Adrian, opening the giant Lego set he got for his birthday – the tower of Barad-dûr. Forty bags holding a total of 5471 pieces.

Adrian’s birthday isn’t until Tuesday, but baking a fancy layer cake is not something you just whip up after work, so we had the cake today instead.

Celebrating my birthday a day early because Adrian is leaving for scout camp tomorrow, and Ingrid is also looking forward to spending tomorrow with her boyfriend since they’ve been apart for over two weeks. Since I am mostly celebrating for my family’s sake and not mine, I don’t care at all what day we do it.

Happy birthday, I am now 47 years minus 1 day!

That’s my factual age. In my own head, I don’t even know what age I am.

When I see people in the street, I instinctively think of roughly 25-to-30-year-olds as “like me”. Like, I see a person walking by in the street and subconsciously identify as belonging to the same group. Whereas people of my own age often start to get a bit of a paunch, or lightly bad posture, and looking “matronly”. I was at a second-hand clothes shop in Tartu just the other week and vaguely noticed a woman next to me who was holding up some shirt or something, without paying any real attention to her, and subconsciously thought of her as “old”. Like, “oh, there’s an older lady here, too”. And a second later I realized that she was no older than me, and could well be a bit younger. Ouch. Maybe I’m just desperately clinging on to my lost youth, but I am absolutely going to keep on clinging, by exercising and eating healthily and not dressing in baggy clothes in navy and beige. Absolutely embracing the grey hair, though!

But when I talk to people, then 25-to-30-year-olds seem really young, and I feel my calendar age. They’re all full of bouncy energy, somehow naive and fresh. They care so much about all sorts of things, whereas I am becoming jaded and can’t work up much energy about any of the big questions. Giving up on humanity, kind of. I’m an optimist on a small scale, when it comes to individual people and relationships, but a pessimist on a larger scale.

Lazy day today.

This corner of the sofa, with the plush cushion and the woolly blanket, is both Ingrid’s and Adrian’s favourite. And Nysse’s as well, actually. Eric and I prefer the firmer parts of the sofa. Or really, in Eric’s case, the even firmer sofa in the other room.

But the blanket is the best. I got it as a birthday gift, and I’m glad I can say it’s mine, because this way Adrian can’t just steal it all the time.

As a birthday present to myself, I gave myself a dinner at Minako sushi, one of the absolute best sushi restaurants in Stockholm.

We’d reserved a table for an evening two weeks after my birthday, but that very day Nysse came home with broken bones, so the dinner never happened. Then there was Nysse’s convalescence, and then me trying to recover my energy after 6 weeks of near isolation, and then the kids’ birthdays, and suddenly it was November.

Now, though, we made a new reservation and there were no emergencies of any kind, so we had wonderful sushi. Eric, Ingrid and I had sushi at Minako, while Adrian, who isn’t as fond of sushi, ordered dumplings and spring rolls from a local place in Spånga and got the house for himself for the whole evening.

The omakase (chef’s choice) dinner consisted of 7 courses, if I remember correctly. Already the first one, with marinated octopus and seaweed, was incredible. I almost never order octopus because it always feels like rubber, but this one was only delicately chewy.

There were a few plates of nigiri, common in shape but uncommon in the choice of fish. Salmon, yes, but also rainbow trout and arctic char. And cod, which – like octopus – I never like in any cooked form, but was perfect here. Every time I eat really excellent sushi one of my main conclusions is that this is how fish should be eaten. Cooking mostly just destroys it. (Except for very lightly cooked salmon that is just barely not raw.)

My favourite pieces were these futomaki rolls. There was daikon radish in there, and something to do with pumpkin, and tuna, and a leaf that tasted like a cross between mint and coriander, and some other thing that I can’t remember. It all came together into a taste explosion where everything balanced and complemented everything else, and every bite brought out something new.

Our baby cousin’s second birthday, and he got a magnetic construction toy that entertained guests of all ages.

Adrian was most proud of this pentagonal prism with inverted pyramid bottoms.

Ingrid’s actual birthday was a week ago, but that day was a party for the extended family and her and Adrian – rather than for her alone. To give her a celebration that was only for her, we had a family-only second birthday party for her today. With lemon merengue pie, of course!

It came out very lemony this time. Lemon is good, more lemon is better, but apparently there is a point where there is too much lemon in the pie.

Adrian and Eric made a birthday cake for Adrian’s birthday yesterday, using the same recipe as two years ago. It’s delicious, again, but also huge, again. If it gets made again, we’ll use no more than half the amount of frosting in the recipe.

PS: When we had eaten half the cake, I weighed the rest out of curiosity – and it was 1.5 kg, making the whole cake a whopping 3 kg. That’s a heck of a lot of cake.

Adrian’s one an only birthday present this year – which is also his Christmas gift – is a new gaming computer. Just like for Ingrid’s computer three years ago, Eric did all the choosing and ordering, and almost all the building and assembling. It went smoother than the building of Ingrid’s computer – by the end of the day, Adrian had a shiny, colourful new computer.

Following time-honoured tradition and wrapping birthday presents late at night. These required a lot of paper and tape.