Ingrid and Adrian have their occasional loud disagreements – mostly when both want to have the same thing, or when Adrian messes up some activity of Ingrid’s. This often happens because he cannot understand what is important to Ingrid. This piece of paper that she was drawing on? Surely it’s OK if Adrian also makes some squiggles on it, too? He has no idea that Ingrid was making a story book and definitely does not want his squiggles on it.

But the root cause is that he wants to do the same as her, because he looks up to her so much. Anything that Ingrid does, Adrain wants to do as well. He may not be able to express it well, but he loves her. And Ingrid understands that, and sometimes even says things like “wouldn’t it be boring for Adrian if he didn’t have a big sister” (and I agree).

I am not entirely sure if she quite understands how much emptier her own life would be without him, because she is more aware of the frustrations. She is old enough to sometimes want to play with her friends without Adrian being around all the time. But most of the time she enjoys his company as well.

We went skating today. Which may not sound like a big deal, because we’ve been doing a lot of skating recently. But today we went skating even though it was dark, seven o’clock in the evening, the temperature was -8°C (which isn’t shockingly cold but is about 10 degrees colder than what we’ve had thus far this winter) and windy to boot. Ingrid even chose skating ahead of watching a movie. I’m amazed.

The reason? Yesterday Ingrid got two bandy sticks and a bandy ball as a late Christmas gift. She was over the moon about them and really wanted to try them out today.

And despite the circumstances, she (and I) really enjoyed it – even though the bandy field felt like it had not been resurfaced for at least a week and was covered with snow, so the ball kept getting stuck. By the end (close to 9 o’clock) it was just us two on one side of the field, and twenty men playing bandy for real on the other side. A weird but fun experience.

The snow on the ice and the snow in the air made new games possible. We skated so as to make pretty patterns in the snow, and by the time we’d skated to the other end of the field (against the wind) and come back again, twice, our previous tracks were already almost obliterated by the snow so we could make new ones.

We had pancakes for dinner. To feed the 4 of us, I make the batter from 4 large eggs, 4 decilitres of flour, and just short of a litre of oat milk. Often I also throw in a few grated carrots as well.

I have three frying pans working in parallel and it still takes forever to fry them all. I wonder how families with teenagers manage to even fit their dinners onto the stove.

Adrian seems to think that I should learn to drink coffee: while I was making dinner he “made coffee” for me.

I now have both a tripod and a remote. This evening we tried them out for the first time.

This feels very representative of our evenings. Me trying to do something; Adrian hanging on to me; Ingrid turning everything up to 11; Eric seeking peace and quiet in another room.

Things that a two-year-old can learn from a big sister, who definitely did not do this kind of things when she was two years old:

• lördagsgodis and fredagsmys (Saturday candy and Friday evening movies with snacks)
• drinking straws, and using them to blow bubbles in milk
• chewing gum
• face painting
• putting pasta on his fingers, or raspberries

We’ve been in Estonia for nearly two weeks and I have barely said a word about it on the blog. It’s all been too intense, the days too full of action, the mind too full of impressions.

Attractions, sights and outings follow each other in an unceasing flow. We have been to museums, science centres, playgrounds both indoors and outdoors, taken a boat trip and a horseback ride, and more.

Ingrid swallows it all and asks for more; Adrian has found it a bit overwhelming at times, and would probably have preferred some calmer days. But it is easier to plan a day with lots of activity and take him aside for some quiet time, than to plan a quiet day and then try to add extra activities for Ingrid.

Most of these activities we’ve done together with my childhood friends and their children. Me, Ingrid and Adrian have really enjoyed catching up with our Estonian friends, and Adrian pretty much adopted my friends Rahel and Marju as extra moms. Eric has bravely kept us company all the way, but he can probably imagine better ways to spend two weeks of his summer… Planning ahead for our next trip, I think I will try to manage both kids on my own.

Both Ingrid’s and Adrian’s ability to speak Estonian has improved hugely. Adrian said almost nothing at all in Estonian during the first days. Yesterday and today he was playing freely with the other kids and talking to the adults, and using words and grammar that I have never heard him use before.

A few highlights:

Tartu adventure park/seikluspark. Ingrid completed the two kids’ tracks twice and found them rather too easy, so we went on to the first two “real” tracks. These were really meant for people over 140cm (and Ingrid is probably not even 120cm) but with me there to help her move her carabiners, she managed both. Then we did the 300m zipline ride, side by side. Adrian sat on the ground and made silly faces. (We’ve been to a similar park in Otepää twice before during our previous trips, and I could have sworn I’ve blogged about it, but couldn’t find any post about it.)

Vudila, an outdoor playland with all sorts of activities. A pool area with water slides, go-karts and mini ATVs, trampolines and bouncy castles, etc etc. More than enough to fill a day, and good fun in all ways, but the food was really disappointing.

Ice age centre, a science centre about ice ages. Interesting for adults but too serious for the kids, who had much more fun at the beach next to the museum.

