We went on a forest walk today. Ingrid climbed a huge tree.

Ingrid has been working on a plush monster for Adrian’s birthday. Today she finished it.

Sometimes the afternoon fruit snack is too far away and the kids need an emergency banana straight after school.

Taken during Ingrid’s riding lesson.

This month was the last month of real summer – the summer break is almost at its end and school starts on Wednesday.

Swimming is by far Ingrid’s favourite summer activity. We’ve been to numerous beaches: the Trepimäe and Saadjärve beaches in Estonia, the small bathing spots at the seaside near Ljusterö, several beaches near lake Mälaren relatively close to home.

A new addition to our repertoire this summer was Kyrksjön (“the church lake”) near Bromma church. It has no actual beach – the banks are muddy and the only way in is from a pier straight into deep water. But it’s small and thus warm, and it’s the one closest to our home so we can go for a quick swim even quite late in the evening.

The last week of summer Ingrid went to swim camp. Not “proper” camp really I guess, just during the day at the local swimming pool. They had two hour-long swimming sessions (morning and afternoon) and games and other activities during the rest of the day.

Ingrid was most proud that she learned to dive in head first from the starting blocks. She’d been trying to learn diving during the summer but not really succeeding. Eric and I demonstrated but couldn’t really teach her, and she sort of half jumped, half dived, landing chest first. And now during camp she got it – she says diving didn’t hurt her chest any more.

One of the non-swimming activities was dodgeball/scatterball. (They’ve played them in gym class at school as well.) Just like me, Ingrid doesn’t have very good ball sense. And just like me as a kid, she reacts to this not by practising catching and throwing but by playing an entirely defensive game – optimising her strategy to fit her skill level. She can be among the last few kids standing even though she can rarely catch a ball.

Speaking of optimising, one day she complained about having to carry her laundry up to her room and put it away. I pointed out to her that she gets a lot of laundry to put away because she goes through a lot of clothes, and that I get less because I wear most dresses several times before I wash them. She gave this some thought and then completely changed her habits. She used to throw all her clothes in the laundry hamper at the end of each day – now her clothes almost always last several days before they need washing.

Another kind of optimising she does is leaving the best until last, in all kinds of situation. Eating pizza with ham and pineapple: pick out all the pineapple, eat the rest, and then the pineapple pieces, from smallest to largest. She’s also realised that Adrian does NOT think this way and in fact almost does the opposite. So when they both want X (for any value of X) Ingrid lets Adrian go first and both are happy.

Summer is over and our ordinary activities are starting up again. First out was riding where the autumn term started this week already. The horses need their exercise I guess. Now that we know that Ingrid intends to continue riding we invested in some gear, instead of making do with any old trousers and borrowing a helmet at the stable. She now has a helmet, riding pants and gloves, and a fleecy jacket. Everything except the helmet follows a lilac and purple colour theme.

With summer and especially our Estonia trip behind us, Ingrid apparently needed something else to look forward to and plan for. The next thing coming up is Adrian’s birthday so Ingrid took that up as a project. She’s saving up money and they’ve been browsing old toy store catalogues together, because Ingrid wants to buy him a present.

She’s also sewing a little plush monster for him. That project is actually quite challenging because it needs to be kept secret from Adrian. She can only work on it late at night when she’s often quite tired. But with a month to go, I think she’ll get it done.

Despite our two weeks in Estonia, it’s a struggle for Ingrid to speak Estonian now that we’re back home. She can’t find the words she wants and can’t express herself as well as she does in Swedish. I’ve started pushing Estonian more and she is starting to push back because it’s too much work and she cannot see the point. “Why can’t I speak Estonian in Estonia only?” she asks, and she doesn’t believe me when I tell her that without practising she won’t be able to speak it at all soon.

Favourite book: Viktiga kartor för äventyrare och dagdrömmare, “Important maps for adventurers and daydreamers”. Each spread has a theme, such as “volcanoes and earthquakes”, “mysterious places”, “gold and jewels”, etc. We’ve been reading it at bedtime. She is totally absorbed and makes sure I read every little sidebar and fact box. The Bermuda triangle is her particular favourite.

The kids and I are halfway through our summer holidays. Mostly we’re on our own because Eric has had work to do still. Being with Ingrid all day, every day, has let me see her from some new angles – or rather, reminded me of angles that have been there all the time but that I haven’t noticed as much during the school year.

