Likes:

• Reading while eating, and eating while reading.
• Non-academic subjects at school: art, music, crafts, sports.
• Computer game day at “The Club”, the middle school equivalent of after school care.
• Being responsible for cooking dinner
• Long hot showers
• Kellogg’s Special K Red Berries
• Being read to
• slither.io (a computer game sort of like Snake)
• Sleepovers

(It’s Harry Potter 4.)

Admiring the view from the east side of Kärsön, towards Nockeby…

… and doing the same from the west side of Kärsön, towards Drottningholm.

Kärsön is a small island in lake Mälaren, mostly covered with forest. It is easy to get to by car, has a lot of walkable paths, and offers nice views in all directions. All set for a day of great walking.

The kids weren’t super excited about the idea of walking to begin with, but also did not want to stay at home, which was an option for Ingrid at least. They got markedly less excited the longer we walked. So instead of a relaxing nature walk I got about three hours of “are we done yet”. (The first hour was OK, with little to no complaining.) The net effect was a slight negative. So I still need my dose of peace and quiet and nature, so will be going for a new hike next weekend, with no kids.

Once every summer we clear out all furniture from our living room and thoroughly scrub the floor. It’s an untreated pine floor: wonderfully pleasant to walk on, but takes an effort to keep clean.

Today was scrubbing day.

Once the floor was more or less dry, but not dry enough for the carpet (and therefore the furniture), the kids realized they had a large empty room to play in.

Their choice of toy – marbles – was probably the one thing I myself would never choose in a large room with no carpet. But it worked.

Ingrid has had her first cavities. She said her teeth hurt. She’s very sensitive to pain and describes even the smallest thing as “hurts really bad” so it is always hard to judge any actual damage. But a dentist took a look and found two cavities – in permanent teeth unfortunately. The drilling and filling bothered her less than I had perhaps expected.

Today was the first day of school. Ingrid has been looking forward to it for a long time. Fourth grade is the first year of “the middle stage” of elementary school, so she gets a new teacher and a new classroom.

She also wanted a new backpack, and spent hours and hours looking for the right one. The old one was “not quite her style” anymore. It’s also a bit too small and not suited for carrying really heavy stuff, such as the loads of books from the school library that she sometimes brings home.

She’s signed up to Instagram. I don’t think she’s posted any photos yet but I’m sure they will come. She likes taking photos of her meals; I don’t know where she picked up that trend.

Like last year, scout camp has exhausted Ingrid. This time I was there too and I feel about as tired as she looks.

For me, it’s mostly due to lack of quality sleep, and I imagine it’s the same for Ingrid. I never sleep particularly well in a tent/sleeping bag situation. Sleeping on a thin mattress makes my back and hips hurt. This year we actually invested in a lightweight inflatable mattress and that definitely helped, but it’s still not like a proper bed. I wake up again and again throughout the night because I am uncomfortable and need to shift into a different position but I am constrained by the sleeping bag which doesn’t let me move.

I think next time I’m camping I will try opening the sleeping bag all the way and using it like a normal blanket, so I can move freely and not wake every time I need to turn over.

After two days of challenging hiking, I needed something less physical for my free hours and joined a group of kids for a metalworking session. Half the kids were casting tin figures while the other half created things out of wire.

At the playground in Kadriorg park, waiting for time to pass.

Today we take the ferry back to Stockholm. The drive from Tartu (where we stay) to Tallinn (which has all the connections to the rest of the world) is over 2 hours, plus city traffic in Tallinn, plus a lunch break of uncertain length, so I aim to arrive an hour before we really want to be at the ferry terminal.

Kadriorg is a large beautiful park very near the harbour and it’s become a tradition to kill that extra hour there. (Well, except for one year when we got stuck in a traffic jam due to a bike race in Tallinn and used up the hour, which is why we have it.)

We’re taking a day off from activities and stuff and just walking around in Tartu. We kind of happened to run across a few geocaches, though.

Ingrid made a Totoro hoodie

Bits and pieces:

• Saving money for a robot dog. Volunteers for emptying the dishwasher, doing grocery shopping etc to earn extra money. Vacuuming the floors is her favourite job.
• Really likes listening to music. Turns on music before sitting down for breakfast, or starting to cook dinner, etc.
• Favourite artist/group, according to herself: Little Mix.
• Favourite food, according to herself: ketchup.
• Favourite summer activity, according to me: swimming. At home she was in and out of the pool all day every day, and any time we’ve gone swimming here in Estonia, she’s the first one in and the last one out. Diving, jumping, splashing, swimming – anything.
• Has started reading a book – an actual, real book, with no pictures, instead of the endless Kalle Anka comics. I bought the book for her, read it myself and loved it, and now she is reading it on her own. It’s The Iron Trial from the Magisterium series.

Carving stuff out of pine tree bark

(I’m in Estonia with the kids. Our days are full and our evenings are late, so I have neither time nor energy for more than a very brief post. And I left all my photos at home on my external hard drive so I only have pictures from the last week with me.)