Waiting and boredom and various ways of dealing with it. Adrian tends more towards turning inwards; Ingrid finds something to fiddle with.

Jumping on the sofa instead of going to bed.

Ingrid’s toothbrush.

For some reason, this toothbrush came with a loop of string and a knob that you’re supposed to attach by suction to some surface in the bathroom. I’m not sure what surface they had in mind – mirror? wall? bathtub? – but Ingrid’s toothbrush now hangs from the sink. Because if you have a knob and a string then of course you have to use them.

And my brain just cannot get used to this. Every time I look for Ingrid’s toothbrush (which I don’t do very often, and that’s of course why my brain doesn’t learn it) I look for it in the cup with all the other toothbrushes. Then I think, it’s not there, how can we have misplaced a toothbrush? before I finally find it.

For a long time Ingrid used an electric toothbrush but now for some reason she’s gone back to old school brushing. She does a decent job but is too impatient to keep it up for as long as she should, so I try to remember to do some supplemental brushing once in a while, which is why I occasionally look for her toothbrush.

Ingrid was bored and came up with the idea of baking a cake. She didn’t want to follow a recipe, though, because then baking would have become work instead of play. Instead she made what she called a hittepå-kaka, a made-up cake.

She has a reasonably good idea of what goes into a cake batter, and roughly what the result should look like. Eggs, sugar, flour, some milk. And she wanted chocolate in it, and some coconut, too. And then Adrian tasted the batter and said it was “too sour”, meaning it didn’t have enough sugar, so she added some more. And then the finished cake needed some icing sugar on top.

The result was surprisingly good, given the amount of thought that went into it.

I don’t know where this month has gone. It’s all been so busy I feel like I’ve hardly had any time together with Ingrid.

During weekends we’ve had birthday parties. The best thing and the worst thing about parties is waiting for them. Ingrid spends a lot of time looking forward to the next big thing.

Another important part of birthday parties is getting presents. Here again anticipation is an important part of it, and the opening of presents. But the happiness about the actual things usually dissipates fast. It’s like when she buys toys for herself: she often has more fun choosing and buying a toy than actually playing with it.

This year’s top present was a radio controlled car. She’s been asking for one for a long time and was really happy to get one. After previous presents, I don’t really have high expectations when it comes to actual usage.

One weekend she also had a scout hike – her first one with an overnight stay. She was very excited and just a teeny bit anxious, but in the end managed it without a hitch.

Weekdays are full of school and after-school activities. Estonian lesson and scouts on Tuesdays; riding on Thursdays; fredagsmys on Fridays. Of the remaining two afternoons/evenings Ingrid usually spends one with a friend, either here or at the friend’s home.

Friend E, whom Ingrid thinks of as her best friend, likes Ingrid well enough but not best, so they don’t play as often as Ingrid would like. Instead she’s reconnected with her friend M, also one of the “original four” whom Ingrid got to know at nursery. M spent two years abroad and came back this summer, kind of out of touch with the others. So now M and Ingrid found each other again. They are kind of similar in character: both a bit bossy, a bit tougher than the average girl. Both like reading and are good at English. They play with their stuffed animals and Littlest Pet Shop figures, and they’ve been swapping iPad app tips with each other.

Ingrid has several pet-raising games now: the kind where you buy pets, feed them, care for them, and breed them to get more pets. And the pets generate in-game money of some sort so you can buy more stuff and more pets. One thing this type of games have in common is waiting. It takes time to grow food, to breed the pets, etc., and in between there’s not much you can do. So Ingrid sometimes switches between several such games, feeding the pets in one while waiting for the others to become hungry, etc.

She’s also discovered Minecraft. She uses Minecraft like she uses Lego: for building houses. The key features of a house are doors, windows, a bed – and bookcases.

Today we had this term’s parent-teacher meeting for Ingrid. She is, not surprisingly, way ahead of the goals in maths, reading, writing and English.

One evening when she was bored she started doubling numbers, in her head. Two, four, eight, … all the way to 8192. Then it got hard to keep the numbers in her head.

Ingrid with her iPad. She likes to have the brightness turned up to the max.

Ingrid writing down a wish list for her birthday.

Ingrid having breakfast.
Marketing vs. real life.

The homework season has begun.

Ingrid is so busy thinking about all the birthdays. First there’s Adrian’s actual birthday, which she has taken really seriously. She made a plush little monster for him, and saved up pocket money for many weeks to buy him presents. (A toy mobile phone, like the one she has, and a Lego set.) And it was really important for her to help plan the day: waking Adrian with a birthday song in the morning, having presents for him, being extra nice to him etc.

Then there’s Adrian’s birthday party with his friends, for which she helped craft invitations.

Then there’s her own birthday party which we need to plan. She’s hesitating between a small party at home with her best friends, and a larger party somewhere else so she can invite all the girls in her class. It will have a Halloween theme because we’ll be away during the actual Halloween trick-and-treating, and she’s already got her costume chosen.

And then finally both kids’ combined birthday party with all our extended family, where the main deal is all the presents she hopes to get.

Ordinary life, by comparison, is rather boring. Ingrid is easily bored, wants lots of activity and has a hard time coming up with activity for herself. And most activities are only fun if someone joins her. Drawing, painting, crafts etc; building with Lego; playing with her doll and stuffed animals – all fun together with someone but not at all if she’s on her own.

On her own she reads. She still likes books to have pictures so she devours comics of all kinds. We have a subscription for Kalle Anka and she also gets one second-hand issue of Bamse and one of Kalle Anka pocket every week. She borrows comics books from the school library as well as Spånga library: Lou, Kalle Anka (again), Bamse (again) etc. But also Diary of a wimpy kid for example: it’s got enough drawings in it to keep Ingrid’s attention.

As for actual books, Lasse Maja is still her favourite by far. She has read other mysteries as well but those are the ones she returns to.

She likes to order Adrian around. She tells him to go get stuff for her when she can’t be bothered to walk there. Usually Adrian is happy to help. Win-win. Sometimes he can’t find the thing she wants and needs more instructions and then the whole thing takes longer than it would have taken for her to do it herself, but of course that is not the point.

Likewise she uses him as her mouthpiece when she wants my help but I’m in a different room. Adrian, gå hämta emme. I dislike being “remote controlled” like that and tend to refuse as a matter of principle.

Ingrid has started cycling to school in the morning together with her friend Majken and her parents. Again a win-win situation for all of us: the girls get company; Ingrid has a strong incentive to be ready on time (which she almost always is anyway); Adrian and Eric can get ready in peace at their own pace.

She’s also started to walk to and from swim school and scout meetings on her own. (This term her swimming lessons are at Spångabadet, very close to our home.)

She likes having long hair but doesn’t see the point of brushing it properly, or of keeping it out of her face. I keep nagging her to get her hair out of her food, and put it up instead.