I am working on building a propello, at Adrian’s request. Propello is the flying vehicle that Numbert (of the Numbert books) flies with.

This month’s themes:

Friends. Adrian often asks to play with a friend after preschool. I have to say no more often than I would like, because of Ingrid’s activities. I try to make sure he gets at least one playdate a week.

Singing. The kids have been practising Christmas songs at preschool, so Adrian has been singing Santa Lucia and such. But he also sings other songs, everything from En elefant balanserade to Vem kan segla förutan vind (which turned into a funnily illogical Vem kan ro utan vind in his version).

Building. He builds with Lego at home and Polydron at preschool. Among the first things he learned to build with the Polydrons was a spinning top. Spinning tops, by the way, are no longer called snurra by today’s kids but “beyblades”, or more likely “beybleys” if the kids are young. So Adrian calls the Polydrons in general “beybleys”.

Christmas. Adrian is excitedly looking forward to Christmas. He closely follows the various Christmas calendars around the house and knows exactly what date it is today. He has a Lego Christmas calendar that he is very fond of.

Empathy. He is developing an understanding of other people’s feelings, and has a kind soul. One day when we played Den försvunna diamanten, a board game where you walk around trying to find a lost diamond, and he was having a particularly lucky streak, I said something disappointed about losing. He instantly comforted me, very sincerely, and offered me some of his money.

Potty humour. Pee and poo and bottoms and penises are incredibly funny. Put Adrian together with another boy of the same age, and there is no end to how many potty words you will hear.

A bunch of balloons, left over from the kids birthday parties, have been gathering dust behind our sofa. I fished them all yesterday, intending to pop them all and put them in the bin. As soon as they were out in the open, Adrian noticed them. Today he focused on stuffing them in a box. (An excellent box, by the way, durable and with a transparent window.)

Not allowing the laws of physics to hinder him, he tried to squeeze in balloons that were larger than the available space. I am not sure whether he expected the balloons to compress or the box to expand. Quite a number of them popped in the process.

Then he got help from Ingrid.

Since he started with the larger balloons and worked his way down in size, he actually got to a point where he could fit three balloons in the box.

And a Littlest Pet Shop figure, too. The balloons were apparently not balloons but soda and Coke for the “pet shops”. Here he/she is, on top of the Coke. I’m not sure whether he looks trapped, or all happy about being locked up with an ocean of Coke.

Something Adrian made at preschool.

Adrian putting on his favourite pyjamas. He loves them because they are fleecy and warm, and wears them every night now during the cold season.

Unfortunately he only has one.

There is a significant chance that there will be fleece pyjamas under the Christmas tree this year.

Adrian loves bread. He especially loves the apricot and walnut bread that Eric made this weekend. (Adrian helped put the apricots and walnuts in the dough.)

When Adrian eats food that he really really enjoys, there is no doubt about it: he chews with his eyes closed, going nyom nyom nyom all the time, like in a cartoon.

Playing with kinetic sand. Adrian, Eric, and two of Adrian’s friends.

Lusen is a Swedish game, dating from the 1950s, where you roll a die to collect parts to build a weird-looking plastic insect. Adrian and I played Lusen today.

Adrian is four… and yet he’s always “the little one”. At this age Ingrid felt so big, but now that I have an eight-year-old to compare to, Adrian feels young whatever he does.

He himself wants to be bigger. He says he wishes he was as big as Ingrid, or that “Ingrid came out of you after me” so he could be the older one.

It’s hard to notice Adrian growing because he’s my second child. His development is not news, I’ve seen most of it before, so I really have to pay attention. I get regular little surprises when I notice how much he’s grown.

Today for example his friend D came home with us after preschool. They played together for two hours, needing no help from me with conflict resolution, which really took me by surprise. There were occasional discussions and disagreements but those got resolved incredibly smoothly and peacefully.

On Friday he had his 4-year checkup. Mostly the things they check are incredibly basic, like walking along a line on the floor, threading large wooden beads on a shoestring, answering simple questions about pictures, etc. He was also asked to draw a man. On his own, he never draws anything but scribbles and tangles. But here to my surprise he drew a surprisingly advanced man: head, eyes and mouth, neck, body, legs (but no arms), and even food in his tummy. I had no idea he could do that. He is never interested in drawing at home.

He surprises me with interesting questions as well. How are fridges made? What is in glass? How did the Earth get made? What is inside the Earth? He’s especially interested in those last ones and has asked me to retell that story several times.

Some weeks ago he tried out an iPad game called Magic Garden. There’s a board with a set of tiles, and you have to rotate the tiles to make the pieces match up so water can flow through the pipe system. To my great surprise he got through like 20 or 30 levels, all on his own – and towards the end they were really complex.

Mostly, though, he chooses YouTube videos or simple games instead of thinking games – because he is tired. He is tired when he wakes in the morning, can’t calm down enough to sleep at preschool, refuses to go to bed early, and usually takes a long time to go to sleep at night.

He’s not really too grumpy, like he was earlier this autumn. But he complains about having to go to preschool, and in the afternoon he complains about having to go home. (It’s comforting to hear him say he doesn’t want to go home in the afternoon, because it means his complaining in the morning is about not wanting to go anywhere, rather than about preschool itself.)

At night the bedtime ritual revolves around singing. First we read a book. Then we sing the songs in his cardboard Ellen och Olle song books. I had given them away to his baby cousin, thinking that surely he had outgrown them. But he really missed them and kept asking for them, so I asked them back, and now we use them every night.

Often he joins me. Sometimes he sings the actual song for real. They’re practising Christmas songs at preschool, so he joins me for Räven raskar över isen for example. More often he sings some nonsense sound instead, but with the same melody as the song I’m singing: “pata pata paa-ta patapatta patta paa-ta” for “har du sett min apa, min söta fina lilla apa” for example. Sometimes he varies the rhythm as well, putting in two quick ones where the real lyrics have one long sound, etc. Which makes it a bit challenging for me to keep singing the real thing, but it’s fun as well.

Then we put the books away and turn off the light, and I keep singing. “First Trollmor, and not too last Kalle Theodor” he reminds me. “Not too last” means it can come later, but not so late that he will have fallen asleep before I get to it.

Favourite clothes: fleece one-piece pyjamas. Oh how happy he would be if we could buy more of those, but I can’t find any. Also, his snowsuit. I brought it up from the basement one cold day, and he kept using it even when the weather turned warmer again. I guess it’s more comfortable than jacket and trousers.

Not favourite clothes: socks. He doesn’t mind them at home but whenever I pick him up at preschool, he’s always taken off his socks.

Favourite food: porridge, but not as intensely as before. Soy “yoghurt” – Carlshamn’s blueberry Soygurt and Alpro’s berry-flavoured yoghurts. “Apple boats” – apples, cored and cut into chunky segments.

Adrian and his friend, in accidentally almost-matching striped outfits, sharing an iPad, surrounded by the leftovers of previous activities: a sofa fort, boxes with Lego and train tracks holding up that fort, and two pirate swords.