A beautiful, unseasonably warm day – one that wouldn’t feel out of place in July and actually felt more like summer than all of last summer did.

Adrian and I went to the Svandammen park when we got home. We packed some fruit, because Adrian is always hungry after preschool, and a water gun. I also packed his swimming trunks, just in case. And another water gun and a swimsuit for Ingrid, just in case she decided to come as well. And some extra fruit, just in case.

Ingrid did indeed join us after she left school, and I was glad I had packed all the extras. The kids had a lot of fun, so we ended up staying well over an hour and only got home when it was already time for dinner.

A few other kids watched Ingrid and Adrian rather jealously: one mum let their kids get in the water as well after rolling up or taking off their pants, but another said that this pool was not made for bathing and therefore “get out away from there right now”. No, it wasn’t made for bathing, but I can’t see what harm a bit bathing might do, as long as you don’t put your face in it.

Spring’s warm and sunny days bring scraped and scabbed knees.

A lovely warm and sunny day, so we biked to Bögs gård, a farm on the edge of Järvafältet nature reserve. A pleasant bike ride through a variety of suburban green spaces, ranging from a disc golf park to forests and water meadows.

It was about 20 km altogether and I wasn’t sure whether Ingrid would be able to do it, but it was no problem at all. I have been underestimating her I guess.

The anemone fields in the forest were mind-boggling. They covered the entire forest floor and spread as far as I could see.

At Bögs gård we had lunch and ice cream and looked at the animals – chickens, goats, pigs and calves. The neighbouring Väsby gård also had calves, of hairy Scottish highland cattle. The calves looked like a cross between calf and bear, and behaved like puppies, running and leaping and bouncing around.

I can’t think of anything specific for this month, so I’ll describe our evening routine.

Eric and I put the kids to bed on alternate evenings – I do it for Adrian when he does it for Ingrid, and vice versa.

Evening starts at about 7 o’clock. An alarm goes off just after 7 to remind Adrian that it’s time to start finishing off whatever he is doing and getting ready to go to bed. Sometimes we’re still finishing off dinner when this happens.

We go to the upstairs bathroom and I brush his teeth. I do the “aah” sides (the inside and the biting surfaces) and he does the “iih” sides (the outside) although I sometimes do a bit extra on the outside as well. Meanwhile he is bored and tries to look around, or to poke my hair, or something equally incompatible with teeth-brushing.

Then he pees while I go to the bedroom and draw the curtains. He has his own bed but it’s in our bedroom. This works well for everybody.

He comes in and puts on his pyjamas. Now that it’s spring and warm outside, he likes to wear pyjama shorts only. Until recently I then applied a fat salve on the dry scaly skin on the backs of his hands, and a slightly lighter salve on slightly less dry parts, but I think we can cut down on this now.

Sometimes he takes a plush animal to cuddle with, but mostly those don’t seem to be particularly important to him.

Next, I sit in a little armchair next to his bed and read for him. We take turns picking books. When it’s my turn, I pick something in Estonian. When it’s his turn, he often picks some old favourite. Currently we are re-reading Sharks by Sarah Sheppard. Apparently bloody stories about scary predators are just right for bedtime.

When I think it’s getting late, I stop reading. Then I sing for him. The songs I sing have varied a lot over time – sometimes he wants the same songs every night, sometimes he prefers variety. Currently it’s the former. I sing Trollkarlen från Indialand, Kalle Teodor and Kes elab metsa sees, in this order, every night. The last one is accompanied by a gentle back rub, because of kolm hästi pikka paid.

Ideally he wants to fall asleep in my bed but we’ve had a bit of trouble with bed-wetting, so that’s not happening. Instead he gets to lie in my bed during the songs. Then he goes back to his own bed, gives me exactly three kisses (left cheek, right cheek, forehead) and we say good-night.

I then sit at the top of the stairs outside the bedroom door, reading, with the door slightly ajar. He talks to himself, occasionally checks that I’m still there, and reminds me to not go down until he’s asleep. After a while I realize he hasn’t said anything for a while and I go down.

At 22:30, no later, either Eric or I go up and carry him to the toilet again. We’ve carefully calibrated the timing: 5 minutes later is probably OK, but 15 minutes would really be taking a chance. Adrian is only very barely awake – enough to co-operate as much as needed, but not enough to remember anything in the morning.

Most mornings, Adrian eats porridge for breakfast, with jam. His favourites are blueberry jam and raspberry jam.

To that shortlist he has now also added “Adrian’s favourite jam”, which is a mixture he made of blueberry jam and cherry jam.

Påskgubbe and påskkärringar, about to fly off to Blåkulla.

No, we do not have chocolate sauce for breakfast on weekdays. But it does happen that the kids put it on their toast on weekend mornings. This photo is from the future, from Saturday.

I’m not even going to write about Legos but of course that is still his main interest.

Every few weeks he stays at home on a Wednesday to rest and play with his Legos. Wednesdays are his least favourite days at preschool because they spend extra time outside in the morning. He doesn’t like the rain clothes he has to wear in the current weather.

Lego Chima, his favourite line of Lego models, has been “retired” and replaced with Lego Nexo Knights. Those are also cool. Coolest of all is Star Wars, though. He hasn’t seen any of the real Star Wars movies, but he liked both the Clone Wars animated series and Lego Star Wars. He doesn’t always find those movies very interesting but they are somehow important to him anyway.

We bought a Lego Yoda figure and that one is now his favourite and gets to join in when he plays with the Chima and Ninjago figures, even though Yoda doesn’t fit the theme. And when the figures all go crazy and swap helmets or legs with each other, Yoda gets to keep his. Yoda is special.

Next after Star Wars and Legos come dinosaurs and sharks. When he needed new socks, ideally he wanted Star Wars socks, or dinosaurs. And his swim trunks have sharks on them of course.

When he tires of Legos and I still have work to do, he listens to music. He can put a song on repeat and listen to it for half an hour. He now has his own Sonos playlist so he has easy access to his favourite songs, which include Samir and Victor and their immortal tunes Bada nakna, Saxo-fucking-fon and Success. Also on the list are last year’s Melodifestivalen winner Heroes and this year’s finalist Kizunguzungu.

The next best thing after that is going out. “We haven’t had any fresh air today,” he tells me, and I cannot but agree. So we take a walk to the supermarket and run a few errands, and come home with renewed energy.

After pre-school of course the iPad beckons, and YouTube. He still plays quite a lot of Best Fiends but not so much Dragon City any more.

Random stuff:
He gets really dry, scaly skin on the backs of his hands this time of the year. It is warm enough outside that he can be without gloves or mittens, but cold enough so the air is dry and no good for the hands, especially when you’re playing with wet cold stuff. And I suspect he wipes his nose with the back of his hands, which makes it even worse. I slather on thick creams and salves every evening and they barely hold the dryness in check, but his skin probably heal fully until spring is here for real.

He really loves apples. “Apple boats” (apples cut into eights, core removed) is his favourite snack between meals. Our supermarket still sells Swedish apples (in March!) which is awesome, and we buy a lot of them.

Swim school is going well. As a side effect he has actually learned to like showers, which is pretty convenient, and he doesn’t even mind getting his hair wet any more.

Playing with Legos, of course.