She really, really hates waiting and is totally unable to amuse herself without external help. After a very late supper I tell the kids it’s time to go to bed. Ingrid brushes her teeth and gets out of her clothes. And then, do you think she goes to her bedroom? No – she sits in the sofa and reads, because she sees that I’m still brushing Adrian’s teeth, and she cannot imagine sitting in the bedroom and doing nothing for those two minutes it will take us.

Her two go-to solution is reading. As long as we’re at home, there are always Kalle Anka pocket issues lying around and she will grab one as soon as there is even a minute of waiting. If the waiting time is longer, she likes to add snacking to the reading.

I’m all for reading. I like reading, and I like that she likes reading. But it’s definitely becoming a crutch for her. It would feel totally wrong to forbid reading but somehow at some point she needs to exercise her atrophied imagination…

She is loves entertainment, activity and especially social activity of all kinds. Belonging to a group and being with other kids is very important to her.

Some of her friends at school had started playing “Winx Club”, after the animated series, and Ingrid then started watching the series so she could better join in at the game. Now I think she’s trying to work her way through all the seasons. She’s been watching Winx Club a lot.

She’s particularly interested in the costumes: she browsed through a Winx Club wiki to look at all the characters’ outfits, and wants me to make a Tecna costume for her.

Her other favourite entertainment right now is Dragon City, an iPad game where you feed and breed dragons. It’s become a social family activity: almost every morning we sit together for a while and feed our dragons, and ooh and aah over each other’s eggs, and watch the dragons combat.

She got a pair of inline skates at the beginning of the summer. She’s been practicing but finding it hard. The streets around our home are hilly and the surface is often uneven – not so easy for a novice skater.

For her own money she generally buys plush animals. The most recent one was an owl. Before that we ordered a large plush horse for her from an online store. From a car boot sale she bought a plush dog with accessories, and a rainbow-coloured large plush snake. She likes taking one or two of them with her when we travel somewhere, and often has one of them in her bed at night. But after a short while she becomes bored with them, puts them away and buys a new one. I don’t know how many dozens of animals she has now.

Her favourite summer activity (after camping) is swimming. She’s one of those kids who can dive into cold lake water and tell me that it’s not cold at all! Come in! It’s great!

The snorkel and mask and goggles are the best things we ever bought for her. She’s a strong swimmer as long as she doesn’t have to think about breathing, so the mask and snorkel allow her to swim around without having to worry much about that.

At swim school they mostly focus on front crawl and backstroke, both of which make it hard for her to see where she’s going. So when we go in deep water together, she ends up doing an awkward dog paddle/breaststroke combo.

She chose a very colourful bikini for this summer, in line with her usual fashion choices (the more colours, the better) but felt too naked in it. She doesn’t think twice about lolling around in her underwear at home, but didn’t feel good in the bikini at the local pool. So we bought another turquoise tankini, like last year.

Favourite part of travelling to Estonia: just about everything. She enjoyed the ferry trip, the dinner buffet on the ferry, the flat we’re staying in (same as last year), the planning, even the packing. She pretty much did her own packing this year, with the help of my all-purpose packing list and just a few hints, although I did help her fold her clothes so they’d fit in the suitcase.

Favourite ice cream flavours: melon, mint (polka), pear, elderflower.

Jackpot in the game of yellow car: being first to remember the parking lot of the local post office and call the five yellow cars lined up there.

Two afternoons in a row.

Ingrid finished first grade this week. The last day of school was this Wednesday. The entire school gathered in the schoolyard; kids sang and performed; the headmistress held a speech. Then Ingrid and I went to town and celebrated with a sushi lunch, ice cream, and a large Lego Friends set.

Ingrid was not entirely happy to finish first grade. She was perfectly happy about the school year ending and summer vacation beginning. But having to move up to grade 2 was not all positive, because it will involve more change than Ingrid wants. The main problem is that her class will move to a different building. This year classes 1A and FA (year 0) were in the same building, and three of her best friends from preschool are in that FA class. Now they will be further away, so they won’t be in after school care together any more. Luckily they will have the same teachers next year at least.

Ingrid is a novelty-seeker but she also wants things to stay the same. She likes doing and seeing new things, going to new places, etc. But she wants the foundation to be unchanged: home, family, school, friends.

She is open to new things but not if they replace old things. It is difficult for her to let things go, and to choose between alternatives when choosing one thing means giving up the other. When she chooses to have chocolate for dessert instead of, say, a piece of cake, she asks if we can make that cake again some other time. We say yes, of course, and that is enough – she can let it go and never asks for it again.

But choices that are final and for real are hard, like choosing between staying at home and watching a movie with Adrian, or going to the supermarket with me. Or deciding what sports she will want to do this autumn. She vacillates and hesitates and then in the end sticks to the same ones that she did this year.

