On the ferry, our way home.

After a week of mostly urban life, I needed to see some greenery around me. So this evening Adrian and I went to the botanical garden of Tartu University.

Adrian, very tired at dinner.

We went to the Ahhaa science centre today. They had a spy themed exhibition with a lot of activities that we really enjoyed: recognizing fingerprints and tire tracks, trying out an airport-style baggage scanner and a hand-held metal detector to find fake guns and such, climbing and crawling through a dark corridor criss-crossed with green laser beams, and a “stepping stones” memory game (just like the entrance to El Macho’s lair in Despicable Me 2) and so on.

We also saw an awesome “science theatre” show about the chemistry of fire, which was basically a demonstration of lighting things on fire, and of different ways of making the fire burn stronger and faster. I love fireworks and explosions – at a safe distance.

The fires ranged from tame (a cotton ball in normal air) to really impressive fireballs (a propane-filled balloon). The final fireball (another balloon containing a mixture of 1 part propane and 5 parts pure oxygen) was such that all members of the audience were first instructed in the proper technique of covering their ears, and the presenter wouldn’t proceed until everybody was following those instructions. It made a very satisfying bang and the heat could be felt several rows away.

Adrian with his new sticker book. It’s got spaceships!

Quirky habit: constant movement of the mouth. Mostly he talks all the time. When he doesn’t, his mouth makes noises. Humming, random words, random pieces of random words, or just sounds. He can be playing on his own, or putting on his shoes, or eating fish fingers – he makes sound all the time. We sometimes have to tell him to stop humming while chewing, so that the rest of us can talk.
Eric tells me that he was the same as a kid, even when he was quite a bit older than Adrian is now.

Random fact: it seems he has outgrown his milk protein allergy and can now eat dairy products.
He refuses to try any outright dairy products such as cheese or cow’s milk butter, mostly because he generally refuses to try any new food. But since he has no such reservations about desserts, we tested it by making pancakes with cow’s milk one day, without telling him, and couldn’t notice any effects afterwards. Since then I’ve been letting him eat dairy when he doesn’t notice it (pasta with a creamy chicken sauce and parmesan!) and in desserts, pancakes, even dairy ice cream – and it seems to work just fine.

Favourite thing above all: Lego. Nothing compares to Lego. The one thing he simply must pack for our Estonia trip: Lego. The one thing he wants to buy at the toy store: Lego.
Favourite Legos: Lego Creator kits, that let you build three different things from the same set of bricks. Also, Lego Ninjago.
I’ve stopped looking at the suggested age range when we buy Legos. As long as the kit is small enough, he can build them all without difficulty. The only thing he needs help with is putting the tiny stickers on straight.

Favourite movie: Minions! And now he points out all the minion-themed stuff that is everywhere. Which is a lot.

Favourite conversation starter: tänk om, “what if”. His what-ifs are usually not particularly fanciful or bizarre, just very random. What if this table wasn’t here. What if we bought ALL these books. What if it started raining right now.

Favourite topic of discussion: ages. How old am I? How old is aunt Rahel? Am I older or younger than Rahel’s teenage son?
He cannot yet see any logic in ages, it seems to me. You’d think that it would be obvious that “I am a mom, aunt Rahel is a mom, aunt Rahel’s son is a big kid, moms are older than kids… hence I am older than her son” but not for Adrian.

Favourite item of clothing: still pyjamas. He wears pyjamas all the time around the house, and often when we go out as well. I still sometimes feel a need to conform somewhat to social expectations about clothing, so to satisfy both our needs, I’ve started buying pyjamas that look neutral and non-pyjamassy. (As an exercise, you could try and guess which of the t-shirts he is wearing in these photos are actually pyjama tops.)

Legos apparently work as a bath toy, too. Or, well, since the Legos and the bath do not interact at all, I guess they are more of a bath distraction: they help me get Adrian in the bath and soak there for a while.

Ingrid has two friends in Estonia. Two of my childhood friends just happened to have children who are almost exactly her age, to within a few months. Whenever we are in Estonia, those three spend a lot of time together.

Adrian does play a bit with them, too, but not so much. No, Adrian’s best friend in Estonia is Artur, the big brother of Ingrid’s friend Katariina, ten years older than him. Adrian absolutely adores him, and when we started planning our trip to Estonia, all he talked about was Artur. And Artur is so incredibly kind and patient with Adrian, which of course makes Adrian adore him even more. He lets Adrian climb all over him, carries him when Adrian’s legs get tired, and so on.

For those of you not familiar with Stockholm, Gröna Lund is Stockholm’s amusement park. We try to fit in a visit to “Grönan” each summer.

I love roller coasters best, and chain carousels are also great. Anything that makes me feel like I am flying, basically.

I’m looking forward to when Eric and I will be able to go on some rides together. Ingrid is old enough to go off on her own, but not enough to take care of Adrian for as long as it would take us to queue and take a ride as well. The queues weren’t too bad in the morning, but after lunch the waiting time for all the best rides was around 30-40 minutes.

Ingrid loved every moment of the day and went on almost every ride she could. (A bunch of them have a 140 cm height limit and she’s quite a bit short of that still.) Roller coasters, things that spin, the scary stuff, things that spin and go up and down at the same time – anything! She’s not afraid of any of the rides so we could do a lot of them together.

Adrian almost broke down crying when he realized where we were going. He’s not fond of any of the fast rides, which means most of them. But after calming down he remembered that the flying elefants were fun, and the mini Ferris wheel, and the wacky house (a vintage attraction from the 1920s!) and above all the “Love tunnel”. He did the Love tunnel at least three times. In the end even he was quite happy with the day.

We went to IKEA the day before yesterday to buy a wardrobe for our bedroom. No success then, because while there was a lot to choose from, there was nothing that was exactly right. After two days of mulling it over (and looking at competing alternatives, all of which were even further from what we wanted) we now decided which of our requirements we would let go of, and made up our minds. So today it was back to IKEA again to actually buy a wardrobe.

Wise from our experience from Monday, we asked the kids to pack some entertainment. Adrian packed a box of Legos; Ingrid packed a stack of Kalle Anka comics. At this point he was getting restless though, and when he saw me moving around and taking photos, he saw an opportunity to run around and make silly faces at the camera.

Adrian playing with things he constructed out of three round pieces of wood (of unknown provenance) and matchsticks.