Puberty is making its entry. Ingrid’s body is changing. She is starting to get breasts. She is tired in the mornings, which she never used to be. And – probably related to some hormonal changes – she is no longer always warm. Now it’s her complaining about the cold when I’m feeling fine, rather than the opposite.

Our (by now traditional) birthday sushi lunch at the conveyor belt place in Kista. Just Ingrid and myself this time, since Eric and Adrian were on a scout hike.

We mentioned Ingrid’s birthday to a member of the staff and she was brought an umbrella drink, which was a real “cherry on top” for her.

We went out to hunt for Pokemons, since there was some kind of event today. It was a success.

The kids’ interest in the game is waning somewhat, just as mine and Eric’s is growing. (Yes, Eric has also started playing.) It used to be Adrian asking to play every day on the way home from school. Now it’s more likely to be me.

In the evening, when they’ve done their things and run out of screen time and bedtime is approaching, the kids often come to me, looking for company. Often I am tired at that hour. Sometimes too tired to want any company, but not always. So then we do something quiet. With Adrian, it’s often reading. Sometimes with Ingrid as well. Or we may work on a jigsaw puzzle, or colour together.

We finally bought a much-needed new bike for Ingrid. The old one went straight to Adrian. Which says something about how small the old bikes were for both of them!

All of a sudden, standing next to a large bike, Ingrid herself looks older and bigger, somehow.

She has some way to go with spatial thinking.

New gym clothes, new shoes, because Ingrid has outgrown the old ones. Size 35.5 in shoes, which I would never have expected! And everything has to be black and white, and she thinks the three stripes look pretty.

And off she rushes to her dance class.

School has started. Ingrid looked forward to it, but after about a week she was kind of tired of it already. Homework, sitting still in a classroom, listening to boring lessons… Luckily there’s sports class to look forward to, and music, art, and crafts.

School has also already had their “personal development meetings” where the kids think about what they need or want to focus on this term. Ingrid wanted to work on expanding her vocabulary in Swedish and English. She’s borrowed The Hunger Games from the school library, in English – because she wants to read it and not because it will help grow her vocabulary, but it should certainly do that as well.

After school, there’s scouting and dancing. She’s dropped street dance (it wasn’t her style at all) and focused her ambitions on disco. She continues with the disco class she’s been doing for some while now, and to that she added “preparatory competitive dance” at the same dance studio.

We sorted through her wardrobe and then went shopping for clothes because she had outgrown almost everything, and most of the (few) things that fit had too much colour or patterns or decorations. The clothes we bought were almost all plain skinny jeans and plain tops in discreet colours. Plus, interestingly, one or two tops in what I think of as “US sports sweater style”: a word or two, and some large digits.

• Favourite songs: Symphony (by Clean Bandit w. Zara Larsson), Instructions (by Jax Jones), Look What You Made Me Do (Taylor Swift)
• Favourite book series: Harry Potter and Warriors
• Favourite snack: peanut butter, straight out of the jar
• Other favourite things, according to herself: Overwatch (the game – which she has tried at a friend’s place and now has at the top of her birthday wish list) and sushi
• A recent interest: IQ tests

Mysterium: our current favourite board game. I bought on recommendation of some random online source (like maybe Reddit) as it was supposed to be a good family game, and it was a bulls-eye hit. We all love it.

The rules seemed complicated when we first read through them, but turned out to be quite intuitive and simple once we got going. (That is my one quibble with this game: they really need to rewrite the rulebook and explain the rules more simply and clearly.) It requires no reading or counting or memorizing or strategizing, and there is very little time pressure, so Adrian can join in without any handicapping or special rules. It’s social and non-competitive and relaxed and fun. It’s akin to Dixit but even better. Plus it’s beautiful!