Her sense of balance has matured and she no longer has her childhood tolerance for swinging and spinning. She now gets nauseous on merry-go-rounds, especially the small fast ones at playgrounds. She can still swing, but cannot read on a swing like she used to. She also cannot read in the car any more.

This meant that car rides became incredibly BOOH-RING! because sitting still and not being entertained by anything is just awfully unbearably boring. Then she remembered the game of “yellow car”, and now this keeps her really busy. And she is good at it! While my brain is busy with other thoughts (such as driving for example), she really focuses and racks up point after point.

In our version of the game we just play for points: the one to first spot a yellow car gets a point. Our rules are that only cars count (not trucks or buses). Parked cars count; however taxis don’t. There is one taxi company in Stockholm that has yellow cars and all the taxis were making the game way too easy.

Adrian occasionally joins in and shouts “blue car” or “white car” and then asks how many points he has. We usually tell him some random number and he’s happy with that.

We reset our point counts after the last rule adjustment (the addition of the taxi rule) and the score is now about 35:10. At first she spotted about two yellow cars for each one of mine, and now she’s pulling ahead at an even faster pace. My only defence is that I am thinking about other things. But really she is both better at noticing details, pays more attention to her immediate surroundings, and has faster reactions.

Her faster reactions are very apparent in Minion Rush, which is her current favourite iPad game. It’s a fun game and I’ve spent some time playing myself. I am nowhere near as fast as her. I watch her play, effortlessly navigating the obstacles at speeds that I usually don’t reach (because I crash before I get that far), and she even has brain capacity left over to talk at the same time!

She is still really polite and I hear lots of please and thank you from her every day. She tells me I am the best mum in the world, because I am so kind. Sometimes she kind of overdoes it a bit and thanks me three times for the same thing but really I don’t mind.

Words she thinks are super funny: Tuberkulos. Chihuahua. Trehundra kvart i sju. (That last one means “three hundred quarter to seven” and is something Adrian said once: he doesn’t yet understand that some measurements cannot be combined with others).

She likes knee socks and likes them pulled really taut so they absolutely do not sag even a millimetre.

You know how people say that becoming a parent has changed them, and that it has taught them new things about themselves? All sorts of life lessons, often deep and true.

It turns out that this also applies on the very lowest levels, the smallest things – such as sleep habits.

Adrian still sleeps with us. The actual position has varied – first it was me next to him, then Eric, now it’s my turn again. Most of the night Adrian is on his side and I am on mine and I don’t notice him much. But in the early hours of the morning, as he moves into lighter sleep, he wants body contact.

He likes to sleep with the soles of his feet pressed against me, for example, or even with his legs on top of me: as if he was supported from below when sitting or standing.

He also likes to put his hands inside his pyjamas, so his palms are against his neck and shoulder. Or he clasps his hands and then tucks them next to his neck.

I had never really thought about it much but I’ve noticed that I actually do kind of the same. I also like to press my feet against Eric (but not at 5 o’clock in the morning, and not against his ribs). And there is something oddly comfortable about putting my hand on my neck and shoulder when I’m sleeping on my side (or on my abdomen if I’m on my back). It’s as if an open loop was closed. I am grounded.

Ingrid is picky about the physical sensation of her sleeping arrangements. She needs everything to feel just right. She has a narrow comfort zone when it comes to temperature, for example. During the day she doesn’t care much, but at night it can take her a long while to find a good blanket solution. She tries one blanket, then the other, then the thinner one folded double… then puts her legs out, then just her feet… it’s either too warm or too cold, and needs to be adjusted until it’s right. And only then she can go to sleep.

The blanket needs to lie right as well before she can feel comfortable, and if I am holding my hand on her chest or stomach that also needs to be right: not too far up or too far down, and in the middle rather than to one side. And likewise her own arms and legs. She can’t just put them down and be comfortable – they need to be adjusted until they feel right.

Now I’m not too picky about blanket weight (I think) – my usual blanket is usually warm enough. But I do recognise this feeling of things being uncomfortable when they’re not just right. For me it comes and goes; sometimes I feel it much more strongly and then for a long time I may not notice it at all.

During a “sensitive” period I feel every wrinkle in the bedsheet, especially under my feet. It can really bother me if the blanket lies more heavily on one leg than the other, or if it touches me too lightly in some place. The blanket needs to come up to my shoulders but not touch my neck.

… and because I missed April, here’s another one, of me and Ingrid.