Old favourites revisited: Road museum, Hansapäevad, Tartu Toy Museum with its playroom, Ahhaa science centre.

I am so happy that our kids love each other and get along so well.

Adrian can wake up in the morning and declare, first thing, “I love Ingrid” (jag gillar Ingrid). Ingrid likewise says “I love Adrian, he is so cute”.

When Adrian needs waking from a nap, I send Ingrid. Both of them love it best this way. If I wake Adrian, there’s a good chance that he awakes grumpy and whiny, whereas if Ingrid does it, he’s always happy. And Ingrid much prefers Adrian to wake her in the morning rather than us. “He does it better,” she told me.

Sometimes Ingrid helps dress him and even change a wet nappy. It ususally involves lots of giggling from both.

Adrian idolizes Ingrid. Anything she does, he wants to do. He tries on her skirts and headbands; he “reads” her Bamse and Kalle Anka pocket cartoon magazines, he wants to join her in all her games and activities. Vänta på mig (“wait for me!”) and jag vill också! (“I want [to do this], too!”) are heard in the house throughout the day.

Adrian has discovered face painting. He likes being painted, and he likes to paint. Sometimes Adrian and Ingrid paint each other. Ingrid paints flowers, strawberries, hearts, or just colours that Adrian chooses. Adrian also very kindly asks which colours Ingrid or I want, and then applies them with great care, concentration and tenderness.

Yes, I am wearing the same fleece jacket as in my previous self-portrait, AND the one before that. I do own other clothes, and even other fleece jackets, but this one is a favourite.

Pippi Longstocking is Adrian’s favourite character, and Ingrid loves many of Astrid Lindgren’s stories, too. So yesterday we went to Astrid Lindgren’s World, a Lindgren theme park, together with another family.

Most of the park consisted of recreations of environments from the books. There was Pippi’s house of course (and a pirate ship next to it), as well as copies of Bullerby, Mattis’s fort, Thorn Rose Valley, and so on. Most things were scaled down to child size, with small houses, narrow streets, even scaled-down cobblestones.

I found the park itself a bit underwhelming. Many of the environments were just façades: the doors and windows couldn’t be opened. In others you could go inside but there was hardly anything there, just bare walls and a bare floor. Cute to look at from afar but there wasn’t much to actually do there.

Mattis’s fort was at least large enough so we could walk around on the walls and climb up and down in the towers, and Karlsson’s roof had some slides. There were also some other bits and pieces where the kids could climb, including a large “don’t touch the ground” trail that Ingrid enjoyed a lot.

There were performances throughout the day, and we saw two of them: one Pippi show, and one sing-along show. The actors also sang and performed between the main shows. I think Pippi and her crew were out and interacting with the crowd almost all day.

Ingrid loved hanging out around the Pippi house with Pippi and her sailors and pirates. She’s now independent enough that we could just sit at a café nearby while she wandered around. Apart from the shows, her favourite attraction was a little knee-deep pond with two cable ferries. She kept going back and forth across the pond, on her own, with Adrian, with random other kids, for around half an hour I think, and only quit after she accidentally stepped into the pond and got rather wet.

Adrian just enjoyed hanging around the park with Ingrid and his friend Hanna, and looking at stuff.

The park was extremely family-friendly. There were picnic tables, toilets, cafés and restaurants everywhere. At times it felt like there were more cafés than attractions there. But it was very convenient, with almost no queueing anywhere. The restaurants served locally sourced food, and it was real food, with no hot dogs or hamburgers in sight. But expensive… 75 kr for a kids’ portion of meatballs and two potatoes is a bit extreme.

We were lucky to be at ALV on a Friday during the off season. The park wasn’t empty but not too crowded either. As we drove past this morning we saw many more people heading that way so avoiding the weekend was a good thing. I can imagine that it could get awfully busy there during the main season which starts in early June. On the other hand it is probably also more fun then, with many more shows during the day, and more characters from the books just walking around in the park.

I don’t think we’ll be going back there next year. Maybe in a few years’ time, when Adrian is as old as Ingrid is now. And in that case probably at the very beginning or end of the high season, so we catch more of the action but (hopefully) not much more of the crowds.

The oddest things turn out to have 3-year age limits because they are “choking hazards due to small parts”:

• Foam noodle water squirters
• Felt tip pens
• Play tents
• Toy barbecue set in wood and felt (ours is slightly different but also has a 4-year age limit)

I have never hesitated about letting Adrian play with any of these since before he was even two. To me, these are great toddler toys. And marble runs, too.

Well, I would not give marbles or felt tip pens to 6-month babies who still explore the world with their mouths. But surely two-year-olds are well past that stage? It makes me wonder what sort of kids these safety standards are based on.

And how are these toys even choking hazards? The caps on felt tip pens, yes. But noodle water guns? For them to become a choking risk, the kid would first have to tear off a piece. That’s not going to happen easily in normal play. Does the average toddler behave like a wild animal, attacking everything with their teeth and claws?