Love

She loves these friends. And they give her a lot of love. In that inexplicable way that a soft toy can. I only got pluck when I was her age, she's had monkey since being six months old. Both are very precious to her. If best monkey has to be in the wash, it isn't her other monkeys she goes to. It's pluck. And recently she's sleeping with both of them tight in her arms, not just monks.

She slept in this morning, for katie. She didn't get up til gone 7. Which would be fine if she wasn't used to having plenty of time for some of the music she wants to do and such. But today she wanted to show me everything new they did at dance class last night and play lots of piano and this and that... yet we still made it to school in time!

I always ask her "what was good about today?" As one of our after school catch up questions. Today it was the cake & stew at lunchtime and playing with her favourite boy friends. She's doing that more and more these days, along with one of her girl friends G. I wonder whether she finds boy friendships easier, the girls are going through that 7 year old falling out all the time phase. She told me about their St Davids day assembly and was a funny mix of bored and interested!

She did clarinet after school tonight, following an early tea. I ended up suggesting she go to her room after the first utterance of that joyful "you can't tell me what to do". I didn't shout. I did however make it clear that was not something I wished to hear again. And that she was going to be in her bed. She looked exhausted and I thought she'd go to sleep quite soon. To her credit, she laid quietly listening to her songs and was very pleased when after half an hour unable to get herself off to sleep I suggested she could read a while. Due largely to a pretty terrible effort on schools part with the reading programme, she's lost her enthusiasm for reading over the this school year. With some concerted effort and some cheesy crappy kids ballet stories, we are slowly managing to do undo that.