Adrian’s birthday party. I had bought balloons for decoration. Adrian loved them so we blew up a lot more than planned, in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours. The kids played with them, and finally popped them all with the bamboo skewers we had used for lunch.

Forty-eight months; four years today.

It isn’t easy to be Adrian right now. He is anxious and worried. He is tired. He is irritable and sensitive. He is angry. There is something in him or his life that is not letting him just be.

He is worried and clingy. There’s no separation anxiety per se: he has no difficulty letting go of us, there are no tears when we drop him off at preschool, no problems sleeping in his own bed. But he wants to know all the time where I am, and if I by any chance go upstairs without telling him and he notices, he’s in tears and tells me to wait for him. In the morning when I leave for work he must get a chance to give me hugs and lots of kisses; just saying good-bye is not enough.

This weekend when we were walking in the forest he held on to someone’s hand almost all the time, and when he didn’t, he stayed within a few steps of us. When Ingrid falls behind on the way home from school – not far, maybe just 10 meters – he starts to worry. At birthday parties (which we’ve had at a pace of about once per week) he insists on me or Eric staying there during the entire party.

He is easily upset and inflexible. When things are not exactly the way he had planned or expected, he breaks down. No bananas in the house? “Then I won’t eat any breakfast at all!” Favourite pyjamas are in the laundry? “Then I don’t want go sleep at all!” He cries and shouts and stomps out of the room.

Sometimes just saying no to him is enough, even in the kindest possible tone. Sometimes it doesn’t even need to be an explicit no, even something like “be careful here, the saucepan is hot” can cause tears and drama.

If it’s me causing the problem (by warning him about hot saucepans for example) “then I won’t talk to you” and “I want to be by myself!” or “then you’re the stupidest mum in the world!”

It’s always worst when he is tired or when he has low blood sugar. Mornings are sensitive, especially before breakfast on weekday mornings when we have to wake him. Evenings likewise. We are very careful not to let him stay up too late because it will only end badly, and have repercussions the morning after, too.

He’s almost always tired when I pick him up at preschool – I suspect he may not eat enough. He used to ride his balance bike to and from preschool; now he’s always too tired and I bring him home on the back of my bike. And he always needs at least one banana immediately after preschool. Some days he eats three during the 5 or 10 minutes it takes us to get to Ingrid’s school.

The rest of us try to compensate. We do our best to be extra flexible and accommodative, to break bad news (such as the lack of bananas) gently. To mention alternatives, but suggest no solutions; to give choices, but not too many. It can become pretty taxing mentally, to have to be so careful around him.

In between he is friendly, kind and sweet. Then he tells me I’m the best mum in the world. He asks me how my day was and likes to listen to me to describe everything I did during the day.

He plays well together with Ingrid, and as far as I know he’s happy and sociable at preschool. He likes playing with girls best. For his birthday party this Saturday, his guests will be 4 girls. He used to have a few boys he played with but many are too wild for his taste. He especially doesn’t like the ones who play wild, angry games with “shooters” and lots of noise.

Favourite toy: Lego, by far. Sometimes when he walks away in anger from the breakfast table he goes to our office (which is the room furthest away from the kitchen) and slams the door shut. Other times he notices the bin with Lego blocks on his way and stops there, and calms himself down with some building work.

Favourite clothes: pyjamas.

Adrian with the toy phone that he got from Ingrid as a birthday present. “Look, my phone has a camera!”

He also instantly fell in love with his plush monster Rufus, who got to go with him to preschool today. Here Rufus is getting ready for the ride home in my bicycle basket.

I was sewing. Adrian climbed up to keep me company.

Afternoon fruit snack.

Adrian with Lego.

A lot of growing up has been happening here.

About a month ago, Adrian moved out of our bedroom into what used to be Ingrid’s room and is now the kids’ room. We had been talking about a bunk bed for a while, and when we found out that Eric’s father had one just kind of lying around, we made it happen. Both kids were immediately in love with the bed and Adrian wanted to sleep there that very night.

And that was that. Since then he’s slept there every night, and fallen asleep there every night but one. He has not wandered into our bed even once.

From about five in the morning he often sleeps restlessly and noisily. That used to lead to him moving closer to me or Eric in our shared bed, but in his new bed the lack of other warm bodies doesn’t seem to bother him at all. I was a bit worried that he might wake Ingrid but that hasn’t happened. Occasionally the noise he makes has woken me instead, especially early on when we kept the doors open between our bedrooms. I’ve even thought that surely he must have fell out of the bed, and waited for the cries, but nothing… I think he might be hitting the wall with his feet or elbows or head or something.

