Adrian learned to read this month. Just like that he went from last month’s “AI!” and “PANG” to such words as “asteroider” and “mjölkfri” and “skogräns”. He reads letter by letter, pointing at each one with his finger. Naturally, long words are hard and compound words are harder still, but as you can see from the example words, he’s not letting that stop him.

He likes to read the chapter headings when I read a book for him.

Now he just needs to get his speed up so he can start reading sentences, which would unlock the treasure trove of Bamse magazines that we have and that he so loves looking at.

While we’re on the topic of learning, he likes adding numbers. Even without me prompting or doing anything in particular to encourage him, he tells me that three plus five is eight, etc.

Double-digit numbers are complicated. It doesn’t help that Swedish (just like English) has irregular names for the numbers between ten and twenty. He knows there is something there to be figured out, something he is close to figuring out, so he keeps asking questions like “what do one and six make” when he sees a pair of numbers somewhere. He hasn’t quite understood that the order matters, so his “one and six” might mean sixteen or it might mean sixty-one.

He has learned to do up buttons, and I don’t know where or how because he doesn’t have any clothes with buttons. But one day he told me “I will button your cardigan”, probably because the buttons happened to be right in front of him, and then he proceeded to do that. And then he unbuttoned it again. Just for fun.

Adrian likes watching TV. We’ve blocked YouTube so the endless mindless surfing of play-dough movies is off the table; he’s forced to watch Swedish children’s television on SVT Play instead.

His favourites nowadays tend to be documentaries and shows about people doing things. He watched all episodes of “Fixa rummet”, an interior decorating show for kids where they redecorate kids’ rooms; then “Bacillakuten” which teaches kids about the human body, and most recently “Alex hittar hobbyn” where Alex tries out various hobbies ranging from figure skating and street dance to making sushi.

I don’t think he plays much on the iPad. The one game I saw him play was Field Runners. He has watched Ingrid or me play a few times, and I explained a few concepts, and off he went. Positioning his units, upgrading, saving money for upgrades, etc.

He is often tired in the afternoon after preschool, and often asks to go to bed before our eight o’clock official bedtime. But then other days he shouts that he is “not tired at all!” and refuses.

The bedtime routine now includes some reading, often from a chapter book. Then I sing for him. Currently he has a fixed list of five favourites, after which I can sing whatever I like. The five are Sockerbagaren, Trollmor, Ekorrn satt i granen, Kalle Teodor and Tre gubbar – in that order. For “my songs” I usually pick some Estonian ones. The cardboard songbooks that were so important a few months ago are now not.

He likes talking like baby or otherwise distorting both his voice and the words to the point where I have no idea what he is saying. Then he translates for me.

Adrian at bedtime.

Our piles of Bamse magazines is growing larger and messier every week. We have boxes for them, but getting the kids to use the boxes is not so easy. Now I ordered ten binders for the magazines, so we won’t have to deal with loose issues any more.

Here Adrian is unwrapping all the binders.

Adrian demonstrated how he can stand. “Like this! And like a triangle! And like an X!”

Nail polish. Plus a temporary tattoo, a too-small T-shirt, and a Bamse.

And daylight! There is still enough daylight for photography when we get home, even at some distance from the windows.

Ingrid and Adrian.

I tried to photograph myself brushing Adrian’s teeth. He couldn’t help but wiggle and try to look at the camera all the time. Instead, here he is washing his hands and mouth just after I finished brushing his teeth.

Adrian is still doing perler beads. Beading is often what he says he was busy with, or just about to start, when I pick him up at preschool. Last weekend he did a fair bit of beading at home and I watched. He was impressively good at it. He reads patterns like a pro. “Three blue ones in this row, and then in the next row there is one extra on each side. And I will need five pink ones and then four more.”

Often he wants to his beading projects to be surprises. We’re not allowed to see them, and then he gives them to one of us as a gift. Sometimes he starts off by saying that it’s a gift for me, then changes his mind and says it’s for Eric instead, or vice versa. The main thing is that it must be a surprise and a gift.

Just like Ingrid at that age, he is picking up simple maths in his daily life, for fun, with no real effort. We count things when an obvious opportunity arises, and add them up when that makes sense. First three grapes and then another twig with three more, that’s six grapes. And so on.

Adrian can count to twenty but doesn’t know how to go on from there – but he can also count from one hundred to one hundred and twenty. He can count backwards from ten to zero, but only in Swedish.

I often find him browsing Bamse comics. He can’t read them yet but that doesn’t seem to bother him. Sometimes he asks me, What does it say here? when there is a sign or a letter or some other written object in Bamse – but not being able to read the speech bubbles don’t seem to bother him.

He loves it when someone reads to him. His taste in books is surprisingly mature, as long as the book doesn’t use any complicated words. We can read chapter books for him, with few pictures (but more pictures is better). Currently, for example, Eric is reading Brandkårsmysteriet (a LasseMaja mystery) for him at bedtime.

He gets bedtime stories, like most kids, but in our house we also have a morning story. I began doing it this autumn because he was always so angry about being woken on weekday mornings. It was an instant hit, and by now it is a strong tradition that both kids enjoy. Because he can listen to chapter books, and Ingrid still enjoys books with lots of pictures, usually it isn’t hard to find books that suit both of them.

Bottoms are still incredibly funny. We have a page-a-day art calendar in the kitchen, and one day’s image was Titian’s Venus and Adonis. The ONLY thing that Adrian noticed with lots of giggles, from the other side of the kitchen, was rumpa!

In my notes for this month I had noted down “anger” again but by now that has subsided again. The periods of barely-controlled anger come and go: times when he reacts to any opposition and any obstacle by yelling.

Right now he is more likely to express himself with words – such as calling me dummaste mamman, “stupidest mom”. When his anger subsides, he comes and looks at me with sorry eyes and says I am the kindest mom, the best mom, and we hug.

Random things:

• He hated tagging along for Ingrid’s riding lessons so badly that we rearranged things. He now stays really late at preschool instead. Ingrid and I pick him up after riding school at about 17:15. We’ve done it this way twice. The first time he was the only kid left; the second time it was him and one other boy whose mum arrived at the same time as us. I thought this might bother him but he’s been fine with it. Much more content than at the stables.
• Adrian loves music. But the kids’ cheap CD player has become more and more unreliable, so they have started to use our Sonos wireless hifi system. It is a lot more complicated than the CD player, so Adrian cannot really navigate it yet, but he is learning bits and pieces. Mostly he listens to the soundtrack from Frost, and the Barnkammarböckerna (which are easy to find).

Likes:

• Bamse. Frozen.
• Fixa rummet, a “fixer upper” kind of TV show where they redo kids’ rooms.
• Rice cakes. Raspberry jam.
• Thick ski mitts and fur-lined winter hat.

Dislikes:

• Baths (despite the impression you might get from the photo below) and washing his hands.

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Adrian eating a rice cake.

Adrian playing with a marble run that Ingrid and I built.