Ingrid’s math homework for this week is a practice sheet for the 7 times table. She doesn’t like this kind of repetitive homework much. Her way to make it more fun was gamification and competition: timing herself (hence the iPad next to her) and trying to beat her previous records. This led her to discover that she can do the sums faster if she doesn’t read them out loud.

Apparently she is also one of those people whom music helps concentrate (which is the total opposite of how I work) so we had her favourite playlist with Minecraft songs blasting away next to us.

Climbing at Klättercentret in Solna. They have drop-in climbing during school breaks. We’ve been there before but this time it felt like we spent 90 minutes queueing and got very little actual climbing for it.

Ingrid at her favourite spot during the cold season: the long heating strip along the side of the living room floor. You can see Eric’s reflection in the background, reading a bedtime story for her. The current story is Schlagersabotören, a LasseMaja adventure.

I have a nine-year-old. A pre-teen, I guess. Soon she will be a teenager and before you know it she’ll be eighteen and moving out!

She and two of her friends had a birthday party together, with a sleepover. Pizza, disco, movie, sleepover, ice cream and candy… And a lot of discussions. The girls created the invitation together in Wordpad, and it took them forever at least an hour. Not because they had difficulty with Wordpad but because every detail had to be discussed and every choice made together. Which is very democratic but also very inefficient. The same happened on the morning of their sleepover: they spent so much time discussing what to play, that they ended up having barely any time to actually play together.

Peers and their opinions matter quite a lot to Ingrid. She’s concerned about sticking out too much, especially in ways that would lead to questions. Questions are uncomfortable. I’ve noticed on a few occasions that when she’s upset, she tries to hide it from others. And if a classmate notices and comes by to ask what’s up, Ingrid says nothing and leaves instead.

She compares herself to others. She is very aware that she is the shortest one in her class, and shorter than some kids who are one or even two years below her. She is tougher and less girly than some of the others.

She is aware of interactions between her peers – not just who plays with whom, but who is difficult to get along with. She knows who doesn’t get along with whom, and took that into account when planning the invitations for the birthday party: one of her best friends can be somewhat abrasive and stubborn so Ingrid didn’t invite her, because she didn’t want to have any disagreements and fights during the party.

She is not quite as aware of her own behaviour towards other… She likes/needs/wants to prove Adrian wrong when she catches him echoing something we say, without really knowing what he’s talking about. Ingrid may say that she really hates X, and Adrian says he also hates X. “Do you even know what X is? Well then tell me!”

Ingrid mostly accepts rules and musts now, without more than token grumbling – from iPad time limits to twice-weekly hair washing. But at the same time I notice small secrets and lies: telling me she has washed her hands when she clearly hasn’t, or sneaking her iPad into her room when she’s not supposed to. I’ve been mostly letting these pass because they’ve been rare, as far as I know, and about minor things – small acts of rebellion and independence. Hopefully they’re not the beginning of a bigger issue. When confronted, she either pretends like nothing – “I did wash my hands but if you want I can wash them again” or stomps off in a sulk.

She drowns her sorrows in Minecraft and YouTube, anaesthetises unpleasant feelings and situations by distracting herself with watching YouTube clips. In Minecraft she’s started exploring public servers and their minigames, e.g. Mineplex and Hypixel.

Favourite word: YOLO, still – used in all sorts of suitable and unsuitable contexts, and as a general interjection of joy and happiness, sort of like “yeah!!!” Also she generally likes to experiment with an American teenager voice, all drawl and “yeah man”.

After a long while of declining interest, she quit riding this month. Scouting is now her only after-school activity.

A birthday starts with the family singing Ja må hon leva, followed by presents, and then a birthday breakfast.

Normally some/much/all of this would happen with the birthday child still in bed, but since the birthday child is still sleeping in the tent, that was just not going to happen this time.

By the way, Adrian only understood today how birthdays actually work, when I explained it for him. He asked me what time of the year he was born, and when his 6th birthday will be, even though he knows very well that his 5th birthday was in autumn – because he hadn’t connected “birthday” to “birth”.

Ingrid was in desperate need of autumn shoes so the two of us went shopping. A pair of autumn shoes, a pair of winter boots, some luxury chocolate pralines, and then a nice restaurant lunch on top of that!

Buying shoes for the kids feels like a black hole for money. They cost as much as adult shoes (unless you buy cheap crap that breaks apart after two months, which is what happened with the shoes we bought for Ingrid this spring) and after a year they’re already too small and I have to buy new ones again.

Today was this autumn’s first truly frosty morning. Ingrid is still bravely sleeping in the tent – now with our warmest down-filled sleeping bag, a thin fleece blanket inside it wrapped around her, and a woollen blanket on top.

She pressed the trigger for my September self-portrait but when I wanted to take a photo of her as well, she turned into a wild little monkey.

The new school year has begun in earnest. Ingrid has two new subjects this year: arts and woodworking. The latter is a split-class subject: half the class does woodworking and the other half does textile crafts, and they will swap after half term. Their first project is to make a mascot (in wood). Ingrid told me she is making a sun.

Otherwise school continues as before. Same school, same room, same kids, same teacher (except for specialist subjects like sports, music, arts and woodworking). One big difference compared to last year is that Ingrid goes there on her own and comes home on her own every day, so I really don’t have much insight into what goes on at school.

This year her Estonian lessons are at her own school, whereas until this spring she had to go to the neighbouring school. (There’s one kid taking Estonian in each school so they get shared lessons.) It was quite a bit for her to walk and she is not yet allowed to cycle in the street on her own, so I used to go with her. We often talked about her school day on our way. Now even that is gone.

One thing I’ve noticed recently is that they are doing lots of sports. There’s sports class on Monday morning, but in addition they have been training extra on Thursday afternoons for a relay race. The race is called Lidingöloppet (Skolstafetten) so I guess it takes place in Lidingö. I have no idea why kids from Spånga would run a race in Lidingö but whatever.

This week they also had a sports day on Tuesday when the kids could try out all sorts of different sports (from table tennis to boxing), plus a charity run on Wednesday. I’ve barely seen Ingrid out of sports clothes this week.

The Thursday running training means that Ingrid is too tired for riding lessons, so we haven’t been to riding school more than once during this past month.

Currently of course the big thing occupying Ingrid’s mind is her upcoming birthday. This year she and two friends of hers are planning to have a sleepover party together, with pizza and a movie at night, and then cake in the morning.

Meanwhile she has her usual interests: watches Minecraft videos, plays Minecraft, reads Kalle Anka, occasionally practices magic tricks.

After much talk about how she would love to have a pet, we borrowed a hamster from her cousin for a couple of weeks. She was diligent in taking care of it, but it turned out to be less sociable and less fun than she had imagined. It would probably have become more sociable if she had taken the time and effort to make friends with it, but she didn’t. There were no tears when we returned it and I haven’t heard a word about getting a pet since then.

Ingrid still sleeps in the tent in our back yard each night. She cannot quite articulate what she likes about it, but she sleeps well there and most definitely does not want to move back into her bedroom.