When the room became the kids’ room instead of just Ingrid’s room, it wasn’t just the sleep habits that changed. Until now Ingrid’s room was really just Ingrid’s bedroom – during the day the kids were always downstairs. Now all of a sudden they’ve started playing there. (This might also have something to do with new, stricter limits on iPad use in the evenings…)

During summer both kids would sleep until about 7, then get up and play with their iPads while we slept on. Now our alarms go off a bit before 7 and there is no iPad time. And then there is the time pressure to get up, get dressed, eat breakfast… Adrian is grumpy almost every single morning now. Getting up earlier helps because then we don’t need to hurry as much, and I can take 15 minutes to cuddle and read for him and Ingrid.

When we read, he’s started looking at the text and asking me where it says that thing that I just read. He’s figured out that words in extra large type or in a different style are the important or loud ones.

We’ve started reading the Mitt första 123 books that Ingrid got around this age and Adrian is very fond of these. The first one, I think, we read every day for a week. We’re taking a new one every week because “you get a Numbert book on Saturdays” was so much easier to explain than any alternative. But this might be a bit too much; we’ll see.

Adrian likes to compares things. This is bigger than that, and this one is even bigger. Pappa is taller than emme.

He has been curious about dying, and wanted me to name lots of ways of dying, and then added some more himself.

And he has wondered what comes after the sky, when you fly higher than the sky. Space is kind of hard to explain.

Our two weeks of intensive Estonian practice made a huge difference. From hardly speaking any Estonian at all, he has now pretty much gone over to speaking Estonian to me all the time. Sometimes when he asks me something and I respond in Swedish (to include Eric as well) he actually asks me to say that again in Estonian. Sometimes I’ve even heard the kids speak Estonian to each other. I’m sure that long days at preschool will put an end to this soon but I’m very pleased in the meantime.

Finally, finally, after uncounted months of no progress, Adrian is now nappy free. He totally skipped the potty stage, and the accident-prone trying and practising stage, and went from nappies to full toilet use pretty much overnight.

He rarely has any accidents, not even at night. It’s as if a switch had been thrown. I guess there was some psychological threshold or resistance that needed to be conquered.

At home he often manages his toilet visits independently, without any help. He has a little step stool to help him, and a child-sized toilet seat ring. Outside the home the toilets are tall and the seats large, so he needs help getting up and down.

When we’re out and about, he prefers peeing in bushes to going to the toilet. One of the main reasons is his sensitivity to noise, especially rumbling, roaring sounds. He cannot stand the noise of hand dryers, and the Dyson Airblade is by far the worst. He is so distressed by them that he cannot think of anything except escaping the noise. I can sympathise with him. The Airblade is awfully noisy, and while I don’t quite feel the need to flee, I try to keep my distance and won’t normally use them.

To get away from the noise, we use the separate family/disabled toilet instead of the main ones whenever possible. Sometimes I carry a pair of kid-sized ear protectors with me for him. Those are also good for other kinds of noisy situations, such as roadside picnic areas, or the building works going on in our street in Tartu. I don’t know what they’re doing – it sounds like a jackhammer but I’ve never stopped to look; we all hurry past as fast as we can.

When we went shopping for underwear, Adrian picked a bunch with monsters on them, and a set of day-of-week briefs. He’s not too picky about wearing them on the right day; instead he picks a pair, puts them on, and then asks what day he’s wearing.

(Face painting by Ingrid)

Adrian is interested in numbers, sizes, measurements, metres and kilograms. He asks how large things are, or how many meters of potatoes we bought and then guesses “fifty meters! no, six!”

He has become quite aware of his age, too. He knows that he is three, almost four, and that Ingrid is several years older. He knows his birthday is in autumn, which comes after summer, when the leaves turn yellow. He wants to be six so he can go to school like Ingrid, and watch big kid movies.

He likes joining in the games we play, and with some coaching and guidance manages some of them pretty well. We’ve played dominoes, “Försvunna diamanten” and Go fish.

He has his own score in “yellow car”, which by the way has mutated into “orange car” now because there were way too many yellow cars in the streets of Stockholm. Occasionally he notices Ingrid and me discussing our scores and asks what his score is. Then he shouts out “red car” or “black truck” or something and gets a point for that. Meanwhile, Ingrid has realised that I have no chance of catching up with her, but she wants the score to be more even to make the game more exciting for her. I now get two points for each car, and sometimes she points out orange cars for me to claim.

He still has his cow milk protein intolerance. One day when we were all having ice cream and he wasn’t happy with his, he asked to try ours. What the heck, we thought, let’s see what happens, and he got small spoonfuls from each of us. What happened was a night of constant waking because of nightmares, until four in the morning. Won’t be trying that again for some while.

