Midsummer day’s picnic in Hammarskog. Lots of food, thereafter a bit of a food coma, and after that Ingrid and Adrian prepared quizzes for us. Ingrid won Adrian’s quiz, while I won hers.



(Adrian took this last photo, after decorating me with his cap.)

Midsummer lunch, with herring and eggs and new potatoes. And a decadent strawberry and elderflower cake.

In the evening, Ingrid and Eric watched the movie Midsummer. They’re the only two in this family who like scary movies.

Eric made stracciatella ice cream.

Ingrid is now about as tall as me, and hasn’t stopped growing yet.

She just culled a basketful of clothes from her wardrobe. Some she has outgrown, some she simply doesn’t like any more. And I almost think some of the latter might fit me. Would it be weird for me to inherit clothes from her?

That feeling when you’ve had a day full of meetings and finish working at 17:30 and hurry to the kitchen to check whether we have any dinner materials because you really need to start cooking something quite urgently, only to find out that your teenage daughter is way ahead of you and is already halfway done with dinner.

When dinner is done, the dinner bell is rung. It has a wonderfully deep sound that carries well through the house. But it doesn’t do well through closed doors. Neither does my voice.

I used to go upstairs to knock on Ingrid’s door to call her to dinner, but that got tiring quite quickly. Especially when the answer I got was in the vein of “I’ll be down soon, I just have to win this battle”. Not only did I do the work of cooking dinner – I then had to chase down people to come and eat it.

The obvious, practical solution to this was a pair of remote-operated doorbells. The buttons are downstairs in the kitchen, next to the singing bowl. The bells themselves are upstairs in Ingrid’s and Adrian’s rooms. They each chose their own ringtones. One sounds like a bunch of birds tweeting; the other is a more traditional melody. Sort of like 19th-century servants’ bells, but the other way round.

Mostly the bells mean “dinner is ready”, but not always. Today Ingrid rang Adrian’s bell when she wanted him to bring down the iPad (that normally “lives” downstairs but is often “forgotten” upstairs) and had sore leg muscles from gym class. Snarky comments were exchanged, both about “forgetting” the iPad, and about using the bell instead of walking.

Ingrid found out this weekend that one of the friends she hangs out with is unwell, and his mother has tested positive for covid-19. And now she is sick as well. It started with a slightly sore throat, and then continued with headache, tiredness, mild fever, and a general feeling of being unwell and achy.

The current procedure is that everyone with symptoms of possible covid-19 infection should get tested. In Stockholm you can either make your way to a drive-in testing station, or get a DIY test delivered home. We went the home testing route.

The process was very smooth. You book online, and a few hours later a test is delivered to your door. You get 15 minutes to take the test, and then the courier comes back to pick up the little test tube with your sample.

Ingrid took the test in the middle of the day and late this evening she already got the result. Negative.

It’s an odd coincidence that she would get some other respiratory infection just as she has been exposed to someone who has been exposed… or perhaps this was a false negative. Who knows. But lacking any other information, I guess we’ll have to trust the test.

And now my own throat is feeling a bit sore. We’ve been trying to keep Ingrid at more of a distance than usual, but we’re still in the same rooms, breathing the same air, so it’s hard to not infect each other with whatever it is.

Eric and Ingrid are playing a racing game. They both play a lot of fast-reaction games like FPSs, so they’re quite evenly matched.

Ingrid came home today with a chart of her height and weight development, from the school nurse. The girl who used to be shortest in her class, always at least one standard deviation below the average for her age, has now caught up with her peers and hit the average line. 163.5 cm and counting.

The points on that curve are sparse so it’s hard to say anything about the slope, but since she’s grown 10 cm in each of the last two years (according to my home measurements) she’s likely not done growing yet.

I’ve always expected this to happen, and always told her so. I was a late grower myself. Always among the shortest in my class. The militarily inspired gym classes in Soviet Estonia did their best to rub it in by lining kids up at the beginning of each lesson, first by gender, then by height. I caught up later than Ingrid, some time in high school I think.

Ingrid was never too worried, I think, but still very conscious about her height, or rather the lack of it. Now she is very conscious and very pleased to be as tall as she is. She often shows off how she can touch the door lintels – without even being on her toes! – and how she is almost as tall as me.

Christmas break is over for all of us and we’re back to our usual routines. I went back to work last week. Eric started working this week, and Adrian’s school term started on Monday as well. Today Ingrid’s school term also started.

We get up shortly after 7, although I sometimes stretch it to 7:30 since I have no particular hurry in the morning. I’m winding down my engagement in my current project (this is my last week) so I have no urgent tasks. And with no commute, I can be at work by 8 even if I sleep to 7:30.

Ingrid and Adrian both leave just before 8. School starts at 8. Ingrid has a three-minute walk to school; for Adrian it takes less than 10 minutes. Eric cycles to work and would much rather do so in daylight, so he waits until sunrise which is happens around 8:30.

They all have breakfast before leaving. I’m not fond of early breakfasts, so I start working first and break for breakfast around 9-ish.

All of us read while eating breakfast. Eric reads Dagens Industri. Adrian read Kalle Anka Pocket. I read Dagens Nyheter. What Ingrid reads I don’t know but I’m guessing it’s Snapchat.

Another month, and the sun will be up when I get up.