Adrian still likes us to read him a good night story. We’ve left children’s books behind a while ago already. We just finished an old Estonian translation of Karel Čapek’s Nine Fairy Tales. I can make myself speak Swedish to my children when others are in the room, so as not to exclude anyone, but good night stories just have to be in Estonian.

We’ve run out of suitable books in Estonian. I usually buy piles of books every time we visit Estonia, but we’ve had to skip our annual trips for two summers in a row, so we had a bit of a book crisis. I’ve got a few boxes of children’s books we haven’t read yet, but we probably never will – Adrian has outgrown such stuff.

Luckily my mum still has many of our old books, some from her childhood, some from mine. I called her, and here’s what she lent us to read next: an old Estonian edition of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.

In the Soviet planned economy, things had fixed prices. This book cost 7 roubles, according to a printed price on the rear cover. That was before the 1961 currency reform; book prices were in kopeks (1/100 of a rouble) when I was a child.

The front cover has a dramatic scene of a dinosaur threatening a man wielding a firebrand. Clearly drawn in a different era, when artists’ knowledge (along with everybody else’s knowledge) of dinosaur anatomy wasn’t what it is today. That dinosaur holds itself like a large human in a dinosaur costume. It will be interesting to look at more illustrations – and to see what kind of mental picture Sir Arthur had of dinosaurs, pterodactyls and other prehistoric creatures. I haven’t read this book for a good 30 years at least.

Adrian is still home with a cough even though he is basically all well. I take him out with me when I go for my daily walks, so that he also gets some daylight and fresh air.

There is so much talk in him, about just about everything. When I come back from a walk of my own, my brain is clear and rested. After a walk with Adrian, work feels like rest.

We talked about daylight savings time and time zones, among other things, because he asked what I’d done at work thus far. (Time zone conversions.) In this day and age with international entertainment everywhere, like live streams on Twitch and special events in games, even an eleven-year-old is well aware of how time zones work. I certainly wasn’t, at his age.

Both kids are, quite synchronously, sick since yesterday.

Adrian has an incredibly runny nose and is going through toilet paper by the roll trying to clear it, but is otherwise perky and feeling well.

Ingrid is totally knocked out with fever and a headache, subsisting on water and ibuprofen and half a small bowl of yogurt.

I very much hope I don’t catch whatever they have because I have a Lucia thingy with tretton37 on Monday as well as a Christmas dinner with Urb-it. I feel hopeful because it wouldn’t be the first time, by far, for the kids to be sick while Eric and I escape with no symptoms. Our immune systems have had a few extra decades of practice, after all.

We promised Adrian a visit to his favourite restaurant, Ri Cora, for his birthday. Which was nearly 3 months ago.

First we were going to do it when we were in town anyway for Forever Piaf, but left it until too late with the booking so we didn’t get a table. Then we had a similar booking problem a few weeks later: just when we had agreed a day and time that worked for all of us, and I was about to press the button, the last few available tables got booked right as I was looking at it. And then there were weekends with other things in the way.

Now finally we made a new attempt and I was surprised to find tables for the same evening. Which works great, because Adrian’s school has a study day for staff tomorrow, so he doesn’t need to get up on time, so it’s OK if he’s a bit tired afterwards.

Ri Cora is Adrian’s absolute favourite restaurant because of the limitless egg rolls and dumplings he can eat. Ingrid also loves it, although she samples the buffet more widely, and prefers sushi to most dumplings.

The buffet has been completely unchanged for the last three or four years. Nothing changes, not even which fresh fruit they serve (melon, watermelon, pineapple, grapes, strawberries), or the ice cream flavours (blueberry, melon, Oreo, plus one I’ve forgotten), or the “season’s roast vegetables” which are always potatoes, sweet potatoes, sweetcorn and broccoli, completely regardless of the actual season. But predictable also means reliable, and the staff are always attentive and friendly, and make sure the buffet is fresh and clean and filled up. While I wouldn’t want to eat there very often, it’s a pretty decent place, as buffets go.

I get fond of my woolly socks and mend them over and over again. Adrian takes it to a whole other level with his favourite socks and shirts. Except he skips the mending part.

We visited Eric’s brother and his family, including a new baby son.

This was the quietest baby I’ve yet to see in the Bergheden family. It was almost spooky. No crying, no screaming, only some small meeps at times.

Not too old yet for playing around.

The neighbourhood cat who’s been visiting occasionally is getting more comfortable in our house. Previously it used to cautiously look around but stay at a distance from us. Now it’s OK with being touched and sleeping in our sofa.

Adrian is practising multiplication. Not just simple times tables anymore – now one of the terms is a double-digit number, so it’s two for one and some addition and memory training as well.

I make up the problems for him by randomly sprinkling numbers on the page. I usually skip one (too easy) and start at two. Work my way from two to nine and put each number on a random line in the first position, and repeat that until there’s a number on each line. Three cycles gives me 24 lines which is roughly what I can fit on a normal page of squared paper. Then put a multiplication sign on each line. Then do three cycles from two to nine again for the first digit of the second term, and then the same again for the second digit. Voila – random maths problems on demand.