After the storm

Originally uploaded by JuliaCroyden

We had a bad Monday last week. My dad came in the morning - he arrived at Heathrow on the 5am flight from Hong Kong, and always comes to us afterwards, which is lovely but wakes me up at 6 every time. I try to make bread for him and we leave coffee and honey out so he can look after himself until we come down. Lucy adores him, which is great, but it means that she is then unable to settle when he goes and wants him back, or wants to go to Ninny and Owl's house, and is generally in a bad, bad mood. So when I announced that we were going to Tippietoes, she went nuts, and ended up hitting me across the face.

After a lot of tears and cuddles, we became friends again, and she did some painting with me. I could bang on about how creative she is and how wonderful it is that she chooses her own colours (demands) and mixes them to create new ones (brown) and how artistic she is (paint everywhere); I will say though that she tidies up after herself, a skill her mother has yet to master. She only got a bit of paint on the floor, and that upset her, so she cleaned it up by herself.

I am far prouder of that than of the paintings.