Ingrid and a friend of hers baked cookies and then sold them door-to-door. The proceeds (94 kr) went to the Red Cross.

Ingrid listening to Eric reading Harry Potter – wrapped in a fleece blanket, stretched out along the radiator sunk into the floor.

After a long time of proper winter cold, the weather has turned warm, almost overnight, and the snow sticks together. Ingrid rushed out as soon as she heard this and made two snowmen before she tired.

It’s Thursday so it was Ingrid’s turn to cook dinner again.

Today we got hajkbomb, which is a meal that probably only those with a background in Swedish scouting will recognize. It’s a meal designed to be cooked over the hot coals of a campfire, but a normal kitchen oven works equally well. A “bomb” is an aluminium foil package filled with any kind of ingredients: chopped vegetables, potatoes, meat if you prefer, etc. (Potatoes and other harder veggies need to be pre-cooked.)

As is often the case, Ingrid likes things to be the same as they normally are, so the hike bombs in our family always consist of potatoes, salmon, bell peppers and one or two other child-friendly vegetables.

It’s a quick and simple meal and would probably take me about half an hour to prepare, plus some time in the oven. Peel and dice the potatoes, chop the rest while the potatoes are cooking, wrap into foil packages, season, done.

It took absolutely forever for Ingrid. 80 minutes, to be precise. I was so bored and itching to actually do something (other than hover around and be ready to help her when needed, remind her to turn off the stove, etc). I was needed often enough that I couldn’t go off and read a book for example, but not often enough to actually keep me busy. I could perhaps have been even more hands off and let her figure more things out on her own, but everybody was so hungry that I felt I needed to direct her a bit to speed things up somewhat.

It was just like watching a junior programmer take an hour to painstakingly solve a task that in my mind should take all of 10 minutes. Excruciating. Frustrating.

But just like a junior programmer can’t get any faster unless they get to spend that hour on a 10-minute task, Ingrid can’t learn to cook unless she gets to practise, on her own, without me interrupting to tell her how to do things faster.

In fact the process of cooking this dinner reminded me of pair programming. The senior programmer takes on the navigator role – keeping an eye on the goal, making sure the pair stays on the right track, warning of upcoming obstacles. The junior programmer does all the actual coding. Just like we cooked: me making sure we are moving in the right direction, Ingrid performing all the actual cooking.

Ingrid spends a lot of time with friends. She stays at school (or after school care, rather) as long as possible, getting home at five. Then she somehow fills that endless hour until dinner with Kalle Anka and Adrian’s company. After dinner she goes straight to her room for Minecraft and Skype with her friends.

She loves her new room. Just around Christmas her new loft bed arrived. We added a desk chair and a few lamps from IKEA, and she is very happy with the result. And of course her new laptop added the final touch.

Now that she spends more time there, Adrian sometimes feels lonely in the living room and goes upstairs to hang out with her. So while the room barely got used when it was the kids’ room, now that it is Ingrid’s room, both kids spend more time there.

All this Minecrafting means that Ingrid spends a lot of time sitting in the sofa or behind her desk. She is getting way too little exercise in my opinion. They only get one hour per week of gym class at school which is definitely not enough for a kid her age. She couldn’t really come up with any sports she wanted to do, but dance seemed at least kind of fun, so she’s now signed up for a weekly dance class. I’m thinking of taking her along to Friskis & Svettis on weekends as well.

Those sessions might not be super exciting in and of themselves, but the fact that she would be attending adult workout sessions might tip the scale. She likes that grown-up feeling and has been talking quite a lot about feeling “older” recently. She’s picking clothes and hairdos that look “less childish”, for example.

Ingrid got a chance to feel quite grown-up when she cooked dinner the other day. She’s helped me with dinner on a few occasions before. Those potato gratins for example… Both kids love potato gratin but I’m often not so excited when they ask for it on a weekday night, because of all the time-consuming peeling and chopping. Ingrid helps out so she can get one of her favourite foods. She also likes flipping pancakes.

This time is different. We redistributed some chores here at home and one of her new duties is to cook dinner once a week, on Thursdays. This Thursday’s meal was corn fritters. It’s not just for fun any more. It’s a responsibility, which makes her feel grown and important.

She hasn’t made anything like corn fritters before and the recipe was in an English-language cookbook as well, so she needed a fair bit of guiding and hand-holding, but she did all the actual work.

A totally unrelated sign of growing up: she no longer chooses animate movies ahead of “real” ones. That used to be a strong criterion for her; non-animated movies just weren’t any fun. When it was her turn to pick a movie for Friday night, she chose Night at the museum (with Diary of a wimpy kid as the runner-up).

And a third one: she has started to read a newspaper. Dagens Nyheter, the leading Swedish daily paper, publishes a weekly newspaper for kids, DN Junior. Ingrid found one somewhere and immediately said it was a lot more interesting than Kamratposten (a kids’ lifestyle magazine) because it had actual news in it.

The best and most important thing that happened this month was this weekend’s laser tag game. Ingrid had a very small birthday party, a sleepover with just a few friends. She wanted a big one as well where she could invite all the girls in her class, but we said that one party was enough. So we agreed on a compromise – she wouldn’t have a second party, but she would get to invite all the girls for a game of laser tag. Christmas messed up our planning so the event didn’t happen until now.

Favourite book: Harry Potter. No, she hasn’t suddenly started reading real books – she still only reads comic books. But Eric reads it for her at night and she loves it.

We redistributed the kids’ chores. Ingrid used to lay the table for all shared meals. Now that Adrian is old enough to help out as well, he takes over that responsibility. Ingrid cooks dinner once a week instead.

Ingrid is happier about her responsibility than Adrian is about his. He’s never had any real chores, so it will take some getting used to. Ingrid on the other hand helped me make a list of possible tasks, then analysed the list and picked one that suited her best. It happens at predictable times and can be planned in advance (unlike for example taking out the garbage), does not happen during her screen time, makes her feel grown up, and has the potential of being fun.

Today: sweetcorn fritters.

Ingrid has been finger knitting off and on for two years, on the same “rope”. She just keeps adding to it when she feels like it. The rope now measures many metres. The kids laid out on the floor – turns out it easily reaches from one end of the house to another, and then some.

Just a few photos this month.