wants something wiped clean, bäpää for dummy/pacifier, bää bää for “Baa baa white sheep” (his favourite book).
mämmä for mommy, ampa for lamp, u’a (“uggla”) for owl, yy’pa (“flygplan”) for airplane, i’-u’ (“tittut”) for peekaboo, ack-ack for thank you (“tack-tack”).
hejaa for good-bye (“hej då”); this also doubles for good night, which he says when he wants to go to bed.
Something like idde for Ingrid if I recall correctly.

As you may have noticed his current vocabulary is clearly veering towards Swedish rather than Estonian.

Favourite activities: like last month, he is still very fond of helping us cook, and the microwave is a particular favourite. If anyone tries to do either of these without him, he will run there and cry and stretch his arms up and generally use all of his being to tell us that he really, really wants to watch and help.

When I cook he inspects all the ingredients of course, and likes to “help” me pour the water or add the flour or salt. (I don’t let him salt the food, of course, since he does it by the handful, but he can salt the pasta water.) Usually most of it ends up beside the pot he aims for.

He now also wants to see what is going on in the pots and pans, and asks me to lift the lid (and lift him closer when needed) so he can see inside. And he likes to watch me stir and whisk and flip pancakes and such, and hands me utensils when he thinks I’m doing too little of that kind of stuff.

He likes drumming and banging on things. Hands on toilet lid, cooking utensils on lamp shade or window, wooden puzzle pieces against each other.

He likes peekaboo: he hides his face in his hands, I ask “where is Adrian?” and then he looks out happily. This can also be played with my woolly hat. He likes woolly hats, and mine is slightly felted and thus a bit stiff, so it is easier for him to put on than his own one.

He likes songs and rhymes, especially those that come with movement. Eensy weensy spider, Põdra maja/I ett hus vid skogens slut… His absolute favourite is Kuts läks karja, a traditional Estonian rhyme, where he lies on his back and I make walking and running movements etc with his legs. He often asks for it (äta-äta) when I’m changing his nappy.

For a while he really liked playing with a book about birds and their sounds. It has a little media player attached, and he pushed the buttons again and again to hear the birds. In the same vein he likes his and Ingrid’s toy phones. And the real thing as well, especially when someone is at the other end, but he doesn’t understand what is going on, he just likes the fact that it makes sound and light.

Favourite things to spot: dogs and air planes. He points out every plane (“yy’pa!”) that flies past, and those are numerous here since Bromma airport is about 3 km away from here. And every time we see a dog he points and stares.

He usually likes going out. He now has no objections to putting on clothes, and tries to put on his woolly hat on his own, and to put his feet in the boots. When he fights clothes, it is not because of the clothes themselves but because he doesn’t want to go out just then.

He has a whole lot of teeth: all 8 front teeth, at least 4 molars, and all 4 canines are out as well.