2nd December (Friday)

This week’s on supersonic mode. Cannot catch up with the boom. Lara’s been having fantastic fun with her friends yesterday and the day and the day before. On Wednesday, Olivia and Ruby came round, and they played in the garden, downstairs (disco dancing, schools, drawing, listening to stories…) and then Ruby stayed for our spaghetti Bolognese dinner. We had a picnic on the grass (yes, with spag bol) and they were in seventh heaven. Afterwards there was a little time and they jumped into the whirlpool bath and had a blast with bubbles.

Then there was Thursday, when Sophie came over to play. She saw the pic from when Ruby was over the day before and… well one thing lead to another and so she ended up staying for our roast chicken dinner… also on the grass. Boy, Sophie’s a good eater. Wonderful. They decided that they were going to have carrots, cauliflower, peas, courgettes and aubergine with the roast chicken and sweet potato, so that’s what I cooked them. Mind you, Lara didn’t want the peas and Sophie didn’t want the aubergine but I think that’s fair enough.

(Ok, they were in the mood for a photo shoot. Demanded it, AND to choose one for my computer desktop.)

Today it was gym, of course. We had dinner on the grass afterwards together (again) and then after Lara was supposedly tucked up in bed a couple of friends came over for a drink… at which Lara immediately go out of bed and sat at the table with us with one of her books and read it aloud to herself for about 20 minutes while we talked mainly about headlice. (A major preoccupation for many of us. Apparently kerosene is a great headlouse killer, and very cheap, but I just can’t see myself soaking Lara’s head in kerosene, somehow…) Then we packed her off to bed again. Simply lovely to just sit and chat for a while.

As a measure of how much stuff’s been going on, Lara hasn’t actually had time to watch a single minute of television since she’s been here. She’s been up from 5:30 in my bed, clutching books and reading, telling stories, doing fantastic homework (she was absolutely on fire for her long multiplication this morning), manic reading, huge playdates, cramming it all in. We’ve got Christmas cards to write, her birthday to plan, the trip to get ready for, everything to do and only a few days left to do it in.