Mother's Day

Waif seems to be taking eating seriously this week :-) I felt bad not allowing her to go to games on Tuesday afternoon, yoga on Tuesday evening and tennis on Friday, but she accepted it with good grace. Today, I let her go on a 4 mile walk to meet a friend the other side of the park, and walk back together but that seems okay as she has been doing well, and already looks better for it. A small weight gain on a frame of nothing, looks immediately dramatically healthier.

Older Daughter heard on Friday that she has a place at the boarding school to which she applied so she will be leaving home in September at the tender age of 16, to begin pursuing her dream of being a doctor :-o We will miss her a lot, including Waif, but on the whole it will be good from her to get away from the tension of meal times, and the domination of our lives by how much Waif has or has not eaten. We are blessed to have this option. Waif wanted to know if there would be enough money left for her to go too! I told her there would be but that she would only be able to go if she has been well for 2 years so she had better hurry up and recover by this Summer if she wants to go there in the sixth form. She said I wouldn't be able to tell her what to do when she was 16 :-) I approve of the odd teenage remark as it seems healthily normal.

We are going out to eat tonight for Mother's Day - Waif booked a restaurant using my husband's restaurant account (!). I hope we can all relax and have a good evening together. Waif also gave me a lovely card. Incidentally, it featured food: it had Goldilocks trying a bowl of porridge and saying "yuk, this is so not organic!" This is very funny as nearly all of our food (well not the ready meals that Waif buys) is organic as I care about the way animals are farmed and the way we treat our planet. Waif also baked me biscuits and a chocolate fondant. She didn't eat any of it herself unfortunately.

Meantime, I have been booking non-food outings for me and the girls. We went to a maths lecture last week (sigh, yes, we all like maths and this was a lecture by Marcus Du Sautoy who is wonderful, on the magic of prime numbers), and I have booked us tickets for the National Theatre on Easter Sunday. Which reminds me. I have been putting off buying Easter eggs for the girls as I don't want Waif to be upset on Easter Sunday at receiving a large chocolate egg that might intimidate her, yet on the other hand nor do I want her to feel unloved by receiving only a tiny one. I am searching for a small yet perfect option, perhaps with more china or fluffy rabbit than chocolate.

I have also arranged for Waif to begin one-t-one art tuition on Thursdays. She loves art and it is a hobby that brings her much joy and, I hope, lets her feel special.

We have been laughing this week because 2 people have called Waif a genius! One was her Latin teacher who had been trying to persuade her not to drop the subject for GCSE as he says she is very talented. He then walked in to her in Spanish the very next lesson. Because she is new at the school and the setting didn't work out (she has been slotted into the German class as that is where there was a space) the school have been letting her sit in with the "A" level class, doing her own work.

"Waif, you are so clever" muttered the Latin teacher in astonishment, and left shaking his head in disbelief before Waif had a chance to explain :-) He, he. Then a boy in her class said that she was some kind of genius because he has been struggling in music to pick out the tune to "Walking in the Air" with one finger, and Waif came along and played it with left hand accompaniment, and announced, for it is true, that she had worked it out by ear. It's all good for her sense of self worth. Oh, she also came top of her whole year in a maths test. Sigh, is it good to be so driven? Half of me is proud of her and the other part wishes that she didn't bother so much and watched more junk TV.

Meanwhile, I am getting her to read Sophie's World and the Selfish Gene to stretch her mind a little more when she announces she is bored.

Oh, one other development. Right at the end of the last Maudsley visit, the psych mentioned that she wanted to discuss the whole issue of whether Waif sleeping in our bed was even "appropriate". Waif has slept in her own bed since then. No doubt this is to avoid any such conversation. I presume this is a good thing. Luckily, one of our cats has at the same moment decided that he loves Waif's bed and so is keeping her company. The dog usually starts off on her bedroom floor, too, although he pads back downstairs some time in the night.