Adrian, again, stuffy-nosed and clingy during the night, but didn’t wake as much as yesterday.

It was cold outside and indoors, so Ingrid and I amused ourselves by placing our small digital thermometers in various places in the house. The coldest spot that I found inside the house was on the hallway floor, underneath the stairs: 6°C. Socks and slippers and fleece jumpers for me. The kids are not bothered at all; Ingrid was in her nightie all morning and apparently did not feel the cold at all, except for her feet (so she put on her Crocs).

Ingrid and I painted a set of board game markers (some of her games have lousy cardboard markers), made a quick trip to the supermarket and had a pretend picknick. I don’t know where the rest of the day disappeared.

Adrian had a lousy night, kept waking and crying. Stuffy nose so he could barely suck, either on dummy or boob. Both of us really tired in the morning. We skipped our Estonian playgroup (which I normally make every effort to attend) because I was just too tired to undertake such an outing. Instead we removed the last of our stuff from the new half of the house, and moved into the new bathroom. The house feels pretty cramped, but doable.

More shovelling. Now the whole width of the stairs is clear, and we can access both the wheelie bins and the mailbox.

Beatiful weather outside, with brilliant sunshine, a bright sky and fresh white snow everywhere. Two nice long walks with Adrian.

The builders will probably start tearing down the interior in the new part of the house next week. This evening Ingrid and I seized the opportunity and painted on the walls.

Had a chat with staff at Ingrid’s preschool for how to continue. I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to be at home all the time, and taking a new decision every day is going to become stressful for both of us. Conclusion: she will go to preschool on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; Monday and Thursday are stay-at-home days.

After several weeks of mild weather, winter has returned with a vengeance. Snow storm today, with lots of fine snow and stinging, gusty wind. The weather forecasts are promising up to 20 cm of fresh snow – it’s like being back in the beginning of December again, except with a thick layer of ice underneath it all. Looks lovely right now, with fresh snow covering everything.

The plumbers installed a water tap in the new laundry room yesterday, and today they moved the washing machine and the tumble dryer. I inaugurated the laundry room by washing a load of baby clothes.

Disassembled the bouncy chair since Adrian will immediately start doing situps when I put him there.

Received a Hippy Chick hip seat in the mail, as well as two pink nightgowns in size 100 for Ingrid. All bought 2nd hand from Tradera, and immediately put to use.

Took Ingrid to preschool so I could go to playgroup with Adrian. He loved it, again. He loves watching all the other babies. It’s pretty much the only time he’s willing, even more than willing, to spend time on the floor, on his tummy.

Actually he also spends time on his tummy in his bed, when he’s wide awake early in the morning morning, just after 5, because he’s pooped again. He keeps doing it, and it annoys the heck out of me. I try to doze while waiting for him to get sleepy again, and when he starts making frustrated noises I either pop in the dummy, or turn him over, from front to back or vice versa.

After playgroup I took a long walk with him in the stroller, together with two other mums from the playgroup. We looked at nice houses in Flysta: many old houses like here in Solhem, but more “fun” and varied with verandas, small towers, etc.

Then to preschool because Ingrid had insisted that I should pick her up early. Of course she’d now changed her mind and did not want to go home at all. I went home, and back again at 3 o’clock. This time I insisted she come home. Nevertheless she doesn’t want to go tomorrow – but does want to be there on Friday when they usually do fun stuff like face-painting, or have a disco, or watch a movie.

She wanted to play with friend J in the afternoon but J was at the playground. J, her sister L and their babysitter N stopped by on their way home instead, and the girls played together for a while.

Ingrid still insists on staying with me rather than going to preschool, and really is at her best behaviour almost all day long. It’s worked unexpectedly well.

She is starting to miss her friends, but as she pointed out herself, all but one of them are in a different group at preschool anyway, so she wouldn’t get to meet them much even if she did go there. I’ve decided to take her there anyway on Wednesday so I can go to playgroup with Adrian – bigger kids are not welcome there on baby days.

In the morning, a trip to the clinic for Adrian’s 5-month vaccinations and the inevitable weighing and measuring. (8.2 kg and 68.5 cm.) Then to the pharmacy to pick up a cortison cream for a patch of eczema he has, plus some cream against his cradle cap, which isn’t bothering us in and of itself, but it’s covering his eczema and making that hard to treat.

In the afternoon, grocery shopping and a visit to the library.

A contractor was scheduled to come here today to start put up scaffolding, so the builders can start working on the new roof. But this weekend we got the builders’ estimates for the remaining tasks. (We’ve been nagging at them since before Christmas about this. I guess paperwork and estimating isn’t their idea of fun.) And the roof came in at about twice their original back-of-the-envelope estimate, so we cancelled the scaffolding immediately. With the sums we’re now talking about, the new roof is not going to happen. Not because we don’t have the money but because it’s not worth it. As an investment, it would never pay for itself – we’d never get that money back if we had to sell the house. Had it been cheaper we could have done it anyway, just because we ourselves would be happier with the house that way, but not for this kind of money. We can think of many better ways to spend it. So it looks like we’re stuck with our shoe box of an extension. Sigh.

A day of the not-boring-but-exhausting kind. Friend P’s daughter’s christening in Spånga church. Nice ceremony, probably pretty standard, and then cake and coffee in a venue next door.

