How is it going?

:-)  Thanks to Jennifer for asking.  I have been busy lately.

We are due back at the Maudsley this afternoon.  Waif is supposed to have put on about a kg.  Personally, I will be pleased if she has maintained her increase of last time..........whilst she professed delight, Waif has gone back to eating outside my presence - always claiming to have "just eaten" her snack (she will show me the plate with the toast crumbs or the empty hot chocolate cup) without me having a chance to supervise, and IMO she is looking quite thin again.   Ho hum, I have my fingers crossed.

Perhaps in the week after a weight gain, I am also inclined to take my eye off the ball, to revel in the fact that Waif can eat her own tea from the school snack shop and make her way to tennis on a Friday instead of my picking her up from school and watching her drink her hot chocolate and eat toast.  This makes me lazy, I guess.  And human - it is the relentlessness of food supervision that personally I find tough.  In the week after a gain, I also have a tendency to allow Waif some slack eg I didn't insist she ate the chips that he rest of us had on Monday and Wednesday, and on a few mornings I have let Waif swap her scrambled eggs on toast for cheese on toast - Older Daughter says that cheese on toast was mentioned as a diet tip on TImes Online or something.  Somehow I doubt it as cheese is calorific but Waif may well have read that.  Either way, it is better than a scraping of jam.

Art is still proving to be a success with her work proceeding apace.  Waif reports that her teacher is chatty and friendly  :-)   That's just what she needs.

Tomorrow is the last day of term and Waif is having lunch out with her friends.  She also asked a friend back for lunch at the weekend, which is the first "playdate" she has had with schoolmates at the school she started in January.  I trust this means she is settling in.  Hmmm, tomorrow will not work out so well as Waif is having lunch out and then super at home with OD only as my husband and I are going out for dinner - 6.30pm in the West End so too early to allow me to feed Waif first.  Well, let's see how Waif weighs in this afternoon.

Waif is planning to cycle to school in the Summer term. Whilst this suits me a lot - no more school runs! - it will only be allowed if she is still doing well at eating so I hope for her sake she keeps up the good work.  She is cross that I mentioned the cycling to the mother opposite - I was pretty much compelled to as she is the one with whom I share the school run so she needs to know if it's not happening!  Why she is cross, it turns out, is that she doesn't want the 15 year old boy from opposite cycling with her. She says that he will not be fast enough.  She says that she overtakes everyone on her bike and there is no way he will be able keep up with her on the big hill through Greenwich Park (see pic below).  I am wondering whether Waif is intending to cycle up and down that hill a few times in each direction.......   It's true she is fast though, for she is light and has a carbon fibre bike so she can race up hills easily.



Finally, some other news:  Older Daughter did so well in her entrance exams for boarding school that the school has made a place especially for her, which we have accepted, even though they don't yet know which house they can squeeze her into.  They said that she would be top of the intake for 2010.  That's impressive for one of the top schools in the country so OD is chuffed to bits.  I feel it will be a fabulous opportunity for her, and a break.  And it will give me a chance to focus on Waif alone.  I also feel like my role as a mother is ending and am wondering what will hold together our family when the girls both leave home.  You could say I feel conflicted, even though I am fully aware that my role is to prepare them for independent adult life and that to see them go off and grab it is a mark of success.