Getting ready for bandy practice.

Ingrid had an “important call to make” because there was “a major computer problem at work”. A virus had infected the network, apparently.

We had a girls’ night out at the theatre, Ingrid, myself and my mum. We saw The Wizard of Oz at Maximteatern. The show was pretty good. Nice costumes, clever scenography (with pages in a giant book providing all the different backdrops), lots of singing and dancing. Visually I thought it was bit unimaginative to mimic the look of the movie so closely, but I guess it’s such a classic that for many people Dorothy needs to look like Judy Garland or it won’t be Dorothy.

(Actually taken on Christmas Eve, but the days are all blurring together into one giant lump of Christmas.)

Ingrid, Lego and Christmas tree.

A message from Ingrid. Loud and clear.

Ingrid at work on one of the items in the craft-a-day advent calendar.

So much of Ingrid’s life happens away from me, outside of my view, that I know her less and less well. I no longer feel like I really know what she does, what she thinks about, what is important to her. She’s growing up and growing away from me.

Ingrid likes to be busy. She loves all her after-school activities. She’s got scouting on Tuesdays, riding on Thursdays, and now during winter also bandy on Fridays. She also wanted to add dancing to this, but enough is enough. Even now with three busy evenings it feels like too much, but Ingrid loves skating so much that I gave in.

On her free afternoons she often wants to play with a friend. And when she’s at home, she has her eyes in a book all the time. There’s rarely a chance to just be with her, just talk. Mostly when she’s too tired to do anything else…

Other people talk during dinner, but any kind of attempt at mealtime conversation in this family derails pretty fast – too much noise and interruptions to allow meaningful conversation. I guess I need to find some way to sneak some “talk time” into our life. I wonder what kind of activity I might use as a cover – something that is enough of an activity so Ingrid feels occupied, but not so much that she will be all busy. Walks to the supermarket, perhaps?

She is often too busy to even notice the signals from her body. When I interrupt some activity, or pick her up at a friend’s place, she’s almost invariably annoyed – why do I have to stop the fun? And then three minutes later she tells me she is really, really, really tired, or hungry, or has a headache, or whatever.

Favourite fruit: clementines. When it’s late evening and she realizes she is hungry, she can eat seven or eight of them in one go.

Favourite activities together with me: the Christmas calendars on TV and radio. Both are really well done this year so I also enjoy watching them with us. Also, crafts, especially Christmasy ones. Also, in fact, anything that means that it’s just her and me, without Adrian.

Favourite activity on her own: drawing. She has become more ambitious in her drawing and doesn’t just want to replicate the usual subjects in the usual way. She has borrowed several books about how to draw, everything from “easy manga” to “funny animals”.

Not at all favourite activity: picking up after her. She just never remembers, so she leaves a trail of small objects behind her – pens and drawing pads, hair bands, Kalle Anka issues, books etc.

Random fact: on weekends, Ingrid loves lounging around undressed. She sleeps naked, and when she wakes (early) and walks downstairs, she usually doesn’t bother getting dressed. She lies on the sofa under a blanket and watches a movie. A blanket is impractical at the breakfast table, so then she puts on her bathrobe, and keeps it unless and until there is a compelling reason to get dressed.

More and more often, when I sit down to write my monthly post about Ingrid, I realize how different she is from me. At times it almost feels like looking at an alien in a human body.

She is very extroverted. She exists for interactions with other people, especially other kids. Being on her own, having to do things on her own, is a real hardship and drains her of energy.

At the same time, she is rather tone deaf when it comes to human interactions, at least when it comes to interacting with us (myself, Eric and Adrian). She talks without listening and seems mostly uninterested in what we have to say, or what we think and feel. Perhaps it’s because we are as alien to her as she is to us. Or perhaps this is just how 8-year-olds are: I’ve never lived with one before.

She will try to dominate any interaction. With us, it’s just annoying; with Adrian it’s worrying. I think her interactions with her friends probably work better. They are on a more similar wavelength, compared to us – and they can push back more effectively than Adrian.

Whenever Adrian is doing something and Ingrid is not otherwise occupied, she walks in and, without really being aware of it, take over Adrian’s activity. She tries to steer his play, tells Adrian what pen to use when he’s drawing, etc.

She sometimes treats him as a servant: asks him to fetch and carry for her, or take messages to me. He often does as she asks. I spend quite a lot of time telling her off for that – even though they both think it’s OK, I don’t want Ingrid to treat others that way, and I don’t want Adrian to get used to being treated that way.

She is often annoyed and irritated by him, for example when he mimics her and echoes her words, or when he sings some nonsense song over and over again. And she cannot help snapping at him when she gets annoyed.

And yet at the same time she really enjoys playing with him, and truly cares about making him feel good. Or maybe she cares about making him not feel bad? She hates it when he is sad or angry (unless he’s angry because she’s been snapping at him) and makes sincere efforts to make him happy again. And the other day when we were buying Christmas gifts, her top priority was finding good gifts for Adrian.

She is incredibly utilitarian. Activities without an immediately visible utility are pointless. There are few activities that she does for the sake of doing them. Reading is the one big exception.

Take drawing, for example. As she says herself, she knows that the end result will be a finished drawing that she has nothing to do with, so she will throw away, so what is the point? Unless she is drawing at school with her friends, in which case it becomes a social activity.

She is totally incurious. She is not at all interested in finding out about how the world works. She never asks how or why about anything that isn’t in her immediate here and now. When she encounters an unfamiliar word in a book, she asks what it means, but will not listen beyond the first sentence in my answer.

Favourite books:
She reads the same series of books that she read a year ago – LasseMaja and Kalle Anka. She rarely looks for new books to read. The books she likes are those that have a fast pace, and lots of action and suspense. Alternatively, the book should have lots of pictures, like Diary of a Wimpy Kid. She also likes jokes – especially what would be called anekdoodid in Estonian, and roliga historier (such as bellmanhistorier) in Swedish.

Favourite game:
The robot game, which means that I am a robot and carry her on my back or shoulders, and she gives me instructions: “forward”, “stop”, “turn”. We play this when it’s time to go to the kitchen for dinner, or to the bedroom at night.

Favourite iPad games:
Various animal-raising games, where you breed and feed animals and collect money from them to get more animals, like Dragon City etc.

Favourite foods:
Brämhults strawberry and lime juice, with their raspberry juice as a runner-up. Cheese buns. Clementines.