Adrian is more and more interested in playing Minecraft. Ingrid is sharing her pro tips with him.

Swim school, which he used to love, turned into a struggle recently. He disliked the new pool, and the new teacher really isn’t particularly good with children. And, really, I think he was “promoted” to the next level too early, so every exercise was just a bit too hard.

I got him moved down to his previous level, so he’s back in the familiar pool and with a somewhat familiar teacher. Now he loves swim school again.

He loves it when I carry him, especially when I carry him up the stairs at bedtime, and when I pick him up at school. I used to lift him as he jumped, but now he’s decided he wants to climb up with no help from me. Well, I help passively, by standing strong and holding out my arms at waist level so he can hold on to them. He grabs hold and pulls and jumps and wiggles a bit, and then he’s up and clinging to me like a little monkey. It was an effort initially but now it often just takes him a few seconds.

We bought some jigsaw puzzles. Adrian’s favourite was the most garishly coloured one. He claims they’re teddy bears.

Not only was this model fun to build – it also shoots little plastic darts.

Adrian finished a Lego Ninjago set he got as a birthday present.

• His head is full of monsters and weapons. Clouds look like pistols; random shapes in leaves look like monsters; anything long and round is a cannon or a “pepperer”; if it’s extra thick then it’s a bazooka. Not that he has any idea what any of these things really look like.
• He likes patterns and shapes. There are name magnets on the whiteboard at school (that show which kids are there and which have gone home), and when Adrian moves his to the “home” box, he arranges them all in equal columns, or in the shape of a tree, or something like that.
• He tried basketball after school but didn’t like it at all.

Adrian’s picture of the road to school. They’re working with a traffic theme at school.

An interesting combination of detail in the important parts (such as the “no parking” sign next to our house, and the shape of the house, and the schematic map of the schoolyard, and the two alternative routes between them) and lack of detail in everything else.

On his way home from a birthday party.