We walked and Ingrid cycled all the way there and back. Weren’t home until well past 5. Made it almost all the way home when the tiredness hit Ingrid like a brick in the head, and then an inexorable slide towards a total meltdown. I could see it coming but have never managed to avert one.

The first signs of impending meltdown often appear at just about the same distance from home: when she feels that she is almost there and can let herself go, relax whatever tight grip is holding her upright and collected.

I’d promised her pancakes for dinner; in the end she ate one and probably didn’t have the presence of mind to enjoy it much at all. Fell asleep in minutes.

It felt a bit weird, listening to the christening ceremony. The texts sound so nice and friendly, about welcoming the child into a community, being received with love, a kindly father figure, and so on. Except for the few slightly jarring, weirder parts about “delivering from the powers of darkness” (befria henne från mörkrets makt) and being “cleansed of the guilt of sin” (renade från syndens skuld). But I just cannot look past the rather hard-to-ignore fact that the thought of a father in the sky is nothing short of ridiculous. And don’t get me started on original sin.

Another day without preschool for Ingrid. We spent much of the day with a bunch of mums and kids (and one dad) that I’ve “met” via Sjalbarn, an online forum nominally about babywearing but really about anything to do with babies and kids. Since it’s got its roots and its name in the babywearing world, the members are a self-selecting group whose views on parenting generally sort of align with mine.

It was pretty chaotic. I didn’t count at the time, but I think we were a total of 6 parents and 10 kids aged 0 to 5, in one living room and kitchen. I’m not sure if I would describe it as “fun”, and definitely not as “relaxing”, but we definitely had no chance to feel bored.

Much of what remained of the day was spent travelling to and from that get-together. With a stop at the supermarket on our way home, we were away for over 8 hours in total. Ingrid fell asleep on the bus on the way home. Adrian also slept like a log. Both fell asleep for the night at about 7 o’clock.

Ingrid didn’t want to go to preschool today either. She said she wanted to be with me instead. We talked about it… I told her that I needed to go to town today for some urgent shopping, and would do a lot of walking. I needed to buy a christening gift, and had left the shopping way too late (the christening is this Saturday) so online shopping was not an option. And I told her that she’d probably get bored without her friends, and that she wouldn’t like all the walking I do. (“I haven’t got anything to do” and “My legs are tired” are two ever-recurring refrains here.) But she insisted that she would not complain about either of those things. Fine, I said, we’ll give it a try.

And would you believe it. Not a single complaint about either boredom or tired legs.

It took us a while to get to town – there were severe disruptions to the train traffic. Just as we were approaching the station I was so glad that we’d make it just in time for the next train… and instead we found out that that train was cancelled. As the time approached for the next train, there were messages about it being delayed, first 10 minutes, then 20. So instead of just making it, we waited over half an hour.

By the time we were in Stockholm Central it was almost lunchtime. Because it was so late I skipped some of the shops I had planned to visit. A quick visit to a jewellery shop (which had nothing nice), the children’s department at NK (where I found both a nice gift and some chewy toys for Adrian), then a sushi lunch, and finally on the way back to the station we stopped by at Krabat and Iris Hantverk. I think Ingrid quite enjoyed the shopping experience: toys and handicrafts and other fun stuff to look at. She probably wouldn’t have liked it as much if I’d been shopping for shoes or curtain fabrics. Well, actually, she might have liked that, too…

In the afternoon she didn’t want to go to her dance-and-play group either. We read a bit, she actually helped me hang laundry, and then played on her own for some time while I was making dinner etc.

Adrian was unusually cranky in the afternoon. Didn’t want to be carried or held, didn’t want his dummy or his toys, didn’t want to eat or sleep… I was getting really annoyed (pointless, I know, but I couldn’t help it) as I tried everything I could think of. Then he started screaming and finally I realized it was his tummy again. Felt really bad about being annoyed with the poor guy when he was in pain.

The only things I ate that I hadn’t cooked myself were one piece of bread, and the sushi lunch. The bread had all its ingredients listed and it was almost the most basic bread you could imagine: 2 kinds of flour, yeast, salt, sesame seeds. And I couldn’t see anything milk-like in the sushi either, no weird rolls with cream cheese or anything like that. According to the internet there’s no milk in surimi (“crab sticks”). What can it be?

This is really bad, because if I cannot even eat bread or sushi, what am I going to do for lunch in the future? Bring my own sandwiches every time?

Lousy night. Adrian kept waking up and then screaming – didn’t want to breastfeed, didn’t want to cuddle, didn’t burp or fart, just scream. I got maybe 5 hours of sleep in total.

In the morning, playgroup with Adrian. Around lunchtime, a long nap for both of us – except that he woke up crying in the middle of it. Luckily we both went back to sleep after a short while.

Ingrid didn’t want to go to preschool (and has been a bit unhappy about it for several days now). Together we came up with a solution for today at least: we asked if she could go to her old group, where 3 of her best friends are. She spent the morning there and was very happy about it.

In the evening Ingrid went to friend J for about an hour. At the same time Adrian, for the first time, consented to a hip carry (in the Connecta). So I got to cook dinner with no complaining children around me. Nice!

Even though he was really tired, Adrian had trouble falling asleep in the evening again which doesn’t bode well for the night.

Eric is away in London for two days.