It used to be that, among the first things I would do when visiting Estonia, I would buy bread and kohuke (a quark-based chocolate-glazed dessert). Now I’ve gotten used to foreign bread and also found better bread than I used to in Sweden, so the bread is not as important any more. And the kohukesed have degraded; most feel slightly gluey (pumped full of hydrogenated fat) and too sweet for my taste.

During this summer’s trip we have instead eaten our fill of strawberries (cultivated as well as wild) and peas, straight from the pod, although not straight from the bush. Next summer we will definitely have to plant some peas.

Just like last year,

1. Estonian mosquitoes really like the taste of my blood, and like last year, some of the bites swell to palm-sized tender lumps.

2. Ingrid totally does not enjoy being outdoors in the countryside. Keeps suggesting reading books, watching movies, drawing, anything indoors. Initially seems happy about the idea of going out to dig in the sand, but after a few minutes’ walking, when we cannot see the house anymore and are surrounded by grass and trees, she gets desperately unhappy, and we turn back.

My vacation starts today, with a two-week trip to Estonia for Ingrid and myself, while Eric gets some time on his own. Ingrid gets some language immersion, I get to meet friends and family. We’ve been talking a lot about how on Thursday we will go on a big boat, and the boat will take us to Estonia, where we will meet Grandfather and Tädi Ülle, and where everybody speaks Estonian and no one understands Swedish at all.

Things that have kept me from blogging much:

1. Summer has finally arrived. This week has been sunny and warm, after several weeks of cold, windy, wet, distinctly non-summery weather. Add lots of evening light, and the result is one energized kid. Ingrid and I have been out on playgrounds in the evenings, cycling, splashing, running around. Today we went out after dinner and by the time I finally convinced her to go home, it was nine o’clock. She only fell asleep around 10.

2. I have experienced an unusual burst of energy myself, and spent a lot of time programming. I’m starting to actually feel comfortable with Ruby and Rails, and getting stuff done. It’s not a painful bang-my-head-against-the-wall experience any more. My expenses tracker can now do all the basic CRUD stuff, plus UI goodies like paging, sorting, filtering, plus importing from CSV.

Speaking of programming, today I also dove into Python at work. A tedious task landed on my desk, and of course I decided to automate it even though writing the script would take about as long as doing it manually. I happened to have Python installed already (a prerequisite for some tool) so that’s what I fired up. I’d never done anything in Python before but after half an hour I had it all working. Learning Ruby was a good warmup, I think: now my brain was well prepared for working with a scripting language.

I was going to write an actual post today, but then I mentioned to Eric that I was thinking of printing business cards, and he sent me to Moo and I just had to go through all of their designs, and then of course I had to order some cards, and by the time I was done enjoying myself it was almost midnight.

Today was session #2 of the bugg course. The course starts relatively late (half past six) which, given that I leave work at about half past three, gives me several free hours in between. Today I spent much of that time buying summer clothes for Ingrid; last week I went to the SF book shop in Gamla stan.

When I came out of the book shop and headed towards my bicycle, which I’d parked out of the way, just around the corner, I discovered a small chocolate shop there. I love good (expensive) dark chocolates. They had a sale on some interesting flavours of Swedish chocolate, which I was curious enough to try.

The saffron-flavoured chocolate was interesting. The glögg-flavoured variety was even better, and the balsamico and honey ones were so good that I ate all except one the very same evening (and only left that one so that Eric would have a chance to try it) even though I couldn’t help thinking, here goes 10 kronor in a bite… and another 10 kr….

Today I had no business in that part of town except buying more of the balsamico chocolate.

Saturday we took advantage of the great weather (warm and sunny enough for t-shirt and sandals) and went cycling in the morning. We cycled to Bögs gård, where I expected Ingrid to enjoy the animals. She couldn’t care less. But Eric and I got some sun and fresh air and exercise.

In the afternoon we worked on our hedge: Eric put in place the rest of the lawn edging, and we spread fertilizer and more soil around the bushes.

Sunday morning Ingrid and I went to our Estonian playgroup. She got to paint an egg during the crafts period. We spent Sunday afternoon and most of Monday in Uppsala with my mother and brother. Ingrid ate her painted egg, and more.

This afternoon we invited our neighbours over for afternoon play and dinner. Both their girls go to the same nursery as Ingrid, and the Julia, the younger one, is in the same group. They’ve been here at our place once before, and a few weeks ago Ingrid and I spent an afternoon at their house. Ingrid loved it, and she speaks almost every day about how she will soon be able to play with Julia again.

I’ve had a couple of really productive days. It feels like I’ve gotten more stuff done (the kind of discretionary should-do-at-some-point-but-not-just-now kind of stuff that keeps piling up on my todo list but that I rarely find time for) in the last few days than in the previous month. A half-day at work yesterday gave me 3 free hours, the spring sunshine has given me lots of energy, and Ingrid’s been unusually happy and unclingy today which gave me a chance to get stuff done in the garden.

• Bought new socks and underwear
• Bought a mouse and a display cable adapter for my Mac
• Bought more towels for the bathroom
• Ordered a new dishwasher
• Took a trip to IKEA with Eric and Ingrid to buy a new kitchen cupboard
• Bought a doll stroller for Ingrid
• Filled in several of the mysterious burrow-like holes in the garden
• Planted the bulbs I was going to plant in November

Spring seems to have arrived, finally. I hope there are no more snowstorms in store. Ingrid and I walked around the garden yesterday, and discovered mysterious shoots in our front garden, of the sort normally seen from bulb flowers. I’m glad we’ll have a few flowers there after all, even though I didn’t get around to planting any this autumn.

It’s the end of March and it is still winter. There were brief glimpses of spring – this weekend we even saw various neighbours get out their bicycles and pushbikes and footballs and hedge clippers. And yet today we woke up to several degrees below zero. As the day progressed we also got howling winds and snowstorms. Give me spring already!

This is what it was like outside, this afternoon:

For comparison, here’s what life was like almost exactly three years ago (give or take a few days) – except that was in London: