![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/Adrian_on_Bauhaus_cart.jpg\")
\nThe end of Adrian’s preschool years is drawing close. They had their end-of-term celebrations already. And we’ve also already been to a first introductory meeting at school, where Adrian met his teacher and half the kids in his class, and saw the classroom they will be in. He seemed neither particularly excited nor nervous about it. But then he’s been to and from that school so many times with me to pick up Ingrid that it must all be quite familiar to him by now.<\/p>\n
This month’s new skill: cycling. He’s been half-heartedly trying to learn it for a while, and managed just fine with the balance and cycling downhill, but as soon as the ground was flat to uphill, it was too hard. He’s no stranger to walking and running, but maybe his cycling muscles are weak, or maybe he just hasn’t really found them yet. Still, one day something clicked, and he even cycled to and from preschool several times.<\/p>\n
He started with the smallest bike we have, the one that Ingrid learned to cycle on, but it’s already too small for him. The next one is just right in size but feels tall to him, so he is slightly nervous on it and doesn’t feel comfortable using it very much. We’ve started looking for a “co-pilot” like thing that we can attach to one of our own bikes, which would both allow us to go on longer bike trips, and hopefully get him used to sitting on a taller bike as well.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, he seems to quite like walking. He often joins me when I want to go out geocaching, and while we don’t cover huge amounts of ground, we can easily walk for two hours without him complaining.<\/p>\n
Twice now he has also walked with Ingrid to the supermarket in “downtown” Sp\u00e5nga. Ingrid asks for extra chores to earn money; Adrian likes being outside; both enjoy the other’s company: win-win for everybody.
\n![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/Adrian_69m.jpg\")
\nAdrian enjoys the idea of a weekly allowance but is not quite old enough to save up money like Ingrid does. As soon as he has enough for a small Lego set, he buys one. He has now also learned about the concept of internet shopping: he used to think that you could just order things but now understands that “ordering” is just like buying and also requires money. He likes receiving parcels in the post so his latest Lego purchase was an online one.<\/p>\n
Online shopping is great maths and reading practice, by the way. With a bit of concentration, he can spell out most words of up to around 6 or 8 letters, and of course recognizing the Lego logo is no effort. Prices are clearly listed and he can compare them to the amount of money he has. I do rather wish that Toys’R’Us online shop didn’t use the misleading 90-cent pricing model: a Lego kit costing 120 kr is listed as 119:90 even though it’s been almost 25 years since the 10-\u00f6re coins were phased out.<\/p>\n
Legos are the best toys still – not only because of all the endless building opportunities, but also because of the clear good guys vs bad guys setup. Almost all movies that Adrian likes to watch also have that good vs evil conflict: Lego Ninjago, Transformers, Star Wars…<\/p>\n
He talks all the time. There is so much going on in his head and it all has to be shared with someone. Quite often he starts talking to me before he has quite figured out what he wants to tell me, and sentences start over and transmogrify into something else, and a minute later I am very lost and have no idea wha the is talking about, and have to ask him to start over. The next attempt usually makes much more sense.<\/p>\n
He also eats a lot: always more than Ingrid, and some days more than Eric or I. He also eats a much more varied diet than he used to. He no longer routinely says no to new foods and tries almost everything I serve, without any need for prompting even. And then he is surprised that things he previously believed to be gross turn out to taste just fine. He has even eaten mashed potatoes! He hasn’t learned to like any sandwich toppings yet – his sandwiches still consist of bread and butter only.
\n![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/Adrian_watering.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The end of Adrian’s preschool years is drawing close. They had their end-of-term celebrations already. And we’ve also already been to a first introductory meeting at school, where Adrian met his teacher and half the kids in his class, and saw the classroom they will be in. He seemed neither particularly excited nor nervous about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[633,665],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrian","category-adrian_monthly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7569,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7497\/revisions\/7569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}