Favourite food: French fries. Raspberries. Porridge. Potatoes. Broccoli and cauliflower.

Favourite story: Three little pigs.

Favourite movie: Despicable Me, 1 and 2.

Favourite YouTube clips: people demonstrating play-dough play sets.

Favourite toy: Lego.

The anger and discontent continues. I am almost (almost) getting immune to it. But it is affecting all of us.

The day begins, literally, with Adrian angry at us for waking him. Then we go downstairs and read a story, which means complaining about the choice of book.

The breakfast is wrong, the bowl is wrong, the fact that porridge was served by Eric and not me is wrong.

Really whatever we do it’s wrong. In the morning he is angry because it’s Eric who will drop him off at daycare and not me. In the afternoon he is angry because it’s me picking him up and not Eric.

If I come by bike he’s angry; if I walk he’s angry; if he has to ride his balance bike he is angry.

If we go to the supermarket he’s angry about having to do that. If I’ve done the shopping beforehand without him, he says he wants to go to the supermarket.

He seems to be extra angry when he’s just with us, and less so when he’s with friends.

And when he isn’t angry, he whines. He seems almost incapable of expressing an opinion without whining our shouting.

My current working hypothesis is that this might perhaps be due to lack of sleep. He refuses to go to bed, and he especially refuses to go to bed with Eric, and he extra super refuses to go to bed earlier than Ingrid. So most evenings he goes to bed later than I think he really needs to. I guess we may have to simply start ignoring his opinions about this and forcefully carry him to his bed when we think it’s time.

When he isn’t angry, his favourite game is “mommy daddy baby”. Usually I am the baby and he is the daddy. My job is easy; I need to lie down and sleep in the play tent. He pretend reads books for me, brings me toys, makes me breakfast etc. “Baby, daddy will be back in just a moment!”

He is interested in who eats what. What do dogs eat? And snails? Ducks? And what about frogs? And thieves?

I wonder what or who he thinks a thief is. He knows I had my bike stolen by a thief, but I wonder what kind of picture he sees in his head when he thinks about that.

Favourite vegetable: Broccoli.
Favourite book: Sipsik.
Favourite plaything: Lengths of plastic pipe (left over from when I built bird netting frames for our planter boxes). One large cardboard box. Lego.

You know how people say that becoming a parent has changed them, and that it has taught them new things about themselves? All sorts of life lessons, often deep and true.

It turns out that this also applies on the very lowest levels, the smallest things – such as sleep habits.

Adrian still sleeps with us. The actual position has varied – first it was me next to him, then Eric, now it’s my turn again. Most of the night Adrian is on his side and I am on mine and I don’t notice him much. But in the early hours of the morning, as he moves into lighter sleep, he wants body contact.

He likes to sleep with the soles of his feet pressed against me, for example, or even with his legs on top of me: as if he was supported from below when sitting or standing.

He also likes to put his hands inside his pyjamas, so his palms are against his neck and shoulder. Or he clasps his hands and then tucks them next to his neck.

I had never really thought about it much but I’ve noticed that I actually do kind of the same. I also like to press my feet against Eric (but not at 5 o’clock in the morning, and not against his ribs). And there is something oddly comfortable about putting my hand on my neck and shoulder when I’m sleeping on my side (or on my abdomen if I’m on my back). It’s as if an open loop was closed. I am grounded.

Ingrid is picky about the physical sensation of her sleeping arrangements. She needs everything to feel just right. She has a narrow comfort zone when it comes to temperature, for example. During the day she doesn’t care much, but at night it can take her a long while to find a good blanket solution. She tries one blanket, then the other, then the thinner one folded double… then puts her legs out, then just her feet… it’s either too warm or too cold, and needs to be adjusted until it’s right. And only then she can go to sleep.

The blanket needs to lie right as well before she can feel comfortable, and if I am holding my hand on her chest or stomach that also needs to be right: not too far up or too far down, and in the middle rather than to one side. And likewise her own arms and legs. She can’t just put them down and be comfortable – they need to be adjusted until they feel right.

Now I’m not too picky about blanket weight (I think) – my usual blanket is usually warm enough. But I do recognise this feeling of things being uncomfortable when they’re not just right. For me it comes and goes; sometimes I feel it much more strongly and then for a long time I may not notice it at all.

During a “sensitive” period I feel every wrinkle in the bedsheet, especially under my feet. It can really bother me if the blanket lies more heavily on one leg than the other, or if it touches me too lightly in some place. The blanket needs to come up to my shoulders but not touch my neck.