Like perler beads but tiny.

Adrian at preschool, drawing and writing some important thing, surrounded by Christmas.

ESLAND HEAD JÕULO

At Adrian’s preschool the staff have put up “Merry Christmas” on the wall in various languages. I believe it’s the languages spoken by kids or staff at the preschool: English, French, Finnish, Kurdish, Greek, Arabic, Assyrian, etc.

Adrian had apparently noticed that Estonian was not present and corrected this.

First I brush, then he brushes.

Today is the 1st Sunday of Advent. We hung Advent stars and unpacked Christmas decorations, Christmas books and other assorted Christmas-related stuff. The Santa hats were best.

The Christmas CDs will stay in their boxes though. We’re 100% digital now, all the way, with the Sonos system playing music from both our own music library (including the Christmas CDs) and Spotify.

Whatever it was, it was riveting.

Adrian eating ice cream.

He still doesn’t like cow’s milk, refuses cheese on his quiches and grilled sandwiches, prefers his dairy-free “butter” to real butter and soy “yoghurt” to the real thing. But when it comes to ice cream he is perfectly happy to eat dairy ice cream. And when real yoghurt has Star Wars imagery on it, it also suddenly becomes delicious.

Last month Adrian started drawing. This month he has done more of that, and added writing. He makes little books by stapling papers together and then draws and writes in them. He mostly draws people and T-rexes, but also ninjas, aliens and monsters.

As for writing, at first he was mostly writing things that had obviously been suggested by the staff at preschool: “til mama ok papa”. But also his own name, and our names, and the names of his friends. As he gained confidence, he broadened out: he’s written a Christmas wish list, added things to our shopping list, etc.

Of course you don’t need pen and paper to write. An iPad is a great tool for learning to write – not least because writing in an iPad makes things happen. Like magic. Almost as soon as Adrian started writing, he started using it to search for video clips on YouTube and Barnkanalen, images on Google, and music on our Sonos system.

Out of those tools, YouTube has the best UI for a 5-year-old – there is just one search box and no further choices. With Google, you need to know how to get from search results to images, but it’s not that hard. Sonos is more complicated – you need to click the right category of things to search, and then there are menus to navigate before the music plays. Obviously not developed with kids in mind. But even if Adrian cannot manage all of that on his own, with his developing reading skills he can at least skip between songs in a playlist and figure out which might be which.

I also wish these tools were more forgiving of spelling mistakes. Google and YouTube are pretty good. Sonos – not at all. Miss one letter and you won’t find anything. The fact that many of the things Adrian wants to search for are in English don’t make things any easier for him.

HVREJÅGUT BLÅBÄR (havreyogurt blåbär)

Many of the songs he searches for are Melodifestivalen favourites: Guld och gröna skogar, Groupie, Hello Hi, Popular. He likes tunes with a catchy melody, funny lyrics and a “bouncy” rhythm. When the song is in English, he sings along phonetically and it doesn’t bother him at all that he has no clue what they’re saying.

Funnily enough, the same happens with songs in Swedish that he learns at preschool. Sometimes hasn’t quite been able to hear or understand the lyrics, and just accepts that songs contain words that make no sense. Sometimes he asks me. Other times he insists that the nonsense version is the right one: “Ögon, öron, kinden klappefå”.

Legos of course continue to dominate. For the first time he has now actually encountered a Lego kit that was too tricky for him to build on his own, so we’re doing it together. Well, mostly I’m just picking out the right pieces for him, and very occasionally helping him notice when he’s made a mistake somewhere, so he doesn’t get stuck later.

When he turned five, we started giving him pocket money: 20 kr a week. He has spent all of it on Legos. Whenever he feels like he has some money, he wants to go to Toys’R’Us and buy stuff. He is unable/unwilling to save for a goal because his discount factor is just too high.

When he doesn’t have enough money to buy what he had planned, he’ll buy something else he can afford, rather than go home empty-handed. But not at any cost: once when he couldn’t afford anything else he bought a Lego mini figure and was really disappointed when he found out it was a duplicate of one he already had, so he’s not buying those any more.

Current interests:

• There’s been a new surge in perler beading. The most recent theme has been ninjas and Ninja Turtles. I guess someone at preschool has printed out new patterns.
• Balancing on sidewalk edges.
• Learning to make porridge on his own.
• Peeing standing up.
• Dialects. Skeånska.

Other random facts:

• Girl colours are totally out. Adrian will not wear anything violet, lilac or pink. It was jarring for him to discover that one of the Ninja Turtles wears a purple headband.
• We play Labyrinth occasionally. It’s a great game that all ages enjoy and can play together, with some adjustments. Just a few months ago Adrian was mostly just pushing the labyrinth pieces around randomly. Now all of a sudden he’s playing for real and making up plans for his moves. It’s amazing to “see” his brain develop.

Normally when I pick up Adrian at preschool the place is half empty. I’m neither the first nor the last to arrive – just late enough so that things have calmed down a bit. But this afternoon Adrian’s preschool had a parents’ fika, i.e. coffee and cake for all the kids and their parents. Adrian was a bit tired so when we left the fika was still underway. Many of the kids were still there, plus a parent or two for most of them, and some siblings as well.

This is the mess that met us in their cloakroom. I don’t normally see it in this state because when we leave, maybe half the kids have left already and taken their clothes with them. And often they are playing out in the yard when I arrive, so the clothes are on the kids instead of on their hooks. But now: all their clothes, plus bags, dropped toys, super important drawings mixed up with random pieces of paper… It struck me that this is probably not an unusual sight during daytime, when the clothes of two groups of kids (30+ in total) are crammed into this small room. And I tried to imagine what this room looks and feels like when those kids try to put their clothes on to go outside…